THE ZABRISKIE

Once we’d flown through the black hole, it was cake. There had been stories about what was on the other side of one, but they were all unfounded. How could anyone actually prove these kinds of things when they’d never returned? Sensors took copious readings as we ventured into the back end of another galaxy some 7,000 light years away from our initial entry. Would we make it back it to prove our findings? We couldn’t be sure. But once we’d arrived, the things we saw went beyond the indescribable. All things we knew to be true were reversed. The darkness of space took on a bright blue tint. Stars were blackened spots in the distance. The black hole we came out of was simply a spiral of white, no light being produced from it. Our initial planet count spilled into the hundreds, and the technology here was astounding. The combined discoveries here were nothing, however, when contrasted with the sight of our sister ship, the Diarmuid, frozen in space, aged a thousand years by our computer’s estimates. It had sped ahead of us into the black hole only hours ago. Upon closer inspection, we noticed the dust particles in the forward cabins were the remnants of the crew, floating weightless in an antique shell. Were we the lucky ones or were we about the face something much worse, living out our days in a cosmos we were clearly not made for? What good is knowledge if all you can do is die with it?




-SLL