Surrounding each of them was a small,  opaque chamber filled with clear,  

yellowish liquid. A tube was connected to each  of their stomachs. They could only see a soft,  

glimmering light through the chamber’s casing. 

Deep disorientation set in. Crying echoed out of  every chamber. They soon began to thrash inside,  

pushing and breaking their way out. Outside was a vast structure that  

was somehow both familiar and foreign to them.  Long halls led to open foyers and sectioned-off  

rooms. There was no one else anywhere. Exterior  windows revealed darkness in all directions.  

Clusters of stars and planets appeared to  be moving slowly past them in the distance. 

Where were they? They wondered. Where did  they come from? Where were they going? 

The group was small. There were one hundred  of them. It was a diverse group of fifty males  

and fifty females covering a wide spectrum of  physical qualities and character traits. They  

all seemed to awake with the same relative  ability of language and comprehension;  

and they all seemed to possess the same innate  knowledge. They knew what certain things were, and  

they knew the words for those things. They knew  they were people with bodies and minds, and they  

knew how to use those bodies and minds, though  it required lots of improvising and innovation. 

Right away, they began to explore  the structure. It was massive,  

primarily made of metal; but the metal was  mostly covered with other kinds of materials  

and casings. There were multiple levels, each  containing long open hallways separating large,  

sealed-off sections. Each section contained  different environmental conditions with  

different self-sustaining ecosystems. There  was water, plants, and animals in each. 

The group soon began to call  the structure the Space Station.  

But with millions of years of unending sleep  and millions of memories formed in dreams,  

no one knew what the reality was of their past.  Reality and dreams blurred together. Consequently,  

no one knew their origins or purpose. It  was as if they were expected to remember. 

Soon, various myths and stories began to  form around vague memories. Many opinions  

and theories developed—about their origins,  their purpose, and their future. The group  

consensus became that they and the Space Station  were created by Gods. They were selected by the  

Gods and put on the Space Station with their  purpose being to obey them; and in doing so,  

the Space Station would continue moving. As time passed, this belief went through  

many changes and broke off into many different  versions. Some individuals began to believe  

that there was only one God. They simply  needed to trust in and follow his guidance,  

following the program and autopilot system set  by him. If they did, they would be rewarded and  

arrive at their final destination where  everything would finally make sense. 

Years and years would go by. Social structure  would develop and advance on the Space Station.  

Children were born. Generations of families  passed. And yet, still there was no arrival  

in sight. More questions began to stack on  top of the prior, still-unanswered ones. 

During a group-wide meeting regularly  held in the Space Station’s central  

room to discuss updates, concerns,  plans, hopes, and anything else,  

one younger member came forward, and brought  fully into question the group’s beliefs. 

“Why did we awake when we did if there is  nowhere to go and nothing to do?” she said.  

“Why did God put us here and program our  guidance system in this way? Why would we  

be awoken to suffer and die for nothing?  Years and years of nothing but sickness,  

in-fighting, death and loss, the terrible  oscillation between boredom and anxiety, the  

deep sense of cosmic isolation in a vast darkness  inhabited by no one else, trapped in here alone?” 

There was a long silence with  no direct response to follow. 

Soon, the group became consumed by this  line of questioning and doubting. They  

began to thrash at their surroundings,  pushing things open and breaking things  

down. They took everything a part and  dug into every layer, every component,  

every mechanism of the Space  Station looking for answers. 

After years and years of doing this, they  understood how the Space Station worked,  

why it worked the way it worked. But beyond  that, still nothing. An understanding of how  

did not bring them any closer to a why.  It all appeared mechanical. Impersonal. 

“There is no God. We have killed him,” a  twenty-year-old individual named Nihil said  

during a meeting. “If we don’t know where we  are going, if we are going nowhere, or even if  

we are going somewhere but for a reason that has  nothing to do with us, why are we continuing at  

all? Why keep bringing more people into this?  Why keep striving and trying and suffering?  

Why not just stop? We can end it now.” There was a long silence. Then,  

another individual came forward. It was an  older man in his fifties, named Lux, who had  

been crucially important in the Space Station’s  recent coordination and sustainment of social and  

political structures. He had one of the largest  families on the Space Station and was highly  

respected, though often very quiet. When he came  forward, everyone was silent with anticipation. 

“Perhaps we were merely put on this Space  Station by someone or something to continue  

life in the cosmos, to survive.” “But for what?!” Nihil interjected. 

“Surely, there was some reason. But a reason in  terms of a cause is different than the kind of  

reason you’re looking for, that we’ve all been  looking for. But maybe that’s just not the kind  

of reason we’ll ever find; and the wrong reason to  continue looking for. Perhaps the question isn’t  

for what reason, or where are we going, but how  do we meaningfully keep going without any reason? 

In all likelihood, we are aimless out here.  Autopilot is no pilot. We have no idea where  

we are going or why. We appear to have been  put here by someone or something that we have  

no memory of or access to. Perhaps it cared  about us once; perhaps it didn’t. Perhaps  

it did but didn’t know any better. Regardless,  it doesn’t seem to know us now. And it doesn’t  

seem like we’ll ever know it or them. Maybe we simply woke up too soon. Or  

too late. Maybe it thought we would remember  or know. Maybe they didn’t know, themselves. 

But look around. The grand design of  this ship, of us. Maybe it wasn’t God,  

but God was it something impressive. We have  formed social unions and order, families,  

friendships. We have been able to create, to love,  to laugh, to experience, and hope. All on our own.  

And every day, the stars outside our windows  twinkle with a beauty and mystery that transport  

us back to the state of awe we experienced  in those early days when we first awoke. 

Maybe we need to hope for  something else to keep going,  

but we don’t need anything else to keep going.”