I am done my call with Arji. Today some of her friends joined us as well. They often do join. They all like talking to me, and I like talking to them as well. The human interaction gave me the courage I need in order to pass through the darkened palace of the night and take all my materials with me to the void. Back around and out to the garden where the tunnel is far, far away and the guards will never see me. 

I thank the universe for giving me this purple-black skin that can blend me in almost perfectly into my darkened surroundings. I’ve spent too many days and nights cursing the colour of my skin. But truly, it has saved me time and time again as I made my way through the darkened halls of the palace. And it has saved my soul in ways uncountable. I would not give it up for anything. 

I have a bag full of various items to test the void with. The bag is as dark as I am, made of stolen bits of fabric from here and there, carefully stitched together. I had it in a corner of my room for a while, not knowing what to do with it. But now it’s filled with machinery and finery and odds and ends from the garbage. Pieces that the Emperor and his family threw away. Objects that they no longer had any use for. Objects that will become very useful to me indeed. 

I light a tiny candle by the edge of the void, outside the castle, far from the guarded room, where I am sure that I am far away from the sight and detection of the guards. And I take out my items one by one. 

First I put a piece of marathine inside the void, so that half of the hardened material is in my hands, safe outside of the void, and the other half is dipped into the darkness beyond darkness, the nothingness beyond all shape and form. The jagged piece does not make any sound as it goes in. It does not feel as if anything has happened at all. But when I pull my hand back, the half that was in the void does not come out. The maranthine is broken in half, a perfect, precise edge along the place where it was plunged into the void. 

This is remarkable! The void can cut through marathine as if it is nothing. Of course, many things can break through marathine. But very few things can do so as perfectly and as effortlessly as this void. I wonder how it did it. I know though, that I do not have the resources to ever find out. Dark rue colours my gut. 

Next I put a thrown-away necklace of platinamber into the blackness, holding on to one end with my fingers and letting the other end dip inside. Once again, it feels as if nothing is happening. It feels as if I am simply holding a necklace up into the air. But once I try to take it back out, I see that only half of the necklace remains, and the other half seems to have just vanished. This is really rather remarkable, and I jot down what happened in the rolls of parchment that I stole. 

I put in half a circuit board after that. And it vanishes out of my hand, leaving a clear, sharp line where it entered the void. I put in the top of a helmet, designed to resist the heat of stars, and the helmet becomes topless, with a large, sharp hole on it. I put in a piece of sheet fabric and it also disappears from where it entered the void. I swing in a golden yo-yo on a string and, surprise surprise, it’s gone. And I keep on testing various things until it’s time to go to sleep. 

I hide all my notes under the shelves of the library and I make my way to my room, which is barely an excuse of a room. My mind dances with questions as I make my way to sleep. What happened to all the disappeared stuff? Where did they go? Did they disintegrate or simply fly off somewhere? Did they teleport? Did they change into something else? Why has this happened? Why did the void affect them the way that it did? 

I recognize that maybe I will never have the answers, and placate myself with thoughts of new experiments for the new nights. 

———

I pad my way through the palace darkness. Thankfully, there are no souls here but my own. I climb out a window, bag by my side, and land with a thud on the other side. The moon hangs brightly in the sky. Too brightly. I should have picked a better night to do this. But still, I don’t see anyone around me for miles. I suppose I am safe. And if I’m not, I could simply say I am out for a midnight walk. It will get me in trouble but not enough trouble to kill me. 

Tonight I am testing what happens to organic materials once they enter the void. And for that I will need some organic materials. So I walk through the palace gardens. And I pick up grasses and leaves and twigs and flower petals that have landed on the ground. They will all have been cleaned up by the time the morning comes around, so it’s good that I’m doing this in the dead of night. I gather bits of leaves and twigs and grass up into smaller bags I made with strips of rags. I tie them up securely. And I keep foraging on through the garden. 

The garden glows pale silver in the moonlight. And my own feet pad wolf-silent through it. I am tense with anxiety. Yet I am also fluttering with hope. I feel like throwing up. I feel like collapsing. I feel like breaking out into a run. I feel like breaking out into song and dance. I don’t know what I feel like. All I know is that I feel the moon flowing through me, this moon which is not my moon, not my home planet’s moon, but is my moon all the same. This is the moon that has raised me when the Emperor’s family would not, or at least would not do it right. This is the moon that has given me all the love that it could. And this is the moon that I love back. 

And I love my home planet’s moon as well. I love it like I love Arji, like I love Arji’s friends, like I love my own parents who were ripped away from me far too young and whom I have no memories of. I love my home planet’s moon and I love my home planet’s people. We are not monsters. Arji has taught me that we are not monsters. If anyone is a monster, then it is definitely the infinitely cruel Empire that keeps all the lower planets as their slaves, the Empire that feeds off of our misery. 

I take my plants and leaves and stuff. And I pad my way through the garden to the almost secret, unused part of the garden that surrounds the void. I recognize that I might leave a trail of footprints in the wet dew. But I am fairly certain that the planet’s hot sun will take care of it as soon as it rises. I make my way through the darkness, darkness like a blanket cloaking me, and I make my way to the darkness that will cloak us all. 

First, I put in a sachet full of grass, dipping half into the void and holding the other half in my hands. I leave it in for a second. And I pull it back out. The sachet breaks in my hand and out tumbles a clump of grass, which I immediately clean up by pushing it into the void. I smile a bit at my unorthodox cleaning methods. I do the same with a bag of leaves, and a bag of twigs. Strangely enough, even though the bags themselves are cut cleanly in half, there are no leaves or twigs or grass blades that are cut in half. I make sure to note that down. 

 

It’s now time to try a whole leaf. I hold my breath as I bring the edges of the leaf onto the void. I push half the leaf in, as I have been doing for all the past experiments. I leave it in there for a few seconds. And, oh so tentatively, I bring my hand back to see if anything came out. 

And the leaf is whole. The leaf is whole. The entire leaf has come out whole. 

My heart almost stops beating with pure joy. I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe. There are so many emotions going on inside me at once that I simply cannot breathe. Exuberance, exuberance, all-consuming exuberance. Hope, cool and sweet and honey-golden, trickling down through my heart like water in a stream. Amazement, excitement, overwhelming joy. I cannot hold it all in. I cannot even comprehend it all. We did it. We did it. We found a way out! 

Still, my experiments aren’t finished yet. I raise my trembling hand, holding a twig, to the dark blackness. I leave it in for a few seconds. For a few moments or a few hours. I’m not quite sure. I pull it back out. And there it is, all of it, whole and unperturbed. I feel as if I am exploding into a million stars. I feel as if I am spontaneously combusting. 

I try a blade of grass. And a leaf. And a twig. And I notice the sky lighting up just a tiny bit. The morning is coming. I pack everything up and I leave. 

———

The next day is a strange day. I had no sleep at night. I am absolutely exhausted. Yet at the same time I am buzzing with energy. I am buzzing with so much energy that I cannot contain it. I go about my day and pretend like nothing is happening, pretend like nothing is wrong, pretend like nothing is right. But I know, I know in my heart what’s going on. But still, I have always been a good liar and I have always had to lie in order to survive. Those talents are really coming in handy now. 

———

It’s night time. Again. The world is finally, finally, finally asleep. And I am finally slipping out of my bare room and into the palace halls. And I don’t even call Arji tonight. I know she’s going to be expecting a call. And I want to call her, I do. I want to call her from the aching, arching, infinitely dark and bright depths of my soul. A want that is infinitely dark and bright. But I just can’t tonight. Not right now. She’ll understand. I’m sure she will understand. I have to … I have to finish my experiments. 

And I’m almost ready to finish them too. I know what I want to do. The last thing that I want to do. The last thing that will tell me once and for all if my plans will succeed or if they will fail. Everything right now hinges on this, hinges on me, hinges on the work that I am about to undertake. The freedom of my people. The freedom of all the planets in the galaxy, the freedom of all the new generations for years and years to come. 

All of my people rely on me right now. My people of blood. My people of bond. My people of shared misery and suffering. My people of shared joy and dreaming. My people of shared hope and love. They are all relying on me to be sneaky, to be smart, and most of all, to be victorious. They are relying on me to use everything I have and use everything I am in order to create something that will bring lasting change, bring lasting revolution, bring lasting peace. 

All I have with me is a small rock. A small stone I got from the garden, about the size of the World Stones. Yes, I know it’s not organic matter. But I think I’ve got the pattern of the void figured out. I think simple organic matter is too straightforward. I know the void. It’s been calling me since I was a child. It does not allow organic matter to flow within it. It allows life. And stones have life. Everything from nature has life. And the World Stones, too, of course, have life. 

I hold my breath as I push half of the small rock into the space of the void. I hold my breath as I hold it there, counting slowly to ten. And I hold my breathe as I take it out. As I look for its dark shape. As I see it whole. 

It’s whole! It’s whole! It’s whole, it’s whole, it’s whole! The stone went into the void and it came back out undestroyed. I can feel the weight of millennia on my shoulders. Millenia in front of me. Millenia behind me. The galaxy lets go of its breath with me. The galaxy sighs with me, and it silently cheers in victory at the grand spectacle that we have beheld in the simplicity of a simple stone unbroken and untethered. 

And now I have to do the next part of the project. I bring my fingers to my mouth and bite off a small sliver of a fingernail. It is a sharp thing. A pointed thing. And, most importantly, it is a tiny thing. A tiny thing that will not be noticed. A tiny thing that will not be missed. In its smallness, in its innocuousness, that is where its power lies. That is the power that it will use to hopefully topple the order of the whole galaxy. 

I pinch the nail with my fingers. I slowly move half of it into the void. And then I count to ten. Slowly. Slowly. Ever so slowly. And then I take it out. And it comes out. The whole sliver of nail comes out, whole, unbothered, undisturbed. Whatever forces guide and guard the universe, they are on my side. Whatever forces control the flow of time, they are on all of our sides. 

Actually no, that’s not true. If that were true, we would not be enslaved right now. But the void, the void is deeper, darker, more far-reaching, and more mysterious than time. And the void is on our side. The void has always been on our side. The void will always be on our side. And the void can save us. The void has to save us. And we will all save each other. 

Breathing in the darkness, breathing in the darkness, I prepare myself for my final test. My final experiment before setting up the second part of my plan, along with Arji and everyone who will be on my side. If all goes well, we can all plan together. We can set up a plan that’s failproof, that will catch the Imperials completely off guard. And we can create a plan that sets us all free, somehow or another. 

I count down from three. And I plunge my arm into the void. It’s glorious, glorious, ever so glorious. I do not think I will ever find the words to describe how it feels. But I promise the void that I will be back, I take my arm out, and I go to my room for the night. 

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