Shapeshifter

Nobody can hear a scream in the vacuum of space, or so they say. Sound isn’t carried outside the atmosphere, because there is no air. Screams don’t exist; stories don’t exist; words don’t exist. Everything that once made my world go round no longer exists for me. But with every minute I’m up here, alone in the vastness of empty space, my mind finds new words to hear, new stories to listen to, and new reasons for me to scream an inaudible scream. Perhaps I’m hallucinating; perhaps it’s a side effect of the strange drugs they gave me before I left Earth- perhaps it’s the fact I haven’t eaten properly in…I have no idea how long.

I float, strapped by a long rope to the outside of the shimmering silver vessel I call home, my uncomfortable suit and glass helmet the only barrier between me and... nothingness. Somehow, the words feel real. They sound real. Perhaps they are real?

‘Do you see that?’ she said, her voice as soft as warm water on my skin. ‘What?’ I replied, the word a simple thought in my mind, existing only in my imagination. ‘The energy all around you; the vibrant life in a place fit only for death,' she continued, always speaking to me in riddles or rhymes, her words as elegant as if they’d slipped from the lips of a poet. I shook my head. ‘I see nothing. Nothing except… blackness.’ I paused, my flickering eyes scanning the world around me. ‘And a few stars, too far away for me to ever reach.’ I added, my gaze fixing upon tiny silver dots so small that they seemed like nothing more than specks of dust in my vision. I took a raspy breath of the air which was pushing on the inner wall of my helmet. ‘You come out here to sit in space, why?’ she began. ‘If it is truly empty blackness- if nothing exists here except death, then how are you here?’ I couldn’t think of the answer to this particular riddle, so I turned, clutching the rope tightly through my thick gloves and pulled myself along, following its length back to the ship. I pressed my body as close to the curved metal wall as I could, slowly bringing myself up the ladder. My heart pounded with adrenaline as I leapt onto the roof, before untying myself and winding up the rope. I turned the handle on the circular door, slid myself inside and locked it behind me. ‘And yet even when I’m not out there, you’re still here, aren’t you?’ I felt her presence all around me as if she were a human being, a friend whom I’d known my whole life. She’d tried to tell me several times that ‘she is the Universe,’ so I’d given up asking. I waited for the vault to seal with a hum, click and whoosh, and then unclipped my suit and pulled my helmet from my head with a wave of relief. A strand of my hair came loose and fell in my face- the artificial gravity inside the ship trying to convince me that I stood upon our planet. ‘I am here,’ she said simply, a statement I believed would always be true, no matter where I was.

‘Tell me…’ she began. I listened as I strode across the vehicle- my jail cell- floating needlessly and pointlessly through the darkness. ‘If the space out there is actually nothing, how come you can hear it?’ Frustrated, I let out a sigh. ‘I don’t know,’ I answered, untying my hair, pulling it back and re-tying it. I leant over the control board at the front of the ship and clicked a few buttons. Auto-pilot sent us hurtling through the vacuum at ridiculous speed, on a course to find ‘The Place Where Life Could Exist Again.’ Unconvinced, I had lived through too many years of this journey only to lose all my crew members and go insane with loneliness, it seemed. ‘You’re not insane,’ she whispered, aware of the anger bubbling inside me. ‘How do you know that I’m not?’ I snapped. ‘I’m speaking to no one, surrounded by nothing, going nowhere. How is that sane?’ She hesitated for a moment. ‘You’re simply discovering the truth. You’re not blinded by distractions anymore. It’s miraculous how most of you humans always find a way to remain unconscious, jumping from one distraction to the next until you fall asleep, and then awaken to do it all over again. Here there is no sunrise or sunset to base this thing you call “time” upon, no distance to walk to get from one place to another, nothing to do or accomplish, no reason for anything…except to wait for your arrival at a location you don’t believe for one second is real. And it’s not real.’

I took a breath, glancing hopelessly out the window before allowing myself to fall onto the hard mattress that was my bunk. ‘So the truth is that there’s nothing out there? Nothing except infinite space?’ I sighed. ‘And the stars’. The vent in the ceiling above me clicked and then began blowing cool air in my face. ‘And the ship, of course. And me,’ I added. ‘Everything that exists in the universe is created from infinite space,’ she began. ‘The physicality of the stars, the ship and you is simply an illusion. Any variation of the physical universe can exist at any moment. So yes, it is accurate to say that there is only infinite space. But- and this is the fun part- what is contained within the infinite space?’ I thought for a moment, but I could find only one answer. ‘Nothing, it’s empty.’ I sniffed, pulling the thin blanket over my legs. For a brief moment I felt satisfied with my response, until a thought struck me. ‘No, wait-’ I began, stopping myself suddenly, my face creasing into a skeptical frown. ‘That’s not right.’ I sat up, staring through the front windscreen out into the vast emptiness. If physicality is just an illusion, then all there is is nothing. And yet, if there is only nothing, doesn’t that make it something? Suddenly the whole universe blew wide open in my mind. ‘Nothing and something are the same?’ I asked, breath-taken. ‘Nearly,’ she answered. ‘Nothing and everything are the same.’ My heart began thudding so loudly inside my slight body that I could hear its pulse in my ears. ‘Oh, my god,’ I mumbled, pushing back the cover and standing, finding my way over to the driver’s seat, my gaze fixated on the darkness. I had spent so long looking at the void from a perspective of lack, failing to see the immense abundance that was everywhere at all times. ‘I see it now,’ I whispered, passion burning inside my heart, a feeling I hadn’t felt for many years, since the first few days of the journey. ‘Finally…’ she said, her voice so melodious it was almost a laugh. Everywhere I looked I saw nothing- and that was the brilliance of it. Within the nothing is everything. I stared out into the greatest nothing I had ever come across- no air, no time, no light- but that was just how it seemed on the surface. This infinity that appeared to contain only stars, my measly ship and feeble little body actually held something far more spectacular- the possibility for anything at all. Or, in her words: “Any variation of the physical universe can exist at any moment”. Utterly entranced, I stared open-mouthed at the black world in front of me, like a child staring at a magician. ‘So it is real?’ I said aloud, under my breath. My question needed no explaining, she already knew I meant: The Place Where Life Could Exist Again. I waited for the answer; there was a moment of quiet inside my mind.

‘It can be.’

Suddenly there was a noise so loud it felt as though the world was screaming at me, piercing through the walls of my skull and ripping me open. In desperation, I began hitting every switch or button I could think of, pulling every lever that may stop the warning alarm. Where had it come from? What was happening to the ship? Had we crashed? I hadn’t felt anything. I cried out, clutching my head in my hands as I stood from the chair. Stumbling, I sunk to the floor, rolled on my back, and screamed. ‘Stop it, stop it, stop it!’ I pleaded, writhing from the pain that pierced my entire body, like a knife had sliced right through me. ‘Stop it!’ The sound grew only louder, far louder than any alarm I had ever heard. ‘This is how you remember what you can do,’ she said, her voice as clear as always, despite the sound that echoed around the ship- as though they existed in two entirely separate compartments of my brain. Gently, truthfully, lovingly, she continued. ‘You mustn’t rely on the world to stop it for you. Instead, stop it yourself.’ I wept, feeling as if my soul was shattering under the pressure. I found myself unable to move, paralyzed to the spot, tied down by a weight I couldn’t comprehend, like the entire universe was sitting on top of me. ‘Stop it yourself. Stop it yourself. Stop it yourself.’ Her voice reverberated inside me, the only comfort amongst the evil that thrived all around me, roaming the ship with its scream, laughing as it gazed down on my sad, weak form- a form that didn’t belong out here- that should’ve never come out here. ‘I can’t!’ I screamed, the anguish building inside me like a volcano threatening to explode. ‘Of course you can,’ she said calmly. ‘If nothing and everything exist right now, right here, what are you? You are infinity; you must be- there is nothing else. Therefore, within you exists every possibility in the universe…and you may choose your reality freely.’

Suddenly, I found myself somewhere outside the ship, floating in the emptiness. What the hell? Somehow suspended in dark nothingness, my soul filled with a toxic fear. My gaze flickered as I searched the empty, black space around me. Realizing I couldn’t see my legs or my arms or my hands or reach out to feel for my body, I screamed, the sound stuck forever inside me, unable to ricochet out into the vacuum and cursed to be non-existent. ‘Just because no one else can hear it, doesn’t mean it’s not real,’ her voice sounded out of my traumatized mind. ‘What’s happening?’ I asked, my thought so intense that it was almost a command. ‘What do you mean?’ she answered. ‘What do you mean "What do I mean?" ? What the hell is happening to me? Where am I? Where is my body?’ I cried. ‘Calm down…’ she continued. I tried to contain my bubbling fear, and took a deep breath, before screaming once more. ‘How am I breathing?’ I said, feeling the sensation of my lungs filling with soft, soothing air, like the sweet air of spring in a pine forest. ‘Well, you’re not breathing air... rather, you’re breathing spirit. It is basically what air is, after all. You’re just bypassing the whole "my-body-needs-oxygen-to-live" part.’ Flabbergasted, a million questions swum together in my head, forming an insane mess. ‘This is a d-dream, isn’t it?’ I stammered. I breathed once more. Before she could respond, I found myself back on my ship, lying on the cold metal floor. My body ached, my head pounded, my vision was blurred, and my heart raced angrily in my chest- faster than I’d ever felt it go before. The noise had stopped. ‘No,’ she said quietly. ‘It wasn’t a dream. You simply realized that you’re not as limited as you thought you were. You transported yourself.’ I took a deep, raspy breath. ‘How?’

‘Using a skill known as shapeshifting, one that all beings in the universe may utilize. You chose one of the infinite possibilities and made it happen.’

My heart ached as I listened to her words, and out of the confusion inside me emerged an energy, flitting around inside my body like a fairy dancing in the forest on a moonless night. The energy grew stronger and bigger, expanding like a flower opening to the sun, reaching out inside me until it filled my entire body, shielding me somehow from the pain of my aches. The energy grew even further, breaking through the boundary of my body and continuing to fill the entire vehicle. Stunned into silence for a moment, I sat quietly on the floor in bewilderment. I took hurried breaths as I realized that this energy… was me. Without moving, I could feel the walls of the ship, the controls, the soft cotton blanket on my bed, the air that rushed through the ventilators and the cool metal bars of the entrance hatch. My eyes innocently flickered around me. My soul was so big and extended so far that, at any moment, I could experience anything inside the ship as if I was touching it. And I continued expanding, endlessness flowing inside me as I grew out beyond the confines of the ship and into the blackness. From there- I knew no limits. I could exist on the opposite side of the cosmos, if I chose. My whole being spread like arms reaching along the very fibers of the universe. It was as though the darkness was an ocean, and I was the water. ‘Now…’ she began. ‘What’s next, Shapeshifter?’ ‘Let’s go to The Place Where Life Can Exist Again,’ I replied.

In an instant, I found myself standing atop a rocky peak that rose miles into the air, the world around me a vast carpet of luminous green, cloaked in a heat haze. I felt the warm, strong wind blowing me backwards and flowing through my hair. I grinned as I rose onto tiptoes and leapt from the clifftop, falling, falling, falling, the air rushing up between my limbs with the speed of lightning, my heart jumping in my chest. I laughed and screamed with childlike joy, the sound ricocheting out over the realm. Just as I was nearing the shadowy canopy of the forest beneath, I suddenly transformed- my bright, silky feathers spreading into huge wings, my talons hanging beneath me as I rose higher into the air, so high that I soared amongst drifts of cloud. My sharp green eyes scoured the vast landscape beneath and I let out a raspy, piercing call. ‘Do you see that?’ I said. ‘What?’ she questioned. ‘The life, all around us,’ I replied, my gaze fixed upon a cluster of treehouses rising from the jungle below. Were there humans living here? Were there aliens? Was I the alien?