Have you ever had that feeling you don’t belong? It’s as if your previous life was so much better and more advanced than the present timeline. Not only that, but each time you gaze into the starry night you detect a hum across the cosmos , only you can hear. This is the secret of my next short story – I hope you enjoy…
Elara traced the arc of a distant galaxy on her monitor, the cool glow reflecting in her tired eyes. Amongst the hum of servers and the crisp calculations of her colleagues, she was Dr. Elara Vance, astrophysicist, star mapper, seeker of cosmic truths by means of radio astronomy, employed by the Maunakea Observatories, located on the Big Island of Hawaii.
But in the quiet solitude of her home, under the vast, indifferent gaze of the night sky, she was something more. Something… different.
Elara had a gift, or perhaps a curse. She could feel the universe. Not in some mystical, new-age way. It was more like a low hum, a vibration that resonated deep within her bones, a sense of connection to the swirling chaos of nebulae and the silent majesty of black holes. She knew, with an unshakeable certainty, when a star was born, when a planet crumbled, when two galaxies collided in a slow-motion ballet of destruction and creation. She felt the pulse of the cosmos, its rhythms and breaths, its sighs and screams.
It was a terrifying secret. In the sterile world of scientific method and empirical data, her gift was an anomaly, a glitch in the system. At her Maunakea Observatories workstation, she imagined the raised eyebrows, the hushed whispers, the inevitable psych evaluations. “Elara’s lost it,” they’d say. “Too much time staring at the stars.” So she kept it hidden, a fragile, precious thing tucked away in the deepest corner of her heart. She poured her feelings into her work, translating the whispers of the universe into elegant equations and meticulous observations. She charted the courses of comets, analyzed the light from distant quasars, and searched for habitable planets, all while the universe sang its secrets only to her. She was a scientist, yes, but she was also something more. She was a listener, a conduit, a silent witness to the grand cosmic drama unfolding across the vast expanse of time and space.
“Oh God ! “ she thought, “ Am I even part of this timeline ? “
The emptiness of space was twofold, in the universe and her soul. And that secret, she knew, she would carry to her grave.
This evening was pretty much like others, as she controlled the massive telescope with the touch of her finger on the computer keys. She could hear a hum, a steady thrum that was less heard than it was felt in Elara’s world. She wasn’t sure when she had first become conscious of this, this feeling of being within something huge and structured. Then came the understanding. It was not a God in the conventional sense, but something. An Architect, she thought, exchanging mutters from degraded data tapes. The universe was not created by a divine being but was a carefully planned system. The stars – not heavenly objects, but mathematical solutions written in the sky.
Elara saw the order, she saw the dance of the particles, she saw the balance of ecosystems. It wasn’t magic, it was code. It was beautiful. Complex. Miracles were not divine interventions, but they were emergent properties of the system – unexpected interactions. Just like a butterfly effect in reality.
But the questions bothered her. Why? What was the purpose of all this?
Was the human being just a random effect, an outcome of the AI’s optimization? Or were they necessary, there was more to them than just the way they were created? And what about faith? Can logic and reason overcome the need for something more? Elara didn’t know. The hum remained, the sound of an immense intelligence that surrounded her, an intelligence that she was starting to grasp, but one that she could never fully understand.
Elara’s breath hitched, a ragged sob escaping her lips. Everything seemed to close in on her, “I’m so alone,” she whispered, the words barely audible, lost in the vast emptiness that had suddenly opened up inside her. Her heart pounded against her ribs, a frantic bird trapped in a cage. She wasn’t just lost, she was adrift, severed from everything that tethered her to reality. Panic clawed at her throat, making it hard to breathe. “It’s imperative,” she choked out, the word “imperative” sounding hollow and desperate even to her own ears. “I have to get back. Back to my timeline. Back to… back to something.” The thought of her own time, her own life, was a lifeline, a beacon in the swirling chaos of her present predicament. It wasn’t just about scientific integrity or preserving the timeline; it was about survival. It was about finding her way back to herself.
“May we find the purpose of our soul. “ The writers curse.
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Dreams and Reality 
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