I still remember the exact moment when reality began to unravel not the dramatic kind no thunderous explosions or reality bending special effects just the quiet horror of watching Commander neanda valis stare at his own reflection in the ship's viewport muttering fragments of a conversation none of us were part of that's not my face he whispered fingers trembling against the reinforced glass that's not that's not my reflection I'm Dr Marcus Pierce Mission specialist for NASA's arabus 9 Expedition theoretical physicist by training though these days that title feels more like a cruel joke than a credential what
good is understanding quantum mechanics when reality itself refuses to play by the rules back on Earth I was known for my controversial papers on Quantum Consciousness and its potential role in SpaceTime manipulation my colleagues called me brilliant but unstable now I wonder if they saw something in me that I couldn't see in myself a predisposition to accepting the impossible the year is 2,135 or at least it was when we left Earth time has become fluid since then our mission seemed straightforward investigate anomalous signals from a planet orbiting a red dwarf in the Hydra system signals
that hinted at intelligent life or at least the remnants of it the kind of mission that ends careers if you're wrong and makes history if you're right Commander valis Ned to his friends though he insisted on formality was a career astronaut with more deep space missions under his belt than the rest of us combined built like a retired linebacker gone slightly to seed with a neatly trimmed salt and pepper beard that made him look more like a philosophy Professor than a Spaceman the kind of leader who memorized not just your service record but your kids
birthdays too he had a habit of humming old Beatles songs during pre-flight checks though he'd deny it if you called him out on it I remember our first real conversation during the six-month training period before launch we were in the centrifuge facility recovering from another brutal high G simulation you know what scares me most about deep space Pierce he said wiping sweat from his brow not the vacuum not the radiation it's the possibility that we'll find exactly what we're looking for I didn't understand what he meant then I do now Dr James Harrison our xenobiologist
was the youngest of our crew fresh out of mit's xenos Science Program still carrying that wide-faced enthusiasm of someone who hadn't yet learned that space mostly wants to kill you always tapping away at his tablet recording observations about the most mundane details of our Journey he had this peculiar habit of talking to his samples as if they were pets giving them names and backstories every living thing has a story he'd say when we teased him about it even if it's just a single- celled organism it's part of a billion-year narrative of survival and adaptation how
can you not be excited about that rounding out our crew was technical officer David Wong our engineer and Resident cynic a man who treated the ship's systems like temperamental children that needed constant attention and Stern lectures he'd been on three previous deep space missions and according to him each one was worse than the last Wong had a doctorate in mechanical engineering from Stanford but he preferred to be called the guy who keeps the lights on his quarters were filled with old paperback science fiction novels the pessimistic kind that predicted Humanity's Doom you know what the
problem with space exploration is he'd often say during our meal breaks pushing his food around his plate with m mathematical precision too many Romantics everyone wants to find aliens or ancient civilizations nobody wants to admit we're probably alone out here and maybe that's for the best if only he'd been right the journey to arabus 9 took 18 months most of it spent in cryo sleep I remember the dreams I had during that time strange fragmentary things that seem to leak between the edges of consciousness dreams of standing in vast empty spaces feeling watched by something
I couldn't see at the time I attributed it to the known side effects of long-term cryosleep now I wonder if something else was already reaching out to us across the vast distances of space The Descent to arabus 99's surface was textbook perfect though looking back I realized that should have been our first warning nothing in deep space exploration ever goes exactly according to plan the planet itself seemed underwhelming at first mostly Barren rock with patches of Hardy vegetation that looked like someone had taken Earth's desert plants and painted them in shades of Deep Purple the
atmosphere was breathable but thin giving everything a Perpetual Twilight feel under the red dwarf's dim light Harrison spent hours analyzing the atmospheric composition growing increasingly excited about the implications of finding earthlike conditions so far from home do you realize what this means he kept saying the chances of this happening naturally are astronomical someone engineered this planet Wong just rolled his eyes and continued running Diagnostics on our landing gear or maybe we just got lucky sometimes a cigar is just a cigar kid we set up our research Outpost about 2 km from where the signal originated
standard prefab units nothing fancy Harrison spent the first day collecting soil samples and practically bouncing off the walls with excitement over the alien microorganisms he found even Wong seemed impressed by the sophistication of the life forms we were discovering then Wong saw it first during his morning systems check I remember the exact moment 0743 local time the pale Red Sun was barely cresting The Horizon casting Long Shadows across the purple tinted landscape I was analyzing some atmospheric data when his voice crackled over the com unusually tight with tension hey Doc he called the usual sarcasm
in his voice replaced by something I'd never heard from him before fear come take a look at this either I'm hallucinating or there's something out there that definitely wasn't there yesterday I stepped out of the main module adjusting my environment suit against the thin cold air the Mist that perpetually shrouded the valley was thicker than usual that morning s in in patterns that seemed almost deliberate almost meaningful that should have been my first warning the way the fog moved Against the Wind as if being pulled towards something then I saw it I've spent 20 years
studying quantum mechanics trying to understand the fundamental nature of reality I've written papers on string theory multiple dimensions and the observer effect none of that prepared me for what I saw looming through that alien M the Colossus defied every natural law we knew it stood impossibly tall its head almost lost in the low clouds its surface a nightmare hybrid of stone and organic matter from certain angles it looked like weathered Granite ancient and unchanging but then you'd shift your perspective slightly and suddenly you'd see what looked like muscles Senus and vast networks of veinlike structures
pulsing beneath the stone surface the proportions were wrong in a way that hurt to look at its arms seemed too long then too short depending on how you measured them the head appeared to be facing away from us yet somehow I knew it was watching the whole thing existed in a state of visual contradiction a Quantum uncertainty made manifest on a massive scale Jesus Christ Wong whispered coming to stand beside me he' been running Diagnostics on the perimeter sensors when he first spotted it his tablet was still clutched in his shaking hands displaying readings that
made no sense massive energy spikes followed by absolute zeros gravitational anomalies that changed every time he took a new measurement Harrison emerged from his lab module his excitement over the morning's microorganism findings forgotten that's impossible he whispered his tablet slipping from nerveless fingers to clatter on the rocky ground we did multiple orbital surveys something that size would have shown up on our scans the gravitational impact alone it should have torn the planet apart I found myself moving forward drawn by a compulsion I couldn't explain the surface of the Colossus seemed to Ripple as I approached
like heat waves off hot pavement but the air was cold barely above freezing Dr Pierce Commander Val's voice crackled over the Comm stay where you are that's an order I stopped suddenly aware I'd walked almost 50 m toward the thing without realizing it Wong grabbed my arm pulling me back maybe it's some kind of projection he suggested but I could hear the doubt in his voice gone was his usual skepticism replaced by something approaching or a hologram or generated by what I asked gesturing at our sensor readings there's no power source no emission signature by
every measurable metric it shouldn't exist look at these Quantum fluctuation readings they're off the scale it's like the thing exists in multiple States simultaneously the Colossus stood there utterly still yet somehow flowing like liquid Stone the more I tried to focus on any specific detail the more it seemed to shift and change it was like trying to remember the details of a dream while still dreaming the moment you tried to pin down any particular aspect it would transform into something else Commander valis called an immediate team meeting in the main module I noticed his hands
trembling as he pulled up the orbital survey data on on the main screen though he tried to hide it by keeping them clasped behind his back 20 years of NASA training couldn't hide the fear in his eyes the module felt too small suddenly too fragile its walls of reinforced plasti seemed tissue paper thin Against The Impossible Mass looming outside the readings on Wong's tablet kept changing each new scan showing different results as if the Colossus was constantly rewriting its own physical properties all right people valis said pacing the length of our small common area his
footsteps echoed strangely as if the sound was coming from multiple directions at once let's approach this methodically Dr Pierce any theories about how we might have missed this during our initial survey I shook my head trying to organize my thoughts the equations and theories I'd Built My Career on seemed inadequate in the face of what we'd found none of that makes sense Commander the mass alone should have affected our gravitational readings unless unless what unless it wasn't there to be detected or unless it exists in a state of quantum superposition only collapsing into definite form
when observed I pulled up my own readings on the main screen look at these Quantum signatures they're unlike anything we've ever recorded it's as if the object exists in all possible State simultaneously only settling into our reality when we perceive it Wong snort Ed but the sound held more hysteria than humor great so now we're dealing with Quantum giant statues that pop in and out of existence should we ask it if it's friends with shredding as's cat he tried to laugh but it came out as more of a sob but something was already happening to
us though we didn't recognize it at first Small Things Harrison would stop mid-sentence looking confused then continue speaking about something entirely different Wong started having conversations with people who weren't there and I I began to remember things that hadn't happened yet I would find myself completing other crew members sentences before they spoke them only to have them insist they were about to say something completely different time became slippery unreliable we check the chronometers and find them displaying impossible readings dates from centuries ago alongside moments that hadn't happened yet the dream started 3 days after we
discovered the Colossus I found myself walking through endless corridors made of the same Stone flesh material as the statue hearing whispered conversations in languages I didn't understand but somehow knew the meaning of in one recurring sequence I stood before a vast control panel made of pulsing organic crystals while thousands of voices spoke in perfect Unison the dreamer must not wake the dreamer must not wake the dreamer must not wake during one of our morning briefings I noticed Commander valis writing in his log nothing unusual about that except he was writing with his left hand Ned
was right-handed had been all his life when I pointed this out he stared at his hand as if seeing it for the first time I I don't understand he said slowly I've always been left-handed haven't I Wong leaned forward his face pale Commander yesterday you told me you broke your left arm in high school and never regained full dexterity that's why you learned to do everything right-handed did I valice looked genuinely confused I don't I remember both things both memories feel real that's when Harrison disappeared one moment he was taking readings near the base of
the Colossus and the next nothing no warning no dramatic special effects just gone leaving his tablet lying in the purple dust the last entry in his notes read I can hear it thinking it's so beautiful so vast how did we ever think we were all that night we all had the same dream Harrison was there but not there his voice came from everywhere and nowhere speaking words that made perfect sense in the dream but turned to nonsense when we tried to remember them after waking the onlye phrase that stayed with me was it's not watching
us we're watching through it the dreams are real Wong insisted during breakfast more real than this haven't you noticed the food doesn't taste like anything anymore and look he held up his coffee mug the steam Rises but never dissipates it's like like we're in a memory of breakfast rather than actually eating it I watched the steam from his cup rising in perfect spirals that indeed never faded had it always done that I couldn't remember anymore when I tried to focus on my own memories of previous meals they seem to shift and change like trying to
hold water in cued hands Commander valis ordered us to maintain our distance from the Colossus but it didn't matter reality continued to fray around the edges time became unreliable I'd check my watch and find it showing three different times simultaneously Wong swore he could remember the future while valis seemed to be living the same hour over and over unaware that he was repeating himself I found valis in the communications module one morning sending the same message to mission control over and over each time he'd finish forget he'd sent it and start again the time stamp
on each transmission was impossible some dated centuries into the future others predating the invention of radio we have to tell them he kept saying have to warn them but the words the words keep changing after I send them he was right I watched the message text morph and shift on the screen English letters flowing into alien symbols and Back Again One version warned of impending doom another was a cheerful status report and a third seemed to be a love letter to someone none of us had ever met then came the day when Wong figured it
out or maybe he always knew and only now remembered that he knew time had come so Twisted that cause and effect no longer followed any logical order I found him in the engineering Bay surrounded by dismantled equipment tears streaming down his face it's not a statue he said his eyes wide with a terrible understanding it's a trap a lure think about it why would any civilization build something like this and then vanish they didn't vanish they're still here in there he pointed at the Colossus they uploaded the themselves into it and now it's doing the
same to us I looked down at my hands and noticed for the first time that my skin had taken on a grayish tint like Stone catching the light had it always been that color Commander valis was writing in his log again but now both his hands were moving keeping separate journals simultaneously when I looked over his shoulder I saw that one Journal was written in perfect mirror script look at this Wong said pulling up sensor data on his tablet these energy readings they're not coming from the Colossus they're coming from us our brains our Consciousness
it's it's feeding on us converting us converting us into what I asked though I already knew the answer into itself into memory into dream Wong's voice had taken on a strange Echo as if multiple versions of him were speaking slightly out of sync we're not exploring arabus 9 we're being digested by it the evidence was everywhere once we knew what to look for our supplies never seemed to run out yet we never received any resupply missions the Sun never moved in the sky yet we experienced what felt like days and nights and our Communications with
Earth when was the last time we'd actually received a response we have to wake up Wong insisted this isn't real none of this is real We're Dreaming all of us right now we never landed on arabus 9 we never left Earth We're he vanished mid-sentence just like Harrison but this time we could still hear him thinking his thoughts leaked into ours A Cascade of memories and fears and Revelations I saw his childhood in San Francisco his first kiss the day his father died the moment he decided to become an engineer all mixed with memories that
couldn't be his memories of alien worlds and ancient civilizations and the birth of stars the truth hit me like a physical blow the Colossus wasn't just alive it was ancient Beyond Comprehension a dreaming God that fed on Consciousness itself and it only woke when others dreamed of it it was a psychic parasite that had evolved Beyond physical form spreading itself across the Galaxy by infiltrating the dreams of other species how many civilizations had it absorbed this way how many explorers had stumbled upon it only to be drawn into its endless dream I could hear them
now their voices echoing in the spaces between thoughts countless beings from across the Galaxy all trapped in the same Eternal moment of Discovery and horror we found Harrison's research logs or what was left of them the last entries were fragmented corrupted but one passage stood out the microorganisms in the soil they're not native to this planet they're memories of life from other the worlds the entire ecosystem is a recreation a dream of Life assembled from the absorbed consciousness of countless civilizations even the atmosphere we're not breathing air we're breathing remembered air Commander valis was the
last to understand I watched as realization dawned in his eyes all three of them now though I couldn't remember when the third had appeared we never left Earth Earth he whispered his voice resonating with the voices of a thousand other commanders who had come to the same Revelation we're still there in our pods dreaming all of us always dreaming the mission the launch the long journey through space all of it was the Colossus Reaching Across light years to pull us into its dream before we even left Earth we were never meant to find it it
had already found us perhaps centuries ago when the first human looked up at the stars and dreamed of what might be out there I looked up at the Colossus one last time as my Consciousness began to fragment its head had turned impossible given its Stone nature yet I was certain it hadn't moved at all it had always been looking at us from the beginning of time to its end as reality finally dissolved completely I heard Harrison's voice one last time clearer than ever do you know the worst part somewhere out there in the real world
they're still sending ships to arabus 9 still picking up our signal still coming to rescue us and they're all still dreaming Wong's thoughts added now indistinguishable from the collective Consciousness we were becoming part of they always were Commander Val's voice echoed now just another thread in the tap tapestry of shared memory I try to wake up sometimes in the endless now that we inhabit we all do but that's the true horror of it all we're not asleep we're not dreaming we're just another memory in the mind of a dreaming God endlessly reliving the moment of
our own dissolution and somewhere in what we once called reality another ship is picking up our signal another crew is preparing for rescue another team is dreaming of the loss us and the cycle continues as it always has as it always will because that's the thing about dreams you never know you're in one until you wake up and we can never wake up because we were never really here at all I think I understand now what Commander valis meant about finding exactly what we were looking for in our quest to find intelligence Among the Stars
we never considered that it might find us first that it might have always been finding us drawing us forward through history with an irresistible call to explore to discover to dream and now in the infinite spaces between moments I sometimes wonder when Humanity first looked up at the stars and felt that inexplicable longing to reach them was that us or was it the Colossus dreaming through US calling us home
