It's unknown whenever Woruv Vtyla ended up inside the secret and abandoned Soviet-era space station, Bezdna-9, since it became his sort of bunker.
- May 13th. I woke up to a sudden lack of gravity pulling my body towards the ground. I don't remember which year it was... I just remember waking up here. I've been trying to survive here ever since.
This is one of the countless notes written by Woruv, none of which made it out of the station.
- Privyet, Woruv, sistemy polnos...
- Angliyskiy! - he quickly interrupted the archaic onboard AI, his only colleague aboard the station.
- Switching to English mode. Hello, Woruv! Systems are fully operational. No rogue space debris is expected to collide with this station. There is no incoming terrestrial signal.
- Check if there is any anomaly in the CMBR entropy.
- The entropy of the Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation, according to a mathematical test using a billion iterations of the Chaos Game, has not changed since the last analysis.
- Give me a sequence of random tokens, based on the current entropy and your system prompt.
- Sure, here is a sequence of random tokens based on such constraints: Exothermic, Manjaro, Plato, Tuvalu, Yttrium.
- Are there any acrostics?
- It's empty.
Woruv is really tired of this. He is waiting for something to happen, for something to rip apart the curtains of a cosmic theatre... maybe his rescue, or his oblivion... or both.
- On the one hand, I don't want to be rescued. This ship is being pulled into outer space, much like the Voyager twins. So far, the landscape beyond these windows is always changing: from a dark cosmic veil to an even darker cosmic veil. Every day, I get surprised by how darker it can get outside... it seems like there's no such thing as "absolute darkness", as if the bottom of this well always has a manhole leading to a deeper dungeon.
The daily, ritualistic routine continues as Woruv reaches for the dusty, old radio equipment.
- CQ, CQ, this is Woruv, aboard Bezdna-9, Bravo-Echo-Zulu-Delta-November-Alpha-Nine. I repeat: this is Woruv, aboard Bezdna-9, Bravo-Echo-Zulu-Delta-November-Alpha-Nine. Does anyone copy? CQ, CQ.
Then, silence, again... A radio silence converging with the silence brought by the vacuum of deep space, where no one can hear a person screaming.
There's Woruv again, stubbornly changing the squelch level, just to hear some random crackling emanating from nearby pulsars. He always tries to write it down somehow: intervals, audible frequency ranges calculated from Fourier transform, date and time. He hopes there might be a hidden meaning disguised as randomness.
- BZD-9000, analyze what I just wrote.
- The excerpt provided appears to be a record or log of technical data, possibly related to a signal analysis or transmission in a telecommunications system...
- Useless piece of robot. Always the same output... it never changes! - he said in visible frustration.
The next step of his cosmic routine is to head to his spacey bedroom, where a small nightstand serves as a desk for his readerless writing urges.
- I heard that Soviets were fond of pencils. There are countless of them inside the cargo hold. Perhaps I'll die writing and all these pencils will outlive me. Why am I writing? I don't know. Nobody reads, after all. I'm alone inside this metal box at 12,912,920 km/h...
Woruv interrupts his writing to confirm the data:
- BZD-9000, what's the current speed in relation to the CMBR?
- The current speed is 12,912,920 km/h.
Only after confirming the accuracy of his information does he continue writing:
- ...(the speed hasn't changed since I memorized it). I don't know what happened to Planet Earth. I'm not sure what year they're experiencing right now, because I'm at 1.1% of the damn speed of light. Every day I hope this spaceship is headed toward some gigantic black hole. I'd be the first human to ever embrace an event horizon, although that title would be pointless: no one would know, no one would care. Not even the black hole.
He stops writing, turning to the machine:
- BZD-9000, analyze what I just wrote.
- The text provided is a poignant and introspective monologue that seems to be from the perspective of an isolated individual aboard a spacecraft. The text is a rich exploration of themes related to isolation, the search for meaning, and the human condition in the face of the vast and indifferent universe...
- Yadda-yadda-yadda... - he mocks the AI in frustration.
The final step of his daily routine is to lean against the window pane, just to watch, with slow and silent tears, as the cosmic veil unfolds outside, before oxygen levels reach a daily hiatus, causing him to fall unconscious until the next, repeated day.
Unbeknownst to him, the ship is, indeed, accelerating... He's simply using the wrong frame of reference, a cosmic wall which is getting closer and closer: a gargantuan, ineffable black hole, undetected by probes (it's too big to be detected), invisible in the darkness (it's too dark to let light through), gravitationally lensing a familiar reference -- the CMBR -- in an uncanny manner.
Unbeknownst to him, the touch of Death is never truly felt: it's cosmic, indifferent, invisible, silent and ghostly. Perhaps She is the one reading his notes with Her somber detachment, waiting for him and his prison-shelter to meet their fate, like a tiny metallic mosquito to be mercilessly slapped, stomped and swallowed as if it were made of dust (because it is).