We found ourselves in a planetarium.
The circular room was dim, the only light emanating from the massive do ceiling above. Rows of empty seats, angled sharply backward, were arranged in concentric circles. In the center of the room, a large, intricate projector was aid upwards. Above, the stars moved with epic slowness across the deep, uninterrupted blackness of the projected night sky. The faint hum of the projection equipnt was the only sound in the empty space.
I sat down on one of the center seats, pulling Prince Baiyu down beside . The seat was surprisingly comfortable, as though it was made for . I noticed that Prince Baiyu hardly fit in his.
“Let’s just watch.” Sothing about the planetarium’s atmosphere made whisper it even though we were alone.
He nodded, and we both looked up, waiting for the show to start.
The stars above us flickered, and then they were wiped away, leaving total darkness behind. A dark circle edged in white flared to life on the do. To my surprise, the familiar strains of Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Sunrise, by Richard Strauss erupted from hidden speakers as a smaller, yellow circle erged from behind the dark circle. I suppose it was literally showing a sunrise.
“Incredible music,” murmured Prince Baiyu from beside , his eyes never leaving the sky projected above us.
I yawned. The combination of the darkness and the comfortable reclined seats was making feel drowsy. Through heavy lids, I watched as the cara moved away from the sunrise and flew through Earth’s solar system and then into deep space.
The cara drifted through what seed like an endless expanse of nothingness occasionally punctuated by the appearance of a star system, nebula, black hole, etc.
It was very pretty but also quite monotonous. I was mildly entertained by the music, which moved on from Strauss to various instruntal music. I recognized a few popular tunes, such as the Moonlight Sonata, the Ride of the Valkyries, and, bizarrely, the main the from Star Wars.
We silently and patiently watched as the galaxies began to recede, dwindling into nothingness until an almost total void consud the screen. It wasn't entirely empty, though. Here and there, almost imperceptibly, specks of matter, individual atoms, stray photons, drifted through the vast emptiness. The cara followed one such speck, a particle of space dust. It began a long journey drifting through space, occasionally colliding with and absorbing other stray particles, a single atom here, a molecule of gas there. Each accretion was infinitesimally small, yet over an unimaginably vast tiscale, the dust grain grew. It beca a pebble, then a tiny rock, no bigger than a pea.
Wait, how was I understanding what was happening when all I could really see were tiny specks of light in a vast darkness?
Looking around in confusion, I suddenly realized that the other chairs were gone, and so were the walls. The do above us now extended to the white marble floor, and the room was empty except for the projector and our two chairs.
I grabbed my boyfriend and whispered, “Hey… this is...”
He patted my hand. “Yes, the room has changed, but I don’t sense any danger. I believe this is a ntal transcendental skill formation of so kind.”
“A what?”
“Do you rember the illusions at the Fox clan’s festival?”
“Right…” I let him go and sat back on my extrely comfortable chair. “Okay. I guess it’s just showing us the answers. Do you think this is the story of the creation of your world?”
“Maybe.” He looked up and smiled. “It’s very interesting.”
Of course, this must be absolutely riveting to soone like him who wasn’t used to watching films, TV shows, and short-form videos.
I took out so vending machine junk food and drinks to share with him. We continued watching as I drank soda and munched on popcorn, cookies, and candy bars.
The pea-sized rock beca bigger and bigger with glacial speed. Now that Prince Baiyu had explained that it was a ntal illusion of so sort, I realized that apart from seeing the movie, there was also information or comntary about the show that I was sohow absorbing from who knew where.
The do screen flickered, and I understood that the rock, through a mysterious chanism beyond my comprehension, had gained a rudintary sentience. Where before it had been randomly caroming around the screen gathering space dust, it was now purposefully seeking out more particles and absorbing them.
Even though this wasn’t shown on the screen, I could tell that it was now also absorbing sothing else. Sothing that I could never see: qi. The ntal illusion was telling that it was drawing primordial qi into itself. This wasn't physical matter, but an ethereal energy, the foundational essence of existence, and its absorption further fueled the rock's erging consciousness and control over its surroundings.
This once again took quite a lot of ti, and I kept on yawning, so I was forced to drink more soda to stay awake.
Things picked up a little bit when it encountered other life forms for the first ti. They were voidlings like the rock, beings made of space dust and gas, but they were not as conscious as it was. They repelled its attempts to communicate by telling it in no uncertain terms to get out of their territories.
“They have zidan even in deep space,” Prince Baiyu whispered to .
I made a soft sound of agreent and continued to watch.
Eventually, its travels took it to a planet that was teeming with organic life. They were only single-celled microorganisms, but the rock found the transitory nature of their life quite fascinating.
I almost choked on a potato chip. “How do I know what this stone is feeling?”
Prince Baiyu chuckled. “This is a masterful illusion.”
“Rocks have thoughts and feelings now…”
The next part made sit up straight in my chair, junk food forgotten, as the space stone encountered nurous beings, from many different planets.
I turned out to be very right in saying that, since what followed was a fast montage of the rock exploring other planets that had basic life forms like trilobites, fish, fungi, and then, amazingly, dinosaur-like creatures.
Then it encountered even more interesting life forms in its travels. There were singing crystals who cast complex light and sound spells at him, amorphous gas aliens, and even reptilian people in a spaceship. It later discovered a species of sentient, telepathic fungi that communicated through pulsating bioluminescence, and colossal, deep-space leviathans whose bodies were living nebulae. It also saw microscopic, self-replicating nanobots that ford vast, intelligent swarms capable of terraforming entire planets.
“Slow down!” I yelled up at the screen. Turning to Prince Baiyu, I said, “It's going super fast now, but it spent hours on the nothingness of space!”
“Amazing.” His eyes never left the images projected on the do. “Keep watching, there must be a point to showing us all of this.”
Rather than slowing down as I wished, the movie sped up even faster until it was now more like a slideshow of photos shown for re seconds each ti. Each quick picture showed sothing new and weird.
I tried to ntally note them down for future reference.
A person made entirely of living shadow.
A coral creature at the edges of a large island.
A shimry, blob-like thing that kept changing its inner light.
A spindly, plant-like alien with feathery tendrils.
A creature that looked like a giant, floating brain with many small, darting eyes.
Then, just as my brain was about to be overloaded by too much information, it sped up even faster so that images were now flashing by in re milliseconds, too fast for to really see.
“Oh-”
The cara then stopped at a closeup shot of the rock. It was now a smooth, polished deep blue stone the size of a person. The screen went dark for a second, then the shot zood out and showed deep space before slowly zooming into a solar system that I recognized and then to a blue planet I was intimately familiar with.
It didn’t stop there. It went down the atmosphere into the land and to a place that I had never been, but had seen pictures of many tis.
I jumped out of my seat, packets of potato chips and cookies dropping from my lap and onto the floor, forgotten, and scread, “No way! It can’t be!”
“What is it?” Prince Baiyu was alard and embraced as though to protect from an unknown source of danger.
I pointed at text overlaid on the picture on the screen above us, making incoherent sounds of denial.
“Calm down. Take deep breaths. Tell what you see.”
With great effort, I managed to speak a sentence before words failed again. “That… the illusion is telling that’s GodIAm!”
User Comments
0 comments from readers