The Emptiness Will Swallow You Whole
The stars are disappearing.
Ursa doesn't know the constellations well (much to her astronomer father's disappointment) but she knows them well enough to know this. Orion's Belt is dimming, and lately Ursa Major, her namesake, appears to be six stars instead of seven.
"It's the city," her mother says. "It gets closer and brighter each day. You know this."
"Light pollution," her father agrees. "The bane of our times."
This isn't true, and Ursa knows it. She knows that, bright and lively as the city is, there's no way it grows fast enough to dim out a new star each night, no way that it is as methodical as this, constellations winking out a star at a time, darkness slowly creeping across the sky.
Each time Ursa looks up, she remembers when she went camping with her family as a kid, and they laid on the ground and stared at the stars. Her father pointed to each of the constellations, telling her every story he knew. The sky had seemed full of light, as if it could never go dark, and now it seems like it'll never be that light again.
When Ursa complains to her brother, he rolls his eyes. "Even if they are disappearing, what are you going to do about it? You can't wave a sign and march around chanting until they reappear." He laughs and returns to his game.
She climbs to the roof and watches, skimming her eyes over all the stars she can see until one starts to dim.
By morning, it's as if it was never there at all.
Ursa writes online about it. The Stars Are Vanishing, and There's Nothing We Can Do. No one listens, except to mock her.
It's light pollution, she's imagining things, this is all a great government coverup for something far more sinister.
No one seems to see what she's seen.
If the stars are disappearing, that means that something is taking them. The darkness winding its way through the sky is alive.
If the stars are disappearing, are the worlds that orbit them going too? The planets, full of undiscovered life? The moons, rich with geological formations we've never considered? Are whole civilizations being swept into this darkness? Could Earth be next?
If the stars are disappearing, where are they going?
One day, when the sky seems emptier than it ever has, even in the heart of the city, Ursa gets a message on her computer.
i've seen it too. i thought i was going crazy-
Finally, she thinks, and eagerly writes back.
Me too haha
how long ago did you first notice?
A couple months I think. You?
the same.
No one in my family believes me
My dad is an astronomer, you'd think he'd realize at some point
he knows space that well and STILL can't tell??
RIGHT! He just complained about light pollution and laughed
cold
light pollution just doesn't make sense
it feels like the stars are just gone
THANK YOU
I feel like even if anyone believed me they'd stop when I said that
I'm scared that something is taking them
what, like a sea monster swallowing ships, but with stars and planets?
Yeah. You think the planets are vanishing too?
you have an astronomer dad how do you not think that-
I guess I didn't really care about stars until now
They talk late into the night, sharing theories and fears, and Ursa takes a deep sigh of relief that she finally isn't alone.
The darkness gets closer and closer, and the night sky gets darker and darker. Ursa and her new friend, Robin, keep trading theories, and call each other late at night to watch stars wink out, faster and faster than ever before.
Ursa is sitting on her roof when the first planet goes.
The sky has been dark for days, and people have finally started to notice. Mass panic has set in, and her calls to Robin often don't go through because lines are so swamped with people calling their family members.
Ursa's father has cursed himself -- how did he not notice this? -- and Ursa wants to scream every time he wallows in it, to remind him that she noticed, that he said it was just light pollution, that every time she said something no one believed her. That maybe if people had, we could be doing something by now!
Though -- what could people do? Scientists would want to study it, and armies would want to blow it up, whatever it was, whatever was eating the stars.
On the night that Saturn vanishes, Ursa expects it, to a degree. Scientists have been updating constantly. Andromeda is gone. Oh, no, Pluto is gone! Neptune is gone! Uranus is gone -- please don't laugh, this is serious, but actually please do laugh, because we need something funny nowadays.
She's finally been able to call Robin, and they're watching together. Everyone is watching, Ursa thinks -- her parents are out in the backyard with the telescope and her brother is at a friend's house and all the neighbors are out in the street -- it's the first planet we can see without a telescope that will be gone.
It's like an ending, as Saturn slowly dims out and then is gone, all at once. The sky is darker than ever before.
Will it take the Sun first, or the Earth? Is it saving Earth for last, or are there more stars out there that we can't see, still yet to be eaten?
Jupiter goes the next day, and then the asteroids. As Mars vanishes, Ursa and her family pile into their car and onto the clogged highways, unsure what exactly they're running to.
It takes them an hour to go half a mile, and they abandon the car on the street, flooding out with everyone else who has given up -- likely all the empty cars are half the reason the traffic is so bad.
Dusk descends earlier than it should, darkness creeping around the edges of the Earth.
It isn't really black, it's more nothing.
When Ursa turns her head towards it, she hears a faint buzzing that starts to sound more and more like words the longer she listens, but she can't tell what they're saying. Are they tortured or are they ecstatic?
It floods over the cars in front of them suddenly, though it feels like slow motion. Some people start running, but Ursa is compelled to walk into it. She can't say why. It's a magnetic pull, unavoidable. Robin was taken hours ago -- they live -- lived -- in Australia. Ursa's brother is running faster than she's ever seen, when she looks back, and her mother is chasing him, but her father is staring at the darkness, enraptured as she is.
She isn't sure whether it reaches her or she reaches it when she starts running, colliding with the emptiness and being jolted into something she can't name.
She closes her eyes as it takes her.
When she opens them, she can see all the stars again.