A Year of Stories (Collection Three)

The Hearts at the Core

This far out in the black it often comes down to a single ship.

A few million tons of alloy and fuel and beating hearts.

A drab drip, drop, drip of order in the storm of void.

A single ship...

But that's not true, not really.

It's never the ship that counts, not in the end, not when all your chips are down, and all your cards are played.

No.

Then, in that moment, what really counts, what really makes the difference, is what you find inside the ship.

Because ships contain multitudes.

Ships contain worlds out here in the void, in the black.

Weapons, supplies, sensors, tech, a chemical stew of Oxygen and Nitrogen and dozens of trace elements, all designed to keep lungs breathing.

To keep hearts beating.

The hearts at the core of every great ship, out here in the black.

But still, that's not true, not quite...

Because it's not what's inside the ship that matters, not really, not even the hearts.

Hearts beat and then die out here in the black.

Happens all the time.

Leaving silence for the void.

It's not the weapons or the sensors or the trace gases or even those hearts that matter.

It's the mind that one heart fuels.

It's that mind that matters.

The mind that is at once smaller and larger than the ship's million tons.

That contains more worlds that its cargo bay.

That can reach outside of its alloyed walls.

That can pass through the void, through the black unscathed.

It's the mind, a mind, only that mind, the one that matters, that can wrap itself around the danger.

Around the thing out there in the storm, the one that devours beating hearts.

That can grasp it like a fist.

That can hold it like a lover.

That can unravel its knots like the mystery at the end of the Universe.

That can save those breathing lungs and beating hearts when nothing else can...

But even that's not entirely true.

For the mind contains multitudes, contains worlds all it's own.

A storm of void in a sea of black.

And it's in one of these worlds where the answer is born.

Where we must search.

Beyond the ship.

Beyond the black.

Beyond the void.

Beyond the mind.

Down.

Down.

Ever down...