and the stars look very different today | stark/strange psl

[industries]

prologue

On March 4th, 2024, a user named Astronautala04 makes a post on Instagram.

"this is CRAZY shit," the caption reads. "spent 3 months taking NASA's raw data on the distribution of galaxy superclusters thru the known universe. applied a grid, assigned x and y values to an audio scale for shits and giggles. listen."

Anyone clicking on the corresponding video sees a white bar slowly cross over a 3D image, overlaid with clouds of green-and-pink pixels. It starts to play noise -- warbled, distorted. At first blush, there's nothing there.

But then the bar crosses over more points in the cloud. Synthesized guitar hits start to play, and it soon becomes clear -- it's AC/DC's "Back in Black."

The video only gets a few thousand views its first week, until the lead singer for the indy band Jill & the Starstrucks retweets it. Then it racks up hits -- hundreds of thousands, then millions, as it migrates from Twitter to BuzzFeed to the mainstream news. It's the first thing in months to rank above hashtags #my5years and #iwasdust.

"Tell us, Cindy," a daytime CNN host talk-laughs, as he turns exactly ninety degrees away from the camera. "This has whipped up quite a frenzy, but -- can it be possible?"

Cindy Justison, paid astronomy expert, shakes her head. "There's no 'up' or 'down' in the universe, Tom. And what's represented in this model is just the sliver we can see, here from Earth. This guy probably messed with settings and perspectives before he got something that happened to be suggestive of a song. Hate to be a--"

"Kind of a downer!"

She laughs. "I'm just giving you the science. Sorry, Tom."

Astronautla04 gains a few thousand followers. There are a couple human interest stories of how he's a college kid, and now has an invitation to work at the big telescopes in Maui. Interest dies down.

A couple months later, a user named PetersonFam423 comments to the original post.

"My daughter showed me this. So cool!!!" it reads. "God is real, and he loves AC/DC."

Comments

[industries]

i.

He's early, so he waits.

He could leave, he knows, and come back later, except he might be too late when he does. He'd have to go back earlier and try again, and he doesn't want to, has done it too many times before. Besides, this is the nearest he's gotten. Not the place -- he always gets the place right, always knows, but finding the right time is harder. He's been impatient before, when he arrived as the planet was cooling. He won't make the same mistake again. He's just a little early this time. He can wait.

A gust of wind ripples across the fields of grass around him. He raises part of himself into the air and forms flesh, tastes cold air as it brushes against him. He's done this on other worlds, but... he pauses as he dips a piece of himself into ocean winds on a planet far from here. No, it's not the same. It's never the same.

The girl is about to cross the hill and see him. He always knew this, but didn't remember until just now, so he turns his faces just in time for her to come up the dirt road, lantern in hand. She stops in her tracks, though she isn't scared. The ones who can see him are never scared.

"Are you a ghost?" she asks. He doesn't understand her language, like so many others, but he doesn't need to.

"No," he says, though "says" isn't right. He thinks it strong enough so she hears it.

"Oh." She looks across the edge of his presence, condensed and compacted as much as he's able, toward the wooden structures some hundred yards away, then back up the road she came from. "Are you lost?"

"I'm waiting for someone. He'll be here soon." Pairs of eyes glance down at the satchel of furs under her arm, wrapped up with fraying rope. "You should get home to your mother. She's worried."

She frowns. "How do you know?"

"Because it's all she's done since your father got sick." The girl is brave, he thinks, and stubborn. She reminds him of someone. His heart aches, at the center of a star.

"Okay." She turns to leave. "Will I see you again?"

"Yes," he says,. "You'll see me on the days before thunder rolls in." He pauses, then adds. "It'll be... nice to have someone to talk to."

She nods. "All right."

Her father dies, one week later, and her mother three years after that. She stays true to her word, comes and visits when clouds are grey in the sky, on the way to her traps in the woods. Half her hair is grey the last time he sees her, before she goes hunting one winter morning and never comes back.

The temptation is great, then, to go back and talk to her some more, but he knows people are waiting for him. So he stays there, and doesn't answer when other people call, knows he's not so old that it won't hurt when they, too, leave. The fields turn to dirt. The dirt turns to roads. Trees disappear to build houses; houses disappear to make way for brick. The sun rises, and falls, and the shadows over him grow higher, until they reach far into the clouds.

He starts to see faces that he knows, from back then. A scrawny kid pauses when he passes him by on the sidewalk one day, but then shakes his head and keeps going.

He gets impatient and makes the mistake of checking on the man he's waiting for, too early, and frustrates himself. He was already in the right place. He just needs to wait. Just a little longer.

Towers crumble, once, and then again years later. A gaping hole opens through the sky. He'd close it, except he already did.

More memories play out in front of him, and that's how he knows he's almost there, and he shakes and trembles and sends asteroids across the edges of atmospheres. He holds on to what he sees, to the raw awful clarity of the man exiting the building in front of him, on the path that will lead him to the stars, to the brink, and then back here again, to this very spot, to this state. He braces himself to be cleaved in half and suffers through it -- the last part is the worst, he knew it'd be.

And then he's whole. And then he's born. And now he's here.