The words beat through me like a cosmic string that threatened to dissolve my molecular bonds. The wave fed upon itself until the tsunami it created swept me out of my life and into a world of confinement that broached vastness. That, after all, was the process of space travel. The small spaces, the great speed, the reach beyond knowable.

And now, I needed the stars. Not the explosive ones that hurled out tongues of gas and, along with gravity, hammered out the planets. I needed the comforting ones that twinkled like a childhood song, that spun about my head, my head alone as I watched them. I was the ‘one who knows’ after all. I was…consciousness.