In the early decades of the 22nd century, spurred by some spectacularly disastrous weather events during the mid 21st century the general fright broke of the final barrier that Climate Regeneration was a world-wide necessity, and most attention was thus directed. In consequence sciences such as those in the Cosmological area were gently eased in quiet corners, left to a few to keep things ‘ticking over’ as it were. Space exploration being mostly restricted to the Solar System, and then even to the locality of Earth, Moon, Mars region. Those who scan the far stars were few in number, an indulged but generally overlooked group.

Cardon was one. The natural fascination with starry nights had been the start and with a quiet persistence he had followed that into study. Whenever asked by friends and relatives, he being an affable soft spoken fellow would say something conversationally along the lines of  ‘Someday folk will look starwards again, and glad the information was kept fresh,’, and the listeners would smile, then swiftly turn to other topics. Cardon would smile at them, be affable, while thinking on the next quiet step in his own journey for knowledge.

There were very few astronomical observatories left, many from any earlier age converted to issues relating to the weather and of the small number still looking outwards, the majority dealt with the respectable issues of assisting in colonisation research or stellar Impact Events. There were, to his knowledge but ten in the world whose attention was on the further cosmos, funded by billionaires who shared the interest. Folk who had enough wealth to inure themselves from public opinion and official unhappiness and commentary on ‘wasted’ resources.

He sat musing over the latest tranche of computer images transmitted from the Reflecting Telescope. It was quite the challenge to decide on where to study, in this he and his colleagues were glad of the archive material from the previous century, with which you could try and fill in gaps, or review.  Currently he was revisiting that most fascinating shape The Horsehead Nebulae part of the Orion molecular cloud complex, a dusty birthplace of stars, and thus a signpost for the study of the massive forces at work to bring about such events. He had been working for some time to seek out the more detailed physical evidence. He knew the shortcomings, the comparative time scales between stellar conception to birth and a person’s life span were so vast in difference no one person could hope to witness the evolution of one sample but in detailed study they could see different subjects at different stages. He would comfort himself with the additional idea that there would be ample evidence there to study the nature of molecular cloud complexes. One of many pathways of study which had been discarded and the progress choked off.  

With this in mind he had chosen to look at magnified images the better to seek out detail in the physical. He had had to discard, though, for it seemed the magnification process had led to an excess of blurring, particularly from the centre to the right of what could be called the neck of the ‘horse’s head’. On reflection this seemed to illustrate just how much skill and even artistry had been forgotten over the past seventy years. Accepting that Finding Ways Which Don’t Work is all part of the process Cardon settled on examining smaller sized conventional images, using computer programmes to analyse what would be the components.

He chose for the first place, the lighter shades to the right of the nebulae on the basis that the variety might give a better ground for comparison and thus insight.

Maybe the train of thought started with musing on the very term ‘Horsehead Nebulae’. There could be no argument the feature did resemble a horse’s head, neck and if you looked to the greyish area to the top, a mane. Some old terms for certain cosmological features he thought a bit of a stretch, but ‘Horsehead’. So obvious. One example of the classic Pareidolia phenomenon, the mind ever inventive in translating.   And maybe because his  was opened up to looking with that perspective, when studying the right side feature, he gradually discerned an image all of its own. There a complex of colouration standing out from the predominant dark. Slender, a form which leant itself to the outline of the upper part of a body. Struck with a type of clarity, his attention and then perception grew. Half way up the neck, an outline which could be discerned as a face made all the more believable by the shaded images of wide shapes which could be two eyes, below these a mouth; three distorted into the suggestion of alarm or anguish.

He paused, struck by the plausibility of the translation. Whereas pareidolia had been an ancient circumstance, you had to be very careful in these days. Governments and societies were united in the suspicion of anyone trying to divert attention from the great scheme of repairing the environment, things could go very hard on anyone engaged in anything other than the practical. To even in a light vein casually mentioning any abnormal interpretation of anything was considered at best ‘bad taste’. And Pity help anyone found even just dabbling in the now forbidden Astrology. He would cast the idea aside and turn his attention back to the scientific and the dark constituents of the cloud. Just one more glance, only out of curiosity.

The face was clearer. He could now see either some sort of hair style or headgear, even forelimbs, out pressing against an undefinable barrier. Quite clearly he could make out the image of a trapped individual, held in the darkness. His mind raced through the implications, the rationalisation of what this image would mean. A being so vast you would measure their span in nearly a light year trapped in a prison of some three and one-half light years. The concept of the forces at work, the unfathomable potential tale of how this event had come to pass. All had come rushing in on him as if he had opened a door in his mind to a raging storm of possibilities, the equivalent of one of those tornados which now plagued vast areas with their rapid and violent arrival.

Hands in his face he sat down heavily on the floor propped against a wall, telling himself this could not be reality. You simply could not have a being so large imprisoned. And how, by other beings or trapped by some vast celestial version of a swamp? These thoughts were beyond the rational. Yet as fast as he told himself, there was the unarguable  proposition that in a Fourteen Billion year old, Ninety-Three billion light year wide Universe, something that covered but three and one-half light years was a speck. What was one light year’s size set against Ninety-Three Billion, ever expanding, and only the observable. Another wave of thoughts battered against his reasoning, the distance was one thousand, three hundred and seventy-five light years. Was that torment still going on now? And for how long?

Safe from the image reasoning enveloped him. He told himself this reaction was ridiculous. He worked upon perspectives and circumstances. He had, he said, been working too hard, with a defensive frame of mind, a constant struggle not to raise suspicions that this work did not matter when set against the battle to save the world. Somewhere in jungle of the stresses of work and maintenance of normality a toxic mix of imagination and fevered intention to believe his work had a true important purpose he had stepped over to a place where the frenetic ran loose. What he had seen was not so. Simply an incidence of Pareidolia, and the imagination.

In an attempt at composure he tided up his work and made to put it all neatly away for the morrow, when in the freshness of day, and the small but convivial company of the trio of colleagues he would seek out another approach. Importantly put away the images of the Horsehead Nebulae, file them as archival material, seek out some stellar image upon which you could not impose an artificial imagery. This done, he repaired to another room, fixed himself a herbal brew and listened to selection of soft and calming music, waiting for sleep to creep upon him. Any attempt to deliberately seek slumber he had to accept would be useless, for the memory of the image even with his efforts to return to easier circumstances, was still there, a constant unsettling replay, feeding the urge to consider the probabilities of his being a witness to vast and fearsome events.

Removed from the atmosphere of work, endeavouring to marshal music and a soothing brew into a combination to cultivate calm he opted not to deny the experience by challenging it with common sense. Here he could tell himself that surely he was not the first person in the history of Humanity’s observations of the stellar landscapes to have seen such a sight. There had been the whole discipline of Astrology, a few thousand years old and only recently discouraged, the basis of which was enriched by seeing pattens of stars, from there had started out the evolution of scientific study. Therefore other folk must have seen the same or similar image in the Horsehead. Yet no recorded commentary.  

If only there he could have broken the yoke of Restless Enquiry, settled on a brief humorous sniff of dismissal, and a resolve to take a serious reflection on his approach to the study, even a dalliance with changing career and putting his education and experience to other tracks. Yet the suddeness of the event would not be stilled. Suppose others had actually seen the same? Suppose they had managed to make that step of dismissal and continue on their way. Suppose though they had mentioned it to others? And suppose ridicule had set in, their reputations, their work ruined. Suppose to suit the purposes of rivals the casual comment had to used to suggest insanity and the proponent’s official removal? Suppose, just suppose, the information had a history of being suppressed on the ground that the claimants had made too good a case, and such words should be consigned to somewhere to be lost and then forgotten, the fate of the claimants wrapped in the fog of of distraction of other events? The latter was a chilling but equally believable scenario; for when the population became aware of this possibility, who could predict what types of disruptions could arise in that most fragile of Human concepts, Society? Aware his hand of trembling and the surface of the brew quivering under the attentions of his own personal storm, he with great effort made to steer into the more stern and essential disciplined world of the Scientific. There he chided himself for not seeking this refuge in the first place. For was it not obvious to the trained and focused mind that this was mere Human distortion of a simple manifestation of gas and dust into a recognisable pattern, all down to wayward imagination? Imagination and the urge for part of the mind to seek to impose a façade of recognisable reality. Nothing more. Nothing more.

He dozed. In the morning he joshed with his colleagues about being side-tracked in looking at far too many images because there were so many to look at. It was safe ground, they had all fallen to that temptation. Nothing more came of it. The work was not the same though, and after a respectable passage of time, he took up the offer of working on the Lunar Transportation hub timetable calculation. There was comfort in such Civic Work and it was valued. Respectable.  

Twenty million light years from the Horsehead Nebulae, essential observations continued on the site and its imagery. The reasoning remote from Human comprehension. 

Neither this, nor Humanity’s activity to save itself had any influence on the dynamics of The Universe.