I walk as quickly as I can, photon scanner in hand, to where the Prince is along with the two guards of the tunnel. The tunnel is a little bubble inside the void, leading to a bigger bubble within the void, where the World Stones are. Only a tiny part of the void can be pushed away, any more than that requires too much energy, if it’s even possible, so I’ve read. I hurry, as I always do, because the Prince is expecting me. Expecting me to be more machine than person. Expecting me to cater to his each and every whim. Expecting me to just accept it all silently without complaint. 

“Here you go, sir.” I hand over the large tube with a screen on one side and a lens on the other. He takes it. 

“Now, guards,” he starts, “the Emperor has entrusted me with checking the integrity of the tunnel.”

I watch the void while he works. The void is amazing. Black. No, black is not beyond words. It is something beyond black. Something that can be described by no words, can be described by nothing at all. It rises from the ground and forms a thick circular mass, which extends far past the ceiling of the grand room that we are in. The void extends even further, through the sky and out into space. 

It extends to all the habitable planets of the galaxy, connecting them all like beads on an unholy, sacred string. It comes from out of the galaxy, from out of the depths of the abyss. And it extends back out of the galaxy, into the dark unknown. No-one knows where it came from. No-one knows why it’s like this. No-one even knows why it’s here. All of the books I have read on the topic have said the same thing, that it’s a pure enigma. 

As a much younger child, I would imagine that the void lead to another world where I could be free. I imagined that it was an escape, a messiah. I don’t know why I thought this. Perhaps because it was the one place where the Imperials didn’t go. It was the one place within which the Empire had no control. Perhaps because it was forbidden, and because subjugated people are always drawn to anything forbidden by their subjugators. Perhaps because I was drawn to the darkness, darkness which is not darkness, which is absolute everything and nothing given form. 

I am still drawn to the void, even after I have researched it, even after years of torment and isolation and experience have made me much more hopeless, and after years of being in the resistance have made my hope much more mature, much more substantial. I now put my hope on things that make sense, on things that can actually help us, on things that have weight and substance and reason to them. But still. Still. The void still represents much of what it represented to me so long ago. The void still draws me close and pulls me in, wanting to turn me into the nothing that it is. 

I know that entering the void means death. In the early days of the Empire, the Imperials thought that the void would be a good way to travel between planets, that it would be a good way to keep all the planets in line. Yet they feared the void. They feared it too much to send their own people into it. And so therefore they sent slaves into the void, equipped with armour and protection pods and anything else that could stave off the thick nothingness. None of those slaves came back. 

The Empire was, however, able to use the void in a way, to uphold their power. They knew that the void was impassable. But they used powerful energies to create a little bubble within the void, which was made reachable through a tunnel. The tunnel was closely-guarded and only people from the Empire were given entry into the bubble. Creating this little space of something within the nothingness cost an incredible amount of energy, an incredible amount of money, but all the magic harvested from the slaves made the undertaking worth it to their greedy, egotistic selves. 

Inside the bubble was the most precious thing in the galaxy. Seven small stones. Stones that could focus the magic of the seven “lower” planets. Stones that were the sources of power for our people. Power we would never see again. Power that would be forever denied to us, locked away in the heartland of the Empire’s stronghold, surrounded by nothing and guarded by the Empire’s best guards. 

I long to annihilate myself in the void. I long to become nothing. I long to be lost forever. 

“Boy!” The Prince’s harsh tones cut through my thoughts. “Put this away!”

“Yes sir.” I take the bulky tube and scamper quickly off. 

———

“Hi, Arji.” My voice is as quiet as it can be, and the volume of the communications disk is turned down way low. The library is dark all around me. And I am with the only person who I can think of as my mother. She found out that my biological fathers were dead. Which is a stake in my heart. I wish so much that I could actually be with her, that I could actually hug her and hold her close and stroke her hair. I ache for this infinitely. But I take what I can get.  

“Hi, Ikkret. It’s good to see you again.” She smiles. And it’s a weary thing. A wary thing. Yet a thing filled with more love than I would ever have the words to describe. A thing filled with maternal protectiveness. 

“It’s good to see you too.” And it is. It’s always good to see her. We only have about one hour of stolen moments to talk each day. And I have to make sure I can get as much out of the short time as possible. 

“Is there anything on your mind lately?” Her voice is soft and sweet and gently inquisitive, speaking to me in a way in which only she speaks to me. 

“Not really just …”

“Yes?”

“The void. It interests me. I don’t know why it interests me. It’s almost like I want to go into it. Like I want to get lost inside of it. Maybe … maybe it’s my suicidal urges that make me think this way.”

“The void is beautiful. I would not blame you for being attracted to it. I’m sure we all are, in our ways.”

“I know I’ll die if I go in there. But I want it. I want it. I don’t know why I want it. Maybe I just want to escape this life. The universe knows that this life is not actually a life worth living.”

“You won’t die if you go into the void.” I do a double take. Her words are so sure. So certain. What? What in the universe?

“Why do you say that?” I ask her. I let the bewilderment show in my voice. I don’t hide any of my emotions from her. I don’t hide anything from her. 

“Because all the people that the Imperials sent into the void came back. They all came back. It took years, sometimes even decades, but they all showed up on one planet or another, completely naked, with incredibly wild stories to tell us.”

“What? That’s incredible. How come the Empire never found out about this?” I almost can’t believe her but I do believe her anyways. I know that she would never lie to me. I know that she would never break even a fraction of the immense trust that I place upon her. 

“They don’t know about this because they’re impatient. They’re not truly good with science. When they found out that no-one was coming back after months, they assumed that they had died and abandoned the experiment. And we were left to pick up the pieces of their failure and turn it into a success.”

“Wow. That’s incredible.” I am amazed. “How did you hide the fact that all those people came back?”

“We just hid them really well. Just like we hide the Ulfs who survived the genocide. It was hard but we were able to make it.”

“So why doesn’t the resistance use the void more? You guys could just take all the World Stones back through the void.”

“It’s impossible to direct where you are going. Not to mention, people stay there for years on end, no-one knows when you will come out. And if you don’t show up to get your energy extracted, your family gets killed. Not to mention, if the guards ever saw us taking the stones, they would surely kill everyone. If we go into the void to get the Stones, the guards will see that and kill everyone before we can come out of the void and repatriate the Stones.”

“That makes sense,” I acquiesce sadly. Still, ideas are whirring to life within my mind. We can make this work for us. I am sure we can make this work for us. I just have to get more information. And information is something that I have ready - if secret - access to. 

“So how is everything going?” Arji asks me. 

“Oh, you know, the same old, same old. I hate my life and want to die.”

“I hate my life and want to die too, Ikkret. But you have to hold on. We both have to hold on. Because the future needs us. The people of the future need us. We need to create a better world for them. A world in which they can be free.”

“I know, I know. It’s just hard.”

“Of course it’s hard. It’s hard for me too. But we can make it. We’re here for each other and we are going to continue to be here for each other and we will make it together.”

“I’m glad I have you. I probably would have killed myself by now if I didn’t have you.”

“And I’m glad I have you too, my child. You’re sweet. So, so, so very sweet. You make my life infinitely better.” 

“So why was everyone naked when they came out of the void?”

“I’m not quite sure, Ikkret. They talked about how their clothes disappeared the second they were sent into the void though, along with everything else that they had with them.”

“That’s very strange. I should do further research.”

“You should. You’re a good researcher.”

“You think so?” My voice rises with bright excitement.

“I do think so. You’re very intelligent.”

“The Emperor’s family doesn’t seem to think that.”

“You know they’re wrong about everything. But still, guard your intelligence. Hide it from them. It’s your weapon.” 

We keep talking into the night. 

————

I have to find out for myself. I have to find out for myself what the void is capable of, what the void is, what the void means for us. Because, this is a possibility. I know that this is a possibility. In the same way that I know that Arji loves me and in the same way that I know the resistance will win. In the same way that I know that the Empire will fall. In the same way that I know that my people will rise up and break their chains. I know that this could be a treasure of possibility, only if I look into it, only if I understand it. 

This new information that I’ve been given has been buzzing in my head, constantly on my mind, not letting me get an ounce of mental rest. Not that I mind it though. Not that I mind it at all. Thinking about the revelations I have just received is very exciting. It pours cool, clear, sparkling hope all over my insides. I don’t think I have ever felt hope like this before. I don’t think I have ever felt joy like this before. Not that it’s really joy. All things considered, it’s definitely not joy. But it’s as close to joy as anything I have ever been given. 

Even during my magic extraction, which hurt to the moon and back like it always does, I was able to hold on to the hope of my new knowledge. I was able to hold on to it and cling to it like a drowning person clings a life preserver and I was able to let it give me strength. Strength to get through the horrible ritual. Strength to keep a piece of flickering happiness alive through the pain. Strength to stay rebellious, stay true to who I am. And once I was lying on the ground outside the machine, I smiled. 

And now I am in the library in the dead of night. I am in my happy place. I am in the one place where I can be myself, the one place where I have been being myself for most of my life. And I have a directive. An operative set up in my mind. I have something very specific to research, that I want to research, that I have to research, that will change the whole direction of the world if I allow it to. 

I pore over every book I can find that talks about the void. Of course, I take everything that I hear with a grain of salt. I know that the Empire is wrong about a lot of the things that they think about the void. I know that the Empire is wrong about a lot of the things that they think. But still. Still. I have to find out what exact experiments the Empire did surrounding the void and how exactly that did them, so that I can have a base for doing my own experiments. 

There are many books about the void and all its supposed properties. More books than I can watch in one night. Not without alerting suspicion. Not without getting myself killed. And so I dive deep into the books that I can finish for tonight. And I take careful notes which I hide away under the shelves. And I go to sleep. The next night I come back and I do research. And the next night. And the next night. Until finally I am all ready to get started with my work. 

The Empire apparently looked into the void quite a bit. They didn’t just send people into it. They sent items of all sorts into it as well. Stone and metal and all sorts of the hardest, most reinforced objects that could never break no matter what you did to them. Sealed vaults and vaccum-proof cases and so many more top-notch objects. And none of those items ever came back. They never came back just as the people never came back. Or, if they did come back, they took their sweet, long time doing it and the Empire did not know of their return. 

Now, this does not tell me anything. Not really. Because, as we already know, the Empire is impatient and all of their results could be false. Especially if everything they sent into the void got picked up by slaves on other planets. I’m sure that the people who the Empire enslaved and used for energy would have loved to steal from them, out of petty revenge if nothing else. And the people would also love expensive stuff that they could sell for a price and use to feed their loved ones. 

Still, all these experiments do mean something to me. They give me ideas. Ideas for what I could do in my own experiments. Ideas of where to start. What to change. What to do differently from what the Empire did, so that I could get better, clearer results. Ideas swirl around my head and I cannot wait to try them all out. I’m sure that they will mean something, that they will get me somewhere, that they will teach me something about the mystery that has been pulling at me for as long as I can possibly remember. 

If the resistance has the void, maybe victory is much closer than I thought it was.