Suspended in the emptiness of space was a vessel strewn together of bolted metal and worn circuitry, large enough to carry one man. It was a crude beast, but it sheltered him from an invisible chaos that lay just beyond a slab of sealed glass. A phantom that would boil away the moisture in his eyes and tissues, and swell his arms and legs and fingers and face to twice their size. It would dissolve the nitrogen in his blood stream, blind him with hypoxia, dye his skin blue and force him to convulse like a repenting sinner. Every part of his body would grovel for oxygen and water except his heart and his head. Those would continue to work for about two minutes. And two minutes could last an eternity. They’d be two lengths of a fundamental quality with which there would be nothing to measure.

Will I dream? he thought. Be caught in a wormhole and preserved in my bloated sac of viscera?

He hoped that it wouldn’t come to that, but in the end all he could do was sit and sigh.

His vessel groaned lethargically.

He’d been drifting for how long? No idea. An eternity.

* * *

The vessel wouldn’t be able to hold itself together indefinitely. Outside he knew that it was void, but that was deceptive. Micrometeoroids that were too small to see were constantly sandblasting the hull. Whether or not that meant that the hull would be worn down and breached, something was bound to happen. The craft was a stranger, surrounded by a formlessness intent on disassembling any vestige of the formed.

Between dying and continuing to drift however, the passenger didn’t see much of a difference. He didn’t see much of anything. It was true that he could maneuver the vessel, but even if he did, where would he take it? One direction was as good as any other…

No. he told himself. Whatever salvation there is to find, reaching it is as much in the hands of fate as it is in my own.

* * *

He didn’t know how long it had been or how fast he’d been traveling because nothing had changed. There was nothing to change. If he had seen a rock, particle of ice, anything, it would have been a sign that there was something out there to be found--A validation of existence. The simple fact was that it made no difference whether or not his eyes were even opened or closed. He knew that when he opened them what he saw would be just as somber and meaningless.

* * *

When he first saw light he realized he had been thus far consumed by black.
The star or the nebula that gave off the ruddy red shine was minuscule, and probably light-years away, but to him it was as blinding as an inferno.
The presence of light brought an end to a day which otherwise had endured in his mind only through the sole existence of darkness. As the light was divided from darkness, day was divided from night. From what time was divided… he didn’t know.

More phantoms.

* * *

He knew his eyes were becoming accustomed to the light, but it remained painful to look at. He could tell that it was a star, and that he was getting closer. Planetary satellites trapped in its orbit emitted hues of red, blue, green, hope, love, despair, and suffering.

Anxiousness suffocated him.

Uncertainty.

He didn’t want existence. He was content to swim with phantoms.

But the vessel was bringing him closer, and nothing could be done to stop it.