This short story (novel) was written by Ken Isshiki (i.e. Me). Its original was written by Japanese. Here you can read its original: https://kakuyomu.jp/works/1177354054890554786. It was translated by Faye Abad (Twitter: @aaliyahalrose9).
I’m very glad your visiting here, and hope you enjoy this story. If you some question, feel free to ask me on the comment or Twitter(@estclusterx). Let’s get started traveling to space.
1. Let there be.
“I couldn’t get caught again”, Alice muttered with regret. It took her forty years to reach the point where she would soon get out of the solar system. From where she is, it’s roughly 21billion kilometers to Earth; which is about 140 times the distance between the Earth and the Sun. It would take about 20 hours at the speed of light to reach the Earth.
“I think I’ve come a long way”
Alice is the only one, though. For me, it was nice to arrive at the universe you dreamed of. When I passed by Pluto’s orbit, I couldn’t see the Sun anymore and can no longer feel the gravity. However, according to the calculated route, he sometimes flies in the darkness, showing the squirrels (as he called it) that send out traces toward the Earth when he remembers from time to time.
For Alice, the universe has just been a dream ever since she was little. She was just looking at the sky, unable to freely move and talk. As for me, I liked the night sky. It became my favorite thing especially when I heard that each star was, in fact, similar to the abominable Sun. It got me very excited. However, the Sun’s light was too strong for Alice. I may curse it all I want, the fact remain that it was the source of light.
But even now, it feels nostalgic. Now, Alice wonders where the Sun has disappeared among the stars. Because Alice knew that since then, there has been so much consciousness in the universe. Some were from the Earth, some were from other planets and satellites, or others were from completely different galaxies. Rather, Earth-derived material was only a fraction of the whole truth about what’s really in the universe. But so far, Alice can only communicate with consciousness from Earth. Therefore, there was a lingering regret at the beginning.
Everyone here and there was just swimming aimlessly, completely unrelated to Alice. They come and go, disappear and then appear, as if they have traveled back and forth through time or maybe even through the membrane. It was like a bubble floating in mid-air. Alice spoke and some consciousness answered then the bubble would burst. However, most of them were incomprehensible reactions. That is why Alice could only speak with consciousness derived from Earth.
During those forty years, I used the communication with Earth as a background music slowly drifting in the universe. But the message from Earth had disappeared, so I roamed around with the wandering consciousness.
“You’ve become so worn out, haven’t you?”
I was no longer shining at the time of departure, and I was just impressed that I have worked this out. Nevertheless, no matter how much Alice speaks, he cannot answer because they don’t have the resources to respond. But she thinks that it’s okay and continued to talk because Alice knew that he’s listening properly. Just like I used to, I couldn’t speak. So Alice speaks so loud that she doesn’t feel lonely in this cold and silent space. It made me happy as I should be.
“It would be nice if an alien could pick it up and make it beautiful. It could be displayed in a museum”
Alice goes around the eyes of a consciousness again. It turns out that many of them look at him and Alice with interest. Even though you can only see them from time to time, there must be more conscious that the number of Tokyo on Earth. You see, there is no distance in space. Consciousness is three dimensional itself because it exceeds the speed of light. Alice and others swim in the interstellar space, where all distance measures are ridiculous.
“I’m lonely”
Alice looks ahead to where he is going. It seems the road to the future. But from the Earth’s perspective, it’s the road that approaches the past. There are endless galaxies spread out in the universe. Wherever one looks, there are stars and darkness.
Light —- God seems to have said that when he created the world.
Alice thinks she’s making no sense at all. The light, that damn glow of the Sun, obscures such a beautiful view. But, I understand. Without the Sun, there would be no Earth in the first place. Even so, it’s no wonder to Alice why humans feared darkness. If it wasn’t dazzling, the sky wouldn’t be so bright. The Sun that cannot be seen directly, that lights the ground completely destroying the darkness. Perhaps God wanted to monopolize this kind of scenery and said that he didn’t have a sense of “light” to make humans be afraid of the dark. That’s what Alice thinks.
I don’t know what kind of consciousness God is. But, just as I was passing by, I realized that the universe is filled with myriad of consciousness. If they collide with something whimsical, I feel that something unusual can be achieved. Even though, that has a really astronomically low probability. However, since the mystery of the birth of life has occurred, Alice thinks that there should be a coincidence of about a hundred digit comma. As if I was eating potato chips with a cane — I had never done that before — although she was disgusted, even if I remember that feeling of “this trip is about to end”, I was still there.
“Hey, aren’t you tried already?”
The sensor is worn out, and the communication device is almost no longer functioning. As it flows, it opens up the unknown sea as it is calculated. But that information can no longer reach the birth parents. He opens the world of stars with a one-way ticket that he’s unable to return. The journey itself has no meaning. He’s flying quietly just to help mankind’s accomplishments in a vast, silent space.
“I’ll do the rest.”
“It’s all right now”, Alice murmured gently. Surrounding consciousness is looking down on Alice with interest.
“The color of the pouring light”
I was very surprised that the stars had such a color variation, but now it’s an everyday scene. I wasn’t too impressed anymore.
“Oh, is that so?”
Alice got the point. Why did God say that “it’s a light”?
“God didn’t know the Sun”
That horrible Sun. I did something like that because I want to see beautiful stars up close.
Then Alice laughed a little.
2. The light
It has been hundreds of millions of years since I left the solar system. The deep space probe I was riding in had long been broken, and I was just awake on this space — there was nothing but a dazzling space.
It may be a little misleading to have drifted because I’m probably crossing the universe at the speed of light. Only about fifty years after I left for space, I knew about the vastness of it. There is literally nothing you can touch. Light and darkness in space appear at random in the unit of years, decades, hundreds of years, and then leave without saying anything.
I went to the pulsar of the neutron star guy that I’ve come across one day. It was so dazzling that it got my head going crazy. But, even that disgusting guy was very helpful to me, who was going crazy cause of loneliness. What’s more, the neutron star is like the guidepost of the universe. So I am traveling from pulsar to pulsar because there is only that much information. I am not scared to get lost in such a wide universe.
Like I said, it has been hundreds of millions of years since I left my home planet, I wouldn’t have been scared if my existence was like a lost child. Often times, I meet with consciousness about the universe, but I can’t communicate with most of them. I have no idea what anyone was saying. It wasn’t background music to me, its noise. I would say this is just another kind of noise. It might be because I am still noisy as ever, thanks to someone who observes me. I am philosophically wondering what would happen to me if someone disappeared, and I’ve been playing it for millions of years yet no one disappeared. It makes me wonder if the future will last forever.
For hundreds of millions of years, I thought I was a god or something, but in reality, I just lived for so long. The universe is too big. The universe we were observing on our home planet was about 138 billion light years. Even though I expanded the observational universe by a few percent, no one will receive it from me and if there was, it’s still a few hundred million years from now. I don’t even know if that stellar system survived. I have witnessed the birth and disappearance of too many stars that I lose faith in it.
Why did I even go on such a trip without a sword just because I liked the universe? I want to take a peek into the deep space that no one has ever seen. I want to go to a world where no one has arrived. I want to talk to people from other stars. Speaking of such pureness, my pure curiosity moved my consciousness that I was unable to physically move. I remember when I was at home; I couldn’t move even my fingertips because I was sick. So I spent all my time looking at the sky.
Somehow, I diverted my attention to spacecraft that leads us to what I am now. And I’ve lived this long. It was just a trip with no purpose. But I have no regrets whatsoever about what happened to me. In fact, I am rather excited. Perhaps because I have an infinite amount of time, I can always meet someone.
Now, a new galaxy is approaching. An orthodox one that spins around having a shape classified as a “bar spiral galaxy”. I don’t know what the galaxy’s name is. Is it about 100,000 light years from end to end? It’s my idea to observed galaxies.
I was able to draw in and jumped into one of the swirling arms that grew.
Tens of thousands of years later, I arrived at the outer edge of a stellar system. There are really no certain destinations on my trip. It was always nice wherever I went. But for some reasons, I was interested in this stellar system. The stellar system, organized by a rather small red star, has a neat shape (although there are some weird ones), and a planet in the habitable part of its bio-survival zone. Is it about 10,000 kilometers in diameter? So much blue star is reflected in my eyes. The planet was about two light years away. If one wants to go, two years is my calculation.
But I couldn’t help but get interested in the surrounding airspace, a region that is slightly out of the control region of that red star. I was drawn to a realm of no one like a comet that would be sucked in by a star.
“… That is?”
It seems like a tattered building. No engine, camera, or solar planet is working; it’s just a box. Once, I came across a box in which it resembles the probe I used when I left for anachronism. The box however is already dead. In the next hundreds of millions of years, it’ll be completely melted into space like my spacecraft.
I approached there softly.
“Hello? Is there someone here?”
“Yes”
An immediate reply — I was surprised that the reply came back in less than a second.
“I thought it would come”
“Huh?”
“What the voyager said at the end, “I’m sure light will come””
“The voyager?”
“The voyager of this spaceship. I am Alice and you are?”
Alice seems to have been craving for a chat. She’s throwing words at a speed that exceeds my understanding.
“I—“
Hesitation came across me. What was my name in the first place?
“Well, alien. Where are you from?”
“From a stellar system billions of light years away from here”
Alice giggled and said, “Welcome to my present”
“My present”
“Maybe it’s our current encounter”
“And that’s why I am happy with it”
“We might get along”
Alice quieted a little and asked, “Hey, do you the word ‘light’?”
“Yeah, it’s a very uncool word”
“Oh!” Alice responded in a cheerful voice. “We seems like we are similar with each other!”
“Oh, right?”
“Why do you think God said ‘light’?”
“This God guy who created our star didn’t know the sun would become his unworldliness”
“So I can’t live without it?”
“Well, I’m gone that’s why I’m here and you too”
“That is true”
We then laughed together.
“The light isn’t really sensible!” Alice said while laughing uncontrollably.
That was the starting point of our trip.
Welcome back. How did you feel on the story? This is the first ship of my English work(s). I have written lots of novels.
I want many people read them globally. To my regret the wall of Language (Japanese) prevents my hope. So I’ll try to make them translate into English someday.
If you think you want to read them in Japanese, please do it. When you face to some difficult expression, please ask me freely.
I hope you enjoy my stories.
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