Episode 2

Pogis Somer > Episode 2

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.’

Rygell’s voice pulsed and harmonised with his own as Pogis recited the centring mantra over and over again. His hearing was the first to return, and he heard himself whispering the mantra out loud with a croaky voice. This steadied him and gave him a sense of his bearings. He was alone with his vessel. He had entered a wormhole. It had devoured him. While still reciting, he cautiously pushed his voice to a normal pitch and his sense of touch spread slowly outwards from his vocal cords to his whole body. He found he was in his Earth form, a wise if yet unconscious decision. He mentally prodded himself for any injuries, but everything seemed in place. His neurovessel also felt intact. How long was he gone? It felt like the age of a whole galaxy had passed since he had entered the wormhole. Dread of the experience threatened to consume him but he kept reciting. He had gone through. He was alive. He must now open his eyes and face whatever comes.
With a decisive last recital of the mantra, he pushed them open and was struck blind. Panic almost overtook him but his vessel’s auto-response quelled it. He shut his eyes again and tried opening them slowly this time, letting them adjust to the light. What he beheld was an awe-inspiring sight, especially for a Trappista of his age: a solar system other than his own. He sat there for a while, taking in the beauty of it, not wanting to break the moment. After a time of silent appreciation, he reluctantly shifted to his Water form. He needed to find out where he was. Not all places in the universe were welcome to strangers. Anything could be lurking just around the corner of his vision.
He quickly turned his focus on his vessel’s processing circuit. With his attention fully engaged, he meshed with its processing power. The first numbers that came up staggered him. He was approximately 39 light years away from home. Only some of the most elite lifeseekers had ever been this far from Trappist and according to the data no one had ever been in this specific system before. There was some very basic information available but that was of no use, he could see the system with his own eyes. However, there was one little piece of information that intrigued him. An asterisk was placed by the formula for one of the planets. An asterisk meant that the planet was in the habitable zone of its system. Both fear and excitement rose in Pogis: life is a very unpredictable thing. 

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.