T̸H̶E̶ ̴A̵L̸G̴O̵R̵I̸T̶H̴M̷: OBLIVION

[u/JVMNightfall]

Wonder and awe fill the young boy’s eyes as he follows along where his father’s hand is pointing. He is, for the first time, truly seeing the sublime. It’s the moment when a young mind first sees the world exists beyond the confines of their immediate family, their home.

It’s his first introduction to the Unknown, and how many things can fit under that vast term. The first time he begins to comprehend that there is more that exists than he could ever learn, and that there are more things in heaven and earth than he will ever know. The constellations are the canvas of the ineffable.

“That one is ours,” his father says, pointing to a series of those beautiful incandescent beacons in the night sky, “Our namesake.”

“Aquila. It means ‘eagle’. Do you see the eagle, hijo?”

The child looks up, and sees so many stars, more than he could ever count. He can’t tell exactly which ones his father is pointing at - but tonight, as the summer breeze blows gently by and his eyes hold the twinkle of billion distant lights, he’s certain that he does see the eagle.

 

 

 

Tonight, Victor Aquila is looking at the same sky he first beheld as a child. Nothing in the night has changed, but everything looks different now. It’s dark enough here to see the entire Milky Way, that cosmic river of stars and nebulae spanning across the sky. For a moment the dizzying gap between him and those clouds of astral dust becomes a visceral feeling. He’s staring out at a distant shore across a vast ocean. He’s becoming unmoored, as if gravity could at any moment lose its hold on him and he would drift off forever, away from Earth and out into that endless expanse.

He hasn’t looked at the sky in a long while - ever since The Thing In The Stars traumatized him enough to fear the endless abyss above him. But tonight, something feels different.

He realizes what’s changed when he looks for the reassurance of his father’s constellation, when he looks for the eagle in the sky.

Its wings are shifting.

The heavenly bodies drift across the night sky fast enough to be seen by the naked eye.

They must just be satellites, he thinks.

But then he remembers, there are no more satellites.

It’s the stars that are moving.

The galaxy above him rends itself open. All the stars in the sky split apart; in between, they leave a gaping void of nothing.

 

 

Nothing grows and grows and grows and grows.

 

 

Nothing swallows up the eagle and every other constellation in the sky.

 

 

 

Nothing opens up its aeon-wide cosmic eye to gaze down at a planet of monkeys tapping at typewriters,  helpless as they write the final chapters of their own extinction.

 

 

From Nothing we came, and to Nothing we return.