In outer space, the stars do not blink. The cosmic objects are silent, and between the universes there is only emptiness.

Not everywhere, though. In the room where Mala sits— though it measures only two-by-two square-meter wide, there’s more junk stuffed inside than the volume contained in the whole universe, maybe even twice that.

At least, that’s what Mala thinks. The man in front of him—the owner— has a completely different opinion. This man sits silently while working on a sudoku puzzle — completely oblivious to the mess around him. This room has totally no space left except for the two spots they occupy. This man clearly has a problem with his sense of space.

Mala : You are going to die in two days time.

Trias : I’ll start dying tomorrow, when your spaceship takes off.

Mala : You should throw these junk ahead of time. At least you’d have more space to store oxygen in which could help you survive three days longer.

Trias : These stuffs are parts of me — if I throw them away, I’ll die even sooner. You were also assembled from these stuffs, remember?

Mala once again glances at these so-called ‘parts of him’ — sheets of magazines, biology books, history texts, piles of machine blueprints, card games, old hardwares… He grimaces, no, nothing like me at all. How could he compare me to this pile of junk?

The man hands him the huge paper covered with squares and mathematical equations written across it.

Trias : Done. I supppose you could increase the difficulty more. Give me another with harder difficulty level, one that’ll take me at least two days to finish.

Mala never forgets a single word of his. Afterwards, he would say that he could die happily after solving a difficult puzzle.

Trias : Must be satisfying, spending my final moment solving a tough puzzle game.

Mala’s job is to test and filter which humans are capable and worth enough to board in the spaceship, his other task is to help them operate the ship, to carry them away from this dying planet. Yet, it seems that his first duty is not over— he still has to make another puzzle for this man to complete.

Perhaps this could no longer even be called sudoku puzzle. In a normal sudoku game, one would find a large square divided into eighty-one equally sized smaller square. Some boxes are left empty, while the other are filled with numbers that serve as hints for the answers to be filled into the blank boxes.

This sudoku, however, contains seven hundred twenty-nine small boxes in which the filled ones hold mathematical equations, and the empty ones must be filled with the correct equations which corresponds to one another. In this vast universe, only handful of beings might be capable enough of solving it, and this man certainly is one of them.

Mala : Congratulations, sir. You have completed the thirty-sixth challenge. Please accept this ticket as a token of appreciation from the government. You now have the right to a space aboard the rescue spaceship and we hope you will join us in helping to build human society in the new world.

He takes out a sheet of thick paper which is stamped with a official government seal and hands it to the man. Trias accepts it, then turns toward the window behind. When he pushes it open, fortunately the sandstorm isn’t too severe. Below, a crowd of people waits, seemingly having stood there for a long time.

Trias throws the paper down, and the crowds erupts in cheers as they scramble to catch it.

Mala watches the valuable paper slip away for the umpteen times. He isn’t human — he cannot feel anger. He could only react by asking. Again and again.

Mala : The spaceship will take off tomorrow. This is your last chance. Why would you throw the ticket away?

Trias : I’m not throwing it away — just giving it to someone else who actually wants to go. I don’t want to leave, remember?

Mala : You’ll live longer if you board the spaceship. By living longer, the more puzzles you can solve, and the more you can contribute to humanity.

Trias : Right now haven’t I contributed to the lives of thirty-six people?

Mala : You could save many more if you came with us.

Trias : I’m no angels, only a human. Even after saving thirty-six lives, my intentions were never noble. Thirty six lives… is far too many. At first, I only meant to save one.

The man takes out two tickets, each with official seal on it. From the different color on the list, Mala can immediately distinguish these from the ones he gave before. These are a special ticket, reserved only for the those who made huge contributions or had a close ties with the government. Scanning the barcodes, Mala pulls up the database and finds that the tickets registered as first-wave passengers : one bears Trias’ name, and the other belongs to a man with a name that feels both familiar, yet strangely distant.

Trias : As a human facing the end of the world, I don’t have any ambitious wish. Even though I’ve been with him from the beginning and halfway through, apparently this guy…. He doesn’t choose me to be with him in the end.

Trias : so you know, M414, be it life or death, I’ve long prepared myself. What I wasn’t prepared for, was that I have to face the end all alone.

For him, passing the time before death by solving a game of sudoku is enough joy; for him, saving one single life is more than enough ; for him, his wish has never been an ambitious one.

For him, if he were to throw away these old stuffs, then bit by bit part of himself will disappear along, like a machine losing its components, like numbers losing another numbers in a sudoku box.

Mala wants to brush off all his logic — to remind him that he isn’t truly ‘alone’ — half of the planet population is already waiting aboard the spaceship. That there’re countless more magazines, biology and history books, more blueprints and card games… There’re a lot more sudoku puzzles than a single lifetime could ever solve.

That there are so much ‘spare parts’ waiting to become part of him, and that having more components would mean an unlimited power source for machines.

But Mala had asked him once, and the man answered in the language of sudoku. This man is a sheet of vast sudoku grids with hundreds of empty square boxes. The correct equations missing from the his boxes could not be found inside the spaceship, nor in the new world that the humans were aiming for.

In this space, clock hands do not exist. In this two-by-two square-meter room, time itself does not exist.

Once again, this man repeats the same sentence Mala could never forget:

“To welcome my end by solving a puzzle and chatting with you, it’s more fun than I imagined. Thank you.”

Mala knows, this time too, he cannot convince the man to come with him.

*

*

*

In outer space, the stars do not blink.

The spaceship passes by star number five hundred and two. Stars have always been a favorite of human children — despite their blinding light, they still gather around squinting at the camera screen just to watch.

A man asks, where’s the leader, Sir Mala? Another man answers, he’s visiting the last memory record with his creator.

Then someone adds, to create another android is too difficult, too much data to collect and too much time to invest.

Another human asks, every day?

Every day since the space ship took off, around a thousand year ago, another man replies.

*

*

In the outer space, the stars do not blink,

The cosmic objects are silent,

and the squares between the universes lie empty.

(March 2025)

***

I wrote this short story to express the emptiness in my heart I still feel even after a long while of parting. I thought it would be longer, but actually it doesn’t need to be long to completely express something so heavy on my mind. Originally this piece was written in Indonesian and was intended to be sent to a story platform, but it didn’t pass the screening process so I decided to translate and publish it in my own platform. While translating, I’m amazed by how suitable this story is in English wordings more than its original language since the double meanings are multiplied by twofold, or even threefold. Since my English isnn’t that great, I had chatgpt to help me correct the grammar and had it polish the sentences a bit.

This story was written in around two or three hours on paper, while listening to the song ‘Triassic Love Song’ by Paris Paloma. From a writer Dee Lestari, I adopted a belief that every single piece written or created on the moment is like a gift from the universe that was sent through our fingers to the world. That’s why when I reread my old works, I always think, I could never write this story for a second time, and that exactly what happened to this story too.

Thank you for reading and hope you like it.