Two Times I Looked Through The Eye Of The Universe, And The One Time I Became It, by Yasmeen Amro

When I miss him, I tell myself I’ll work up the courage to ask the stars where my husband’s ended up. His vessel isn’t big enough for me to sense with the repressor medication I’m on; large shuttle, seven passengers. He disappeared through the open gape of a wormhole months ago. We knew there’d be a gap in communications, all par for the course, but I wrote to him constantly. Nearly daily. I imagined the barrage of messages he’d get when the comms come back online; heart-stamped, star-bound virtual mail. I know he’d read through every one of them. It’s unlike him to let any detail slip through the cracks. He’d want to know how I’m adjusting to life without him. If I’m taking my meds. How I soothe my paranoia without the cocoon of his body, without the gentle words at the shell of my ear. I’d tell him that the universe has opened up to me once he left, endless vortex through the bedroom floor. And when I peered down it was into a third eye, one shrouded with the red webbing of nebulas, the swirl of galaxies, the pinpricks of stars and their planets. The blurring of real and unreal.

Today’s been rough. The lingering sense of paranoia seeps through whatever barrier my medication’s put up. I’m dreading the coming of night. That’s when the stars grow the loudest, shimmering voices magnified by the amplitude of the sheer number of them. I’ve been cursed with an infinite chatter. The universe, something I can peer into, that constantly calls for me.

I sit under the shade of a satellite, one of many situated into a kind of grove. We’re reading the sound of the stars, converting the noise into something legible, something mathematical. The sun, the closest of the voices, is silent today. It hangs over me, warming the autumn air enough to lull me into a calmer state. I’m shielded from all sound by the barrier of my headphones. I play music to distract from the noise of the universe. Today’s selection is a variation of hits from the early 2300’s, back when instruments were rendered obsolete for a short period of time, and the natural sounds of space and the earth alike served as background to the vocals. The solar winds blowing to Saturn’s rings, the angry growl of the sun, nebulas expanding. They’re the usual nuisance to me, but the music reworks them into something soothing. Makes sense of all the noise. I lay back, and allow myself to enjoy a mind’s silence. Something so rare for someone like me.

That’s when the van comes.

I expected NASA to contact me one way or the other. If there’s any entity that wants to hear the stars’ secrets, it’s them. My study is through a public university, one of the leading research institutions in the country. If they wanted to see my data, there are politer ways to ask. But I knew they wanted more than the usual background noise picked up by the sophisticated equipment I use. They want my interpretation, of something further out and more specific than the data I’ve collected can offer them.

I let them lead me into the hold of their vehicle. It’s black from the inside too. I feel like I’m in some dark void, windows blackened, so I don’t know where I’m being taken. It’s hours before the vehicle shows signs of slowing. I can feel us come to a stop. The door opens, and the light assaults my eyes. I’m escorted onto some observatory campus, through the glass doors of the main building, and into what looks like an office room.

I shrug off my headphones, as a courtesy. My husband, Laith, would knock these guys out if they knew how they took me – technically kidnapping, without as much as an explanation. I fold myself into a chair, facing directly across a large desk. There’s a man sitting before me, arms crossed over each other, resting on the wood of the desk. He looks middle aged, typical academic type; glasses, white button down and a tie with depictions of galaxies embroidered on the front.

“Is this about the Valor mission?” I ask before he can address me.

“We’ve lost track of the ship.” He says, folding his glasses down.

“Comms went down months ago. I just assumed they needed adjustment for the time distortion after passing through the wormhole.” I study his face; the subtle twitch at his upper lip, the glitter of his eyes when light shines through the window at just the right angle. The refraction is crystalline, a single image expanded and spread, multiplied into parts that when pieced together transcend the flatness of its dimension. A parallax, another tool for understanding the universe.

“No traces of the ship could be picked up, from radio telescope, or any form of communication.”

“You think I can hear them?”

He nods. “I think if there’s anyone or anything that can track down their signal, it’s you.”

I look out the window, coming to terms with my demotion to human instrument. Laith would abhor the term. He was the only one who could really see the humanity in me; could nurse me through episodes, when I’d be rendered bedridden, unable to let any light in, to take in any stimulus. Reality and my brain’s false interpretation of all the noise are often conflated. My body would react to false cues; strikes of lightning when there was none, the swirling of helicopters over the house when the sky was clear and bright.

“I have a reputation for interpreting what could only be considered as the imaginary.” I try to explain the futility of it all. “Yes, I am sensitive enough to pick up whatever noise they’re making. But I don’t think my mind could take the strain of sorting through the static.”

“But you could survive it.” He doesn’t phrase it as a question.

“If you try not to kill me.” My pitch drops.

“We operate an apparatus for people like you,” he says. Those with my condition make up about 0.3% of the population. We are statistical anomalies, with brains that piece together patterns that don’t exist in the same dimensional field as our bodies. Some of us hear human voices, others live in a parallel existence, where reality is warped. The sounds I hear are celestial in nature, heavenly bodies and their songs. I could track a ship down if taken off my meds and suspended in a state with few external stimuli. They’ve built chambers for such purpose. I believe that’s what he’s referring to. “We have a team of scientists who will supervise your efforts. The data you can extract for us is invaluable.”

The door opens, and a man, preceded by the wooden length of his cane, makes his way in.

“This is Felix.” The man at the desk says. I haven’t bothered asking his name. “He’s the mathematician that will be working with the raw data you provide.”

I nod at Felix, trying to act as polite as I can despite the circumstances. I wonder if he knows of my capture, how there was never really a choice in the matter of whether or not I help locate the ship that holds my husband.

“It’s so nice to finally meet you.” He holds a hand out and I take it. We shake hands. “I’ve always wanted to ask,” He retracts his hand and places both on the grip of his cane. “What do I sound like to you?”

“Human.” I laugh. “You’re not a celestial body. I don’t really pick up much from anything smaller than an average sized moon. Or something rocketing through space”

“Ah.” His eyebrows furrow. “I should have deduced that from what I’ve read about those with your ability.”

I stand, and offer him my seat. He seems to want to linger for the remainder of this conversation, and there’s only one other chair in the room apart from the one occupied by the man at the desk. Felix settles himself into the plush of the chair, folding one leg over the other.

Then I see you’ve met my boss, Phillip Wright. Program director.”

“What do you do here exactly?” I ask.

Phillip leans forwards and sighs. “We facilitate the shift from mechanical means to more organic instruments in the field of Astronomy.”

“So, you work with people like me?”

“That’s the main objective, yes. We seek to use your abilities to the fullest, for the furtherment of research in places our telescopes cannot reach.”

Now I see the need for the black van. A highly secret subdivision of NASA, delving into human experimentation. I would want no part in it if it wasn’t for my husband.

“How long?” I narrow my eyes at him. “How long will you keep me for?”

He shifts in his seat, straightening his tie. “As long as it takes for you to find them.”

***

It’s midnight and I’m screaming. The walls have melded into an amalgamation of insect-like bodies, skittering around the room, moving as a mass, spilling onto the floors. I cover my eyes with my palms and beg Laith to do something. He puts a large hand at my back and rubs.

“It’s not real,” he soothes.

“It’s very real to me!” I smear tears along my cheeks. “Laith, make it stop!”

I rock back and forth, a soothing motion. I try to rake scratches over the skin of my arms, but Laith isn’t having any of it. He holds me by both palms and presses them against my chest.

“Let’s ride this out, OK?” He asks, his voice calm. He’s had to learn to become calm when these things happen, when episodes wake both me and him from sleep, and there’s nothing to do but wait for the tranquilizing meds to kick in. It’s part of my curse, I had told him, everything’s too loud, too real.

“OK?” He finds my eyes, prodding for an answer. It’s a miracle I’m still cognizant. As far as episodes go, this is a mild one. I’m still aware that this is one of my mind’s evil tricks. I’m still aware that I need to ground myself.

“OK.” I gasp. “OK.”

I lean into him, and he lets my arms go. I close my eyes and try to focus on the noise that had once been my biggest delusion. I try and focus on the patterns of the universe’s expansion, and if I would ever be able to decode them. I imagine an eye, clear lids licking its sclera clean. Its pupil is agape and so empty, so devoid of crawling insects or the melting walls. I squeeze my closed eyes, and imagine that I am in that devoid pit, that I am in the eye of the universe.

***

I curl around myself, constellation of scars dancing across my bare back. The things I saw and heard used to drive me to tear into my skin. Back before Laith was there to tranquilize me, to keep me from straying too far from reality.

My feet dangle into the water of the sensory deprivation pool. It glows, green lights built into the bottom of the tank illuminating through the water. The color’s supposed to be calming. To induce the dream-like state I need to work at.

I bring myself into the tank, water sloshing around my form as I float to the surface, belly up. The canopy closes around me, forming a pod-like shape. The lights shut off and I’m left with the pitch blackness and silence.

I can feel the flurry of data, the speckles of stars, webbing of galaxies swathing my body in their luminance.

There is an eye opening above me. I can see the black globe of its sclera, the supernova of its iris, the sharp slit of its pupil. The bulge of it nearly reaches my abdomen. This eye doesn’t suck in matter like the last one I’ve come in contact with. It swells with information, an inverse cosmic landform to the void eye, concave tear in spacetime that had appeared on the floor of my bedroom. This eye protrudes, projects my image onto the back of it, and then spits it out. I can feel it, rocking back and forth like a cosmic pendulum, black mirror pulled from the depth of my mind's wicked games. This eye is not real. This is my disorder. I’ve summoned the unreal. Something which only I know exists.

I panic, stretching my back to lower my feet and bring myself upright in the water. I sink down, as far as the bounds of the tank will allow me. Surfacing, I gasp, wiping wetness from my face.

The pod opens, and the lights at the bottom of the pool flicker on.

“I’m sorry.” I pull myself up the edge of the tank and onto the rubbery platform. “I’m too sensitive like this, it’s making it difficult to sort through what I’m seeing and hearing.”

“Don’t apologize.” It’s Felix. I didn’t know he was allowed clearance into this portion of the compound. He brings me a towel, and I take it from him as I stand, wrapping it around my body.

“This is too much.” I say, water dripping from me, cold shiver running through-and-through.

“We need a sensitive instrument.” He places a hand in the pocket of his slacks. He’s dressed like what I would imagine of a mathematics professor, academic and serious. I feel silly in my towel, the only thing covering me. I knew that this process would involve some degree of humiliation. Felix doesn’t stare. He leans against his cane and fishes a paper from his pocket, a printout of the map of the galaxy the Valor mission was hypothesized to have ended up in, if the jump from the wormhole was successful.

“This is the andromeda galaxy.” He hands the paper to me, and I take it with a wet hand. The edges curl from the moisture. “In the center of all galaxies are black holes. This one is home to a supermassive. I’ve been told they are the loudest to you.”

“They’re an eye for me.” I explain, “At such a proximity to a supermassive, space becomes a mirror. Light circles around and back.”

“It’s incredible.” He smiles, “What you get to see and hear.”

I shrug. “You could say that. I find it terrifying.”

“That’s why I’m proposing we move on from the sensory deprivation pods. Somewhere where you can ground yourself, where I can guide you.” He taps at the paper I hold, at the edge of the galaxy’s spiral. “I need to lead you here. Your senses are sharp, but you don’t seem to be able to navigate through the ceaseless noise you pick up.”

“And there’s the problem that my mind poses.” I add on. “My gift comes with the cost of my sanity. Of the bounds between real and unreal.”

“Then pick a place. Somewhere I can accompany you, we don’t need to push you to such limits, though the director seems hellbent on bringing you to your brink.”

“I appreciate it.” I return the paper and grasp the towel around me tightly. “You showing some humanity to your telescope.”

“I’m not known to be so careless with my studies.” He smiles, gathering my hand in his. Human touch makes me feel less mechanical, less like a laser-focused scope but something softer. I keep my towel up with my other hand, the embarrassment of the makeshift garment subsiding.

“Let’s get the telescope some clothes.” Felix chuckles, swinging his cane forwards with his leg, and we walk.

***

We pick Felix’s study for the next attempt. I’m given a full evaluation by medical, and left with a device measuring my brain’s electrical activity. I’m told the data will be fed into a program that can aid us in narrowing down the missing ship’s location. Felix will be with me to interpret any raw data I express in real-time. He thinks fast, faster than I’ve ever seen. Sometimes I wonder if he has a condition similar to the one plaguing me; the ceaseless patterns and universal chatter. For him it would be numbers, mathematical language that melds into reality. I can’t really think of any other way for anyone to understand and interpret the working of the world at such a complex level.

We set up where I’ll be sitting; a yoga mat on the floor, just in front of the chalkboard Felix will be using. There’s medication left besides where I’ll be, things to quell, to keep me from injuring myself if I go too far. We hypothesize that doing this outside of sensory deprivation might lessen the load on me, as the background noise the pods insulated me from could ground me back to this physical realm. It’s all theory, but there’s a good chance it’ll work.

I realize now that this whole time I haven’t sent any correspondence to Laith about my activity in this program. That I would be the proxy for the telescope they use to locate him and his crew. Maybe a part of me believes he really is gone, and that sending any messages would be futile. Or maybe I don’t want him to know that I’ve broken the promise I made to him; that I would stay on my meds, that I would be good and do anything I can to not slip into another episode. I wonder for a moment if Laith would be angry at me upon return, or if he would redirect that anger to the director and the whole program itself.

“What’s on your mind, telescope?” Felix asks, playfully.

“My husband…I...” I shake my head. “Should I really be doing this?”

Felix pauses, setting his cane down against the chalkboard. “Would you rather lose him forever?”

“No. Of course I wouldn’t. It’s just that I made a promise to him. To never push myself like this.”

“The conditions are difficult. I’m sure he’ll understand.” Felix leans against the board and crosses his hands over his chest. “You’re fully supervised. There’s medical on standby. I can administer tranquilizers if necessary.”

I nod. “I want to do this. I really do.”

Felix stares at me. The slopes of his jawbones are visible in this lighting. I just realized they’ve lowered the lights to dampen the assault on my senses. The look in his eyes is not critical; it’s analytical. He’s sizing up my ability to perform under these circumstances, with all the barriers in my mind, and the pressure of the past few weeks. With what’s at stake and what I’ve lost. I’m most likely the highest maintenance instrument he’s ever worked with. Though, he doesn’t seem to complain.

A smile crosses his face. “Then let’s find him.”

***

It’s incredible how small something as vast as the universe becomes when you cram yourself into the center of it. I’m in the dead space that constitutes the eye, slowly melding into it. Scientifically speaking, there is no center to the universe, of something constantly expanding and shifting. It’s a figure of speech, anyways. More of a description of a vantage point I’m able to give myself.

The transfiguration from human to eye is as painful as you’d expect. While no one can see from this plane of existence, I’m undergoing changes I can’t describe without using the more sophisticated of astrophysics terminology. In short, I’m focusing my sight into something physical, and then transferring that physicality into the rearrangement of the self. It’s a hell of a feat, something I’ve failed earlier, accidentally transmuting the space around me into the eye that was supposed to be me. And even earlier before, my bedroom floor.

“What do you see?” Felix’s got his chalk pressed into the board, poised. He’s expecting a large string of numbers. Sums and functions I can’t understand but spit out.

“I…my eyes.” I lean in, press my palms into the floor. “One eye, it’s so black. I’m blind.” There’s movement in the fringes of my vision. Kaleidoscope of creamy white blanching the dark of my amalgamated vision. I’m the eye of the universe for now. There’s no mistaking it. I don’t need sight to take in input. It courses through me like blood.

I spit a string of numbers, coordinates, functions detailing the expansion of galaxies and gas giants.

“The area you’re describing is too big,” Felix says, “give me something smaller to work with.”

My breathing’s picking up. I heave as I lean down some more, so my forehead presses into the ground between my splayed palms.

“Run some valium through my IV.” I order.

“That’ll dull your senses.” Answers Felix.

I scream, not from the pain, but from the fear. I’m beginning to lose track of the bounds between my body and the universe.

“I’m closing in.” I breathe, then run him limits and series, some mathematic language I don’t need to be fluent in; I only need to know how to form the words, how to string a series of numbers that will be decoded as coordinates.

Felix writes in tandem with me. I hear the drag of his chalk against the board, the clack of it as he finishes each digit, each sign.

The floor’s dematerializing beneath me. My vision returns only to display the endless spread of a black hole’s innards. Unmappable vortex glittering with its secrets.

I hold on for dear life, fingers curling into the carpet, translating and dictating what I see and hear. Stars come and go through the swing of the alternating gravitational field. The ripples in spacetime bring them to me, and they scream data like solar flares.

I translate until my throat is raw, for what must be hours. Until the eye of the universe shrinks my vision to the box of a television screen, technicolor fireworks, star systems exploding in far-off galaxies, shrinking and shrinking until I can hear the thrum of the ship’s engines bounce off the infinite cone of the vortex that makes up my cornea.

“I have them.” I gasp. “I have the ship.”
Felix’s done transcribing. He sounds close, like he’s coming towards me, bending down to my level.

“Compute the life signs.” He asks.

“I don’t know how, it’s just noise.” I groan. It takes effort to even find his voice through this mess. “You’re the mathematician.”

“Just listen.”

I freeze, then jerk myself upright, placing one hand on either knee. I inhale, long and deep. Spiral patterns plaster the back of my eyelids, multiplying on each other, tendrils of branches like neural networks, the eye of the universe under my temporary command.

“It’s all stardust.” I shake my head. “And engine noises. Alarms. All mechanical.”

“Look for heartbeats.” Felix suggests. The drumming sound produced by the human heart is easy to distinguish from the fractal patterns stars create, glittery and haphazard. Heartbeats are even and constant. “A constant numerical sequence. Something divisible by sixty.”

I use my new eye, let the incoming data flow through me. Everything’s swirling around, warped star systems fluttering like trilling birds overhead. The universe relights itself where it was dark, rushing brightness that comes and fades again in a beat. This is my own pulse. I shouldn’t mistake it for anything else.

“Just me,” I say, “I’m the only heartbeat in this portion of space.”

“Keep looking.”

I raise the pitch, stars screaming in overexposure, everything amplified in my infinitely extended vision so clearly, I would have to be blind to miss any signs of life. I clamp my hands around my thighs, the pressure reminds me how a human pulse thrums. Organically, flitting under my fingers as my heart dances in my chest.

There’s no sign of what I’m searching for.

“I’m telling you.” I pant. “Nothing.”

“Do you want me to recite the sequence I’m expecting to you? It’ll help you sort through the raw data.”

“There’s nothing!” My voice echoes in to the cavernous realm of space. Tears roll slick down my cheeks. I shake my head, feeling the globe of it sway on the axis of my spine.

The universe sucks back into itself as it leaves me. My vision goes white, then slowly fades back into color.

“The valium.” I plead. “Please.”

Felix’s not cruel. He feeds the liquid through a syringe that’d been at the ready this whole time, left by medical. I feel the cold relief, liquid silence. Something to calm the encroaching remnants of ancient entropy, the chirp of incoming gravity waves, the rolling thunder of solar flares in far off galaxies. I can feel the accretion disc of my corneas shrink ten orders of magnitude, until they’re human sized. The gravitational lensing that once surrounded my body turned celestial eye shrinks down until there is no aura.

I inhale, breath hitching as the stuff really kicks in.

“I’m sorry, Laith,” I mutter, feeling the gravitational field of the singularity he’s become. I can still feel him, even when the eye’s been closed, when I’ve been fed intravenous drugs that should sedate enough to dull even my human senses. What’s left of him is giving off the same signal of a dying star; one in a binary pair, body transforming to a gravity well as its partner has no choice but to remain in orbit. They’ll circle around each other for what humans call eternity. What could be considered eternity for the body I occupy but not the eye I’ve borrowed. And we’ll be trapped like this, because time slows to a relative crawl in the telescopic eyes of humanity. An infinite pause in the death cycle that I’ve been circling around.

“I’m sorry.” Are the only words I can find within me. I should have used this eye sooner; I should have risked madness and hospitalization to find him alive.

“I’m sorry” is the final sound into the void, words that will be stretched and rendered uninterpretable. That lose their meaning in transit because there is about two-and-a-half-million lightyears between us, cleaved by a sharp turn in spacetime.

“I’m sorry” is just another string of data, something we’ll wait to be interpreted by the supercomputer attached to the nodes in my scalp. No coordinate can pin down where Laith is in reference to me, a singularity where the idea of space is laughable because there is nothing, and any matter surrounding will suffer the same fate: erasure.

I wipe the tears and stand, wobbly and uncertain. I pluck the leads from my head and make my way to the board. Felix’s writing again, a string of numbers and symbols I can’t comprehend. I steady myself against the black surface with both palms, smudging his work. My forehead taps the board and I exhale.

Felix stops his work and steps back, steadying me with his hand. I lift up my head, and brush the chalk off my palms.

“We’re done,” he says. He’s written all I’ve given him. The input feeding straight from my brain will be compiled and analyzed momentarily. If the numbers, the pure data, matches both my and Felix’s conclusion, then the worst outcome is the correct one. Then I really couldn’t detect any signs of life, with all the sensitivity of the universe.

There’s a staggeringly painful pause. One that doubles and doubles again, until it reaches an infinite crawl. We wait, along the treacherous rim of the event horizon, and listen for a heartbeat.

Yasmeen Amro

Yasmeen Amro is a Jordanian-American-Palestinian writer currently living in Jordan. She enjoys beading, baking, and writing. Website: https://yasmeenamro2.wordpress.com/