He must have laid in that pool of darkness for an hour. He was paralyzed with fear and anxiety; he came under the impression that if he moved, something horrible would happen; or, morseo, he came under the impression that he was dead. Why would he think that he was not dead? His body became numb, his hearing became distorted, he could hear his own heartbeat—all of these things pointed to the notion that he was dead.

Or was he?

He felt like he was dead; of course, how would he know what being dead would feel like? He had not died before—he had only been alive. Eventually, he determined that the idea that he was dead was not true—but it was probably more of the fact that he convinced himself that he was not dead, for he did not want to be dead—and so, pushing up from the non-existent ground underneath him, he came up to his feet. Once he did so, the darkness around him became a galaxy; a gallery of stars and nuclear clouds mixed together and thrown onto a massive canvas of black.

At first, he was both surprised and frightened because he was out in space with no protection. It was like he was dangling out in the middle of a solar system, but he stayed in one place. After a minute of floating there, ground began to form underneath him; though, it was not soil, nor was it any other sort of natural terrain—instead, it was a sturdy, solid purple or magenta-like material. The stars all around him were reflected in the glossy texture of the floor below him. This floor seemed to build itself, expanding on infront of him and, when he eventually turned around, he saw that it expanded backwards. Isaack decided that what he was standing on was a bridge because it looked like a bridge; or, it might have been a path. Either way, he started to walk down it, having a small echo come from the sound of his feet hitting the solid ground. He turned around after going forward a bit, looking behind him; there was nothing but the bridge and the glittering stars in the cosmos.

He felt trapped—he felt even more trapped than when he was on Earth. Where was he? Was this a dream? Was it a nightmare?

Isaack continued along the path, his footsteps echoing. He felt a burst of energy come over him, and so taking advantage of that, racing forward, trying to get to the end of the bridge, if there was an end to it—and after doing this, Isaack came to realize that there would be no ending to it. There would be no end to this bridge; it stretched into the dark abyss, cluttered with burning spheres of gas. He walked over to one of the sides of the purple bridge and looked over. Below the bridge was ever expanding darkness, which was also full of stars.

It was made apparent to Isaack that he would not be able to escape. He was exceptionally far away from the Milkyway, as a significant amount of the stars that were around him were cluttered into one area, that being where the Milkyway was. Isaack suddenly had an emotion sweep over him: sadness. He had been so used to heartbreak that he was able to easily figure that that was what he was experiencing. He wanted to cry, yet he could not. Isaack knew that now he would be forced to live on this path forever and that he would never be able to escape; it was like how it was on Earth. He would never be able to leave, but now, he would die in a few days. Or, would he? How could he measure the amount of time that he spent there? Would he count it in his head or find some point of reference, like how he used to use the Sun on Earth, to tell how much time had passed?

No, he could not do that. He would have to live there for eternity. Though he knew that that was not at all possible, he had a strong feeling that that was what was going to happen.

Eternity: infinite. Unending.

Eternity: something that a human would have trouble processing.

Eternity: something that a human would never be able to understand.

Can a human truly understand time?

Memory is the only thing that a human can use to comprehend the idea of time. Without any sort of memory, a human can not understand what day it is, or even what year it is. They will not be able to go back to times that had already passed. They would never be able to retain any sort of information.

If one has no memory, is yesterday and today the same day? Is today and tomorrow the same day? Is last year and this year the same year? Is this year and the next year the same year? Years, decades, centuries, eons; are they all the same if one can not remember?

“Eternal torment”—is Isaack being trapped on Earth and now trapped in the middle of the galaxy not the same? No humans are there for him to interact with. He will have no relation with anyone. Solitude is something hard for most humans to understand. Never being able to talk to anyone; never being able to speak about anything to anyone that will listen to them; even though a lot of humans live alone and they have no relationship with others, that does not mean that they can not speak with others. Some humans choose to live in solitude, yet they can not really live in true solitude.

Isaack endured true solitude; barely anyone can say that they have.

Was Sol meant to be rediscovered? Those distant lands that humanity had forgotten about became something totally different from what they originally were—from what they were supposed to be.

“The city-scape that was Io eventually became a wasteland of old buildings that at one point touched the sky; the gardens of Mercury became overgrown sense the care-takers of the planet did not live there anymore; Europa’s mines and outposts became frozen over; Mar’s sands and rocks reclaimed its realm; Venus, much like Mercury, once was a lush world, but soon the terraforming that had taken place to shape Venus into a plant inhabited world eventually went away; Saturn’s mining settlements in its rings began to break down and fall apart since there was no one there to operate them anymore; Triton’s volcanic tundra came to lay dormant; and the Earth, much like its fellow companions, grew over its now ancient architecture that littered its surface, and its seas became rich and abundant in life.”

Untouched by man for an eternity. Untouched by man for the rest of time; except for Isaack.

Though he lived in solitude and he never got to see another human that was alive, he was able to experience a beautiful and vibrant world that no human had ever been to for eons. He was able to be in a world that had been forgotten by everyone.

Isaack did not grow old, nor did he become any younger—stuck in a place that he wished not to be in; yet, the beauty in front of him was beyond anything that he comprehended.

Space: that expansion above humanity that they so stupidly ignore; full of wonder and mystery, but humans are never going to grasp the sheer size of it—the sheer magnitude of it, how large it is, how long it goes on forever—yet, Isaack was able to behold it forever. He understood that there were things out there that were bigger than him. Things out there that were greater than him and mattered more than him. Though this negative and nihilist-like thinking may sound harmful, to Isaack, it was not. It was calming. It gave him peace. It gave him tranquility.

And so, the story of Isaack comes to a close, where he is living out in space, in an area that was unknown to him, for eternity.