The Great Nothing

Nobody can hear a scream in the vacuum of space, or so they say. Anyone else may find traveling through such a void horrifying, yet it’s all I can think about. Naturally, I mean the Great Nothing, 700 million light-years away. The observable universe is so large, but no area has fewer galaxies than that dark, desolate place. It’s practically an anomaly. Shrouded in mystery.

Hearing that mirror-life may exist there turned my interest into an obsession. I was 12, watching a new season of Cosmological Wonder on the Ph channel, always musing over possibilities: what if our quaint little Milky Way had the misfortune of forming in the centre of the Great Nothing? We would have only darkness to call our friend. Perhaps Geocentrism would live on. Perhaps such a lonely context would make the prospect of space exploration that much more frightening. But the abyss will never kill my curiosity. Neither will the nightmares.

I wiped the sweat from my brow and took a deep breath. My insomnia was getting worse, but nothing a few sleeping pills couldn't handle. My partner always worried about my dependence on them. I half-expected to hear his familiar gravelly criticism from across the bed, but it never came. We gave in to our inevitable separation a year ago. His incessant complaints that I remained ‘married to my work’ were too obnoxious to bear. I mentioned our date nights and my effort to set aside time for us, but Gemi would always reply “it’s not enough Em. You know that.” I wanted to disagree, but every brain cell I had screamed at my waste of energy as if to urge me to pour my entire being into a traversable wormhole. Working on the theory has usurped the last decade of my life, and working towards such a privilege meant sacrificing more than just time.

Reaching out, I grabbed my glasses from atop the nightstand. It was 4 am. I needed rest. The institute was inching closer to creating the Einstein-Rosen bridge. If we could only stabilise the white hole with negative relativistic mass, we could construct a usable wormhole. There was only one answer: dark fluid. Finding dark energy might be out of the question. Creating it wasn’t.

I couldn’t help but smile as my hand closed around a Christmas gift in the bottom drawer. My Dad, for all his faults, listened. He knew what to say. And he knew when to say it. I caressed the handmade leather-bound journal and wrote today’s date. Recording my dreams was something I only pondered. Something I never acted on. Now was the time to change that.

Date: 29th June 2029

Title: Smoking Mirror (recurring)

I find myself running along a red-carpet several miles long. The mirror is within reach. But every time I close the distance, it shatters, leaving only black smoke behind. It starts... taking shape. Tendrils form and coal-black smoke blots out all sources of light. I feel the tunnel shrink. Wait... am I in a tunnel? Dizziness sets in and I smell a faint whiff of petrol in the air, or maybe something like it. Stumbling through the darkness, I suddenly feel free. Space has opened up as if to welcome my arrival. Everything tilts. I desperately try to hold on to the carpet, only to realise it never existed. I find myself floating. I freeze. The more I struggle against this invisible force, the stronger it becomes. The space feels as dense as an ocean, with no end in sight. No ability to swim toward sunlight. What should I do? I can’t give up. I won’t.