I’ve lost track of the days. I fear my mind has been long absent from reality as well.

I’m adrift, crawling amongst the stars. Sometimes fast, beyond recognition, sometimes still. I watch the black abyss of empty space, only changing in frighteningly brief glimpses as an explosion of creation appears.

A blast of solar radiation fried the on-board computer, destroying its circuitry and plunging it into insanity. I fear it has done the same for me.

I recognize my solitude. I understand it. None will look for me; I have been alone my entire life. Alone, but seen. Now, who is there to witness my existence? There was an old-world adage I had read once before, something that had not really stuck out to me, but now as its meaning becomes more apt to my situation, it is never far from my mind.

If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound? I fear it does not.

If there are none to see me, to experience me, do I exist? Why can I not shake the feeling I have already long perished, lost in that bath of solar waves that murdered my ship?

I cannot die; physically, that is. I have tried. There is enough autonomy left in the ship to prevent me, its sole occupant, from that fate. It keeps me alive, somehow, but I feel I have already died in the only way that matters. None will look for me, no one will ever know my thoughts and dreams. This ship is traveling fast to nowhere; the vastness of space makes it certain I will never land upon an alien world, much less one that would care for my presence.

I can see outside. A small window outfitted with an infrared reimager shows me the vibrancy of the universe that lies just beyond the scope of human sight. I fear that I am the first and last to view these vistas.

Random chaos spills out from every corner of this reality, bending and shaping into new and fascinating structures of light, dust, and matter. Billions of years of slow-moving evolution, unseen until I happened upon it. Is it arrogance to feel it was made solely for me, for this brief moment in time when I happened to drift by on my endless journey into madness, a small glimpse of hope or beauty or futility? Is it the only way my mind can cope with my situation? Does my existence make a difference in this universe? Do I make a sound?

If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, do I make a sound? I fear I am not alone.

The universe lives and breathes in its own way. I can sense it. It is alive and virile. Why is it not comforting now? I am still alone, wholly separate from the definite arms of evolution that keep these forces of nature constantly growing and changing. The distant galaxies swirl and swell, growing and moving through their lives, explosions of color and beauty that will never be matched, merely imitated. I alone am given such an intimate seat to its theater of splendor. I am not allowed to be involved any longer. I am the audience.

Maybe at one point, I was part of the show, part of a system that needed my presence. Now, I fear I am only allowed to watch as it moves on without me.

The tree will always fall, and it will always make a sound because no one is there to witness it. I fear I am no one.

I fear this living death.

I fear.

And that can never change.