e p i l o g u e

Adam once explained to me how time for someone moving very fast or near an object of immense mass occurred at a different rate than it did for someone who was in a different place. I never understood why, of course, but I believed him when he told me it was true.

I know now that time occurs at a different rate for someone in the grip of death, or perhaps I have already died, I don't know for sure. There is much I don't understand, but I know something is conscious and aware of what is happening around me.

There is no sound. The silence is penetrating and absolute. I am turned and can see Pike as he moves away from me, clawing at the space around him as if he could drag his way back through the door he has opened to his own frozen, airless end. I see the gate, light still streaming from it along with the frantically struggling bodies of other men and the debris sucked out of the room by the vacuum of space.

I suppose they are feeling what I am feeling. My skin is on fire yet I am cold enough it seems my bones might break. I am strangely unaffected by these sensations, powerful as they may be.

I wonder what will come of all this. If the gate were to remain open, will it suck all the atmosphere from the surface of the planet? More likely something will damage the computers and the gate will close, leaving only an enigma and a legacy of genius to be fought over by other men like Pike.

I will never know.

The Earth appears before me as I turn. She is the most beautiful thing that I have ever seen. There is time left to miss the planet of my birth, time still to fear she won't receive me now that I will die so far away. I dread that I will be forever alone, just ice, debris, cold until the end of time, but I know that this is not the case. Even now she yearns for an embrace, and sings a siren song I cannot hear. Her mass and mine reach, each for the other, across the emptiness of space, and long before the end of time, she will call me home.