It wasn’t noticeable at first, at least not from the light polluted suburbs of Washington, where stars were already barely noticeable grains of salt sparsely speckled throughout the dark night sky. I never thought anything about them was off, those fiery spheres of light residing millions of light years away from my family’s home, until my father brought it up at dinner one night.
I was inhaling baked potatoes by the whole when I looked up to see him flipping through his folder, ruffling through copies of diagrams and star systems and formulas that gave me headaches just looking at them.
My dad was an astrophysicist. He worked as a researcher at the national lab, and that often meant long and tiring shifts. Some nights, he’d become so glued to his work that he wouldn’t come home until it was well past midnight, and I’d hear him go right to bed minutes after coming through the front door without even brushing his teeth or changing out of his work clothes. Other nights, when he had no work, he’d go out into the front yard and set up his home telescope. Those nights were the best. I’d sit with him while he peered through the lens with his eyebrows scrunched in concentration. He’d play with the knobs and gears while pointing the telescope at different directions in the sky, and whenever he saw something he liked, he’d always beckon me over and peer into the lens after him. I’d stare in awe at the speckled gray surface of the moon, the Great Red Spot on Jupiter, and Saturn’s adornment of rings. My dad also showed me the more distant stars and galaxies, despite his telescope not being advanced enough to pick up on all the details. Nonetheless, I always loved the feeling of being able to see the wonders of space for myself.
“Josie,” my father said, the first time he spoke since we started eating. He was still staring down at his papers. “Look at this.”
He slid over two sheets of paper. I took a look at the two images, both taken from his telescope, and could see that both contained a cluster of bright light in the center.
“Both pictures of the Sombrero Galaxy,” he continued, “taken five months apart. Twenty-nine million light years away. Do you notice anything?”
I examined the papers a bit more closely. The pictures were printed in black and white, and relatively grainy, but I could still see it.
“The one labelled May ‘22 looks a bit… dimmer?” I responded tentatively, half expecting my dad to start laughing at my incredulous response. Instead, he nodded silently, his gaze lingering upon his plate of untouched food.
His response worrying me was an understatement at best; he was never this grave.
Sliding me another two sheets of paper, I was once again asked to compare the two. This time, it was two pictures both labelled Messier 31, which was a galaxy two point five million light years away from us. “The Andromeda.” I said, immediately recognizing the celestial body from the countless times I’ve gazed up at it through the telescope. “It looks the same to me, but-”
And then I saw it. Not the galaxy itself, but the surrounding stars in the background. In the older picture, labelled January ‘22, I could see an array of bright dots speckled throughout the distance. In the more recent one from May, however, I noticed that there was only darkness in the background. I didn’t even have to finish my sentence. The silence lingered between my father and I, sharp and clear. My father had discovered something very wrong.
The following days, I tried to continue with life as normal. Every day I went to school, came home, did homework, went to bed, and did the same the very next day. My father, on the other hand, started to spend even more time at his lab. Sometimes he’d be at work for days straight, leaving me home alone with nothing to do but mull in my thoughts. One night, with me alone by myself and nothing better to do, I decided to try looking through my dad’s telescope. It took me a good few hours to finally fit all the pieces together and mess with the settings, but eventually I figured it out and could start pointing it at different directions in the sky.
I started off trying to find Messier 104, or the Sombrero. I knew the galaxy was located near the borders of the constellations Virgo and Corvus, and I found those with relative ease. But I just couldn’t find the Sombrero; it was as if it had been wiped clean off the surface of the night sky. Unnerved, I moved onto the Andromeda, which I easily located near the Great Square of Pegasus. The telescope was nothing fancy, so I couldn’t make out any small details with it, but I zoomed in as far as I could and just stared at the little sparkle of light.
It vanished.
Just like that, in the blink of an eye, the light vanished. It was as if some celestial being had exhaled a bit too harshly, and thus caused the stars to go out like flames on a candle. There was no rational explanation I could think of. I swiveled the telescope due north now, desperately searching for another star. Omega Centauri, a cluster of stars, seventeen thousand light years away, much closer to Earth than either galaxies. I stared at it while holding my breath, fearing for the worst.
I counted. One. It was still there. Two. The stars looked like millions of shards of broken glass. Three. I wondered if those stars had their own solar systems. Four. Were there aliens living on those planets?
Five.
In horror, I watched as a black cosmic mass quickly engulfed the sphere of twinkling lights. I couldn’t describe it; it looked as if darkness itself had gained mass and was now determined to spread to every corner of the universe. Stifling a scream, I fell backwards onto the damp grass behind me. I had seen enough. Without even packing up the telescope, I hopped in my car and started the drive to my dad’s workplace.
“The higher-ups know.”
I was sitting across from my dad in his cluttered office now, surrounded by screens and whiteboards and textbooks. His messy desk lay between us, its surface practically covered by books and folders.
“All the researchers here know about it. The government has been informed.”
“Then why haven’t they told us about it?! Why doesn’t the entire city know?! Why doesn’t the world?!” I was half shouting by now. “Everyone’s going on with their lives, oblivious to the fact that everything in the universe is disappearing. And we’re gonna be next!”
My dad simply sighed and placed his head into his hands. “There’s no point in telling the population. We’re all going to be gone within the next few days anyway, so what’s the point in causing mass panic with no solution in sight?”
“Josie,” he continued, “you know about the Big Crunch Theory, right?”
“Kind of.” I responded stiffly, terrified yet curious.
“It’s the idea that whatever force which facilitates the growth of the universe will eventually stop, thus causing space and time to double back on itself. Basically, the universe starts compressing itself.”
He paused for a while, as if not sure how to continue. I wanted him to keep going.
“But this is… different.” He started up again. “Instead of matter being pushed back… it’s instead being… consumed. No one here can figure it out. It’s as if, as the edge of the universe is pushing in on us, it’s devouring galaxies whole as it moves. It violates everything we know about modern day physics.”
Abruptly, he stood up from his seat and looked me in the eye. I saw a wave of fear and sadness take over his expression, and I suddenly realized how tired and stressed he must’ve been these past few days, trying to figure out this phenomena that was well beyond the scope of the human mind.
“Come with me,” he said. “There’s something I have to show you.”
I followed him as he went out through his office, past blank white hallways, down flights of stairs, and through multiple security doors. His workplace was big, I noticed, and most of it seemed empty. I assumed most of the other workers went home to spend their final days with their clueless and blissful families. Finally, we arrived at an iron trapdoor set into concrete floor. Upon opening it, I could see it was some sort of bunker. Neon panels of fluorescent light adorned the ceiling and illuminated the space with a dim glow. The walls were complete slabs of concrete, along with the floor. Wires ran along the cold surface of the floor like worms on the sidewalk after a rainstorm. The air was filled with the droning sound of buzzing machinery.
In the center of the room stood a metal box. It was maybe the size of a small telephone booth, with hundreds of wires running into it. After walking closer, I could see that there was a door which led inside, which stood slightly ajar. LED lights flashed from multiple panels all over its interior.
“You built this in the past week?” I turned to stare at my dad, incredulous.
He smiled, an expression that looked more sorrowful than happy, and shook his head. “I’ve been working on this since I started working here 10 years ago. I just spent the last few days finishing it up.”
“Ever since I’ve learned about Einstein’s theory of the multiverse,” he continued, “I’ve been determined to prove it. I haven’t had time to test this out yet, but it’s supposed to transport matter into parallel universes through wormholes. By compressing matter into…”
He stopped suddenly. I watched as he walked up to me and firmly clasped his arms around my shoulders into a hug. The shoulder of my shirt was damp, I realized. He was crying.
“I’ll miss you, Josie.” He choked out. Then he let out a weak bark of laughter. “Who knew my side project was going to come in use one day?”
“What do you mean?” I asked, now starting to tear up myself. “Are you going to send me away? Aren’t you coming with me?”
“It’s too risky. The more matter the machine has to transport, the more unstable it becomes. It’s safer if it’s just you. You have to live on. You have to warn the others. Who knows if this situation is limited to just our timeframe?”
Before I could protest, he led me to the booth.
“I love you, Josie. Don’t forget me.”
Those were his last words before he shoved me in and closed the door. I felt everything go dark, and then I was falling.
When I woke up, I was in my bed. Except my bed was on the wrong side of the room. And my walls were blue instead of purple. I turned to look around, and spied the window. Quickly, I shot out from under my covers and yanked open my curtains. Sunlight streamed in through the glass. Sunlight. The sun was still here!
I heard a knock on my door. “Come in,” I tentatively responded. As the door opened and the visitor came in, I saw that it was a woman. I immediately recognized her as my mother through my memories, even though I never remembered living through those memories. In my old life, my mother had left us when I was five.
She took one look at me and knew.
“You also had to leave, right?”