A Voyage of A Million Lightyears

If you are given a spot in Earth’s first intergalactic expedition to travel towards a still undiscovered planet beyond the Milky Way, an expedition that would last more than a lifetime in space, where your only companion is a bunch of crews and an intelligent A.I., aboard a faster-than-light spaceship, would you take it?

…

If a man tells you to get inside a dark enclosure with a promise that you will reach heaven will you get in?

It depends on who the man is. He may just be a killer. Or he could be a NASA official drafting you into their intergalactic space travel towards the heavens.

…

The boy travels inside a bubble. The bubble travels faster than light. The boy left the earth on a Sunday morning just after breakfast. Destination: towards God’s seat in the heaven in the Pleiades star cluster.

The bubble reached the first star of the cluster just before lunchtime. For lunch, the boy ate an apple, two pieces of bread and drank a glass of milk.

The bubble was pulled in the clusters local gravity well after passing Maia. The boy went down on his feet and knelt “for he has seen the throne of God” and lived.

God’s throne appears just like any other star but the boy knows that it is the throne. It looks brighter and more immaculate.

…

The man will do anything if it means going away from here. He boards inside the spaceship and doesn’t even bother to look back and wave farewell. He is very excited of the prospect of going into a wholly different environment. He doesn’t really hate it here, he just feel like he does not belong here, that there is another place somewhere where the likes of him can live peacefully to their hearts’ content. He is holding on to that thought.

…

Up there in space, the boy looks down on earth. Up there in space there is infinite silence, with only an occasional hum of engine or clatter of metal to interrupt it. Up there in space, the boy has unobstructed view of stars, comets and all heavenly bodies he only dreamt of seeing.

The boy looks down on earth, a pale blue dot on a large black canvass. The boy exclaims, ‘Wow!’. No one hears. The boy saw a painting of a thousand stars, an artwork of nebulaes, a masterpiece of celestial proportions. The boy sheds a tear in awe and admiration. The boy looks down on earth. He sheds a tear.