Boundaries of the Known Universe
There's more to this. No?
Zigmas let out a heavy breath, his fingers still locked tight around the shaft of the spear. The monster, a transparent white blob that came at them straight out of a wall, has finally stopped spasming, and was already beginning to congeal into an ugly white mass. The sharp tip of the weapon was lodged deep into one of the enemy’s hearts, bringing the young man his first kill.
“Hey, not bad for a rookie!” Exclaimed Marytė, slapping the colleague’s back. “A kill on your first day—not bad at all!”
The new recruit to the Security Initiative Detail, fresh out of the orientation course, raised his admiring glance at the older and more experienced colleague. A praise from a superior officer, and a striking female at that, was wreaking havoc in Zigmas’ brain while he tried to look cool in front of his new squad.
“T… thank you. It’s just like they taught us.” He managed.
“Aww, don’t sell yourself short, Z. You did really well.” She shot back, turning to face the remaining three members of the patrol. “Let’s call it a day, team. Hit those showers and head to the pub. The beer is on me!”
***
Metal mugs, brim-full of sloshing liquid, produced a muffled thud rather than a clang being smashed together.
“Cheers to the best squad this side of the Universe!” Howled Marytė, then downed half of her drink in one gulp, while the men around the table scrambled to catch up.
For the first time in his life, Zigmas felt like he belonged and things were starting to make sense. The blunt weight of purpose and camaraderie dulled the nagging feeling of absurdity of the existence—not just his, but their entire species—a pervasive thought that tortured the young man since he became self-aware enough to form coherent thoughts.
Countless generations of scholars massaged, interpreted and mangled the history to the point that it was impossible to tell how Zigmas’ people arrived to their current situation. `We were sent this space vessel by Gods to carry the flame and genes of our species when our own world became unlivable` was the current official line.
Zigmas did not buy that shit. None of it. Gods did not exist until proven otherwise, and whoever constructed their current habitat was one mental motherfucker. He could get behind the idea of using organic materials to create a spacefaring vessel—whatever works, right?—but why in hell one had to make it such an insufferably hostile environment?
Narrow, impossibly convoluted hallways. Damp, meaty, suffocatingly hot darkness. Full of hazardous materials and pits you could fall into. The inexplicable shifts in gravity. The tremors. The motion sickness-inducing sudden lurches. Not to mention an infestation of a whole spectrum of malicious creatures. It’s like the whole contraption was out to make Zigmas’ people sick and depressed before exterminating them.
And then there was the smell. No matter how many times you reassured yourself and the others that it gets better with time, you just never get fully used to it. You’d forget it, and then it’d jump at you, making you gag and gasp for air, taking a few moments to calm, repeating a learned mantra ‘I’m okay. I’m okay.’
“Hello? You still with us, wonder boy?” A voice plucked Zigmas out of the rumination.
His mind snapped back to reality. Marytė and one of his new colleagues—shit, what was his name?—were gone. The two remaining sets of drunken eyes stared expectantly.
“Do you guys ever think about what’s beyond these walls?” He mused, lamely, not finding anything else to say.
“Of course!” Exclaimed one of the officers—Kests?—motioning at the door in the pub’s back. ”I wonder if there’s a shitter beyond that wall. I’m about to go there to piss, or to barf, whichever seems to be more urgent at that point.”
“No seriously.” Said Zigmas. “I mean, is there something beyond this shitty ship we live in?”
“Fuck no.” Chuckled the other man—Zigmas almost could remember the name of this one, Ovidij?—”Haven’t they taught you anything in school, dumdum? There’s nothing. Empty space. A void. Duh!”
“We had to come from somewhere, tho?” Zigmas did not let up—there was a reason why he had no friends—nobody liked being nagged about existential questions with no answers, at least not when there was something to drink. “You don’t think our species evolved in this… this… godawful shithole, do ya?”
The two older men looked at each other, a wordless question and an agreement passing between them in a fraction of a second.
“Hey,” said maybe-Kests, “we were planning on wrapping up this night by throwing shit into acid pits. It’s a tad dangerous, but watching stuff dissolve is pretty, uhh, therapeutic. You wanna tag along?”
“Or!” Cut in Ovidij before Zigmas could reply. “If you’re so dead set on seeing there’s nothing out there with your own eyes, we can take the transit lines all the way to the outer slime caverns.”
Zigmas couldn’t quite read the intent behind such an offer coming from the other two men—chances were he was being played into some kind of practical joke—but there was no way in hell he’d chicken out. There was his newly-acquired monster hunter reputation to live up to after all.
***
Getting there took time and required jumping between countless elevator shafts, riding in airtight capsules submerged in a thick liquid, teaming with dangerous pests that would devour you in seconds if not for the protective shell—another infuriating thing about this space vessel. Why couldn’t it have a normal transportation system?
After a few wrong rides and backtracks, the three men finally arrived at their destination. They squeezed through tight gaps in the wall into a huge cavernous space.
In awe, Zigmas took in the place—never in his life has he seen such an endless expanse. The whole chains of yellowish mountains stretched into the distance beyond what his eyes could see. A huge forest of impossibly thin and long trees waved in an orchestrated motion, moved by the rhythmic gale winds that seemed to constantly change direction.
But what most captivated Zigmas’ mind was the light. For the eyes used to the near pitch black dusk of the ship’s innards, the luminosity of this place was close to blinding. It took a few moments before he could look without squinting. The white glow seemed to be coming from a huge roundish cave entrance to his left.
“Is this outside?” He asked, not able to tear his glance from the sight.
“Yup.” Confirmed Ovidij. “You can go closer, peer out, just watch out for the wind.”
Zigmas stepped forward, then turned back. Both of his new colleagues didn’t move.
“Aren’t you coming?” He asked.
“Nah.” Kests said, scratching behind his ear. “There’s nothing there anyway, you’ll see.”
Zigmas took another step towards the source of the light, then another, more confidently. After a while, he stole a glance back—the two officers were just tiny dots in the distance. Stifling growing unease, he continued his journey, the entrance getting bigger, yet revealing nothing besides immense glow pouring in.
He just settled in to take some rest, when the wind coming in from the opening suddenly intensified. A gust, much stronger than the ones before it, knocked the man on his back and began pushing towards the dark end of the cave. It didn’t stop like the previous ones, gradually increasing in force, until Zigmas could not hold on any longer and was tumbling back at a neck-breaking speed towards the dark abyss.
Being tossed and dragged across rugged surface, terrified beyond any comprehension, he began to say the pre-death prayer when a deafening sound of an explosion reverberated from the depth of the cave. As if on cue the walls of the cave seemed to expand as the gale reversed its direction, picking up Zigmas into air with an even greater force, carrying him towards the opening at impossible speed.
Fighting to retain the remaining shreds of consciousness, Zigmas blinked. The eyes closed just for a fraction of a moment, then snapped back open.
He was outside. Flying through open space. He wasn’t dead.
It wasn’t empty space. It wasn’t the void. It wasn’t nothing. The scholars got it all wrong. A million colors, lights, sounds and smells—all dramatically more pleasant than anything back home—assaulted his senses. He was scared to death and happy beyond imagination at the same time, even though he couldn’t make any sense of the sight.
Momentum slowly rotated his body mid-air until he was looking back at the direction he just came from. The rapidly receding view of the space vessel started to take shape. At first, Zigmas’ brain refused to comprehend the sight, then it clicked into gear. There were two ears, not unlike his own, an enormous open mouth, a pair of closed eyelids, and of course, the nose with a couple of black openings.
“What the…” he managed before his consciousness slipped away.
This short story was inspired by a concoction of these three things:
A.M. Bowman’s “The Shift” serial (also linked below) for introducing a notion of microscopic aliens fucking with protagonist’s mind.
Gil Nobodi’s note about tiny aliens living in a human body, which seems to have been removed (man, you owe me a cup of braincells, a handful of hair and 15 minutes of my life I lost frantically looking for the damn note to link to)
Kameron Hurley’s “Stars Are Legion” unhinged novel, a.k.a “Lesbians In Space” for a notion of a space ship as a living organism.
This is a really fun read. I love how you mix absurd humor with intense, chaotic world-building. Zigmas’ confusion and awe pull me in, and the sharp dialogue combined with the sensory overload keeps everything moving. The ship feels like its own character, and you make me care about him stumbling through it. It’s messy and wild in the best way and I think that works perfectly.
🤣👏