HE0450-2958

All creation is sentient just in different ways.

We Quasars, the creators of stars, are aware for billions of years before we eventually die fading into still green clouds. Mine is a big profound, ancient awareness coupled with an equally big and profound painful agony.

I am alone – I have been torn from my partner galaxy Astrophel by a powerful mysterious force and left misplaced in the dark. Her absence is excruciating. Quasars too can be lonely.

My heart is a yawning massive black hole aswirl with gas and dust that superheat as they slide into its fathomless depth. It just churns and churns and churns with unimaginable force. Everything that comes close is consumed. But it is still constricted by the pain of her loss.

It is exhausting being a vortex of creation; made to the nth degree harder without my Astrophel. Once we were conjoined in a collision of fiery creation – such a joyful union. That we would be yanked apart, after such bliss has gutted me to my core.

What happened? There was nothing to see. Yet, suddenly I was drifting further and further away from her. It took me eons to stop the momentum and now straining hard, I can barely inch back towards her at some ten thousand kilometers an hour. The chasm separating us is 22,000 light years. Will I die before reaching her? Crushing down that fear, I focus on what can be done.

From afar, I bathe her beautiful contours in light brighter than six hundred trillion suns. Greedily she soaks up my glow. I spasm energy into radio jets then send them to her to help her create stars. She is a fertile goddess, birthing three hundred suns a year on her own. She is now star rich – glittering like a net of diamonds, they shine all around her.

As time passes, I cannot stop pondering on who or what did this to us? What dark force could wield such power? The only clue I have is that I have lost my halo of dark matter. Who took it?

How could they steal such a thing? I know it is gone by the crimped flow of matter into my heart. I feel like I have been stabbed, kidnapped, and robbed on a cosmic scale.

Then out of the black - there is the answer – a male quasar is moving at impossible speed towards Astrophel. He is massive and clearly powered with the energy of two halos. He will not co-create in her center as a quasar mate should, he will consume her entirely.

He clearly did not take my halo on his own. How did he get it?

I can almost taste her fear when she too first sees him coming. Like being stuck on the tracks of an oncoming train unable to move for what seems like an eternity she knows she is a trapped target.

My only option is to collide with him far enough away from Astrophel, that she is not harmed by the fallout of the crash. Changing course, pulling out all the stops, I race to reach him in time.

Time stretches out to a pinpoint when we smash into each other. A surge of catastrophic energy and then we are engaged in a massive brawl. Luckily clear of Astrophel and heading further away on a new course. My halo spins back to me, clicking in as the dust swirls.

I feel akin to a bouncer in a bar who tackles a drunk on a rampage to keep his sweetheart safe only knowing he may have to wrestle with him till he dies.

As I watch Astrophel get smaller in the horizen, she constantly sends me her love in waves. It flows through every part of me sparking bright joy deep within. She will be loving me till she dies. And I will feel it no matter, how far apart we are. It was worth it.

After so many years, my nemesis - CTA 102 and I know each other intimately now. We are in a constant struggle for dominance but evenly matched so there is a balance to it, a rhythm, like breathing to the fight. He is lusting for life and more life, and I simply want to go home, but neither will get what they want - entangled as we are.

My desire for revenge has long gone. I am still inside. Though from time to time I do try to pry the secret from CTA 102 of how he managed to steal my halo. Sadly, he ignores me and smugly turns away every time. He knows, I slyly plot to steal his halo when we are far enough away, so I can fly back to Atrophel double quick.

What a strange situation to be in. How one minute all is right with the universe and the next a calamity perhaps death. But my nemesis echoes in my mind that he has no intention of dying. So on we go - I will dream of Astrophel and smile at him knowing he will never harm her now, it is my turn to be smug.