published on
VOS 080
'They sent the rocket up in December. Houston calculated that if you fly a couple of light-years west of the Milky Way, you’ll find the Tunnel. It’s a pocket of space-time that works something similar to a black hole – though with the Tunnel, gravity doesn’t lock you in; it propels you instead. The only question was to where.
They handpicked 4 of NASA’s finest. We all thought it was suicide – but I guess they didn’t care. The captain put a letter in my palm and told me to give it to his daughter on her 18th birthday. She loved the ocean, and I figured he promised her that they’d dive again when he got back home. Before I knew what to say, they were gone. Months. Years. Us, down here. Them, out there.
Eventually, they came up to the Tunnel. We could see it from the cameras on the ship. It was this swirling vortex of coloured gas. Intense lightning going off on the green edge. Then on the blue. Like the body of the universe had multi-coloured veins flaring under its skin.
“God speed,” said NASA, and the ship moved into the gravitation field. The Tunnel slowly reeled them in. But right before they touched the mist, something sounded off on the radio. A sonic wave ploughing through a hundred million dollars’ worth of US titanium. The craft-cams, the body-cams, they all went to shit.
“Captain?” Yelled the Control.
There was static on the other end. Everyone on Earth scrambling to save the connection. 10 seconds. 20 seconds. Then, one of the screens lit up. A head-cam.
“CAPTAIN?”
There was no ship or crew. Only a man caught in the middle of all that coloured fog. You could see his hands reaching out into the empty space.
“CAPTAIN DO YOU COPY?”
The room went quiet. Jaws dropped like anchors to the floor. How couldn’t they? Seeing that massive thing swim above him like that. The length of about 20 buses sitting one in front of the other. Only this thing had a dorsal fin and a massive tail.
“Is that… A whale?”
In space you can’t hear a thing - but then this beast starts singing. Echoing these low-pitched cries and dancing in those particles of colour. The captain floated under it. Danced alongside it. And then, he held out his arm. Same way he did when he was giving me his daughter’s letter. A hand that never wanted to let go.
The whale came closer. It glowed red with electricity. Pulsating currents rippling all over its back. Finally, it holds out its tail, and the captain grabs on. Then the creature starts swimming, dragging the captain like a bullet through that Tunnel. His head-cam barely catches the whizzing beams shooting overhead. Minute after minute, light after light.
Then the whale calls again. Deep, and endless, it cries and takes a nosedive, pulling the captain down with it.
“HOLD ON CAPTAIN!”
Before long, that whale is coming up at twice the velocity. There are tremors on the image. That thing is shaking its tail like an earthquake, breaking the captain’s grip before swimming up into the coloured light. It glows away into the distance – and now the captain is perfectly still. Suspended in the coloured nothingness. He reaches his palm out to the fading light again.
Suddenly, we lose the video feed.
“CAPTAIN,” they scream. It’s pitch black, but there are sounds still moving through the radio. Barely audible at first. Then, in the distance, we start to hear the call. An infinite void of deep frequencies and tones. It’s coming closer. Getting louder.
“CAPTAIN, WHERE ARE YOU?”
Now the song sounds close enough to swallow him whole. And then, right at the last second, right before we lose him for good, the captain puts his mouth up to the radio, a warm acceptance in his voice all those light years away. “I’m home,” he says.'
Story was exclusively written by Mindoglyphics (instagram.com/mindoglyphics)
Thank you for your continuous support, we wouldn’t be here without you.
⚗
Connect with the artist:
SC: @soundslikepan
FB: fb.com/soundslikepan
Connect with Melody Lab:
SC: @labofgrooves
FB: fb.com/labofgrooves
- Genre
- VOS