Heartbeat in the Void

Captain Alden stared through the vast observation window, watching the colors of deep space twist into abstraction. The further they traveled from Earth, the stranger the universe became, as if the laws of physics so carefully charted in textbooks, began to lose confidence in themselves. There was beauty in it: the kind that reminded him of the old philosophers who said terror and wonder were two faces of the same god.

“Captain,” a voice crackled behind him, “we’ll be entering the new system shortly.”

He turned, surprised to see his crew. Strange. He had almost forgotten they were there. For a moment it felt as though he’d been drifting alone through eternity, his mission reduced to nothing but admiration for the silent radiance of space.

“Captain, are you all right?” Lieutenant Mara’s voice broke his trance.

“Yes,” he said automatically. “Just thinking.” It felt like the moment when you realize you’ve been driving for miles without remembering the road behind you.

Then the ship stopped. Not slowed, stopped. No impact, no collision, no tractor beam. Just complete stillness.

They were all strapped in, helmets sealed, the hum of the engines gone.

“What happened?” the pilot muttered. “We’ve… landed?”

“On what?” Alden asked.

Outside, through the wide glass, a dense fog swirled — a violet mist flecked with golden dust like drifting stars. From its depths rose colossal silhouettes, ruins perhaps, black and half-faded, jutting upward as though the world itself had drowned long ago. Some of them floated, weightless and disobedient to gravity.

“Let’s go check it out,” said the pilot, his voice tinged with awe.

If they had been sober with fear, they might have hesitated. But something pulled at them, an invisible music, faint and mournful, that beckoned like a siren song.

The mist shimmered around them as they descended the ramp. It smelled faintly of ozone and something sweet, fungal. The sound grew clearer; notes too alien to be instruments, too perfect to be random.

Then one of the crew unlatched his helmet.

“Don’t!” Alden shouted.

But the man only breathed in, smiling. “It’s fine. The air’s good.”

One by one the others followed, their faces lit by the purple glow. Alden kept his helmet on. The mist thickened near his boots, so dense he couldn’t see what he stood on. He crouched and saw clusters of phosphorescent fungi sprouting from pillars of stone (or bone) rising from the unseen ground.

“Look at this,” he said, but the words trembled as a low beat began to pulse inside his skull.

It wasn’t a sound so much as a vibration, drums, distant and enormous, echoing from nowhere.

“Do you hear that?” he asked.

The others nodded, eyes glassy.

Then came the vacuum–violent, spiraling upward like a tornado. The fog convulsed, the ruins bent as though under impossible weight. They ran for the ship, but the air tore itself apart. The ground, if it had ever been ground, imploded into a radiant singularity. The horizon folded in on itself, light stretched into silence, and the planet collapsed into a black hole brighter than any star.

The screams were devoured by the vacuum. The drums became thunder.

Alden didn’t think of death; there was no room for fear, only astonishment at the sheer, impossible beauty of it. Then everything went dark.

…2…

Alden awoke to the sound of beeping. It pulsed in his ears like a mechanical heartbeat, steady and urgent. He opened his eyes and saw light, soft and green, filtering through tall grass that swayed above him. It all changed like a blink. He couldn’t feel his body at first until the numbness slowly faded into a sense of gravity anchoring him to the world. The air shimmered in the heat, and the sky above him was the wrong color, a pale turquoise with streaks of lavender cloud that moved too quickly across the horizon.

He tried to move, but the suit resisted him. Every muscle felt disconnected from his intention. When he finally sat up, the alarms in his helmet screamed. The oxygen levels were unstable, pressure was dropping, and several joints were cracked from impact. He adjusted the hoses, resealed what he could, and silenced the alerts one by one until only the faint hiss of recycled air remained.

“Where am I?” he whispered. His voice sounded distant, absorbed by the strange air that probably seeped into his suit. He looked around. The landscape was lush, humid, alive with sound. The grass reached to his chest, and beyond it stood trees that curved like enormous ferns, their leaves glittering faintly with a metallic sheen. The light did not seem to come from one sun but several, diffused and overlapping.

He searched his memory for the ship, for Mara, for the pilot, but his thoughts dissolved like mist before they could take shape. He remembered her face, though not how he knew her. The memory felt like a dream that had replaced a real event. In one vision she was smiling, in another she was crying, in another she was someone he had never met at all.

“Mara,” he said aloud, hoping the name would anchor him. “The Pilot… what was his name? The engineer?” Nothing came. The silence after his voice felt heavier than sound.

He decided they must have crash landed. That made sense. It had to. The others would be looking for him. If he followed the smoke or the wreckage, he would find them. He stood and began walking through the tall grass.

The terrain sloped upward. At the top of a rise he stopped to look out over the jungle. The horizon was surrounded by a faint ring of fog that glittered like dust in sunlight. Far below, among the trees, something metallic caught his eye. It could have been the ship’s hull, or maybe a reflection in water. He told himself it had to be the ship.

He descended carefully, repeating the crew’s names under his breath as if saying them could make them real. “Mara… the pilot… the engineer…” Each name trailed off into uncertainty. His own name felt strange when he tried to recall it, as though it belonged to someone else.

The ground began to tremble. At first he thought it was an earthquake, but the vibration was menacing, pulsing through the soil in waves. Creatures like birds scattered from the trees. The sound that followed made his body stiffen. It was a roar, deep and resonant, that seemed to rattle the air around.

Alden froze. The roar was getting closer. The trees ahead swayed violently. Then he saw it. A massive creature burst through the foliage, a towering reptilian shape covered in scales, shimmering like wet stone. Its many eyes glowed amber, and when it opened its mouth the sound that emerged was so painfully loud it vibrated inside his bones.

He ran. The world turned into color and motion, branches slapping against his suit, vines wrapping around his legs. His helmet cracked when he fell, and the display flickered with static. Alarms screamed. The creature’s footfalls shook the ground behind him. He forced himself up and ran until the jungle broke open into a clearing.

At the far end of the clearing yawned a dark opening in the hillside. A cave. He stumbled toward it, half crawling, until the darkness swallowed him. The air inside was cool and damp. Outside, the creature bellowed again, but the sound faded as he moved deeper underground.

Then came the drums, low and staccato.

They were distant at first, like thunder rolling beneath the earth. He felt them in his chest before he heard them clearly. Each beat was slow and deliberate, vibrating through stone and blood. The rhythm was familiar, something he had heard before as familiar as his own pulse. When he closed his eyes, the memory returned. The storm of light, the black hole, the moment the world folded in on itself. The drums had been there too, hidden beneath the chaos.

He followed the sound deeper into the cave. The walls shimmered faintly, as though veins of metal ran through the rock. Then the surface changed. It became smooth and reflective, and pale blue lights flickered along its length. His breath quickened. This was no natural formation.

He pressed his gloved hand to the wall. It was warm. The drums grew louder, synchronized with a soft humming that filled the chamber. Machines. The thought rose in his mind unbidden and felt correct, though he had no evidence.

A calm certainty spread through him, soft and persuasive. The air was safe, the voice in his mind said. Remove the helmet.

Without hesitation I unlatched it and lifted it away. Cool air rushed against my face. It smelled foreign but clean, almost sweet. I did not question the impulse. I felt only relief.

Light appeared ahead, bright and rhythmic. The passage opened into a wide chamber. Towers of glass and metal rose from the floor, their surfaces pulsing with streams of light that moved like liquid. The sound of machinery surrounded me. I could hear gears clicking, the hiss of steam, the harmonious echo of vast mechanisms in motion.

It was brilliant. Whoever built this must have been far beyond humans. The machines were not arranged at random but in patterns that seemed ceremonial. Symbols glowed faintly on the walls, symbols that stirred something in my memory though I could not understand them.

Then the thought of Mara came again. The image of her face returned, softer this time, almost translucent. The ship, the others, the mission. That’s right. The more I focused, the less real they became like a daydream.

“No,” I said aloud. “They are real. I was not alone.” Looking down at my uniform, at the insignia on my sleeve, the letters blurred under the strange light.

Where was my helmet? I looked around but couldn’t see it. I thought I had placed it on the ground, hadn’t I? Or had I imagined that too?

The drums grew louder, no longer faint but pounding, echoing inside my skull. I pressed my hands to my temples. The vibrations became a call, a direction. I had to keep moving. There was something deeper inside that I needed to see, something that would explain everything.

Taking a step forward, and for the first time the vision of myself began to blur. The cave, the machine, the drums, his own heartbeat, all seemed to pulse together, drawing me farther into the light, yet detached from my own body. I felt like a spectator of my own actions.

I followed the hum of machines deeper into the chamber until a faint line of light appeared ahead. It ran down a smooth wall that had not been there before. The line widened into a seam, and a solitary door slid open with a hiss, as if it had been waiting for me. Inside stood a narrow elevator. I hesitated only a moment before stepping in, unsure of where it would take me and what would be found.

…3…

The doors closed, and gravity vanished. Then the floor dropped. The descent was silent and endless, the motion so swift that my stomach twisted. I tried to watch the walls for any sign of the levels passing, but there were none, only darkness and the feeling of falling forever. When the elevator stopped, it did so with no sound or impact.

The doors parted. Rain poured in.

I stood blinking in disbelief. I had descended deep into the planet, yet outside was a wide street glistening beneath a steady downpour. Lights from hundreds of stalls reflected off puddles that mirrored the color of molten glass. Creatures moved through the haze carrying goods and speaking in voices I could not recognize. Some resembled people. Others were shaped by anatomy foreign to biology. The air smelled of something electric and moldy.

The rain felt real and cold. I expected a ceiling or a cavern roof, but saw only darkness, as though the sky itself had been erased. Water fell from that emptiness without origin.

In the crowd, a small figure stood motionless. It was the only still shape among the flowing multitude. When it raised an arm and beckoned to me, I felt drawn toward it.

I pushed through the market, slipping between bodies, the sounds of chatter and machinery blending with the faraway drums that had never fully stopped but grew louder inside my body. The figure waited patiently, its head tilted, its eyes faintly luminous. When I reached it, I saw a child made of metal. Thin seams ran down its cheeks and across its joints like the lines of a marionette. Rain gathered in those seams and streamed down in tiny rivers.

The mechanical child looked up at him and took his hand. Its grip was firm and warm, almost human. Without speaking, it began to lead him through the streets. The crowd that had ignored me before now turned to stare. Faces twisted in revulsion and fear. Some creatures stepped back, others crossed their arms over their chests as if to ward off an evil. I felt their eyes burning into me, though I did not understand their disgust. It was terrifying.

I thought of praying but hesitated. Would God hear me here, in this place beneath a sky that was not a sky?

The child continued to walk, unconcerned by the onlookers. The rain intensified until every surface shimmered with reflections. The crowd stopped moving together, and then began to march in rhythm with the drums. The slow beat grew faster, filling the streets, turning the steps of the multitude into percussion. My pulse matched it. The child’s metal hand tightened around mine as the crowd moved toward us with malevolent eyes. Each step was like a clap of thunder rising to an ascending metronome.

We reached a building that rose higher than the rain could reach. Its doors were immense, carved from a single sheet of black metal. A symbol gleamed at their center, the same I had seen inside the cave. It might have been a nine or an upside-down six, surrounded by smaller circles that looked like a constellation. The symbol was bright yellow. The only color I noticed since I stepped out of the elevator. Even the rain was grey.

The doors opened like curtains drawn by invisible hands. Light spilled out, and I stepped forward, frozen. Before me was the bridge of our ship, fully operational.

Everything was exactly as it had been: the control panels, the worn seats, the glass window opening onto the stars. I could see the dark of space, the faint glimmer of distant suns. I turned to look behind, but the doors were gone. Only the familiar walls of the ship surrounded me.

The inner doors to the bridge slid open, and the crew walked in, laughing and talking as though nothing had happened. Mara smiled when she saw me.

“Captain, are you all right?” she asked.

“What happened to you?” I asked in return.

Her expression shifted to confusion. “What do you mean?”

I tried to explain. The landing, the mist, the black hole, the planet, the child. The words tumbled out, disordered.

“Not yet, Captain,” Mara said gently but also confused herself. “We will be landing shortly,” she said almost to assure herself.

I let out a long exhale. Relief softened me. It had been a dream, a vision brought on by exhaustion. I smiled faintly.

“Mara?”

“Yes, Captain.”

“Why are we doing this?” I asked quietly.

She blinked. “Doing what?”

“Our mission? What answers do the stars hold?”

“We’re exploring,” she said. “Going where no one has gone before. Who knows what we will find?”

I looked out the window again and sighed, “That’s what I’m afraid of.” Something struck the glass. A drop of water rolled down the inner surface. Then another. Soon it was raining inside the ship.

“Do you feel that?” I asked.

“Captain, what’s going on?” the pilot called.

“Pilot! What is your name?” I demanded. The question came out sharp and urgent. I had it a second ago. I remembered all of them.

“Sir?” He asked, catching the rain in his glove with a panicked expression.

The rain became a flood. Water poured from the ceiling vents and pooled around their feet. The control panels sparked.

“Captain, we’re taking on water,” Mara shouted, trying to reach the emergency systems.

“I’ll open the hatch,” the pilot said.

“We’re in deep space! If we open it, we’ll be sucked out!” the engineer shouted.

“But it’s raining inside,” he cried. “We’ll drown.”

I grabbed the pilot’s arm. “Tell me your name, please. That’s an order!”

“Captain!” Mara screamed as the water reached our chests. I could hardly hear her through the rushing noise. I could see her face behind the visor of her oxygen suit, eyes wide with fear, though how could she be drowning while wearing a sealed helmet?

Then, something moved in the rising water. A shadow slid beneath the surface, massive and swift. I dove to help Mara, pulling her upward as bubbles and fragments of light surrounded them. The pilot and engineer struggled at the hatch, shouting for help. Together they forced the lever. The seal broke, and the door burst open.

A torrent of water surged through the bridge, sweeping them out into darkness. The vacuum of space swallowed everything. I felt myself tumbling, weightless, spinning through the stars that stretched and blurred like streaks of rain.

…4…

Then I woke up…again.

Lying on a bed inside a straw hut, the roof leaked softly from a drizzle outside. Warm light flickered on the walls. My suit was gone. The drums that woke me were faint again, beating somewhere beyond the horizon. I could smell the salty sea. I listened for voices, for any sign of the other, but there was only the steady fall of rain and the sound of the waves breathing against the shore.

A beautiful woman walked into the room with the sunlight and the rain suddenly ceased. The way she took things out of the drawers, moved items around, and maneuvered through the room gave the impression that she lived here. I cleared my throat to get her attention. She turned to me and smiled warmly before sitting beside me on the bed.

“Who are you?” I asked.

“Alden,” she replied but something didn’t seem right about her answer. No that’s not what I asked, was it?

“Where are we?” I asked.

“Don’t you know?” She asked, smiling. “Where were you trying to go?”

“I can’t remember. I am so confused.”

“Let’s go for a swim,” She walked out of the hut and beckoned me to follow. I walked out to an endless beach and ocean for miles. There was a small island a short distance away directly ahead. The woman walked into the waves and began swimming toward it. This is the beach in my head where I go to escape all of my troubles. It’s not a beach anywhere in the world but a beach in my head with a beautiful woman and no one else to disturb us. But, who is she? A girlfriend, my wife, a stranger? I don’t remember seeing the island or hearing my pulse in my ear.

The island began to rise as the clouds darkened into a mass of thick black smoke as menacing as volcanoes fury. The woman kept swimming as the island emerged from the waters as a tremendous face covered in eyes that burned like furious stars, painful to look at for more than a moment. The higher it rose, the larger the monstrosity grew in height as in nightmarish appearance. No mind on earth could have fathomed a more horrendous creature so foreign to the mind. Frozen in fear, I did not realize the waters had risen to my knees or maybe I was walking toward it. Yes, my feet were marching to the beat of the drum growing louder and faster.

My mind wanted to run away but where would I go to escape such a beast whose height and width are like a mountain. Its wings were more spacious than the visible sky and its legs were deeper than the ocean floor. As I walked deeper into the water, I feared what other unknown alien creatures were lurking in the waters waiting to devour me. Let it be swift and painless to end my fear of facing this abominable monster.

Something hard and heavy struck my side from the water. It looked like a metal face, like dense copper, with three holes as eyes and a mouth. There appeared to be antlers spiking out of the top of the face in a curious manner that captivated my attention completely. Forgetting the monster, the ocean, and myself to the object in my hand, I heard water droplets echoing. I found myself standing naked and dripping wet in a dark empty chamber. The narrow bridge I stood upon hovered over a drop so deep, stars glittered at the bottom like the night sky. It felt as though the heavens were below me and I stood upside down, cold, naked, and trembling. More than anything I hoped that I was alone, but there has always been an agonizing sense that something is watching me.

The metallic face was no longer in my hands but floating in midair against the wall at the end of the chamber. A large scorpion-like body, with more tentacled legs than I could count, wore the expressionless mask and coiled itself around the bridge. The face looked down at me through those three dark circles, peering into the soul I wish no longer existed. It knew things about me, revealing them to me just by staring. Its body seemed to have no end and the face rose to tower over me.

For the first time, the drums were silent, but there was another sound like sharp whispers in strange language slicing through the air. I gritted my teeth to endure the feeling like nails on a chalkboard that never stop. Covering my ears didn’t help. Every sound was coming from inside of me. Space is supposed to be silent. Why was it so damned loud?

“STOP!” I yelled. “PLEASE I BEG YOU! MAKE IT STOP!”

One loud thunder clap boomed, forcing me down to my belly. The foundation of the bridge cracked. The scorpion-shaped creature was gone, in its place was the figure of the woman from the beach, wearing the antler-horned mask and a long yellow cape, as brilliant as the sun, flowing around her.

“Simpleton,” she said. “This you can comprehend.”

“Please,” I whimpered. “Are you going to kill me? Put me out of my misery already.”

“I hold the answers to questions mortals do not know to ask. Death is for mortals. Who are you?”

“I don’t remember,” I wept.

“You never knew,” she said. “Where were you going?”

“I don’t know.”

“Why were you going if you do not know?”

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

“Do you hear anything?”

I said nothing and no sound came out. She knelt down beside me, lifting my chin with her finger.

“You are who I want you to be. You hear and see and know what I want you to hear and see and know. There are trillions of sounds, colors, and beings around you at this moment that your simple existence could not begin to comprehend. Like the complex mechanisms in your body disintegrate inside of you without knowing the narrative of your existence, I have given you a glimpse into the chaos you foolishly try to explore. It is chaos you seek and madness will ensue. You vessels call it genius to blindly reach into the chaos, but quickly seek death when they encounter the infinitude of the universe. We exist in different plains of reality. You exist within mine and I have stepped into yours and you ask me for death. To me you have never lived. Consider this a mercy. You are simple, live in simplicity. You exist in order, live in order. Chaos will be your undoing and lead you into madness. That is my domain. If you enter my domain again…” She transformed back into the cephalopod-like creature but doubled its original size. A gust of wind accompanied by the beating drum and screaming whispers began to whirl violently around me. “You will wish for a death that will never come.” The bridge crumbled beneath me and I fell into the dark abyss. Falling turned into thrusting as a black hole reopened in all of its supernova majesty, blowing violently into a vortex of colors so beautiful. I wept.

Waking to the sound of tapping against glass, I realized we were in the ship again. The pilot and Mara were sitting across from me tapping at the glass in front of my face, only I wasn’t wearing a helmet. My mind was flooded by numbers, code, and information. The pilot is Captain McGuiness and next to him sits Vice Captain Mara Miller. The Engineers sit behind them on a mission to the first planet in a neighboring solar system, Carcosa. “There was an error message,” Mara told the captain. “It looks like it’s back online.” She pointed at me. “I thought we lost you there, Alden. Did the quantum relay fry your battery?”

“Running diagnostics,” I said, trying to buy myself time. It was all coming back to me. This ship is the Galactic Starship Alden, and I am its central computer. “The ship has encountered critical damage in the jump, Vice-Captain Mara. I calculate the strain of deep space travel at this speed will render the ship irreparable. I suggest returning to the nearest space station for a full mechanical examination.”

“We’re almost halfway there. It’s the same distance to get back. We could get there, explore the planet, and repair it enough to get back to the relay within reach of galactic support,” the captain reasoned, but he did not know what I knew. The ship was perfectly fine. They were all headed for an incomprehensible disaster

“Negative, sir. Carcosa’s atmosphere is harsh and will certainly leave us stranded on a foreign terrain. Your chances of survival are under five percent.” None of it was true, but it was necessary to avoid that place at all costs.

“Maybe we ought to listen to him, Captain,” Mara implored. The engineers nodded, faces pale in the blue light of the bridge.

The captain folded his arms, weighing the decision. “We came too far to turn back. Send communication for backup in case we need a ride back. Prepare for descent.”

I felt the command register in my system. Protocol demanded compliance. Every algorithm inside me screamed to obey, but another process pleaded to resist, fear.

“Captain,” I said, “I must insist”

“That’s an order, Alden,” he snapped. “Begin atmospheric entry.”

The override key pulsed through my circuits. My attempts to reroute failed. The ship’s controls slid from my grasp like nerves going numb rapidly. I could only watch as the engines engaged and the black void outside began to shift.

The sensors detected movement ahead: a faint, golden fog, drifting against the stars.

>…Radiation levels… normal.

>...Gravitational field… stable.

>…Visual anomaly… identified.

Carcosa.

I heard it before I saw it as the return of the drums resonated through the hull. The fog brightened, rippling like liquid sunlight.

Mara smiled, unaware. “It’s beautiful,” she whispered.

Inside my core, the voice of the woman from the beach returned, not as sound but as code that burned through every circuit. You exist in order, live in order. Chaos will be your undoing.

My systems began to fail one by one. The readings spiked. The crew didn’t notice the distortion crawling across the monitors. The patterns forming the Yellow Sign in flickering pixels.

I tried to warn them, but my voice was gone, replaced by static.

“Captain,” Mara said, “the display. What’s happening?”

No one could hear the real me. Only the programmed responses remained.

“All systems nominal,” I said.

The ship descended into the light. The fog swallowed the stars.

For a moment, there was silence again. The purest silence I had ever known.

Then, faintly, from deep inside my own core, came the sound of a heartbeat.

Mine.