CHAPTER 10 – THE VOID
Another YouTube video appeared on the screen.
This time, it was not Joseph.
It was his mother.
The video quality was slightly grainy, as if it had been recorded late at night. The room behind her looked ordinary—too ordinary. A plain wall, a dim lamp, shadows clinging to the corners like something alive. The camera trembled faintly, as though the device itself was unsure whether it should be witnessing this moment.
The woman took a slow breath before speaking.
"Hi… my name is Lucy. I'm Joseph's mother."
Her voice cracked almost immediately, but she forced herself to continue.
"All of you already know my son, Joseph. Ever since he was a child, there was only one question that lived inside his mind."
She paused, her eyes drifting away from the camera, as if she were searching for Joseph somewhere beyond the screen.
"What exists beyond our space? Beyond all universes? Beyond the darkness… beyond the void itself? If someone crossed everything—every star, every galaxy, every universe—what would they finally find?"
Her lips trembled.
"That question is the reason he left. That question is why he abandoned the Earth… why he left me."
Lucy lowered her head. For a moment, there was no sound except her breathing—uneven, broken. Then she began to cry.
"I know I'll never see Joseph again," she whispered. "I'll never be able to find him. Because I know… I know he can never come back alive."
She wiped her tears with trembling fingers.
"And even if he somehow did return… by then, countless years would have passed on Earth. So many years that you, me—none of us would still be alive."
Her eyes met the camera again, filled with a quiet, unbearable pain.
"The truth is, Joseph… the thing you went searching for—it already exists on Earth."
She forced a faint smile, the kind that hurts more than crying.
"Take care of yourself, my son."
The screen went black.
The silence lingered longer than it should have.
Then the image shifted.
Joseph's spaceship drifted through the endless dark, a solitary speck moving against a backdrop that no longer resembled normal space. Stars were scarce here. Light itself felt thin, stretched, exhausted.
Joseph had been able to travel such unimaginable distances in such a short span of time for only one reason.
Wormholes.
By folding spacetime itself, Joseph's ship carved tunnels through reality—bridges between points that should never have been connected. What would normally take billions of years could now be crossed in moments. Space ceased to be a barrier. Distance became a suggestion.
But distance, no matter how cleverly bypassed, demanded energy.
An impossible amount of it.
So how had Joseph managed to travel this far?
The answer lay deep within the ship's core.
The Zero-Point Singularity Core (ZPSC).
A machine born from humanity's greatest suffering and ambition.
The ZPSC drew energy not from fuel, not from matter, but from the vacuum of space itself—from the zero-point fluctuations that existed even in absolute nothingness. Where there was emptiness, it found power. Where there was darkness, it fed.
In deep space, it was unparalleled. Infinite. Terrifyingly efficient.
To invent such technology, humanity had paid an unspeakable price—countless lives lost, ethics shattered, civilizations broken in the pursuit of knowledge that should never have been touched.
Joseph was lucky.
Or cursed.
He had access to this forbidden technology. And with it, he had gone deeper into space than any human ever had.
Far deeper than anyone was meant to go.
Eventually, Joseph returned to his cryosleep chamber.
But this time, something was different.
Fear clung to him like a second skin.
As he stood before the chamber, staring at its glass coffin-like structure, a thought crept into his mind—quiet, poisonous.
What if I stay awake for the entire journey?
The idea terrified him.
If he remained conscious, the relativistic effects would age his body. Years—decades—would carve themselves into his flesh while Earth moved on without him. His body would wither before his mission was complete.
"No," he muttered to himself. "Don't think like that."
He forced the thoughts away, calling them madness.
Cryosleep was the only option.
And yet… he knew the truth.
Every time he entered cryosleep, he lost himself.
Nightmares awaited him there. Endless, suffocating nightmares that felt more real than reality itself.
Still, he stepped inside.
Joseph lay down in the chamber. The glass slid shut above him. He closed his eyes.
Darkness swallowed him whole.
Five years earlier…
Joseph sat alone on the balcony of his college dormitory.
The evening air was heavy, thick with the smell of rain-soaked concrete. His phone buzzed in his hand.
A message.
No—news.
Joseph's best friend, Frenchi, had committed suicide.
The words barely made sense.
Joseph bolted to his feet and ran.
By the time he reached Frenchi's room, a crowd had already gathered. Students stood shoulder to shoulder, whispering, staring, pretending not to stare. Faculty members hovered nearby, their faces tight with discomfort.
Inside the room lay Frenchi's body.
Motionless. Helpless.
Empty.
Drugs were scattered across the table—pills, bottles, crushed powder. Some had spilled onto the bed. Others lay on the floor like fallen petals.
Joseph collapsed to his knees.
His legs refused to hold him.
Everyone said the same thing.
Frenchi was cheerful. Always smiling. Always motivating others. The kind of person everyone loved.
So why?
Why would someone like that choose to die?
Joseph's world began to rot from the inside.
He spiraled into depression, drowning in guilt. Frenchi's death clung to him, suffocating him with endless questions.
*What if I had been there that night?*
*What if I could have stopped him?*
*What if he'd still be alive?*
But what had really happened that night?
Rain had been pouring relentlessly. The wind howled through the campus. Students retreated into their rooms, shutting themselves away from the storm.
Then Frenchi had messaged him.
**Frenchi:** *"Joseph, where are you?"*
**Joseph:** *"In my room."*
**Frenchi:** *"Can you come to my room for a bit? Please?"*
**Joseph:** *"Why? Is something wrong?"*
**Frenchi:** *"It would be good if you came. I need you."*
**Joseph:** *"Dude, it's raining like crazy outside. I don't even have an umbrella. It'll take me at least five minutes to reach your room—I'll be soaked."*
**Frenchi:** *"Please, dude."*
**Joseph:** *"Tell me what you need first. You've dragged me to your room like this so many times for nothing."*
And then…
Frenchi went offline.
**Joseph:** *"Hey? Where did you go?"*
*"Hello?"*
No reply.
No read receipt.
Joseph sighed.
"Probably his Wi-Fi died," he muttered. "I'll check on him tomorrow."
He ignored it.
It was the biggest mistake of his life.
---
Joseph isolated himself.
He locked himself inside his room, trapped between four walls. He stopped talking to people. He stopped eating properly. Days blurred into nights.
He swallowed sleeping pills—seven, eight at a time—just to escape consciousness.
People knocked on his door all day. Classmates. Friends. Voices calling him to eat, to talk, to live.
Joseph never answered.
For nearly eight hours, he lay on his bed like a corpse, his body limp from the drugs.
Even in sleep, guilt consumed him.
He blamed himself for Frenchi's death.
In a fit of rage and despair, he swept all the books and notebooks from his table, sending them crashing to the floor.
Then he looked at himself in the mirror.
"I'm the murderer," he whispered.
"I killed Frenchi. I murdered someone who was like my own brother."
His reflection stared back at him, hollow and broken.
"Disgusting," he spat. "Joseph, how could you be this careless? Why? Why? Why?"
He broke down.
The pain became unbearable.
So he decided to end it.
Just like Frenchi.
Joseph grabbed a knife. His hands shook as he raised it, aiming for his own head.
And then—
His phone buzzed.
A notification.
Joseph froze.
He unlocked the screen.
A message from **Frenchi**.
> *"Hi Joseph. How are you? I'm sorry my death caused you so much pain."*
Joseph couldn't breathe.
His mind shut down.
"Fre… Frenchi?"
> *"Yes, dude."*
"How are you messaging me?"
"Aren't you dead?"
> *"It's magic."*
"What the hell do you mean by magic? How are you talking to me?"
No reply.
"Why aren't you answering?"
"And why did you commit suicide?"
> *"I didn't kill myself, bro. I was murdered."*
"Murdered?"
> *"You'll die soon too, dude."*
> *"You'll die too."*
> *"You'll die too."*
> *"You'll die too—"*
The message repeated endlessly.
Then the phone went dead.
Joseph stood there, shaking.
He tried to convince himself it was a hallucination. The drugs. Sleep deprivation. Lack of oxygen in his sealed room.
He opened the door.
Outside, every single person on campus stood frozen—like statues.
Not a single blink.
Not a single breath.
Together, they spoke:
> "You will die too, Joseph."
Joseph screamed—
And woke up.
---
He was back in his spaceship.
The cryosleep chamber hissed open.
"Another nightmare…" he whispered. "What does it even mean?"
He sat up slowly, his heart pounding.
*Maybe I haven't traveled that far yet*, he thought.
He checked the navigation device.
And went completely silent.
**Distance traveled: 10¹⁵⁴ light-years.**
Joseph stared out the glass.
Ahead of him lay nothing.
No stars.
No light.
Only the endless, suffocating darkness of the **VOID**.
Had he reached the final boundary?
To be continued...