For the [Black Hole] of Your Mind, by Claire van Doren

The aluminum shutters were open again, revealing a vast, black void dotted with distant stars.

Vash sighed and stepped over to the far side of the room, snapping the metal sheets shut so quickly they rattled.

It wasn’t that Vash hated the space outside the ship, it dizzied him. Where the other crew members saw beauty in the distant stars, Vash saw nothing. He was dassarian. His native language didn’t have a word for ‘pleasing’ let alone a concept like beautiful. With one massive mind shared among the entire species, dassarians did not have the space in their own heads to think about whether an object or view was ‘pleasing’ or not.

The window was as useful to Vash as the painting his crewmate Frankie has insisted on displaying in medbay was. It would have been easy enough to deny Frankie, but Vash had seen the amount of time they had put into creating the thing and was reluctant to turn them down. Gift giving was not a dassarian practice, but Vash knew enough about other cultures to understand that rejecting gifts was almost universally rude.

Still, as Vash turned away from the window and toward the painting on the opposite wall, he attempted, once again, to find something in the image Frankie had created.

Blue streaked across the canvas, along with a dusty pink and flecks of warm brown, but much of the painting was a purple so deep it was almost black. It was not unlike the color of Vash’s skin, though this was not a new observation.

Vash noticed nothing new except for the fact that the painting was slowly beginning to angle itself down toward the floor.

Vash tilted his head to get a better look at it, and the floor tilted with him, throwing off his balance. Within a few seconds, Vash and everything unsecure in the room were losing a fight to the artificial gravity and falling fast toward the wall. Vash had to awkwardly climb over chairs to pry his way through the medbay doors.

The hallway was sitting at an angle as well, though the blank gray walls made it much harder to notice. Even the circular doors Vash passed as he slipped down to the control room didn’t seem particularly out of place at the acute angle the ship was sitting at.

The control room was a different story. Emergency lights cast their red glow across the entire room. Even the massive canopy window that displayed the abyss and the stars before them seemed to have taken on a red hue from the alarm. Mercifully, the alarm was a level six emergency, making the alert absent of any blaring sirens.

Outside the canopy window was the distant, but ever-present [black hole], looming a bit closer than it was before.

Everything in the control room was built into the walls and flooring, so instead of sliding about like medbay, this room was twisted. Vash had to keep one six-fingered hand on each of the control panels as he made his way to the center of the room.

The only person at the console was Elijah. The confused look on the human’s face was a familiar expression. So familiar, in fact, that Vash could recognize it without a second glance.

Elijah was easily the least experienced of their crew and was rarely left to manage the central console by himself. Vash doubted Elijah had been left to supervise anything of importance, it was more likely an engineering emergency, so he had been left behind by the rest of the crew to press buttons on request.

“We’ve moved 30 degrees toward the black hole, Captain,” Elijah said, the crease between his thick brows deepening. “Shouldn’t be a problem so long as—,” He turned. “Oh!”

“Thought you were Maurdat.” There was a grin on Elijah’s face, which confused Vash.

“I’m not,” Vash said. He didn’t know how he could be mistaken for their unofficial leader. Where Maurdat was short and round, Vash easily had the skinniest frame of anyone on board. “Why is the station tilted?”

“Vertical axis’s fucked.” Elijah rubbed the back of his neck, holding his gaze on Vash’s face. “Not a big deal. It increased our exposure to Hawking radiation a little. Doesn’t affect humanoids far as I know.”

Whatever Hawking Radiation was, a [black hole] was not to be messed with. If Vash knew anything, he knew that.

In Dassar, Vash’s native language, the word [black hole] didn’t mean what it did in Standiad, even though it referred to the same planetary body. The word itself was closer to the word [Hive-All], the great collective mind that bound all dassarians to each other, than to any scientific term. All thoughts that could be had, any space individuality had to grow; it all circled around the drainpipe that was the [Hive-All], not unlike the dying light the [black hole] consumed.

Because of the that, Vash preferred his work in medbay. The idea of working with the looming presence of the [black hole] over his shoulder made him feel a little sick. Vash had escaped an unrelenting authority once. He hadn’t planned on returning so soon.

Still, the station was better than prison. It was prison. Everyone on board was serving a life sentence for some crime or another, but they were given special circumstances for volunteering to be so close to the [black hole].

Vash had a hard time conceptualizing the station as a prison because it was so free compared to a dassarian prison. Anything was better than the cold, unforgiving dark of a cohabitation cell, where it was just Vash and the [Hive]. It wasn’t prison like individual societies knew them, with cellmates and activities, there wasn’t much use for that kind of prison in a society where no one had an original thought, let alone committed a major crime.

Except for Vash, of course. The one and only exile of Dassarya.

That didn’t mean much in the grand scheme of things. Dassarians didn’t go anywhere off-world, so he wasn’t going to meet anyone from his homeworld ever again, even if he was allowed to leave the station. Other species, mostly humans, thought of him as a curiosity.

Vash was unique, for better or worse.

“Better view than anything planetside, huh, Vash?” Elijah grinned at Vash before glancing up at the [black hole], making his meaning abundantly clear.

This was something that Vash fundamentally could not understand about humans: the need to converse about inane subjects. Elijah often deemed a wandering thought worthy of being voiced, which confused Vash.

“You can see a black hole from the surface of Dassarya.” Vash blinked his outer-eyes in polite regard of his crewmate before realizing that Elijah would have no idea what that meant. “If one looked hard enough.”

“No kidding!’ Elijah said. “Can’t look like this though, otherwise the whole planet would be—,” He made a noise with his mouth that sounded like a vacuum. “Gotta get close for a view like this.”

Vash nodded. Human or not, he could appreciate it when Elijah listened to his perspective. That was something no one had done on DassaryaHome. The [Hive-All] had no use for the individual opinions of its parts, even thinking a negative thought could be considered a deviation ThereAreNoDeviationsUnderTheHive

Vash froze in place, his back stiffening. That hadn’t been his thought. It wasn’t even true. It was familiar, entirely too familiar, but it wasn’t something that he would willingly think.

“What’s Dassarya like?” Elijah’s voice broke Vash out of his deliberation.

“It was—,” WarmHomeSafeSafeSafe “It was as bad as I said, nothing will change that.” The bitterness of his words snapped Elijah’s mouth shut. The abrupt shift in his expression made Vash feel a little bad.

The feeling went away as Vash thought of his homeplanet. He missed the fields upon fields of llyce swaying in the wind, he missed the towering heights of the trees in the Hynta forest, he even missed the voices of his family sharing his feelings, his thoughts. None of that changed the brutality of Dassarya. None of that changed the price of living there.

Nothing in the universe could have changed the lifeless little body he had held in his arms, still slick with his own blood and delivery. Just one of the many deaths for the [Hive-All].

No, Vash didn’t miss them. He didn’t miss being a plural instead of an individual. If there was anything he was glad to have stolen from the humans, it was the word ‘he’.

YouAreNotYouYouAreUsYouAreAll Return

Vash sat straight up in his chair. The thought that wasn’t his had returned, even more invasive than before.

Shit. Fitting that a human word would best describe his confusion. They always seemed to have the words Vash wanted. “I’m going back to medbay.”

He stood, despite the strange look Elijah was giving him, only to immediately fall sideways and stumble into the transmission controls. NoOneIsNoOneBeforeTheHive.

“Woah, hey—Vash!” Elijah took a step towards him. Vash warded him off with a raised hand.

“Don’t touch me.” Another painful spark. A beat pounded its way through his brain so loudly he felt like he had a drum over each of his four eyes and a snare behind his temples.

“Okay, okay,” Elijah backed off again. “No touching. Want me to get Maurdat?”

Vash shook his head. “It’s just a headache, I’ll be fine.”

“Hell of a headache,” Elijah said.

“I’m fine,” Vash bit out.

“You’re the doctor,” Elijah conceded, continuing to speak as he watched Vash walk out the door as quickly as he could. “Frankie’ll have your head if you aren’t down for dinner though, you know how they get.”

Frankie could have his head; Vash didn’t want it. Even the sudden peace from the emergency lighting wasn’t enough to stop the pounding.

If he closed his front-facing eyes, the ones that took in light and color, it was marginally better, but that left his outer-eyes as his only way of navigating. Said eyes were smaller, further out than his primary set, and only designed for detecting motion, making them useless in the quiet, still hallway. It dulled the ache enough to make it worth it anyway.

He couldn’t make it back up the angled floor to medbay, which forced him to turn left and wander until a door slid open in front of him, startling him.

Vash stumbled backwards, his back hit the wall across from the door, the pain in his head spiking at the rough movement. His eyes flew open and darted to the door, which led to the loading dock and the small, round window inside the airlock. Through the window was the [black hole].

He couldn’t look away. The cold, empty hole in the universe caught him, held him. It felt like drowning. Like there was some force in his mind, tearing it apart and warping it like the stars the [black hole] consumed, fueled by thoughts that were not his own.

YouAreYouAre The [Hive] whispered. YouAreHome

It was achingly familiar. The voices, the feeling of being surrounded by the steady, consuming love he had wanted so desperately.

YouAreTheWorkYouDo The [Hive] sang. ThatIsTheLoveYouHaveForTheAll

He had been good at his work, hadn’t he? A good medic, the best, always there to patch up the worst wounds with a smile, to be with the patient first, to kill the ones who were past saving. HeThey had been good at his work.

YouAreTheYoungYouBear The [Hive] sang again. ThatIsTheLoveYouHaveForTheAll

HeThey had children. HeThey would never hear them in the [All-Song] again. Not this far away, not with this much stubbornness still in himThem. All it would take was a step backwards, a simple step back, away from the noise,noise,noise of the constant warring individuality in hisTheir head. That was it. Just a step backwards to return to who heTHEY belonged to, truly.

They closed their eyes.

Just a moment, just one moment to listen to their children, that’s all they needed. One tiny relief from their own empty, empty mind.

Lonely The [Hive-all] pressed into them, a sharp pain flaring up behind their eyes. One LonelyPieceToTheAll comehome The pain receded, leaving a calm, warm feeling to fill its absence. YouCannotLeaveTheLoveOfTheAll COMEHOME

The biting cold of metal hardly registered. They were going home! Home! With air, real air, and people, the people they knew, the kind they didn’t have to talk with to understand. They would let them back like this; easy, cooperative. They only had to get there, get to the [Hive-All], show their devotion—their love for the All—and they could return.

HomeSafe Their fingers were very cold now. Stiff as well. SoCloseCloseCloseReachAnd ReachAndReachAnd

“Vash?”

Why couldn’t they go any further? There was something in their way. A solid, metal door. They slammed their hands against it, but it wouldn’t budge. They slammed against it a second time, ignoring the pain that it sent spiraling down their wrists and up their arms.

“Jesus! Stop—,” Something seized them from behind. It was warm, wrapping itself around their arms and pulling them backwards. The retreat made them feel dizzy, but they fought against it, still reaching for the door. The force holding them was strong, unshakable. “The hell are you doing, Vash?”

They didn’t know a Vash. They didn’t know anyone. It was just the [one] and the [Hive], why would there ever be a need for anything besides that? Things would be much more complicated with thoughts about names, people, all the mundanities that [heretics] saw fit to chase. The [Hive] would not allow for that. The [Hive] allowed for nothing but what was necessary to supply the ever-growing needs of its parts. The many. They.

“Vash, you’re the doctor—you gotta help me out here!” The human face seemed to contort in fear, its brows pushed together and mouth curling in concern. “Tell me what to do!”

The fear was for them. Them as a single body. (Him?) But it was nothing compared to the love, love, love that the [Hive-All] felt for itself. It was love and a desperate need, a perfect space built just for them, pulling them back and back into the warm grip of the [Hive]. This was a place to fit, to belong, to sink the remains of your mind and—

Vash slammed his fist into the metal grating of the airlock, gasping at the sound the collision made.

“Fuck!—” Elijah’s grip loosened as Vash went limp and stopped fighting him but didn’t let him go. “What happened?”

He was himself. Vash was warm, enclosed in the arms of a human, a new, odd sensation, yet it brought him to himself again even as another wave LoveLoveLove tried to force its way through his head.

Vash looked up into Elijah’s brown eyes, recognizing the color from Frankie’s painting for the first time. Maybe Elijah didn’t LoveLoveLove—love him, but he cared for him. Maybe that was enough to hold on to.

Claire van Doren

Claire van Doren is an American writer and editor who recently graduated with degrees in English literature and journalism. Growing up queer encouraged her persistent interest in the perspectives of aliens and monsters. This piece is her first published fiction piece, but far from her last!

• Website cvandoren.com/
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