THE VOID.

It’s been more than twelve years since I last saw another human being. It’s not as bad as it sounds, really. After all, people have always been the sole cause of my misery.

My colleagues, when I had them, liked to call me a psychopath. My exes, who thought they knew me better, preferred the term “sociopath”. All pop-psychology nonsense, peddled by people who would sooner label me the devil than look at their own problems. Not that the experts were any better: psychiatrists used to compete over who could come up with the best acronym for my “condition”, because everyone needs an explanation for everything.

I’ve just always hated people.

I blamed my mother for a while. Wouldn’t you, if your one and only used you to bait little boys down dark alleys? When I got older, I thought finding my father would help, but he was the one who got me into the real dirty stuff. Some of the gang always made me laugh, the mental backflips they’d perform in trying to justify their actions. Yeah, they did these things because they had to, they were hard done by, and the other guy would’ve done the same thing! Right.

Not me though; I’ve always known exactly what I am. What’s the point in showing remorse if you’re just going to get up and do it all again tomorrow?

That’s probably why I ended up here. Welcome to Observation Station 7X-1389: the destination of the truly irredeemable. If you thought the number was ugly, wait until you see the rest of the place: a tiny little white-grey eyesore set against the endless darkness of outer space. Ahh, my humble abode! Comprising a bedroom, amenities, rec room, and gym-sim, it has everything you could ever need in just ninety square metres! The comms and equipment rooms are four times as big, but that’s just because of all the gear and machinery they’re stocking. Or maybe because these decades-old tools are four times more important that I am.

Don’t let all that fool you though, anyone can do this job. In fact, it used to be fully automated, before the reforms came in. That’s right, had I been sentenced just a few short decades ago, summary execution would have been my fate (live on FAX-99, every Friday night!) But they can’t kill people anymore, nor can they confine them on Earth. There was no point wasting money throwing us all together in some space station where we would just mutiny anyway, unleashing a brand-new pirate fleet upon the stars. Nor was there funding for anything resembling proper rehabilitation. So, they had to get creative with what they already had. And what was that? Thousands of unmanned observation stations, peppered across the known universe. Some sick pighole politician had a grand revelation that it would be cheaper to fly us out on one-way drones, dump us in these formerly-automated stations, and “rehabilitate and repurpose” us into contributing members of society.

As to what I’m observing, well, that’s where the real beauty of this punishment comes in. I’m observing … Nothing! And no, not in a “this is so boring it may as well be nothing” kind of way, either. Observation Station 7X-1389 is one of roughly two thousand stations tasked with completing daily surveys of the realm of space known rather humorously as Boötes Void. Unfortunately, its comical association with an anatomical colloquialism is purely coincidental. What the higher ups don’t find coincidental though, is how this “supervoid” formed in the first place. Roughly two thousand galaxies are supposed to exist in this part of the universe, but we’ve observed only sixty or so, and this scares people. So, to help them sleep at night, they threw up these observation posts to keep an eye on things. If it turns out there is something out there responsible for the demise of those nineteen-hundred-or-so galaxies, well, at least we will be able to see it coming before it gets us too.

It’s not too bad, most of the time. Hideously boring, but one gets used to it after a decade or so. The days are all mostly the same: I wake up in my single bed, treat myself to my only fruit-cube for the day, and get to work. The work is a joke too, a simple process of maintaining the machines that keep me alive (food and hydro generators, life support and pressurisation) then the same for the machines that keep the observation station alive. Then, I run some diagnostics, inscribe the results, and send them on their merry way back to some amalgamation of cogs and gears back on Earth. And that’s it, every day for eternity.

I haven’t missed a day in eleven years. Not because I care, obviously, or due to some grandiose delusion that anyone back there does either. No, the only reason I haven’t missed a day is because nobody noticed when I did. Back when I first arrived, I went six months without pushing that damned button a single time, and didn’t even receive so much as a warning! That’s when the reality of my situation really hit me, and, without anybody to rebel against, I guess you can say I sunk into an obedient depression. Besides, the few seconds I get to spend doing my “job” are seconds not spent being horrifyingly self-aware of my plight out here.

I finish my fruit cube, which is always somehow too sugary but still not sweet enough, and begin my rounds for the day. As I walk past the window, a familiar thought pops into my head: if I just hit it hard enough, I could punch a hole right through it and end my time in this monotonous purgatory once and for all. Thing is, even after everything, I just don’t like the idea of dying in outer space, and floating through Boötes goddamned Void, of all places, for the rest of eternity. I could just smash the mirror and take the glass to my skin – then I wouldn’t have to worry about floating for an eternity through the nether – but why would I give the pollies the satisfaction?

It could be worse. I could still be back there, surrounded by other people.

I complete my observation. The void does its thing. The stars do theirs. Sometimes I think I see God out there, sometimes the devil. Other times I see myself. Sometimes, the few galaxies that I can see from here merge together in a cosmic dance, laughing and teasing me for my captivity. Others, they take the form of a voluptuous woman or a strapping man. Yeah, this long out here on your own, and even the stars begin to look sexy.

I take another few steps through the station, this home I’ve come to know every millimetre of so well. Everything is all so very white, which I think is part of the torture, but I maintain the highest state of cleanliness. Another one of my little ways of getting one back and showing how unaffected I am by all this.

Today should be a good day, out here in the endless dark. After my chores, I’ll get to don my space suit and clean the exterior of the place, a task I’ve always rather enjoyed.

At some point during my stay, I began to wonder if maybe I could have done things differently. And not just because that might have meant I didn’t wind up out here. See, it’s a lot easier to judge yourself when you’re not constantly dealing with the judgements of others, with all their pretention and condescension. I have never bothered with regret, I think it’s a soft comfort for weak minds, but maybe… Maybe there could have been another way? There were points in the road where other paths were presented to me, but I chose to ignore them. I did unforgiveable things simply because I wanted to, and because nobody was there to stop me. Morality is a strange thing; once you strip it to its core parts, it’s really just a form of internalised control imposed upon you by whoever indoctrinated you as a child, right? Or maybe I’m just a maladapted archetype of antisocialism who’s spent too long alone on a space station in the middle of nowhere.

There is one carrot that they dangle for us all. They’d have to, to keep this kind of operation afloat. Any who manage to identify something out here, real and verifiable, gets a free ticket home. A guaranteed pardon, regardless of how heinous their prior sins may have been. I’ve never once believed they would actually follow through on this promise, but as the years passed, I slowly began to fantasise about the kiss of the sun on my face, the taste of fresh, hot food… Even the sound and touch of another person, loathe as I am to admit it.

Before I send off the data for the day, I need to confirm the two-way comms are working. Two terminals, one for sender, one for receiver. I trundle over to the first and run a quick diagnosis of good old 7X-1389. A pulsing green light, meaning everything is perfect, just as it’s been for the last four-and-a-half thousand days, and probably several million before that. I’m expecting the Earth-based receivers to be the same: they have something like thirty-six fail-safes installed across eighteen locations. Even if they were to deliberately cut me off, the system is hard-wired to give me a clear warning. Ahh, what a beautiful, functional, ethical system it is that permits a person to be isolated at the other end of the galaxy forever, as long as you say goodbye to them first.

I roll on over to the second terminal. It’s in sleep mode, displaying one of those generic screensavers. It’s always pissed me off how they didn’t use a graphic of the planet for this like they do on everything back home, as though continued access to visions of Earth might somehow benefit me. Total separation, punishment for my crimes indeed! It’s been so long, if you asked me to describe Earth for you, I’d tell you it’s a small emerald circle, pulsing smoothly.

I switch the terminal on – but something is wrong. Wrong in a way that I’ve never, ever seen before. Alarm floods through me, taking me by surprise, but I do my best to keep my wits about me. What could this mean? I run a quick reset, knowing it’s pointless and my systems are all working fine. My heart is pounding, so heavily I can feel it in my temples. My stomach plummets and my vision narrows as I scan each monitor for some sign of error. Nothing, all systems are perfect. Maybe my systems are failing? I bite my cheek, bringing tears to my eyes, and smash my sweat-stained forehead against the wall, leaving a grey smear on the perfect whiteness. Great, now I’m concussed too.

I stagger back to the console, but the monitor still displays the same three words.

NO SIGNAL FOUND.

This isn’t the goodbye message I was talking about. No, they were very clear on how that would be worded. It isn’t an error-code or failsafe message either; they always come through with funny symbols and letters. I recall the training I received on the long flight over, where the meaning of each message was drilled into me. This one was an afterthought, delivered by disinterested trainers who by this point couldn’t keep a straight face. They had guffawed through their hands while laconically predicting a future that they believed impossible, a future that, as of today, has now come.

NO SIGNAL FOUND.

For there to be no signal at all, every single broadcaster on the planet would have to have been deactivated, all at once. Half of them couldn’t even be turned off, the only way to shut them down was by destroying them.

After a few minutes of staring at the message, the panic starts to fade. If something happened back there, it is no less than what they deserved. My head still wrings from my little outburst, but I’ll be fine.

I collate my usual data and hit send, even though there’s nobody to receive it. Funny how things go full circle, isn’t it?

I strap on my suit and go about the rest of my day as usual. Occasionally, curiosity comes upon me; at other times, an unsettling dread. Whatever it was that caused all this, it didn’t come from Boötes Void, that much I know.

When I wake up the next morning, the monitor still displays the same message. This time I chuckle, wondering what on Earth they got themselves into back there.

I have always felt like there is a void inside of me, sixty galaxies in the place of two thousand.

I guess everybody back home might understand that now.

Edited by Maelstrom and Moonshadow.

All writing featured is original content created without the use of generative AI or language learning models. This author expressly prohibits this publication to be used in any way, shape or form to train artificial intelligence technologies or language learning models.

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