Sirens

The vast nothingness of space was dotted with a small ship, carrying a weary captain and his crew. The war had ended, and they were finally headed home. But after years in the void, the captain had grown distant. He was haunted by death, by the deaths of his friends killed in battle, and by the deaths he had caused, the enemy soldier he had killed. He was now adrift in the void, without joy or purpose.

The crew, also joyless and bored of endless space, had taken to brewing booze from the ship’s fuel, which gave them rich visions to entertain them between cryosleeps. The visions were addictive, and so was the booze.

The ship’s sensors detected a darker part of the void. The captain was fascinated by the strange dark void and steered the ship’s course towards it. The crew, though still a little drunk, realized this was dangerous and tried to warn him off. But the captain wouldn’t listen, as he was drawn to the darkness.

The sirens sounded – a black hole. They had entered its gravity field and now there was no escape. The crew said their final farewells and put themselves into cryosleep. The captain stayed at the helm and stared into the void. Suddenly, reality broke, and every possibility of his life became true at once.

He saw himself as a farmer on Earth, content with a simple life. Then he was a mosquito, feeding on himself. Now he saw the memory of the enemy soldier he had killed, through that soldier’s eyes. Now he saw the same memory from the view of the weapon that killed him. He walked through the dreams of his sleeping crew members and saw things through their eyes, felt their hopes and sadnesses. 

He saw all possibilities, all humanity, all connected. No ‘good’ or ‘bad’, just a world of connections. And then, at the centre of the void, he saw something.

“Is that you, God?”.

And suddenly, the ship flew out of the void, now pushed towards home with the same force that it had been pulled into the void before.

The crew woke up and saw the captain had changed. They were still sad and distant, but he now saw the beauty of a connected universe. He wanted to go home. 

He tried to explain it all to them, but they did not understand. This made sense to him; he understood that they could not understand. It all made total sense. 

This made him feel better as the air rushed out of the hold. Through the glass, he saw the same look in their eyes that he had seen when looking through the eyes of the enemy soldier he had killed, and he forgave them.