They told me I had to Watch and there would be something of a Wait, which at the time seemed no great burden, after all this is my role, my speciality if you like. We who walk and work on the edges of the conventional and tangible portion of Creation have many differing roles. I met a colleague who would turn up in persons lives and navigate them through for reasons he admitted were obscure. I came across him sitting on a edge into Nowhere. He said he liked to return because ‘There was It Was Where It Started’. We chatted and we had both met the fellow who wandered from one abandoned world to another. In my presented situation it might have been profitable to have met up with again that second fellow. Unlikely though, when you multiply the age and diameters of the Universe and there are so few of us, about our various ephemeral tasks, even They are not sure why We do what We do. But We Do.

I was to journey to a vessel which was of some size even noteworthy in this Universe of countless wonders. Whereas the dimensions were exceptional by the standards of artificial constructs what had drawn particular attention was it perpetual stationary place in one of the cosmological voids, those places,   which can be measured in sometimes hundreds of millions of light years wherein Nothing is the most common state and yet this vehicle was attracting the attention of Observational Machinery, a speck of comparable quark-like status, shone in the central enormity of a Void.

When We travel, We move in a manner which acknowledges the Twenty Dimension structure and thus Distance, Time and Velocity all have different meanings to the conventional and even the more numerous innovative mechanical means. We find a place suitable to the various tydes and waves of the Universe and there we wait to be carried along by its vast and unfailing natures. At this juncture We are in effect motionless of will being carried along. We wait to arrive and thence depart or fall out, opinion is divided. The mastering of the disciplines take several centuries for want of a better measurement of a Time.  Although Time itself for Us is not the same as it may be for those who dwell in the Conventional. We are gifted or burdened with the ability to alter our perception. We can turn in our frame of existence what you might count as a thousand years into one count of Sixty in the going forwards. Then choose place far from Activity of Civilisations and reset. In effect not moving through the Time you will experience. We can therefore, in the vast Scheme of The Cosmos appear Motionless. Aging is not our concern. Although Immortality, I have been told is not ours either. At some stage, We fade apart, with barely a whisper.

Thus I arrived in No Time or Space at the deemed location  and from what  would be crudely termed ten light years out looked upon the vessel. One should always exercise caution when approaching an unknown in a singularly uncommonly visited place.

Since there appeared no particular threat I drew in closer for my observational estimation of its nature. There came up the first paradox. The vessel was remaining stationary at its location, which was singular since even in The Voids there are subtle movements of particles and the faintest waves of cosmological events thus an object stationary should be subject to those influences displaying signs of moving by either, to use vulgar simplifications pushing or pulling. In what you might call the Hundred Years I watched it did not move in any discernible direction, which suggested some machinery was holding it in place; whether by design or by the simple process of constant repetition in the absence of instructions remained to be seen. Movement to remain motionless. Not unusual in craft travelling in at least the three dimensions. However in this location the cause needed to be discerned.  I moved to investigate, intending to take what might be ten years, employing the caution and also a long enough time to gauge any movement.

As the distance narrowed naturally the craft’s dimensions appeared greater. Vast by the standards of most conventional measurements. Craft which travel the stellar distances usually are for they must account for all manner of encounters; this one, built on a familiar long and slender lines was nonetheless beyond anything of my experiences. At touching distances the ends were beyond sight, the height comparable to a mountain of more modest height. Yet, still, no sense of locomotion. To hold statis must I thought require great effort, small wonder the craft was making its presence known.

Entrance into any artificially constructed is possible: the navigating through damage of a wreck, the patient persuading of an airlock to open from the outside, the rather avoidable journeying along places through which waste is ejected or the rare but esoteric interfacing with some aspect of the vessel. Since this object of curiosity seemed to have been deliberately manufactured on an enigmatic basis  I was obliged to spend what might have been five years convincing one airlock to let me have access, a tactic which required being physically motionless while seeking out through thought and emotion the means to touch the internal dynamics of the access area; an act I might add which took three years, something a tribute to the smoothness and uniformity of the surface.  Yet entry was a success.

Inside all stillness, along corridors whose length required days of steady travel, at various junctures were rooms which could have held towns and empty were empty, some were repositories of stored equipment, in others there were the faint sounds of activity whose nature would take study. There were places judging by the furniture and absence of industry were probably assigned to rest, leisure or maybe reflection. As my internal cycle suggested what could be described a half of a year an clue as to purpose or history of the craft still eluded me. Itself not an unusual circumstances for the unanswered and likely unknowable questions within this Universe are myriad, although normally  there is a start and a point where the enquiries go so far. With this it was difficult to know just what approach to take. Whereas my orders were to wait and watch there was a sub-text of expecting me to have some sort of working notion as to the nature of this, in universal terms, very small speck being so noticeable, in pristine condition too.

I deemed my first task to garner information on the constructors of this vessel, suspecting there would be no physical evidence of remains, for Enigma seemed to be their calling. Over the next year by examination of the interior for they had left no organic evidence, it could be deduced they were bipedal, possibly slender, with two forelimbs and a neck upon which was a head, the absence of decoration suggested a level of austerity and focus upon their mission. How many were the crew was another matter of speculation, the evidence of machinery and means of internal communication indicated a relatively small crew could have managed the craft from central positions, of these I identified a likely ten. It would be another matter of conjecture as to whether the size of the craft made complete automation inoperable or they did not have a trust of machines with whatever the task might have been.

Five years I dedicated to the possibility this may have been a craft whose sole purpose was the movement of a large population from one location to another, and once this had been reached had been set on a journey unto the void. That could have been to leave no trace of where the population had arrived or maybe for some cultural reason. Both were possible, that clean absence of any life suggested they would have intended to leave no clues.

At the end of that period I became aware of a weariness settling over me. Exploration no matter how arduous and demanding would eventually give some outlines of cause and effect. I had none. A vast craft, in place which should indicate only error and abandonment or deliberate cloaking, and yet nothing indicated. Thus I finally repaired to a familiar place, one of the large room, designed in a semi curve, replete with active machinery and on one wall a panorama of one portion of the void, with the smears of far off clusters of galaxies. Seated I resorted to measuring the count of fifty to mark the passing of one thousand of the average passages of seasons and cycles around a star, anything faster and I might miss the fleeting spark of some clue. For ten thousand I sat and stared, listened, the Universe did not reveal much. After all what is ten million years against such a backdrop of Creation? The craft still operated, holding fast in the Void, leading to another question. What design could stand the demands of that passage of time, which also begged the next question. At what stage in its existence had I arrived.

Normally the interaction of the perceived passage of times with those of the actually times, if extended to this level can be dangerous, there is only so much stress between physical passages and the perceived ones We are taught to meld about us. I may have gone beyond the advisory limit. But I had become so weary, all which I could do was to sit and watch, the tasks of explorations yielding very little had pressed heavy on my senses and intellect. For here I was faced with an Absence of any motion of learning, realisation.

And here I am.

Still.

Wrapped in a previously unknown temporal dimension.

In a place which keeps all of its secrets still hidden.

A discoverer of a Motionless in form

Wondering if this had absorbed a lost, stranded crew into its statis.

And all I can do is Watch and Wait.

Which was my mission.