--- title: "Abyss and Actuality" description: "The revelation was both unsettling and profound. We were not masters of the universe. A voyage through space wasn’t enough to become such. We were keepers of…" url: https://www.independentpress.com/article/abyss-and-actuality date: 2026-10-06 categories: ["Fiction"] author: "Pierce Duhe" --- # Abyss and Actuality ![Abyss and Actuality, Pierce Duhe](https://images.ctfassets.net/ewtdlsoyixc1/4KDcwfkTquspgYwsQOU7Yc/89c206621527f26529032f18ecbd387a/Abyss_and_Actuality__Pierce_Duhe.jpeg) I looked down at Earth as I catapulted from the launch pad into the void of space. I got out right in time. Nine circular craters covered the Earth. I could see just the outskirts of one as I ascended from what-was-once-Florida. The other eight craters were scattered across a planet that was now uninhabitable after the war. Some of the nuclear craters were bigger than the others, some even completely submerged in the oceans. Was this an inevitable consequence of man’s creation of nuclear weapons? Were we always mere tenants on this planet, and if so, where was our true destination? I wasn’t quite sure just how much fuel I had actually preserved. It was easily more than any manned or unmanned National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) mission from the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. The Juggernaut Mission of 2511 burned enough fuel to land astronauts in the Draco Constellation, a mere 309 light-years from Earth. I was confident that NASA had preserved enough to get me much farther, but I had no way of telling. Before the great nations blew the world to hell, I was fortunate enough to earn a degree in Aerospace Engineering from Cambridge and eventually be a part of the last known group of NASA experts to ever exist. My fuel gauges were destroyed in the first wave of explosions that hit Oklahoma. It was a slow and boring June day when two countries decided to press their big red buttons and launch nuclear weapons at the United States. We responded in kind, and the only thing that followed was an Earth that looked like an eaten apple–two once fully rounded sides became misshapen caverns. Sometimes I imagine those farmers and sharecroppers in Oklahoma watching as the first mushroom cloud turned their blue skies black. I imagine that just before the fiery smoke singed their flesh to a crisp, they felt at peace with the fact that they would no longer have to suffer the servitude of farm life. I envy them in a way. The food rations kept surprisingly well. I had enough supplies to feed myself for two years, nothing in the grand scheme of things, though. I had perfected this ship, and, to me, it almost seemed sentient–like an extension of my mind, an accessory to man that would allow him (me) to prevail in the journey towards oblivion. The mind takes everything rational and covets longevity in life and efficiency in action. Coveting is what got survivors of the Holocaust through the Nazi concentration camps in World War II. It’s what got millions of eighteen-year-old men to grab Uncle Sam’s hand and fight for what was good and holy. Not their bodies, skinny and frail and weak like mine. That’s not what won the war, and it’s not what was going to win this one against space and time. I left Earth’s orbit with nothing to hold onto but mere hope. But hope can be a dangerous thing. I sat on the edge of the hibernation pod and read the manual’s directions. I secured the cardiovascular harness to my chest, attached six different wires around my head, and shed a drop of blood from the tranquilizing needle. I lay down and began to drift. I tilted my head back and let the darkness absorb me and thought once again of those brave Oklahomans. I drifted away. My mind took over, and for the first time in my life I was where I belonged. In the abyss. My eyes fluttered open. I heard nothing, felt nothing, thought nothing. I did not feel rested or tired, but rather like Dante awakening in the woods before his journey through the infernos of Hell. Suddenly, heat surged through my body, and I felt my strength slowly return. I looked down to see the harness still attached to my chest. I lay there as the wires pumped vitamins into my body for six hours. Six hours, prostrate on my back, awake. I lay there as machines brought me back to life. As soon as I felt the strength to lift one arm up, I raised the roof of the hibernation pod and felt the cold, harsh air hit my body. I strained to pull myself up, like Nosferatu rising from his casket–slow, dull, menacing; it almost made me chuckle. Of course I wouldn’t know how long I had been asleep, but from the thick, scruffy feeling of my beard, I had to imagine it was more than ten years. Nothing appeared to have changed from when I submerged into darkness. Every light had remained on. Nothing was out of place. The most disappointing revelation of all, however, was the message board. Nothing. No one in the universe had reached out to me. I thought of the original _Planet of the Apes_ movie from the twentieth century–Charlton Heston waking up thousands of years after he had left Earth on a world he didn’t even know existed. After my return to equilibrium, I stood up and began walking towards the information deck. I pressed the power button and the screen illuminated. I squinted in pain. When I finally opened my eyes completely, I looked at the year. My jaw dropped. I broke into a cold sweat. Year: 3420. I had hibernated for eighty-five Earth years. I looked into the mirror and found that the beard I felt while still lying in the hibernation pod was snow-white. The vitamins had kept my skin from wrinkling for the most part, but the bags around my light blue eyes drooped lower than before. Why in the world did the pod wake me up so early? I requested coordinates from the information deck. The screen claimed I had traveled 640 light-years from Earth. My fuel reserves had been undeniably greater than the Juggernaut Mission 909 years ago. I walked as fast as I could towards the pod window and saw a clear, blue horizon. I was no longer floating in the vacuum of space. An atmosphere had snatched me, parachuted me down safely to a vast ocean still untraveled by man. I was on Kepler-22b, a planet researchers once considered to be a second Earth. I had only studied Kepler-22b for a short period of time before the war. We used to call it “Super Earth.” Behind me, I could faintly hear a siren. I followed the sound into the electrical control room to find a red blinking light on the main computer. Now I knew why the hibernation pod had woken me up. It was the emergency raft. It had not deployed, and the ship was in the process of sinking. I wasn’t sure how long I had before my ship submerged under the Kepler-22b ocean, but I didn’t plan on staying to find out. I rushed back to retrieve my suit. I was moving in slow motion. I was thin, frail, and eerily malnourished. I needed solid food but had no time. My hearing was improving. I could tell by the sound of rushing water entering the lower levels of the ship. The floor vibrated as the deluge continued. I was finally able to latch my helmet onto the full-body suit. I walked towards the food preservation room and pried open the eighty-five-year-old freezer to find dehydrated bananas, asparagus, lettuce, and unsalted nuts. I shoved as much as I could into the titanium container attached to my back. I began to feel ripples of water surrounding the boots of my suit. I didn’t have much time. I hurried back to the main computer, my knees now submerged as the water continued to rise. I clicked on the message board of the main computer and relayed a message that I could only hope would be found by anyone or anything in the universe. My hopes that it would reach Earth were nonexistent. Even if it had, Earth would certainly be a barren landscape by now. The craters in Oklahoma were probably still visible, gray and black covering hundreds of miles of what were formerly wheat fields. If there were any survivors, they had most likely reverted to the status of cavemen, creatures driven purely by instinct until one brave primate decided to foster his free-thinking cerebellum and master the creation of fire. The water was now at my waist. I relayed my coordinates and a message out into the universe that read: “SOS, Year: 3420. Ship sunk. Kepler-22b Ocean.” That was all I had time to write before a wave of the extraterrestrial water pushed me helmet-first into the computer, smashing the glass of the screen and nearly knocking me back into unconscious darkness. I brought my knees to my chest and pushed as hard as I could off the face of the now smashed computer. I was barely able to grab onto a handle attached to the wall of the electrical control room. With my strength still diminished from the lack of carbohydrates and fat, and with the weight of an ocean pulling at my back, I used the propellers of my suit to catapult towards the pod window. Fiery gas steamed out of my suit’s tanks and sent me flying upward. The glass had already broken. I jetted out of the window and into the Kepler-22b ocean air. Turning, I saw the ship fully disappear under the ocean as bubbles shot upward. I floated on the Kepler-22b ocean and waited. I waited for my death as it slowly crept towards me. I floated into another deep sleep. I woke up to a pitch-black night sky. _Weird_, I thought. _I’m no longer floating_. I lifted my head to find myself hoisted upon an island of algae. It spanned for miles. Green, living algae as far as I could see. It was as firm as cement. I pushed myself up and assumed a standing position. I began to trudge forward on the algae island into the barren Kepler night sky, not looking back. The algae road beneath me began to separate like a fault line. Two roads now split in opposite directions as I stood in the middle of both. I looked down to find that I was now standing on a milky-white surface, terrified but intrigued. The algae at my sides began to point straight up like the hairs on the back of my neck. _They’re motioning to me_. I proceeded forward down the oblique white path, the sky now no longer pitch black, but revolving into a translucent hue of _green_. It was miraculous. I hadn’t seen green since before the war on Earth, but here it was everywhere. This green was similar to the borealis in the skies of Earth’s northern and southern hemispheres, but instead of being elusive, it filled the Kepler sky completely. I walked for several minutes along the algae path until, suddenly, the white road came to a halt. The translucent green sky seemed to connect with the path below me, like a horizon on the water’s surface. The only difference here, though, was that I could touch it. I could touch the horizon and the green-on-white wall that faced me. It seemed to be presenting a sort of entrance to me, one that–if entered–would show me things that would horrify me to the brink of seizing. I turned around. This world was not mine, and I was not here to sightsee. I was here to survive in the abyss as a debt owed to the race of humans that preceded me. I turned. The algae walls beside me began to close in the distance. Slowly, they stiffened and began to press together, pushing me back towards the translucent green portal. I’d be crushed to death if I didn’t abide. I reached towards the now-tangible green-on-white horizon. My fingers barely grazed the surface of the portal when a scalding hot surge of fire erupted on the glove of my suit. I screamed in agony as my suit began to deteriorate slowly. I fell back from the horizon wall, but the cement-sturdy algae walls came closer and closer. I couldn’t go in either direction. In one direction, I’d be crushed like fingers in an elevator. In the other, I’d be burned to a crisp. Which death would be quicker? Looking at the pace at which the algae walls were closing, I decided on the portal. My suit, now completely armless from the kindling fire, was increasingly fading. My bare skin now felt the humid Kepler atmosphere upon my flesh. I had to get rid of my suit. The algae walls were now two hundred yards away and nearing. I unstrapped my full-body suit, starting with my boots and then the sides of my helmet, ready to let the Kepler air strike my face. I slid my helmet upward and immediately dove headfirst into the translucent green horizon. I left the abyss, ascending into my own actuality—my newfound place in this world, not originally mine but someone’s. Everyone’s. The revelation was both unsettling and profound. We were not masters of the universe. A voyage through space wasn’t enough to become such. We were keepers of the universe, created by intelligence, hope, dreams, and problems unsolvable by math and science. We prefer to stay in the abyss, avoiding our small and insignificant existence in the universe because we are afraid of what it might mean when we die. But actuality is beautiful, and those who achieve actuality will one day see that we exist for a purpose: perhaps not a large purpose, but a meaningful and adequate purpose for what we can reasonably accomplish. In that understanding, we must do our best with what the universe throws our way. In the end, our actuality, albeit incomprehensible, is fantastical and preferable to remaining in the abyss.