This isn't the fate of an intelligent being.
I squint through a haze of murky gases into the outer universe. Within here, nothing can be seen as it truly is. I have to deduce, conject, and infer what is real. I must rely on my memory of moments past on the outside, without that I'd have no true idea of reality - or how to fake that I do. Put all these pieces together and I can paint a semblance of the truth. I pray every day no one calls my bluff. "Tell us what your true experience." That I cannot do.
No one can know I was stupid enough to enter a nebula, of course. On the comm-link I must pretend I'm still outside engaging in interdimensional travel like any normal being of the universe. I rehearse lines of normality, speaking with a feigned interest, the weight of the façade tearing me down as the clock runs out and I must hastily disengage. Funny thing is, I feel a sense of relief on the other end too, as if they are lying as well. Are they also stuck in a nebula? Can't be! Only I am that stupid.
At some point I will have fallen too far behind. The nature of responsibility is the nature of the universe. If I do not progress I will be exposed for not experiencing what everyone has as they advance. My soul grows stale in these shapeshifting clouds of the nether world. With its nebulous nature I can lay an object down only to find it drifted to another place later on. This is very trying and taxing and vexing on the mind as I must constantly search and search for even the simplest of things. I fear the life before me.
And so I despair. How pointless my life beats. To even breathe is a charade. In here, the end has already happened.
These reasons and more are why no one but a madman - or a coward - enters a nebula to escape the light. Sooner or later you crack from too many days of futureless passed. I hear it all the time in the cross chatter of we fools. I can detect an excited certainty in their voice of having found an "answer" to escape reality. They've limited the incoming comm-link so as to hear no voice of dissent, to keep their voice of inner moral authority pristine. I may not be alone in my idiocy but I'm alone nonetheless.
Oh, how weary webbed the mind as the heart freezes in the bottomless cold of space. Tears ice into sharp pointed crystals that never melt. Once born they never disappear. How can I see hope in living with that? Why would I expect life to get better when I have to dodge more and more of these slicing objects dancing around me? Even a second's relaxation can be dangerous. If I don't like it - if I cry even more - it only makes it worse. But without tears one gets brittle and snaps into space dust. Then I'd forever be part of the nebula - which is how nebulas exist.
I need to escape but at this point I'd be cycled through a prison planet as my only portal to eventual freedom. I just can't face a place of marching armies and useless, empty chores and fanatical worship of death. I understand I've put myself in this position but what a nightmare those places are! I'd be back among the savage ignorant all over again and be brutally killed the second I to commit to love. Running from love is what got me to hide in this damn nebula so I understand having to prove myself. Still...it sucks more than I can face right now.
"Oh, to be among the stars again..."
What price an honest word to slip out? Like a short-circuiting android I catch myself repeating phrases in my wooden charade that once had life in them. I feel clever in my deception but I only dig my hole deeper. I heard people on the comm-link talking about "integrity". I wondered if I had integrity but then I realized what matters integrity hidden in a nebula?? What does matter is who I'd be back among the stars. I used to think I knew. Not now. I can only know when I'm there.
Angry is the empty gaze,
Star-lifes twinkle through the haze.
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