THE LAST WORD

Somehow, I know I’m dead.

I never thought that was something you could know, but it just feels different. I can’t describe the feeling. Not quite a dream, but the memory of a dream. I vaguely remember a crash. Excruciating pain. But it was short. And it’s gone now. I look to my hands, but I can’t quite be sure they’re there. I don’t know if I’m stood up or lying down. It all seems unimportant.

All around me is darkness. Not infinite black, but the finite, comforting kind like hiding under a thick duvet on a cold morning. The black seems to have a texture to it. A weave and a weft. Imperceptible gaps in the fabric.

I lean in. Or at least what feels like leaning. The darkness becomes more defined. Specs of white become clear between the void and it seems that the black is formed from familiar shapes. They are minuscule. Compressed together. Line on top of line. I squint and cannot stop myself from reading, “…equal equidistant foods; a man, though free to choose, would starve to death before…”

Words. Not darkness. Words surround me.

From far off it appears to be a void of black, but leant in as I am now, I can read, “…Beatrice did what Daniel did when he appeased Nebuchadnezzar’s wrath…”

Do I know these words? Is this a test? Am I to read every word and only then secure my freedom? Or maybe they’re some sort of deeper truth, only knowable in death?

I turn and find another part. I focus in until once more of the words reveal themselves. “…stretched out his arms, straining to clasp her and be clasped; but the hapless man touched nothing but yielding air…” I remember now. I’ve read this. Was it at school?

I continue reading, “…tendrils. Level of. Could you send me the pics from yesterday? Yeah, sure thing. X. Inbox. Saudade, Alan. RE: Scheduled ap. Bill due GUST…” The words now seem nonsensical. The whole thing appears as a seamless block of text, but the phrases are like snapshots, incoherently strung together.

Here’s a long passage. It seems to be a story, but it breaks off midsentence. More snippets. I recognise parts of them. A name here and there. “…Old City. 40. MG5. 48. ROAD WORKS…” Are these road signs? “Hi dear, how is the course going?” A text conversation. Is this my mum? I’m recognising more and more. A book I read on holiday. A pamphlet at the dentists. Subtitles of a film. Words from a poster on my bedroom wall, over and over, then gone abruptly.

I pull back and once again all the text becomes a wall of black. Could this be every word I have ever read? Is it possible to catalogue all that? These words. They surround me. There are so many and yet it seems like so little. Every word of my life...

There must be a start to this. Where is the first word I ever read?

It feels natural to look up and left, so I do. I move what feels like forward and find a small white space within the black. To the right of the gap are the words, but to the left is white. I try to read it, but the first few symbols are a garbled, blurred mess. They look like letters, but they’re turned upside down, warped or have extra pieces so don’t seem to say anything. I follow the line and gradually the letters become more recognisable. Soon I find amongst the gibberish, “Car.” My first word. The text becomes the strange symbols again and then only the ‘car’ over and over for lines and lines. Skipping ahead I find the single words of a picture book I grew up with. Ahead once more and here’s a book that taught me to read in school.

If this is the start, where is the end?

I pull back. I turn around and search down and right and there again is another little white gap. I crouch and lean in, but before the words become clear I stop. Do I really want to know the last words I ever read?

As I think, my eyes wander to an earlier part of the wall, “…speaking or mute all comeliness and grace attends thee, and each word, each motion forms…” As I’m reading, out of the corner of my eye I see the white space move. Text is being added.

I read a little more and every time I do, more writing appears. Worry crawls into my mind. I have no reason to be afraid. What harm could new words cause? This text, this whole place was not threatening but interesting to me. A strange object, still and fixed. But objects aren’t supposed to come alive.

I try a test. I read a little before the end and find what I expected, “…the hapless man touched nothing but air…” The words I had only just read are there before my eyes. I skip a little closer to the end, “…speaking or mute all comeliness and grace attends thee, and each word…”

I pull back. What will happen if I read the most recent sentence? Perhaps I can create a loop, perhaps that would break whatever this mechanism was. As interesting as this is, I don’t want to spend forever rereading my life. Perhaps this is the only way to escape.

I lean in once more, toward that final white space and find, resting there, the little black symbols of the last text I’d read. There, I read the final word, “Word.” As I do, another word appears to its right. Being so close, I cannot help but read it. “Word.” Another appears and so again I read it. “Word.” And so again, “Word.” And so again, “Word.” I continue, “Word.” Until, all I see forever is, “Word,” that last word, “Word. Word. Word. Word. Word. Word. Word. Word. Word. Word. Word. Word. Word.

.ANAX.

ON COSMONISMS

---Whilst the origin of cosmonisms remains uncertain, in recent duodecades there has been significant progress made in the field of cosmonic zoology. As to the various theories that abound, I will only briefly note that all postulated explanations of their origin have yet to withstand scrutiny; A. G. Garis is perhaps the most outspoken proponent that they are “a by-product of human colonisation”; the FOTA seems certain they bear the mark of machine work and those of the Burcanian school suggest an altogether alien beginning.

In order to illustrate the full wonderous breadth of complexity that these creatures hold, allow me to introduce a few specific forms that you might encounter should you venture into those regions-interstellar, habituated by the cosmopods.

Ystatozoa [/i:sˌtatəʊˈzəʊə/, ee-sta-to-zoa] (the broad name for space-dwelling cosmonisms) exist as giant, complex, organic, near mechanical structures. They appear translucent due to their exterior cell walls commonly composed of silica microtubules. This non-crystalline structure forms a semi-rigid lattice, able to bend, stretch and, most importantly, allow a controlled flow of substance into and out of the cosmonism. Ystatozoa with neural structures have yet to be discovered.

Cosmonisms are commonly divided into heterotrophs and autotrophs. Of the autotrophs, the heliotrophs derive their energies from stellar radiation and can be found in the near orbit of stars, whilst dynatrophs derive their energies from the minute field fluctuations in the vacuum of space and can survive deep into the uncharted void. Heterotrophs, on the other hand, gain energy in the consumption and digestion of inert matter such as nebulous gas, asteroids, planetoids, or, more commonly, other cosmopods. Heterotrophs have been found thriving across many varied regions of the observed universe.

Whilst all ystatozoa are at the whims of solar winds, gravitational tides, and space-bound debris, almost all known species have developed methods of movement which vary from species to species. Velates, for example, extend large sail-like structures and attempt to harness the propulsion of natural forces such as solar winds. Ejectates, on the other hand, expel their own propellant, often waste matter from digestion, and manoeuvre themselves in that way. Great pseudopodia, however, are perhaps the more perplexing as they are able to alter their molecular state from solid to gas and back again. This cosmopod will alter a part of itself into a gaseous form, disperse, then reform in its new position. Such a process has also allowed this class of cosmonism to consume matter and even engulf space vehicles.

Even the simplest of the ‘spacimals’ (as the layman terms them) bares such immense beauty and majesty; the single-celled macrostentor, for example, identifiable by their long tubular shape, are noted for being among the largest known single-cellular cosmonisms and have been recorded reaching sizes of up to 12 billion kilometres across with a mass of 6 solar masses. Such forms could theoretically consume entire systems, as some mythmakers and wayward mariners have alleged to have witnessed.

Another stunning aspect of the macro cosmonic universe is when different spacimals find symbiotic harmony and form colonies. Aphanizomenon major, for example, exists as two symbiotic cosmonisms that form rigid, thin stalks that are particularly adapted to stretch across asteroid belts. Voltox too is notable for spherical colonies stretching far across regions of warp trails, often disturbing space freighter routes.

Some species have adapted a symbiosis with human systems. The species nallonas, for example, has adapted to consume by-products of spacecraft fuel and expel gases useful to humans. Nallonas and other similar species have thus far been---

Fragment ends.

ANAX

[Haga clic aquí para leer en español]

GOAN NUP

Metal. Cold, metal. Shiny, to make the space feel bigger than it was. Tiny lights in the ceiling, glinting off cold metal. Six lights, three were out, three worked. A handrail. A panel of little buttons and a display of numbers. A small hole from where emergency rations were dispensed. Another small hole to throw out waste. A bed made of balled up clothes. There were doors, but they had only opened once when the man had entered - when the man was just a boy. That was it, that was all he had or knew. He didn’t know exactly what he would find when he got to where he was going, but he knew that his tiny box was going up.

Every day he watched the numbers. He didn’t know what they were, but they changed every second and sometimes there would be fewer of them. He had worked out a pattern that when it showed a circle shape, all the shapes changed, sometimes with one less shape. Perhaps all the shapes would go and there would just be a circle and then he would have reached the top.

The man hoped that when he reached the top, he would see the sun. He had never seen the sun. He remembered stories of the sun; he had been told it was eternally warm. He did not understand how, but it sounded good.

The man distantly remembered the mines, although that had been so long ago. Cold, black, dirty. He was born in the mines, but they had been closed by then. Most people left. Up the elevators they went, fast as dynamite. Many stayed. He stayed. Underground was their home, a good home they were told. If it was a good home why did the people keep leaving? There was so little power, so little food. He had hated it. He wanted to see the sun. He was still a boy when he stole some things. They wanted them back but he wasn’t coming back. He ran into the elevator, where they were forbidden to go. “Dosclosin,” it had said. It was a nice sound, to him it had sounded welcoming. His family ran to stop him but the doors slid shut and he never saw them again. “Goan nup.”

The dream of the sun got dimmer every day until eventually, the man wished he had stayed in the mines. In the mines he could roam and wander long tunnels and vast caverns. In the elevator he could wander from corner to corner and back again. When there was more power in the mines, the elevators took you to the surface in minutes. The mines closed, people left and the only power was what could be spared. The elevator on emergency power may well have not moved. It still had miles and miles of shaft through the planet’s crust to travel. If the man had known that a trip from the mines to the surface at this speed would take twenty-four years, he may never have stepped inside. It was too late however; he was in and happily watching the numbers count up and up. A sideways line, a line, two circles, a circle, two circles and two lines: “-18087”. The man smiled. “Lots of circles,” he thought, “Nearly there.”

ANAX