Close to the brink
‘Concentrate your…’
Energy, outwards and inwards, pushing and pulling.
’Find the centre of…’
Meteor showers, asteroid belts unfastening, cosmic dust and colliding particles and dark matter twisting and writhing.
‘Don’t let fear disperse your…’
Nebulae glowing and shimmering. Discs spinning in vast icy expanses. Comets exploding.
‘The universe…’
Thousands upon thousands upon thousands of stacked supernovas.
‘One.’
Life and death. Life and death. Life and death.
‘The universe is…’
Hungry, ravenous, insatiable.
‘The universe is…’
Alive and breathing. Alive and breathing.
‘One.’
‘The universe is one. I am the universe. I am one. The universe is alive and breathing. I am the universe. I am alive. I am breathing. The universe is one. I am the universe. I am one. The universe is alive and breathing. I am the universe. I am alive. I am breathing.’
Being still some distance away he triggered the vessel into a faster gear. Distracted by the looming sight of a ringed gas giant, Pogis failed to notice that his vessel kept increasing pace. By the time he passed the even bigger gas giant, his vessel was nearing the speed of light. Yet, it took the sight of a faint blue sphere in the far distance rapidly getting larger for Pogis to realise that his vessel was not coordinating its own speed. Perplexed, he initiated a troubleshooting loop, but the vessel would not respond. Entering manual mode, he fumbled through the vessel’s gears, trying to get it to slow down. The vessel would still not respond. A red desert of a planet zoomed by alarmingly fast and he looked up to see the blue of his target planet coming closer and closer. There was nothing more he could do. He switched his vessel to plunge mode, immersed himself in his Water form and hoped that the water on this planet was as friendly as his own.