The Darkness Outside Us

by Eliot Schrefer

Nowhere is truly empty. The thought makes me feel lavishly alone. Somehow, space is so deeply melancholy that it’s not at all sad, like a note so low it ceases to sound. Even my sorrow about my insignificance feels insignificant.

Space is disorienting and obliviating. I could stare into it forever.

“I’m glad you’re here,” I say. He grunts in response. He actually grunts. Who does that?

Remember, our intelligence might be low, but at least it’s not artificial.”

We’re a bright cottage on an endless dark plain.

Nothing can be trusted. No, it’s even worse than that: nothing can be known.

Intimacy is the only shield against insanity. Intimacy, not knowledge. Intimacy, not power.

I am in a waiting room without end, without location, without time or place. If I go outside, I die before I get any answers. I exist only in a theoretical way, like a point on a coordinate plane. I am the simulation.

this is an insanely good book

You would not be the first to realize that duty and motivation are not enough to overcome the harmful effects of hopelessness.

Insanity used to be a stranger that lived on the other side of the world. Now it’s moved next door. It’s only a matter of time until it becomes shipmate, lover, self.

The airlock opens, and the universe roars. The thunder on the other side is not full of light. It is only dark, and so cold.

I reach out and grasp his hand. The hand of this stranger who will become anything but. He stiffens, then surprises me by clasping mine back fiercely. As if he’s lost his balance on a cliff, trusting the nearest stranger to hold him back from a fall.

There were no more transmissions from Earth, not ever again. You’re all there is.

Accept what you cannot know, and work without knowing exactly why.”

“You must be Kodiak,” I manage to say, before promptly throwing up.

He’s a stranger, a lover, and my life partner. We have lived and died lifetimes together, and it makes me shiver every time that odd truth comes over me.