I walk as quickly as I can, photon scanner in hand, to where the Prince is along with the two guards of the tunnel. The tunnel is a little bubble inside the void, leading to a bigger bubble within the void, where the World Stones are. Only a tiny part of the void can be pushed away, any more than that requires too much energy, if it’s even possible, so I’ve read. I hurry, as I always do, because the Prince is expecting me. Expecting me to be more machine than person. Expecting me to cater to his each and every whim. Expecting me to just accept it all silently without complaint.
“Here you go, sir.” I hand over the large tube with a screen on one side and a lens on the other. He takes it.
“Now, guards,” he starts, “the Emperor has entrusted me with checking the integrity of the tunnel.”
I watch the void while he works. The void is amazing. Black. No, black is not beyond words. It is something beyond black. Something that can be described by no words, can be described by nothing at all. It rises from the ground and forms a thick circular mass, which extends far past the ceiling of the grand room that we are in. The void extends even further, through the sky and out into space.
It extends to all the habitable planets of the galaxy, connecting them all like beads on an unholy, sacred string. It comes from out of the galaxy, from out of the depths of the abyss. And it extends back out of the galaxy, into the dark unknown. No-one knows where it came from. No-one knows why it’s like this. No-one even knows why it’s here. All of the books I have read on the topic have said the same thing, that it’s a pure enigma.
As a much younger child, I would imagine that the void lead to another world where I could be free. I imagined that it was an escape, a messiah. I don’t know why I thought this. Perhaps because it was the one place where the Imperials didn’t go. It was the one place within which the Empire had no control. Perhaps because it was forbidden, and because subjugated people are always drawn to anything forbidden by their subjugators. Perhaps because I was drawn to the darkness, darkness which is not darkness, which is absolute everything and nothing given form.
I am still drawn to the void, even after I have researched it, even after years of torment and isolation and experience have made me much more hopeless, and after years of being in the resistance have made my hope much more mature, much more substantial. I now put my hope on things that make sense, on things that can actually help us, on things that have weight and substance and reason to them. But still. Still. The void still represents much of what it represented to me so long ago. The void still draws me close and pulls me in, wanting to turn me into the nothing that it is.
I know that entering the void means death. In the early days of the Empire, the Imperials thought that the void would be a good way to travel between planets, that it would be a good way to keep all the planets in line. Yet they feared the void. They feared it too much to send their own people into it. And so therefore they sent slaves into the void, equipped with armour and protection pods and anything else that could stave off the thick nothingness. None of those slaves came back.
The Empire was, however, able to use the void in a way, to uphold their power. They knew that the void was impassable. But they used powerful energies to create a little bubble within the void, which was made reachable through a tunnel. The tunnel was closely-guarded and only people from the Empire were given entry into the bubble. Creating this little space of something within the nothingness cost an incredible amount of energy, an incredible amount of money, but all the magic harvested from the slaves made the undertaking worth it to their greedy, egotistic selves.
Inside the bubble was the most precious thing in the galaxy. Seven small stones. Stones that could focus the magic of the seven “lower” planets. Stones that were the sources of power for our people. Power we would never see again. Power that would be forever denied to us, locked away in the heartland of the Empire’s stronghold, surrounded by nothing and guarded by the Empire’s best guards.
I long to annihilate myself in the void. I long to become nothing. I long to be lost forever.
“Boy!” The Prince’s harsh tones cut through my thoughts. “Put this away!”
“Yes sir.” I take the bulky tube and scamper quickly off.
———
“Hi, Arji.” My voice is as quiet as it can be, and the volume of the communications disk is turned down way low. The library is dark all around me. And I am with the only person who I can think of as my mother. She found out that my biological fathers were dead. Which is a stake in my heart. I wish so much that I could actually be with her, that I could actually hug her and hold her close and stroke her hair. I ache for this infinitely. But I take what I can get.
“Hi, Ikkret. It’s good to see you again.” She smiles. And it’s a weary thing. A wary thing. Yet a thing filled with more love than I would ever have the words to describe. A thing filled with maternal protectiveness.
“It’s good to see you too.” And it is. It’s always good to see her. We only have about one hour of stolen moments to talk each day. And I have to make sure I can get as much out of the short time as possible.
“Is there anything on your mind lately?” Her voice is soft and sweet and gently inquisitive, speaking to me in a way in which only she speaks to me.
“Not really just …”
“Yes?”
“The void. It interests me. I don’t know why it interests me. It’s almost like I want to go into it. Like I want to get lost inside of it. Maybe … maybe it’s my suicidal urges that make me think this way.”
“The void is beautiful. I would not blame you for being attracted to it. I’m sure we all are, in our ways.”
“I know I’ll die if I go in there. But I want it. I want it. I don’t know why I want it. Maybe I just want to escape this life. The universe knows that this life is not actually a life worth living.”
“You won’t die if you go into the void.” I do a double take. Her words are so sure. So certain. What? What in the universe?
“Why do you say that?” I ask her. I let the bewilderment show in my voice. I don’t hide any of my emotions from her. I don’t hide anything from her.
“Because all the people that the Imperials sent into the void came back. They all came back. It took years, sometimes even decades, but they all showed up on one planet or another, completely naked, with incredibly wild stories to tell us.”
“What? That’s incredible. How come the Empire never found out about this?” I almost can’t believe her but I do believe her anyways. I know that she would never lie to me. I know that she would never break even a fraction of the immense trust that I place upon her.
“They don’t know about this because they’re impatient. They’re not truly good with science. When they found out that no-one was coming back after months, they assumed that they had died and abandoned the experiment. And we were left to pick up the pieces of their failure and turn it into a success.”
“Wow. That’s incredible.” I am amazed. “How did you hide the fact that all those people came back?”
“We just hid them really well. Just like we hide the Ulfs who survived the genocide. It was hard but we were able to make it.”
“So why doesn’t the resistance use the void more? You guys could just take all the World Stones back through the void.”
“It’s impossible to direct where you are going. Not to mention, people stay there for years on end, no-one knows when you will come out. And if you don’t show up to get your energy extracted, your family gets killed. Not to mention, if the guards ever saw us taking the stones, they would surely kill everyone. If we go into the void to get the Stones, the guards will see that and kill everyone before we can come out of the void and repatriate the Stones.”
“That makes sense,” I acquiesce sadly. Still, ideas are whirring to life within my mind. We can make this work for us. I am sure we can make this work for us. I just have to get more information. And information is something that I have ready - if secret - access to.
“So how is everything going?” Arji asks me.
“Oh, you know, the same old, same old. I hate my life and want to die.”
“I hate my life and want to die too, Ikkret. But you have to hold on. We both have to hold on. Because the future needs us. The people of the future need us. We need to create a better world for them. A world in which they can be free.”
“I know, I know. It’s just hard.”
“Of course it’s hard. It’s hard for me too. But we can make it. We’re here for each other and we are going to continue to be here for each other and we will make it together.”
“I’m glad I have you. I probably would have killed myself by now if I didn’t have you.”
“And I’m glad I have you too, my child. You’re sweet. So, so, so very sweet. You make my life infinitely better.”
“So why was everyone naked when they came out of the void?”
“I’m not quite sure, Ikkret. They talked about how their clothes disappeared the second they were sent into the void though, along with everything else that they had with them.”
“That’s very strange. I should do further research.”
“You should. You’re a good researcher.”
“You think so?” My voice rises with bright excitement.
“I do think so. You’re very intelligent.”
“The Emperor’s family doesn’t seem to think that.”
“You know they’re wrong about everything. But still, guard your intelligence. Hide it from them. It’s your weapon.”
We keep talking into the night.
————
I have to find out for myself. I have to find out for myself what the void is capable of, what the void is, what the void means for us. Because, this is a possibility. I know that this is a possibility. In the same way that I know that Arji loves me and in the same way that I know the resistance will win. In the same way that I know that the Empire will fall. In the same way that I know that my people will rise up and break their chains. I know that this could be a treasure of possibility, only if I look into it, only if I understand it.
This new information that I’ve been given has been buzzing in my head, constantly on my mind, not letting me get an ounce of mental rest. Not that I mind it though. Not that I mind it at all. Thinking about the revelations I have just received is very exciting. It pours cool, clear, sparkling hope all over my insides. I don’t think I have ever felt hope like this before. I don’t think I have ever felt joy like this before. Not that it’s really joy. All things considered, it’s definitely not joy. But it’s as close to joy as anything I have ever been given.
Even during my magic extraction, which hurt to the moon and back like it always does, I was able to hold on to the hope of my new knowledge. I was able to hold on to it and cling to it like a drowning person clings a life preserver and I was able to let it give me strength. Strength to get through the horrible ritual. Strength to keep a piece of flickering happiness alive through the pain. Strength to stay rebellious, stay true to who I am. And once I was lying on the ground outside the machine, I smiled.
And now I am in the library in the dead of night. I am in my happy place. I am in the one place where I can be myself, the one place where I have been being myself for most of my life. And I have a directive. An operative set up in my mind. I have something very specific to research, that I want to research, that I have to research, that will change the whole direction of the world if I allow it to.
I pore over every book I can find that talks about the void. Of course, I take everything that I hear with a grain of salt. I know that the Empire is wrong about a lot of the things that they think about the void. I know that the Empire is wrong about a lot of the things that they think. But still. Still. I have to find out what exact experiments the Empire did surrounding the void and how exactly that did them, so that I can have a base for doing my own experiments.
There are many books about the void and all its supposed properties. More books than I can watch in one night. Not without alerting suspicion. Not without getting myself killed. And so I dive deep into the books that I can finish for tonight. And I take careful notes which I hide away under the shelves. And I go to sleep. The next night I come back and I do research. And the next night. And the next night. Until finally I am all ready to get started with my work.
The Empire apparently looked into the void quite a bit. They didn’t just send people into it. They sent items of all sorts into it as well. Stone and metal and all sorts of the hardest, most reinforced objects that could never break no matter what you did to them. Sealed vaults and vaccum-proof cases and so many more top-notch objects. And none of those items ever came back. They never came back just as the people never came back. Or, if they did come back, they took their sweet, long time doing it and the Empire did not know of their return.
Now, this does not tell me anything. Not really. Because, as we already know, the Empire is impatient and all of their results could be false. Especially if everything they sent into the void got picked up by slaves on other planets. I’m sure that the people who the Empire enslaved and used for energy would have loved to steal from them, out of petty revenge if nothing else. And the people would also love expensive stuff that they could sell for a price and use to feed their loved ones.
Still, all these experiments do mean something to me. They give me ideas. Ideas for what I could do in my own experiments. Ideas of where to start. What to change. What to do differently from what the Empire did, so that I could get better, clearer results. Ideas swirl around my head and I cannot wait to try them all out. I’m sure that they will mean something, that they will get me somewhere, that they will teach me something about the mystery that has been pulling at me for as long as I can possibly remember.
If the resistance has the void, maybe victory is much closer than I thought it was.
———
I am done my call with Arji. Today some of her friends joined us as well. They often do join. They all like talking to me, and I like talking to them as well. The human interaction gave me the courage I need in order to pass through the darkened palace of the night and take all my materials with me to the void. Back around and out to the garden where the tunnel is far, far away and the guards will never see me.
I thank the universe for giving me this purple-black skin that can blend me in almost perfectly into my darkened surroundings. I’ve spent too many days and nights cursing the colour of my skin. But truly, it has saved me time and time again as I made my way through the darkened halls of the palace. And it has saved my soul in ways uncountable. I would not give it up for anything.
I have a bag full of various items to test the void with. The bag is as dark as I am, made of stolen bits of fabric from here and there, carefully stitched together. I had it in a corner of my room for a while, not knowing what to do with it. But now it’s filled with machinery and finery and odds and ends from the garbage. Pieces that the Emperor and his family threw away. Objects that they no longer had any use for. Objects that will become very useful to me indeed.
I light a tiny candle by the edge of the void, outside the castle, far from the guarded room, where I am sure that I am far away from the sight and detection of the guards. And I take out my items one by one.
First I put a piece of marathine inside the void, so that half of the hardened material is in my hands, safe outside of the void, and the other half is dipped into the darkness beyond darkness, the nothingness beyond all shape and form. The jagged piece does not make any sound as it goes in. It does not feel as if anything has happened at all. But when I pull my hand back, the half that was in the void does not come out. The maranthine is broken in half, a perfect, precise edge along the place where it was plunged into the void.
This is remarkable! The void can cut through marathine as if it is nothing. Of course, many things can break through marathine. But very few things can do so as perfectly and as effortlessly as this void. I wonder how it did it. I know though, that I do not have the resources to ever find out. Dark rue colours my gut.
Next I put a thrown-away necklace of platinamber into the blackness, holding on to one end with my fingers and letting the other end dip inside. Once again, it feels as if nothing is happening. It feels as if I am simply holding a necklace up into the air. But once I try to take it back out, I see that only half of the necklace remains, and the other half seems to have just vanished. This is really rather remarkable, and I jot down what happened in the rolls of parchment that I stole.
I put in half a circuit board after that. And it vanishes out of my hand, leaving a clear, sharp line where it entered the void. I put in the top of a helmet, designed to resist the heat of stars, and the helmet becomes topless, with a large, sharp hole on it. I put in a piece of sheet fabric and it also disappears from where it entered the void. I swing in a golden yo-yo on a string and, surprise surprise, it’s gone. And I keep on testing various things until it’s time to go to sleep.
I hide all my notes under the shelves of the library and I make my way to my room, which is barely an excuse of a room. My mind dances with questions as I make my way to sleep. What happened to all the disappeared stuff? Where did they go? Did they disintegrate or simply fly off somewhere? Did they teleport? Did they change into something else? Why has this happened? Why did the void affect them the way that it did?
I recognize that maybe I will never have the answers, and placate myself with thoughts of new experiments for the new nights.
———
I pad my way through the palace darkness. Thankfully, there are no souls here but my own. I climb out a window, bag by my side, and land with a thud on the other side. The moon hangs brightly in the sky. Too brightly. I should have picked a better night to do this. But still, I don’t see anyone around me for miles. I suppose I am safe. And if I’m not, I could simply say I am out for a midnight walk. It will get me in trouble but not enough trouble to kill me.
Tonight I am testing what happens to organic materials once they enter the void. And for that I will need some organic materials. So I walk through the palace gardens. And I pick up grasses and leaves and twigs and flower petals that have landed on the ground. They will all have been cleaned up by the time the morning comes around, so it’s good that I’m doing this in the dead of night. I gather bits of leaves and twigs and grass up into smaller bags I made with strips of rags. I tie them up securely. And I keep foraging on through the garden.
The garden glows pale silver in the moonlight. And my own feet pad wolf-silent through it. I am tense with anxiety. Yet I am also fluttering with hope. I feel like throwing up. I feel like collapsing. I feel like breaking out into a run. I feel like breaking out into song and dance. I don’t know what I feel like. All I know is that I feel the moon flowing through me, this moon which is not my moon, not my home planet’s moon, but is my moon all the same. This is the moon that has raised me when the Emperor’s family would not, or at least would not do it right. This is the moon that has given me all the love that it could. And this is the moon that I love back.
And I love my home planet’s moon as well. I love it like I love Arji, like I love Arji’s friends, like I love my own parents who were ripped away from me far too young and whom I have no memories of. I love my home planet’s moon and I love my home planet’s people. We are not monsters. Arji has taught me that we are not monsters. If anyone is a monster, then it is definitely the infinitely cruel Empire that keeps all the lower planets as their slaves, the Empire that feeds off of our misery.
I take my plants and leaves and stuff. And I pad my way through the garden to the almost secret, unused part of the garden that surrounds the void. I recognize that I might leave a trail of footprints in the wet dew. But I am fairly certain that the planet’s hot sun will take care of it as soon as it rises. I make my way through the darkness, darkness like a blanket cloaking me, and I make my way to the darkness that will cloak us all.
First, I put in a sachet full of grass, dipping half into the void and holding the other half in my hands. I leave it in for a second. And I pull it back out. The sachet breaks in my hand and out tumbles a clump of grass, which I immediately clean up by pushing it into the void. I smile a bit at my unorthodox cleaning methods. I do the same with a bag of leaves, and a bag of twigs. Strangely enough, even though the bags themselves are cut cleanly in half, there are no leaves or twigs or grass blades that are cut in half. I make sure to note that down. 10Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡZ8m8bvbBCI
10Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡhxGClDH0jD
It’s now time to try a whole leaf. I hold my breath as I bring the edges of the leaf onto the void. I push half the leaf in, as I have been doing for all the past experiments. I leave it in there for a few seconds. And, oh so tentatively, I bring my hand back to see if anything came out.
And the leaf is whole. The leaf is whole. The entire leaf has come out whole.
My heart almost stops beating with pure joy. I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe. There are so many emotions going on inside me at once that I simply cannot breathe. Exuberance, exuberance, all-consuming exuberance. Hope, cool and sweet and honey-golden, trickling down through my heart like water in a stream. Amazement, excitement, overwhelming joy. I cannot hold it all in. I cannot even comprehend it all. We did it. We did it. We found a way out!
Still, my experiments aren’t finished yet. I raise my trembling hand, holding a twig, to the dark blackness. I leave it in for a few seconds. For a few moments or a few hours. I’m not quite sure. I pull it back out. And there it is, all of it, whole and unperturbed. I feel as if I am exploding into a million stars. I feel as if I am spontaneously combusting.
I try a blade of grass. And a leaf. And a twig. And I notice the sky lighting up just a tiny bit. The morning is coming. I pack everything up and I leave.
———
The next day is a strange day. I had no sleep at night. I am absolutely exhausted. Yet at the same time I am buzzing with energy. I am buzzing with so much energy that I cannot contain it. I go about my day and pretend like nothing is happening, pretend like nothing is wrong, pretend like nothing is right. But I know, I know in my heart what’s going on. But still, I have always been a good liar and I have always had to lie in order to survive. Those talents are really coming in handy now.
———
It’s night time. Again. The world is finally, finally, finally asleep. And I am finally slipping out of my bare room and into the palace halls. And I don’t even call Arji tonight. I know she’s going to be expecting a call. And I want to call her, I do. I want to call her from the aching, arching, infinitely dark and bright depths of my soul. A want that is infinitely dark and bright. But I just can’t tonight. Not right now. She’ll understand. I’m sure she will understand. I have to … I have to finish my experiments.
And I’m almost ready to finish them too. I know what I want to do. The last thing that I want to do. The last thing that will tell me once and for all if my plans will succeed or if they will fail. Everything right now hinges on this, hinges on me, hinges on the work that I am about to undertake. The freedom of my people. The freedom of all the planets in the galaxy, the freedom of all the new generations for years and years to come.
All of my people rely on me right now. My people of blood. My people of bond. My people of shared misery and suffering. My people of shared joy and dreaming. My people of shared hope and love. They are all relying on me to be sneaky, to be smart, and most of all, to be victorious. They are relying on me to use everything I have and use everything I am in order to create something that will bring lasting change, bring lasting revolution, bring lasting peace.
All I have with me is a small rock. A small stone I got from the garden, about the size of the World Stones. Yes, I know it’s not organic matter. But I think I’ve got the pattern of the void figured out. I think simple organic matter is too straightforward. I know the void. It’s been calling me since I was a child. It does not allow organic matter to flow within it. It allows life. And stones have life. Everything from nature has life. And the World Stones, too, of course, have life.
I hold my breath as I push half of the small rock into the space of the void. I hold my breath as I hold it there, counting slowly to ten. And I hold my breathe as I take it out. As I look for its dark shape. As I see it whole.
It’s whole! It’s whole! It’s whole, it’s whole, it’s whole! The stone went into the void and it came back out undestroyed. I can feel the weight of millennia on my shoulders. Millenia in front of me. Millenia behind me. The galaxy lets go of its breath with me. The galaxy sighs with me, and it silently cheers in victory at the grand spectacle that we have beheld in the simplicity of a simple stone unbroken and untethered.
And now I have to do the next part of the project. I bring my fingers to my mouth and bite off a small sliver of a fingernail. It is a sharp thing. A pointed thing. And, most importantly, it is a tiny thing. A tiny thing that will not be noticed. A tiny thing that will not be missed. In its smallness, in its innocuousness, that is where its power lies. That is the power that it will use to hopefully topple the order of the whole galaxy.
I pinch the nail with my fingers. I slowly move half of it into the void. And then I count to ten. Slowly. Slowly. Ever so slowly. And then I take it out. And it comes out. The whole sliver of nail comes out, whole, unbothered, undisturbed. Whatever forces guide and guard the universe, they are on my side. Whatever forces control the flow of time, they are on all of our sides.
Actually no, that’s not true. If that were true, we would not be enslaved right now. But the void, the void is deeper, darker, more far-reaching, and more mysterious than time. And the void is on our side. The void has always been on our side. The void will always be on our side. And the void can save us. The void has to save us. And we will all save each other.
Breathing in the darkness, breathing in the darkness, I prepare myself for my final test. My final experiment before setting up the second part of my plan, along with Arji and everyone who will be on my side. If all goes well, we can all plan together. We can set up a plan that’s failproof, that will catch the Imperials completely off guard. And we can create a plan that sets us all free, somehow or another.
I count down from three. And I plunge my arm into the void. It’s glorious, glorious, ever so glorious. I do not think I will ever find the words to describe how it feels. But I promise the void that I will be back, I take my arm out, and I go to my room for the night.
————————
If you like this piece check out my Mastodon my account is [email protected] and I post about human rights, social justice, and the environment.
ns216.73.216.95da2
and then Add to home screen.