The Station, Part 6

5/6/2207

Eight days ago the stars disappeared. I woke at precisely 07:00 and went through my routine. Nothing showed up on scans. And that should have been my first clue something wasn’t right. But routine and habit got the better of me. My fault letting the comfort of the automated systems and my general and growing disinterest in the project make me lazy. Why, oh why, wasn’t there some civilian contractor out there willing to put a bid out? Guess I’m the answer for the cheap labor the military usually goes for. And yeah, I’m a communications specialist. Hooray for me.

Scans showed nothing but the expected interstellar static of the universe. Pulsars, stellar nurseries, red giants and all stellar marvels outputted their wavelengths of meaningless chatter that was efficiently catalogued and dismissed by the main computer. If I had given more of a care then I would’ve noticed the marked drop in that traffic from a particular region of space, in the direction of the unknown regions. A null point.

I don’t look out the ports anymore. I used to. On the port side I used to be able to see the Crab Nebula. A wonderful sight. But as spectacular as that sight was, a man can get used to anything. And so I just stopped looking at it. Every window to the outside was little more than a familiar framed picture in a hallway. If I had only stopped to look that morning. If only I had given a flying fuck and stopped wallowing in my boredom and look one fucking look. I would’ve known just what the hell it looked like. Just what it might’ve actually been. Now when I look out any port, there’s only pitch darkness.

Sometime between 07:00 and 07:30 I had been completely surrounded and swallowed like Jonah. Expect I have no idea just what had done the swallowing. How big is it, what’s it made of? Is it alive? Am I just another victim of psychosis? I could have just gone crazy, and now I’m laying on a gurney back at base pumped full of tranquilizers. In a way, that would be a relief. But I know that just isn’t true. This is too clear, too real and too…outside my experience so it must be real. I get the cold feeling that this has purpose. I have to stop for now. Sorry. I’m getting the shakes again. It’s too dark out there.