Dare I enter?
Scraped and pockmarked from a thousand thousand years bared to space, the outer walls scream their age into the inky blackness that enshrouds them. Stretched and smeared across this drifting rock, they bleed away in gunmetal fractals from the parted lips of the gate to recede into the enclosing darkness.
A darkness thicker and deeper than space itself.
A darkness that is broken not by starlight or gaslight, but by a sullen amber light dribbling from a makeshift craft that's dragged itself across the void. Strained and worn, but with tenacity woven through its core, the craft had traveled far beyond the outer tendrils of civilisation with its singular cargo. And now it lies above me, writhing awkwardly in slow-motion as its omnispective gaze is defeated by the enigma of the gate.
And so I stand here, now, facing a structure no human hand has touched, no human face has witnessed. And as a crepuscular vapour releases its millennial-long hold on the rock underfoot, awoken by the unexpected bombardment of dull streams of photons, I ponder anew.
Dare I enter?
Not of my own free will.
Not again.
image source: Christopher Bowler.
