Starless Child

1. Starless Child

There is no end to the great void.

There is no beginning.

Through it's silence the void speaks to us.

And gives infinity to our seemingly finite lives.

Someone was violently shaking his shoulders. "Rin! Rin wake up." If she keeps up the jerking, it won't be long before his shoulder gets dislocated.

"If Trey finds you sleeping on duty again you'll get fired this time for sure," Ira said as she pulled Rin's head up from his desk and forced him to sit up straight.

"Who said I was sleeping?," Rin said, his eyelids refused to open. A heavy yawn escaped his mouth and he folded his hands on the table. His head ducked into the his arms as he got ready to take another nap.

The beeping sound caused them both to look up at the screens in front of them. The light from the countless screens floating in space was the only light that illuminated the dark room. Rin groaned and rubbed his eyes. Forcing his heavy eyelids open, he typed in the code. His finger ran smoothly over the transparent keypad, barely touching the keys as he analyzed the data. 

"What is it? A corpse?," Ira asked.

"No a human. We have a blue eyed one here. Probably male. His nebula is starting to form some where in Andromeda," he said. He ran a hand through his dark hair, pushing away the strands above his eyes.

He touched three screens and enlarged them in front of him for Ira to see. The first one showed the image of a blue planet in a small solar system in the milky way. Such a small planet orbiting such an small, ordinary star. Yet so breathtakingly beautiful. It was one of his favorite planets in the void.

The rich blue color, specks of shaded green is enough to take anyone's breath away. The swirling flashes of white hovering above it as if they have been drawn over it's surface by the delicate hands of an artist made the world easily distinguishable out of the never ending sea of planets.

The second image was of Andromeda. The galaxy stood within the dark void with it's arms stretched, illuminating a small portion of it.

The third was of a newly forming nebula in the arm of the galaxy. It was still shapeless and could easily be mistaken as a random swirl of colors. The dust and gas were only beginning to collide.

"I don't understand how you can fall asleep on your job. I could watch this all day," Ira said. The dark lighting of the room made the flashes of lavender in the midst of her honey blonde hair seem nearly blue.

His lips curved into a smile. "When I first got the job, I thought so too. But it gets a little boring after all these years."

"You never understand the gravity of what's in front of you, do you? Those data have become merely numbers to you. But every time that machine beeps somewhere in the universe a child is born and it gets it's own star. And with it the power to decide what the star will become and how it will end. Yet most of them don't even know of the power they hold," her baby blue eyes stared at the giant balls of gas, the twinkle in them brighter than that of all the stars combined.

Suddenly a slight blush crept up to her cheeks. Even in the dark Rin could see the pop of pink on her pale skin. "Okay maybe that was a bit dramatic. But I just think it's incredible."

He wished he could see the her fascination with the system. But she was right. To him those numbers were merely numbers. But the twinkle in Ira's eyes still made him smile.

Every time when somewhere in the void a child is born, no matter what species it is, it's nebula begins to form somewhere. Maybe near the center of an old galaxy, maybe as an isolated rouge star that didn't quite fit in in any one of the star families. Or maybe somewhere beyond the boundary of the universe they know, in a cold, mysterious place from where light still hasn't reached their world yet.