Demise of Desires

I pressed my forehead to the window and let the cold seep in. Space didn’t move, but it felt alive. The ship buzzed behind me, a steady background that had become the sound of my days. When I was a kid I drew this view on scrap paper and taped it to my wall. I thought it would answer something big. Now I had the real thing, and the question was still there, only quieter and harder to name.

We were scheduled to fire for Earth later this week. My crewmate slept in the medbay, sedated while a stubborn fever smoldered under the numbers. I told myself I was lucky: I would see my family soon. I also told myself that the life I had chased for years had turned into a room with switches and a window, and I didn’t know what to want after “arrive.”

A pressure gathered behind my eyes, a slow screw turning. I blinked and something slid across the starfield—a dark shape, thin as a scratch, moving in a way that didn’t match any track I knew. I told myself to rest.

In medbay the monitors were calm. Fluids in. Heat pad on. The panel’s green light pulsed: new message. His voice, recorded two days ago, came through rough and careful: “If you see something that isn’t on the plan, don’t follow it. We go home.” I saved it and left the room dim, the door sighing shut.

In my bunk I floated between thoughts. Dinner from a pouch sat flat on my tongue. Water on my face helped for a moment, then the headache pressed in again. Sleep didn’t arrive, it drifted, thin and uneven.

The alarm tore through it. One fixed tone. EMERGENCY. I kicked free and pulled myself to control. Panels glared. Numbers held steady. Hull secure. Air clean. Whatever tripped the system cleared itself before I could sit. The board slid back to green like nothing had happened.

At the window, that same shape cut across the stars, closer now, gliding like a fish through still water. I felt curiosity rise, simple and clean, the way thirst rises. I opened navigation.

Mission Log T+187:14:23. “Breaking protocol to identify unknown object. Minor course change.” I pinged Earth and sent a small line to my family: “I may be late. I love you.” The transmitter threw code into the dark.

I tapped a short burn. The ship rolled. The fans buzzed. The shape drifted farther, and I eased after it.

Fuel numbers ticked down in tidy steps. The CO₂ scrubbers still had margin, but less than yesterday. I trimmed nonessential alerts and kept only the ones that matter when breath and heat are involved. On the scope the object sat at the edge, never more than a whisper of return.

Mission Log T+188:02:05. “Object acceleration matches ours.” Radar painted it faint, as if it were reflecting us back at ourselves. On the engineering display, lines curved around an empty patch ahead, light and radio bending as if a bright ring had been dropped into space and covered with paint.

I tried Earth again. Static hissed, then the link lamp went dead. The panel wrote “link lost” in plain letters. I watched the blank light and told myself the relay would come back, though I didn’t know when.

Time loosened its edges. I kept count with log stamps and sips from the water bag. The headache settled in as part of the room.

Mission Log T+190:11:40. “Crewmate stable. Sedation maintained.” I let his message play again: “If you see something that isn’t on the plan, don’t follow it. We go home.” I paused it before the last word and floated in the quiet.

The object waited, always just at the range where our sensors turn shy. Heat signature: a ghost of ours. Burn timing: a step behind ours, then a step ahead, like two mirrors facing each other. Mass estimate swayed with our own orientation. The trace on the scope folded back like a ribbon.

I kept the thought small so it wouldn’t consume me: if you replace a part, the ship stays the ship; if you replace a choice, do you stay you? I didn’t chase the answer. I watched the numbers.

On the third day the dark ahead thickened. Not brighter, not yet, just dense, as if the field itself had texture. The ring showed up slow, like a bruise coming through skin—first a hint, then a clear edge. A circle where there should be none. The object veered toward it. I followed, and then the object wasn’t there any longer, but the ring was.

Guidance shifted before I touched it. Thrusters tapped without my command. The path line drew itself in a smooth arc that threaded the circle’s mouth. I tried the stick and felt that soft resistance the system gives when it thinks it knows better than you. Readings saturated. Pings curled and came home as copies of our own voice. I stopped pushing. I watched.

The ring grew until it was all that the window could hold. I thought of home with a clarity that hurt: my mother turning down the flame under a pot; my father tightening a loose hinge with a coin because the proper tool wasn’t close; me on a roof with a cheap telescope and a neck that ached and a heart that didn’t. Those pictures were sharp because they were small. The thing in front of me was too large to fit anywhere inside me.

Light rose without color. White reached the edges and then swept past them. The ship’s buzz lengthened into a low groan, like metal asking a question. Heat pushed at my eyes. I tucked my head and counted without meaning to. For a second I believed the hull would peel open.

When I looked up, I wasn’t in the seat.

I was weight in someone’s arms, a child, pressed to a soft shirt that smelled clean. My mother’s breath moved against my hair. Words didn’t belong to me yet. Time loosened again and ran, not a film but a current carrying everything: dust in a schoolyard, the surprise of a clear night, a little tube of glass and mirrors that found the Moon and shook when I breathed, the quiet desk where I learned to wait, the exam hall with air like stale paper, the first job that felt larger than it was, a loss that made a bus ride home take three years, training that turned dizziness into skill, the long hallways that never truly ended, hands gripping a bar in the centrifuge while the world narrowed to a point, the day I shook my crewmate’s hand, the climb to the pad, the sound you feel more than hear, rooms that buzzed, stars that refused to blink. All of it moved through me without asking me to judge it. It was mine and also not mine; it simply was.

White again, but now it had no place to sit. Just white, and a hum so far off I had to remember it to hear it.

A figure stood a little way ahead. Not a person exactly. A shadow with edges that kept deciding where to be. I walked toward it and the ground didn’t notice.

“Who are you?” I asked.

“I am you,” the figure said, and it sounded like me, only older, as if the words had crossed a long field and picked up dust. “But who are you?”

I tried to answer. Nothing came. The figure lifted a hand, and the fingers met with a small sound.

Black.

I came back with a tight, heavy pain behind my eyes and a dry tongue. The ship buzzed. Air slid past the vents. On the medbay panel across the room, a green light winked, steady as breathing. I stood and went to the window.

Outside, not far from the hull, something moved that shouldn’t. A thin shape against the dark, cutting a line that didn’t fit any course I knew.

I told myself I should rest. I checked medbay. Vitals steady. The message light blinked. I tapped it and let the words fill the room: “If you see something that isn’t on the plan, don’t follow it. We go home.”

I floated back to my bunk. Metal on my tongue again, like the taste you get when you press a coin to your teeth. Sleep hovered but didn’t settle.

The alarm found the seam and split it. One fixed tone. EMERGENCY.

Control lights rose before me. Numbers held. Hull secure. Air clean. The board slid back to green like nothing had happened at all.

At the window the shape was closer, moving the wrong way through a sky that doesn’t have a wrong way...

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