[Not a short short story, but a short story. Please enjoy anyways...]
Saul was going to die. He had come to terms with that in the hours following the malfunction of his ship. He had come to terms with that in the hours following the loss of communication with Earth. He had come to terms with his death in the hours following his ships lethal excursion off course, into open space- into the nothingness that Saul was so blankly staring at now.
Well, Saul had come to terms with and accepted his death long ago, even before his first steps into the ship he was currently in. Even before his first steps into a future whose end was him as an astronaut. Whose end was him floating idly by a porthole, staring out into open space- into what Saul saw as nothingness. But this acceptance of the inevitability of his death was different. It had to be. This was the now, not the later Saul had always anticipated it to be.
His brow creased slightly.
Well, it was later wasn't it?
His brow creased again, but not as deeply this time.
But sooner than the later he had always thought- always wanted.
Outside that porthole he saw death- death by nothingness. Saul felt nothingness, and to him that was the equivalent of acceptance- of coming to terms. In the minutes following his realization he had felt fear. Here he was, facing the reality of death rather than the idea of it, and it scared Saul to the deepest depths of his being. It was as if fear itself had materialized into a virus, an infection, a disease. They were not synonymous, but they were all equally applicable. Franklin Delano Roosevelt's quote had momentarily sounded in Saul's mind. The fear at the realization of his imminent death had crept through his body- to his cells, to his very atoms.
That had been hours ago, and now he felt nothing. And as he stared out into the nothing he recycled the thoughts of before.
Atoms.
Saul tilted his head slightly. His brow furrowed, more deeply than it had the first time. His eyes refocused. He saw himself, reflected in the transparency of the small porthole. His visage, faded and broken by the blackness of space, floated amongst the nothingness. Here he was- a diver in his submarine, submersed in a sea of nothingness.
But the atoms...
Saul looked into his eyes. He examined that blank, nothing man. Then he saw them- trillions of them.
Them?
Were they a them?
No. They were him.
Saul looked at himself floating out there in space. He saw the faintest specs of light, making a nebula of his soft, faded face. The light of far away suns. Those were real. Those were not nothing. Those were...
Atoms.
A flicker in his eyes.
Is that what he had seen? It certainly seemed so.
His brow creased, but not down as it had before. Up. His eyes had widened. Slightly- only slightly. But he had seen it- felt it. He looked back out at the...
The sides of his mouth twitched. His eyes widened again- and stayed. A light restored. Saul thought. He thought about the stars- billions of light years away. No- it had been gifted. Saul thought about the atoms, about energy. His mind was struck by that- energy. The energy of those stars- those suns. The energy that lingered and lived amongst that black. The energy inside of...
Saul looked more deeply into his eyes- a glow they hadn't had.
No- a light not restored, nor gifted... but transferred.
Saul saw beyond his eyes to that black space that he lie within- and always had.
He no longer saw nothing- but something.
Was there ever really nothing at all? No.
He saw black- the purest, most beautiful black he had ever seen.
And beyond that he saw those lights. Those tiny specs of ancient light, full of energy still.
He imagined being a part of those tiny specs. Those specs which no man had ever been a part of. Not for nearly fourteen billion years at least.
Someday...
And until that someday, Saul knew he would never be afraid again. The life ahead of him, in this form, may be short, but it would be fearless.
He no longer accepted death. Had he ever truly accepted it at all? No. And he did not now. Now he accepted life. He embraced it- more so than he ever had before.
He no longer saw death. He saw life- a rebirth of sorts. One he would be a part of but never experience, and he was content with that. He thought about that.
Content.
He was content. And in being so- he smiled.
Not the proud smile of a man who thought he was happy, but the humble smile of a man who was content- of a man who found himself in something else- of a man who had found something in nothing.
Drifting off into the infinite ocean. Caught in the currents of the universe.
He smiled.
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