Page 149 of Stars

It was the stars, a billion of them singing in radio waves and ultraviolet light, painting the universe with a million notes of sound. The buzz of blackness, whispers of solar winds whistling around him. The sharp crackle and pop of the sun, and of the stars stretching from the beginning of time to the end, letting him hear moments of thirteen-billion years before. Comets and their arias shuddered in millennia-long orbits. Asteroids rumbled in a whalesong bass he felt in his bones.

The roar of electrons and protons and elemental atoms flying through the cosmos took his breath away. He coughed. Tasted blood.

Once, he and Sergey danced in space like this, two atoms playing tag across time. Who had chased who, or had they always chased each other? Had they been pulled into separate planets for a billion years, orbiting the same star but never touching—until their star burned out and blew into a supernova and, in the heat death of their solar system, they were free to tangle together once more?

How had they formed in the earth at the same time on one rock in the infinite vastness of everything? How, after billions of years, had he been graced with a life entwined with Sergey’s, given seconds and minutes and days and hours and years to love him?

He’d had this life, these precious moments together, before they became atoms chasing time and each other again.

Solar winds crashed against Earth’s atmosphere. He heard it like the waves beating against the seashore he’d sat at and listened to Sergey whisperI love you. The universe was an ocean, each planet a sanctuary in the cosmos. Earth was their cradle, a sheltered viridescence, a tiny, exquisite point in the cosmos. She’d seemed so immense on the surface—Houston to Moscow was as far away as the moon, he’d once felt. But her grandness paled against the vast universe. From above, he could finally see how fractional, how inconsequential—and yet—how striking, how perfect their home truly was.

It had given him life at Sergey’s side. He would always cherish those moments, even after his atoms were scattered and a million human lifetimes had passed before his soul and Sergey’s were mingled again.

I will return to you, Seryozha. I will return to you in any way I can, even if that is only dust and atoms when my orbit decays and I fracture apart, my body burning through the sky as my soul tumbles free. I will gather my ashes and bring them down to you, wipe your tears and kiss your lips with what is left of me. And I will nestle in your hands and live there for the rest of your life. Until you are dust once more and we are together again, our particles conjoined until they are one.

Would he do it all again? If he could rewind time, pick a moment to go back to in his life and say,wait, choose differently,would he? Everything he’d worked for, all of his long, arduous years, his sacrifice and privation, the punishment he’d heaped on his own shoulders, had led him here: clinging to the edge of humanity, watching Sergey spin beneath him and pass away, the earth eclipsing them from each other again and again and again.

Was it true to say I died doing what I loved, and it was worth it?

Ice picks dug in behind his eyes as something squeezed the base of his brain. He felt like an overfilled balloon, like any moment his skull would pop. His thoughts were too slow, shaped and changed by gravity and the tides of time. His radio was silent, but space was not. Galaxies sang a million light-years away as a supernova scattered. Saturn hummed as if someone were drawing circles on the crystal goblet of her rings while Jupiter, the star that never was, flickered in defiance.

Sasha was drowning in sound, in the ocean of space, in the salt of his tears and his blood. He coughed, scratched at his throat, struggled to drag in air that wasn’t there. A roar filled his ears, and a white light blinded him. He tried to shield his eyes from the burn, the pain—

Kilaqqi held out his hand.

He was younger than Sasha remembered, the same age as the corpse they’d brought on board the ISS. But no, that wasn’t Kilaqqi. It couldn't have been.

Sasha took hisaminmi’shand and walked across a frozen lake. Earth lay suspended beneath them, the universe—writhing with galaxies and stars and stretching to the ends of time—overhead.

He wasn’t in his space suit anymore. He stood on the ice in his orange flight suit, as he had when they had launched onFreedomdays before.

“Sasha Andreyev,” the man who looked like Kilaqqi said. “My brother sent me to you.”

“You’re not Kilaqqi.”

Kilaqqi’s brother shook his head. “Do you know where we are?”

“Above space and below time. Kilaqqi brought me here once. He said the dead were rising to the stars.” Before, a blood aurora had shimmered above them. Now the stars were clear, time looping forward and backward with no interruption.

“You have fought the dead, Sasha. Now you must fight your way back to the people who love you.”

“How?”

“You must hold on,” Kilaqqi’s brother said. “We are waiting here, where time stops. You must hold on.”

“Hold on for what?”

The other man was fading, disappearing into a white light that hurt Sasha’s eyes.Hold on. Hold on.He squinted, trying to chase the man, crossing the frozen lake.

Every step was easier, lighter, as if his burdens were lifting, as if his body were being stripped of every pain, every scar, every dark moment from his life.

Sergey’s voice tumbled from the light: his laugh, his warmth.Sashunya, I love you. I will always love you.

Solar winds pulled on him, carried him forward. The stars sang a billion notes of joy.

He reached for the center of the light, for Sergey—

His eyes opened.