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[FynalSlash]

Early in the 21st century, it was clear that space exploration was no longer a way to posture for dominance among the nations, and so governments began to defund those programs. Private industry took over, and market competition drove battery and navigation technology to new extremes. The human race finally knew the truth: We were capable of anything. Anything at all that we truly set ourselves to accomplish, good or bad, if working together. Even God had to strike down the Tower of Babel to keep us from reaching Heaven without him, but now we had done it. We would spore out into the infinite black! What an era of hubris. We thought ourselves finally above the era and notion of gods. And then we stepped out and off the front porch. KALA. True mother, more than the oceans. We stood and knew that awe and wonder were also inherent inescapable truths of this existence. We knew that gods or not, even if nothing was sacred, nothing was not sacred.

This is not like the Third Renaissance. Young and idealic my wife and I had set out to make a home on Meiva, when almost immediately the infinite fires of Kala found a way to burn me. When I was struck with the virus, we resolved to make a life of it. Make the best of it anyway. She would tend to things in the day. I would come out in the dark of night, when the UV of our colony world would not singe the skin from me until I would tick with uncontrollable jerks of pain. Despite the benefits, the complications were more than she could bare. Before a year had passed in our new home, discord with locals and the pressures of a testing environment proved too much for young newlyweds. I don't blame her. And I'm sure she will rest well in the garden.

When your heart no longer beats to sustain you, and the scientists still don't fully understand how your nervous system works, it takes a little more to put you in true Stasis. I slept so long. I slept the sleep of the dead. I could swear in the deep of my sleep I could hear screaming, and then fire, and then the roars of a thousand beasts. And then the Deep Silence rang out like a gong. Clearing away the madness. Ushering in its own. Silence all the way down. Behind my eyes, I could feel it. This infinite black was not mother Kala. This was the godless deep. I exited to find the timer on my Stasis unit had broken. How long ago? I checked the towns and trade cities. Nothing. Just that ion fizz in the air, and the hiss of those cannibal beasts which can sustain themselves in feast of each other. The world itself is not lifeless, but its life is within that well of Deep Silence. That wordless groan, unreasoning and hollow. Has reason left this place? Has it left me? Even without the commuter ship, it wouldn't be hard to return to the surface and be beamed to another planet, another location, another world in the infinite black. One with the convenience of industrial enterprise. Away from the work of building the new. But I am one of the beasts now. I write these logs, but in my toils I groan wordless.

In my solitude, I have come to understand the true nature of the virus that drove away the colonists. No. I am not without reason because I am not without purpose. I leap from the mountain to the coal below without so much as the advantage of a water landing. Such things no longer trouble me. I embrace the silence and let it empty me. My task is always before my eyes. I can work indefinitely without food or sleep. There are no distractions. I swing until one pick gives out against the ores of this heavy world and switch immediately to the next. I am more steadfast than any stone. Yes, when all ends, I remain. I am the infinite. Emptied of ego, out of our own way, who are we? We are all of it. I have found the Cygnus of my equilibrium. We are neither lorded over nor godless wretches. We are the infinite black. We are the gods. Just as we must explore, we must create. The mortal changeableness, the turning of seasons and ways, the inefficient bunnytrailing, diversions, reductions. I no longer feel them. Just as I can no longer recall the sound of another voice. Undying, I crawl the depths of this rich stone. Tirelessly, persistently I construct. Even in a vacuum, this is what the universe does. It finds a way to life so that life can find a way.

How long? I don't know. I haven't thought in terms of days for ... there is only day and night. The night comes and the stars twinkle above the rain clouds. Stars.
Or ships?