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bored traveler, seeking adventure
Jan. 14th, 2019 10:26 pmHe can see it all stretching out in front of him. Everyone uses vast to describe space, so he hesitates to do so, but there’s really no other word he can use. Vast doesn’t truly encompass how wide, how big the distance between planets are, how much nothing there is, and how beautiful everything is. But even in the emptiness, there’s still something underneath- something alive, and breathing. He can feel it in his own body, incorporeal as it is- it’s almost as though there’s a heartbeat, echoing through the universe.
He floats a little farther, past the planet known as Jupiter in the galaxy known as the Milky Way. He sees the winds on the surface, pushing and pulling, and sees the clouds swirling around, the gases too toxic for even him to go near. He floats past Saturn, weaving in and out of its majestic, sparkling rings, floats past Uranus and Neptune, both such an eerie shade of blue, and past Pluto, tiny and cold, but still clinging to the edge of the solar system, like a bird on a hippo. He keeps going, past Eris, past a few comets, and past a few other small rocks and clouds of dust before he finally steels himself to take a step.
One step, then another, and he finds himself in a completely different part of the universe. He looks around, and there it is- a star in its death throes, a moment away from complete destruction. It’s a white dwarf, compact, and right next to a red giant. He can see that the gas from the giant has been spilling onto the dwarf, setting off explosion after explosion, until the dwarf combusts.
One more second passes, and it’s triggered. The shockwave blasts him back a few million miles, but even from that distance, he can see the light, burning his eyes, and the star’s last bits of energy eating up everything around it, devouring its surroundings like a starving lion. He can see dust and gases coming from the edges of the supernova, trailing off like the last vestiges of a crown worn by a fallen high king. He sees one in the distance, a tiny trail breaking free from the larger clouds and moving far and fast. Taking a second to look back at what was formerly a white dwarf and mourn for the death of such a magnificent beast, he follows it, taking one small step, then another, and suddenly he’s running, trying to catch up to the trail.
He loses all sense of time as he keeps running, the trail just ahead of him, until he finally has to stop. He looks around and sees he’s in a nebula, far away from where he started. He’s surrounded by hydrogen, and helium, carbon monoxide and other molecules, when he spots the trail. It’s been pulled towards another cloud much like the one he’s in, not too far away. He watches as it is sucked towards the center, and can see the gases converging and drawing tighter and tighter. He frowns for a moment, and then it hits him.
He’s watching a birth. A new star is about to come into existence right in front of him, built from the ashes and dust of those freshly dead. The knowledge makes him feel small, in the face of the ever-persistent creation going on all around him. He looks down at himself, still floating there, and feels almost incompetent.
When he looks back up, the cloud of molecules is collapsing in on itself, and a glow starting from the sudden fusion of hydrogen atoms. It will take some time, he knows, before the star grows to its full size and power, but he thinks it will be a force to be reckoned with.
He wonders where it will end up in 10, 100, 1000 years. He doesn’t know if he’ll be around to visit it, but he knows that, if he is, he will see it grow up to be one of the brightest stars in this galaxy.
Just like himself.
He floats a little farther, past the planet known as Jupiter in the galaxy known as the Milky Way. He sees the winds on the surface, pushing and pulling, and sees the clouds swirling around, the gases too toxic for even him to go near. He floats past Saturn, weaving in and out of its majestic, sparkling rings, floats past Uranus and Neptune, both such an eerie shade of blue, and past Pluto, tiny and cold, but still clinging to the edge of the solar system, like a bird on a hippo. He keeps going, past Eris, past a few comets, and past a few other small rocks and clouds of dust before he finally steels himself to take a step.
One step, then another, and he finds himself in a completely different part of the universe. He looks around, and there it is- a star in its death throes, a moment away from complete destruction. It’s a white dwarf, compact, and right next to a red giant. He can see that the gas from the giant has been spilling onto the dwarf, setting off explosion after explosion, until the dwarf combusts.
One more second passes, and it’s triggered. The shockwave blasts him back a few million miles, but even from that distance, he can see the light, burning his eyes, and the star’s last bits of energy eating up everything around it, devouring its surroundings like a starving lion. He can see dust and gases coming from the edges of the supernova, trailing off like the last vestiges of a crown worn by a fallen high king. He sees one in the distance, a tiny trail breaking free from the larger clouds and moving far and fast. Taking a second to look back at what was formerly a white dwarf and mourn for the death of such a magnificent beast, he follows it, taking one small step, then another, and suddenly he’s running, trying to catch up to the trail.
He loses all sense of time as he keeps running, the trail just ahead of him, until he finally has to stop. He looks around and sees he’s in a nebula, far away from where he started. He’s surrounded by hydrogen, and helium, carbon monoxide and other molecules, when he spots the trail. It’s been pulled towards another cloud much like the one he’s in, not too far away. He watches as it is sucked towards the center, and can see the gases converging and drawing tighter and tighter. He frowns for a moment, and then it hits him.
He’s watching a birth. A new star is about to come into existence right in front of him, built from the ashes and dust of those freshly dead. The knowledge makes him feel small, in the face of the ever-persistent creation going on all around him. He looks down at himself, still floating there, and feels almost incompetent.
When he looks back up, the cloud of molecules is collapsing in on itself, and a glow starting from the sudden fusion of hydrogen atoms. It will take some time, he knows, before the star grows to its full size and power, but he thinks it will be a force to be reckoned with.
He wonders where it will end up in 10, 100, 1000 years. He doesn’t know if he’ll be around to visit it, but he knows that, if he is, he will see it grow up to be one of the brightest stars in this galaxy.
Just like himself.
