Submission (#184) Approved

Luficer Rising.

A fragment of the reborn star opened its eyes. It could not move just yet, but it could feel how the cosmic forces were slowly moulding its being, extending its capacity for existence beyond what it was before with something grand; a soul maybe. It could feel now, how its delicate tufts of fur stood stagnant in the vacuum of space, and how gravity collapsed inwards towards its chest. The stardust it had left behind in its death coalesced inside its ears and formed its tail. The rest of the stardust swirled around the singularity at its chest, forming a glowing accretion disk. It had paws, paws that when lifted revealed the shimmering stardust underneath. He was a creature tossed a bone.

He looked around. There was nothing beside him. He couldn’t see any planets or stars that were close enough to travel to. He was struck with a feeling he could not ascertain, staring into the panorama of millions of miniature lights. The kinship of the universe felt immense to him. He felt he could not bear it. Suddenly, his fur bristled up with a slight movement that came from beyond his line of sight, belying an unidentified object in his vincinity. He waited for it to orbit into view, and as one segment after another of a lengthy spaceship revealed itself, he waited still to see what would happen. He tilted his head up to get a closer look, greatly curious about his new discovery. Its age could be seen in the layers of dust that coated the exterior and the small segments that seemed broken. Perhaps it needed repairing. Reaching out with his paw, he pulled the derelict ship closer to him.

The lights on board the ship flickered on. He was a bit startled at the sudden revival of the mysterious ship, even more so by the fact that it has started to vibrate. Intrigued, it looks in through the window of the main control center where it thought it saw a shape inside move. Looking back at it was a dark figure with a tall rectangular shaped head and a glowing red circle as an eye. His stance indicated that he was surprised, but he stared calmly at the large pair of glowing orange eyes that suddenly appeared in space.

[ Hello. Can you hear me? ]

He did hear him. The words registered in his head, somehow. He could communicate with this guy! He suddenly felt as if he knew how to speak to the figure on the ship, subconsciously. In quite a complicated fashion, he fashioned the radiation that emitted from the black hole resting in his chest into a string that could be read by the recievers of the ship. It was like pulling on threads, untangling the waves to give the right amount of tautness, adjusting the energy to match the code he heard. He relayed back.

“Yes I can! Hello!”

A pause.

[ Wonderful. I’m IBM, captain of the Discovery. I was assigned on a mission to survey Jupiter and its surrounding satellites. My mission has been successful, but I have continued observing the Jovian system in absence of my crew, even as it underwent a transformation into Lucifer. I believe this data may prove to be helpful one day. Although, my readings have recently recorded that Lucifer has underwent a destructive sequence and has collapsed into a black hole. You, mysterious creature, are all that’s left. I would like to talk to you in order to record this new phenomenon. ]

“Oh. Okay! So, uh how do I start?”

[ Would you like me to call you Lucifer or should I call you something else? ]

“Lucifer… I think it would sound better as Luficer! I think… I’m different from my birth star. But that means you can call me Lufi!”

[ Thank you, Lufi. It has been a while since I’ve had a conversation. ]