Harken!

[Maximilian Lhoth]

[Frog Morton]

The sun continues to fade into another spec. You're in the void now, the great interstellar gap. The stars don't twinkle here, they haven't since you started the journey but you haven't really noticed until now. They're just little points of uncaring light.

Its been a year, the same thing day in and day out. You don't know where you are, your brain just can't process how far you're going. This isn't like the mars base, there is no atmosphere, no meteors, no sunrise and no sun set. There is no weather. There are enough people where you can meet someone new but it won't change your daily job. There are only so many games to play, so many books to read when you can't go anywhere new. Even the biggest cabin will give you fever if you give it time.

The year drags on. Occasionally the science team spots something cool, but its only a minor diversion from the monotony of shipboard life. The stars begin to look the same. Identical points of cold, distant light. You can see Sol still, but its just another star. Messages from Malas take a year to get here, and it takes a year to reply. Shipboard relations are discouraged until arrival and you slowly feel withdrawn.

You wonder if anyone loves you, if anyone cares, if the mission that felt so great when you left really is some great undertaking or just more nothingness, more meaningless puttering about eating and reproducing. You begin to realize just how indifferent the universe is. The stars don't love you, they don't care if you live or die. Neither does the planet you're going to. Your ship doesn't care if you get there, and the greatness of your journey won't echo across the cosmos. The only things that care are your shipmates, but the long repetitive days drag on on on and you begin to doubt them.

This doubt eats at you, gnaws on your resolve and you begin to question how the religions of old worked. They alledgedly provided direction, crowd control, and hope enough to keep peasants subjugated for centuries, yet you've read their texts and compared to the stack of science they can't possibly be right. Having spent two and a half years in this void you know first hand the sheer indifference of the universe, having met birth, death, illness, happiness, sadness, and the whole range of the human experience without so much as a twitch from the vast universe. The stars keep burning, the interstellar medium drifting, regardless of what happens on your ship.

As you near the half way point in your journey the ship springs to life. Everything must be prepared for the momentary lapse of gravity when the ship flips over and prepares to decelerate. A great change from the past three years of monotony, you still don't go to new places in the ship. Still the air is electric in anticipation for the event. Three long years in and finally a sign that you might escape the void.

The excitement quickly fades. The stars still don't care, your daily routine is still the same and you continue to ask why am I out here? Will I ever see Malas again? Will I ever see any planet surface? You ask if there is any point. The great apathy of the void claws at your sanity. You draw, paint, and write trying to recapture Old Malas, but something is missing. The vast freedom of movement that an entire planet, no matter how croweded offered just cannot be found on your ship. You long for the vast plains of Old Malas or even any plains at all. Anywhere that isn't the sterile, metal walls.