3801.1.3

I hail the Yovel, whose language ululates in every quasar, pulses in the far reaches of outer space, and suffuses our lives with its meanings.

I write this aboard the Ramthid-Lyr, the scout vessel charged with the exploration of Sector 314. A captain quickly learns not to miss the deep ochre canyons of Nygarth, nor one’s left-side and right-side reproduction-mate. Still, I can’t help thinking of the curl of each of Alia-Kur’s tendrils, the proboscis of Golath-Nar playing with the soft jelly of my head as we three enter the shared dream state. I remember those long nights watching the verses of the Yovel pulse from the stars among lakes of mercury.

This time is different. This is no quick jaunt to a moon of Korang to search for life frozen in the ice. Mission Unfurling Verse will send each of our twenty-four ships in a new direction, to record the poems of the Yovel, the languages it speaks in distant planets and nebulae. We have crossed the boundary into unknown space. At the speeds we travel, my beloveds will count time in decades, where I will only count months. I know our bond in the Yovel is limitless, like each quark is bound to each ocean and each ocean is bound to each black hole. But sometimes the ancient feeling, the separation, overwhelms me.

I steel myself for my crew. The twenty-three coming with me do not hide their longing for home as well as I do.

3801.2.1

Eight Nygarth-days of surveying galaxy B-7295. We marked a desert planet that, given our rate of progress in terraforming technologies, might make an excellent candidate for habitation in the coming century. Our geological probes uncovered promising lithium and copper deposits on one of its satellites. The preliminary detection of phosphine in the upper atmosphere of a desert planet raised the prospect that we had discovered a cloud-based lifeform. However, closer analysis revealed the chemical’s presence could be explained by a combination of atmospheric gases.

All is without incident. The universe unfurls with the sound of the Yovel’s glorious couplets and tercets as we speed past. We record and preserve.

3801.3.7

Long weeks zooming past red dwarves, drifting comets, and fields of asteroids. Space bends under the weight of dark matter, making sumptuous ripples in the Yovel. We marvel at the rhymes and alliteration of this sector. Our resident scribes translate these into Kruno-Nygarthian, language of the ancient masters from the Days of Separation.

I feel beyond lucky to experience these songs in the original: star-pulse, meteor soar, event horizon. 

3801.3.9

Today, we have been focusing on a small arm of a galaxy, about 8,000 parsecs from its center. It is distant, vacant, and almost thorl-elia. Sometimes we must use the old words to describe ancient feelings that most no longer feel. Perhaps we could translate it as forsaken. Or simply abandoned.

It is not that the Yovel’s poetry is absent. By no means. But the texture of gravity’s field, the spin of leptons here, feels…quiet.

I will extend free hours for all crew members, for meditation on the Yovel.

3801.4.1

Today our ship found itself bombarded by a focused pulse of electromagnetic radiation.

I asked if it might be the remnants of a supernova. A distant quasar. Jorinth-Kall, head of the science team, came back with the calculations.

“One in sixteen trillion,” they said.

“The other possibilities?” I asked.

“There are two: an undiscovered language of the Yovel or…”

“Or?”

“Life.”

The thought that our ship would be the first rushes through my neural circuits. I begin to tremble as my mind replays Jorinth-Kall’s words. Life. Life.

“Locate the source, immediately,” I say. “Dismissed.”

“There is one key detail,” they say. “The radiation is all in the 30-300 MHz range. Which means…”

“Our minds should be able to sense it. To see it, like back on Nygarth.”

“Then may it contain a message praising the Yovel.”

3801.4.2

Jorinth-Kall informed me they’ve traced the signal to a small planet orbiting a yellow dwarf at a distance of about five millionths of a parsec. We are still many weeks from the solar system. But I barely registered the details even as I write these words.

New creatures. Fellow readers of the Poem.

I never thought it would be us among the twenty-four ships. I shiver with excitement and trepidation, only wishing to feel the embrace of Golath-Nar, the touch of flesh-jelly from Alia-Kur. Not to celebrate without them.

During our meeting, I reviewed Contact Protocol with the officers.

Make contact. Establish communication. Commune in the river of the Yovel’s words. Share what we have collected of the Poem from our sector.

3801.4.3

The radio waves have become more powerful. More focused. 

Nalia-Tol, one of the psychologists, has begun to see forms appear in their mind. Gangly entities. Almost limping creatures. Nalia-Tol drew the outlines of the aliens for the senior officers. The entities are unlike anything on Nygarth. Almost like a short tree, with two branches coming from their trunks. There seem to be three eyes — or perhaps orifices — at the top part of the creature.

I commanded the ship to approach but slow its pace. Perhaps with further study of these images, we will learn more about their world. Know how best to dialogue.

There is a thought I cannot shake. 

Something about the beings feels wrong.

3801.4.4

Half the crew has now picked up the signal. But I am still oblivious to it. The images come in staticky, blurry, filled with electromagnetic noise. I ordered a comparison of the sketches, looking for commonalities in the details.

The aliens seem to use tools, even primitive machines to traverse their own rocky planet and lower atmosphere. They dwell in structures made of some kind of metal, possibly alloyed, and drape plant fibers and animal hides on their bodies. Only two bodies are needed to mate and they carry their young inside those flesh-caves. Not in thrice-fertilized eggs like us.

In so many ways, it appears they live like we did, in the days when we spoke Kruno-Nygarthian, in the Days of Separation, centuries ago.

But these are secondary details.

What startled everyone is the illness that seems to plague the species. The aliens wander their planet oblivious to the Poem of the Yovel all around them.

I ordered a pause on all talk of contact.

3801.4.8

At last, I can see them. Their bony bodies. The flailing, hairy muscle. They look almost like vertically erect versions of our uwiut-tan, swinging from the vines in Nygarth’s jungles. But these bizarre creatures have no tails.

Not once have I seen them sit under the stars and transcribe the Yovel languages. Not once have I seen their skin tremble with the ecstasy that we receive each day from the beating stanzas of the cosmos. Just like the others reported.

Impossible.

There’s no other way to make sense of it: their lives seem scattered, random, like molecules beating against each other in a hot spring. They do what those who have seen the Yovel cannot. Harm and eat other beings instead of pulling energy from the quantum vacuum. They extinguish the Yovel-flame in each other with crude steel objects. With their hands. By exploding the core of atoms.

Had they perhaps once known about the Yovel and forgotten It? Or even rejected It? And if they had somehow evolved without a Yovel-sense, how could we ever give it to them?

There is a knock on my door. It is Jorinth-Kall. Even at fifty feet, my mental connection can pick up at the disturbance in their mind.

Yes, this unease has spread across the entire ship.

3801.4.9

It is worse than I feared.

Glun-Phror, our pilot, has developed what ancients called ko-elar, separation from the Yovel. They said it was during a particularly strong radio blast during which their mind showed many of the beings bowing down and clasping their hands inside a building. The aliens seemed to be gesturing toward something that was not there, as if it might respond and give them an answer.

“I felt what they must feel,” Glun-Phror told me. “A…longing, that is the word, for something to offer yov-tanak…meaning. As if it is not ubiquitous, written across all space and time.”

I embraced Glun-Phror and told them that healing soon will come.

I left treatment to the medics and psychologists. The remedy, I know, is simple: full-day meditation. Observe the star-lit words of the Yovel. Read the Poem of the cosmos day and night.

I do not tell any of them what I know of ko-elar. No, I do not tell anyone.

3801.5.1

We expected Glun-Phror’s recovery to take mere hours. At first, the signs seemed promising. Glun-Phror’s respiration slowed. They leaned their body against doctor Kamat-Urew affectionately and discussed how the Yovel births universes with a mere stroke of its noetic pen and extinguishes them with a period of contracting spacetime.

But the more images flooded their mind, the more Glun-Phror’s condition worsened. Their skin has turned a dark, violet color, and secretes a pungent, acrid ooze.

“I see nothing but black space, but absence out there,” they say. “Parsecs upon parsecs of empty pages.”

My visit was short. Almost wordless.

For the first time in my career, I am at a loss for what to do.

3801.5.2

Rhey-Jol fell ill with ko-elar, coupled with bouts of panic during which they flail their tendrils and strike the walls of the ship. Farinth-Mol followed, just a few hours later. They are paralyzed, catatonic. No longer respond to our words, to our touch.

I call an emergency meeting.

Most of us agree the images are likely the inhabitants of the planet. Distorted, unsteady beings. But we considered all hypotheses. Medical Chief Ly-Dhasal believes the images might be an electromagnetic virus. Pushes for an immediate quarantine of the infected.

Lieutenant Kor-Urt argues the creatures appearing in our minds might not be the true inhabitants of the planet. Instead, these Yovel-Blind entities were nothing more than EM projections sent out to drive mad approaching species. A defense barrier of sorts to horrify would-be conquerors. They demanded retreat, as did most of the assembled team. The meeting convened and a low murmur filled the room.

“I will give you my decision tomorrow,” I said.

But I have already made it.

3801.5.3

I have rarely been hesitant to speak in these long years of flying past satellites and through asteroids on the far edges of space. Have rarely felt any sense of non-communion with the minds of my crew.

But today, my voice shook. No. Almost shook as I gave the order. “Triple speed toward the planet. We make contact at once.”

The astonished crew looked on. No tendrils moved toward the thrust. No one’s eyes turned to the ship’s screens.

“We will be going to show these beings the Yovel,” I say. “Now!”

Our pilot’s replacement, Yorin-Lop, turns and adds thrust. Navigation maps flicker on. Others fill their stations. Slowly, we edged toward the furthest out of the eight planets — two teal-colored ice giants.

I have never heard a ship so quiet. I do not like it.

3801.5.4

The alien images have become feverish, relentless in their intensity. Dolinth-wfer, rage, makes their faces wrinkle and wince until they look like dried fruit. Their lips and teeth are like sharp bits of granite stuck into mud. Like us, they have red blood. Unlike us, they seem unconcerned by spilling it.

I received a report early in the day that our Medical Chief had fallen prone, unable to communicate. Within minutes, others followed suit: Dar-Lamas, from engineering, Upol-Friw, a cadet on their first mission. I headed to the deck and shouted, perhaps for the first time in half a decade.

“Press on,” I said. “No one will be healed here until we make those beings down there whole.”

We sped toward the alien planet, diving through an asteroid belt.

And that’s when the ship’s siren blared.

3801.5.4

It is not unknown on Nygarth. But it is exceedingly rare. One, maybe two a year. To name it, we only have the old words.

Dij-mor. Self-ending.

I never thought Glun-Phror might do it. A breach in Airlock 7.

I ordered a solith-betan, the ancient ritual mourning the deceased who have lost contact with the Yovel. We wrapped our tendrils around each other and sang the old poems, from the days when self-ending was more common.

That night, four more of the crew fall into a void-filled staring. The Yovel is gone. Its words, erased. Stammering. Muttering dirges of ko-elar. Their convulsions end with their bodies in a glacial stasis. We are running out of beds in the medical ward.

We are running out of time.

3801.5.4

We were approaching a red planet when another siren rang out. Another breach. Another airlock. This time it’s Ly-Dhasal.

Two dead and more than half the crew has gone catatonic. The replacement pilot slumped to the floor just as the blue planet of the beings appeared before us. The ship began to steer off course. I rushed over and took control of the helm.

“Reconsider, Captain,” Kor-Urt said. “We must take these home. Let another ship come back.”

“This is all part of the Poem too, is it not?” I said. “Verses we are meant to read.”

“This is nonsense. A space the Yovel has forsaken.”

I command the crew to repeat the Highest Prayer, with Kor-Urt as its leader.

“I hail the Yovel, whose language ululates in every quasar, pulses in the far reaches of outer space, and suffuses our lives with its meanings.”

“In the far reaches of outer space,” I repeated, and steered the ship toward orbit.

3801.5.5

I can see everything about the aliens in the radio images in my mind: the gray and smoke-filled cities. The rows of decapitated trees. The oils and plastics that fill their seas. Their aqua planet with its giant wall and radioactivity blossoming in its fields. I can almost feel their desperation, their ko-elar.

Twenty minutes ago, I informed my crew we were to descend. I have given them one hour to prepare for contact.

However, my mind can sense the pulling-apart of the bond that keeps me and my crew together, a single entity. Can sense their eyes darting around toward each other and the low whispers.

Even now I can hear the knocking against my door. No, not knocking. Banging. It may all be too late.

3801.5.9

So this is how it ends. Me, alone in this prison, drifting on this ship, with nothing but this journal to comfort me.

The mutiny took hold just as I finished my last entry. Lieutenant Kor-Urt and the four others who had not yet succumbed to the Yovel-Blindness smashed through my door. I did not resist when they shackled me and led me to this cell.

“We are returning to Nygarth,” Kor-Urt said, “to hold you before the Council for the death and endangerment of the crew.”

“I will be found guilty,” I said. “And rightly so.”

Kor-Urt shakes their head. “And still you pressed on.”

“For what we could have given their species… eyes to read, an ear to hear the rhyme of the galaxies. A heart finally at home in the universe.”

“Instead, you brought madness and death to your own kind.”

“And you have left those creatures in Blindness for eons.”

They took my journal away, but still gave me a visitor each day, a rotating cast of one of the five survivors, to make sure I was not on the verge of dij-mor, self-ending. After a time, only four came. Then three. I did not need to ask where they went.

Before long, my only visitor was Kor-Urt, the old lieutenant themselves. I could tell their eyes had reddened, their face was shriveled and flushed with an agony only the tentacles of the mind can produce.

“I have lost the Poem, Krun-Alia,” they said. “The Yovel is finally gone.”

“It is still with me,” I say. “There is still hope.”

“But why? Why have you been spared?”

I took a deep breath and thought back decades. To the separation I once knew.

“When I was young,” I said, “I once looked at the stars and saw no words, no verses, no luminous rhymes. I felt I was floating in a universe that had nothing to communicate to me, the silent visage of space staring back at me like a corpse.”

“Ko-elar. So you have known it too. You have already lived through the Yovel-Blindness.”

“Three months on Mount Galatan-Yu. I traced and retraced every line of the ancient poems from The Days of Separation in my own hand. Studied the constellations and felt the breeze of the winds on my face. The Yovel, at last, returned. It was my inoculation. My vaccine.”

Kor-Urt let out a deep grunt. They looked at my cell. Took something out of their backpack and opened the door.

The journal.

“Confess what you have to confess. I may be the only one left, but I will return us home. And you will stand trial.”

I tucked the journal under my pillow and Kor-Urt shut the prison door. One last chance.

“I can pilot us out of here,” I said. “Faster than you alone. We can leave all this behind. Heal ourselves. Tell them we were attacked by the beings. Then we return to Nygarth. To live our normal lives.”

Kor-Urt turned and faced the exit, unable to look me in the eyes. “So you have lost the Yovel at last.”

He knew. No one still with the Yovel would turn from what they had done. Or dare to lie.

3801.6.0

Early today, before my normal visit, the siren went off. Another airlock breach. Kor-Urt was a friend, even as a captor.

The cell of my door remains locked. The ship is drifting, aimless. My days will not be many I suspect. I wonder if my two beloveds have spent decades waiting for me or if their spirits have dissolved back into the Yovel. Should it exist.

I look out the window at the abyss of empty space and see a blank page. A blank page where words will never appear again.