“The night I broke away from Earth—though it may technically have been morning, yet here in space it was absolute blackness—was the most monumental moment of my life. When I emerged from my chamber after my private study, the silence that filled everything caught me off guard, yet it also enveloped me with a dangerous thrill that had long been part of my nature, as though it marked the foundation of a new existence. It was dangerous because that thrill always demanded more of itself.

  I experienced an intense physiological reaction, as though even my biology had grown weary of terrestrial existence. What had carried me all the way into space was, above all, a profound boredom with the world. The planet seemed far too small—tiny, almost bacterial—when set against me, a being of no measurable size within the cosmos.

  I had always regarded life on Earth as a form of confinement. Even when I dreamed of having wings, the thought suffocated me, because they would still keep me within the atmosphere—within the same prison. I did not wish to escape to some other place on Earth; I wished to escape from the Earth itself. When my crew disappeared, that feeling returned—yet this time it was not suffocation but relief. I had always known them to be endlessly laughing, shallow people, and their presence grated on me. Each time I left their company, it felt as though I had emerged from a war.

  This was not merely a matter of ‘disliking people.’ It arose from my disgust at the vulgarity of the pleasures they lived for. Cigarettes, alcohol, sex—everything revolved around these. They enacted an “adulthood” that I regarded as a form of infancy. It was as though they entered life only to mate and then depart: worshipping the breast as infants, chasing the opposite sex as adolescents, numbing themselves with substances as adults, and dying without ever realizing—or caring to realize—anything.

  How long could such a cycle continue? There was a structural flaw embedded within humanity itself, and it was precisely this flaw that allowed the same pattern to persist thousands of years ago—and to promise its repetition thousands of years from now. If humanity survived, it would do so unchanged.

  These were the thoughts I carried. And yet, what was I doing among those incapable of grasping even a fragment of them? I was not there by choice. I had slipped into a pit at birth; my foot had caught, and I had fallen into this form of humanity by accident.

  I always smiled at people, even when my inner life expressed the opposite. And because they saw only the smile, they assumed I was happy. I behaved as though I were one of them—because I had to. Superficially and emptily, I attended meetings, dinners, and the small ‘parties’ I found intolerable. There I repeated, almost automatically—and without belief—the standard Soviet slogans expected of me. Applause filled the halls after my speeches.

  In more informal settings, I tolerated the nauseating closeness of colleagues: the smell of sweat, the hovering bodies, the false intimacy disguised as camaraderie. I endured it all to preserve my external reputation. The state did not admit into the cosmonaut ranks those who rejected communication or refused to glorify socialism.

  Outwardly, I belonged. Whatever they did, I mirrored. If they laughed, I laughed; if they spoke, I spoke; if they walked, I walked. I adopted their slang, their jargon. They attempted to define me through those words, to assimilate me by language itself—or so it felt, since I was never allowed words of my own. To step outside this collective illusion would have meant permanent exile, because recognizing it as a herd would make return impossible. That, ultimately, is what happened to me.

  Why did I endure all of this? Because of space. The idea of it had enchanted me since childhood. Soviet space propaganda—painted on buildings, printed in newspapers, displayed in the streets—always stirred something deeply emotional within me. Its effect was permanent. It was not crude indoctrination; it appealed to something internal and pre-ideological. I felt no loyalty to socialism as a system, yet I loved its aesthetics.

  These emotions led me into astronomy and cosmonautics. Naturally, I despised the bureaucratization of that passion. Diplomas and certificates meant nothing to me; they were merely paper. But there was no alternative. The path toward space ran through institutions already rotten. Even school was the same—its sole justification was compulsion.

  I worked relentlessly and produced what the state termed ‘achievements.’ Medals were pinned to me. It was expected that I would preserve them in some family archive, as symbols of past glory. Instead, I gave them away—to children fascinated by glittering objects, who collected them like gold. Over time, my name became known—if not to the extent of Tereshkova’s, then sufficiently—as “the youngest female cosmonaut in history.”

  During parades in Red Square, I was positioned beside state officials on the Mausoleum tribune. Below us, crowds waved red flags as missile launchers rolled past, accompanied by deafening marches. To me, the atmosphere felt unreal, as though I were watching a film. I observed with a detached pleasure, knowing I did not belong—though my presence convinced others that I did. The media treated me similarly: brief, emotionless profiles focused on professional milestones, never on inner life, which was inaccessible to them anyway.

  This never troubled me. I could have lived alone on a mountain, like a monk, and remained content. My notoriety did not arise from who I was, but from a media apparatus that seized upon me instinctively. Everything unfolded automatically.

  Years later, I was assigned to the mission that brought me here. I boarded the station with the crew. They departed amid tears from loved ones; I left with empty hands. Once again, I carried that familiar invisibility within me and watched the crowd as though they could not see me at all. The solitude was not painful. It provoked thought.

  For instance: how could beings I regarded as lower than animals be mourned so intensely? I resisted the conventional response of turning that question inward. I concluded not that something was wrong with me, but that humanity itself was fundamentally decayed. This skepticism toward love allowed me to remain alone for long stretches without emotional collapse.

  When I went to space, I wanted to enjoy the magnificent view through the windows, but to do so I had to stop playing my social role—to be truly alone—but I was surrounded by people. During work hours, I was with them, naturally answering questions, fulfilling requests, laughing at jokes. I was not dominant, but the personality I assumed was outgoing enough to allow me to function, and that was sufficient.

  To free myself from this, I always waited for the quiet, sleeping hours. Instead of sleeping, I would watch outside for hours, dive into fantastic dreams, and lose myself in them. In those moments, I came to know most intimately how tangled existence really is. When this happened, I would realize it was already morning—without even noticing that I had fallen asleep.

  Then came the day of the incident. As soon as it happened, I severed the station’s communication with Earth and withdrew into seclusion in space. At first, it was suffocating—even for me. But over time, by immersing myself in both intellectual and physical work, I managed to keep my mind intact. I had no trace in the overworld anyway.

  During the first year of isolation, through the media channel on the platform, I learned that the state which had sent me here no longer existed. According to official records, I was listed as ‘dead,’ since no contact had been received. The media published a few articles about the station, but their interest faded once no new developments occurred. They could not entertain the masses by repeating the same story. They needed something ‘interesting’—that is, something they could distort to sell back—and that source had vanished. Thus, I was forgotten by the world. Or more correctly, I did not even exist for anyone else ever.

  Although I felt a faint grief at the dissolution of the Union—it was, after all, an inheritance from my childhood—it did not concern me deeply. I devoted myself instead to philosophy, or rather to the social sciences in general. The station contained digital archives and books, and I read them constantly. Some, I remember, I read dozens of times. Then I began to write as well. I wrote endlessly, because my mind was clear. When one is human and surrounded by humans, there are no thoughts; when one ceases to be human and is not surrounded by humans, thought floods the void.

  Without imagination, everyday life was unbearable for me. I therefore wrote long stories—sometimes hundreds of pages of fictional material that might be called ‘novels,’ though only I knew their contents. I lived like this for years. What made it difficult was the growing sense of being trapped even within the space that had once enchanted me. Perhaps if I were outside the universe, I would feel free. But there was no ‘outside’ to the universe—how could such an impossibility exist? Even nothingness is a form of existence, and that realization struck me like an asthma attack. Everything, no matter how hallucinatory, must exist—and perhaps that is the cruelest aspect of existence.

  To escape that feeling, I turned my attention back toward Earth, trying to forget the incomprehensibility of the cosmos by focusing on that tiny point below me. From time to time, I gazed at it—if time still existed, sometimes for hours. The planet appeared suspended, trapped within an infinite black void. It felt distant now—emotionally, not physically. Was all of existence truly confined to that small point? Did Hell, seen from the outside, really look like this?

  Thinking about humanity from space felt absurdly comic. I stretched my hand toward the glass and imagined Earth between my thumb and forefinger, like a tiny marble. That was all of human reality. Every person existed inside that marble, and the marble itself rested between my fingers. By snapping them together, I imagined grinding it into grains of sand.

  Gradually, I began to take an interest in humanity again. I studied the newly founded states. I followed current events. And while doing so, something caught my attention—something that felt strangely familiar, an alien kind of recognition: a nihilistic theocracy hidden in Northeast Asia, wielding silence as an instrument of terror.

  I remembered the name Aldira from my youth, though only vaguely. It had appeared so rarely in writing or conversation that it seemed to be censored without any formal decree. This absence intrigued me. I began searching for its name in everything I read or heard, like sifting for crumbs in a heap of refuse. Occasionally I found traces of it, but never enough to satisfy my curiosity. When I asked adults about it, the only answer I received was that the Order was an ‘evil organization’ and that I should not speak of it further.

  Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

  Later, I learned that this entity was blamed for a parasite outbreak and the social unrest that followed. When I examined the reported symptoms—normlessness, megalomania, the pride of nothingness—I was fascinated. Yet there were so few sources, and almost no firsthand accounts from within the society itself, that I could not study it deeply. I read what foreign analysts had written, but their interpretations struck me as profoundly misguided. It was evident that even they did not understand what they were describing. The name Aldira remained with me as an unresolved enchantment.

  Eventually, I gained access to the only source through which I could approach genuine knowledge: the Black Book, the foundation of Aldiran thought. Unfortunately, I could not obtain the book itself—only fragments and quotations, which naturally failed to convey the whole. This cult-state released no concrete information to the outside world, and its secrecy drew me toward it with increasing obsession. In truth, that impenetrability fostered a sense of kinship within me; everything else was easy to expose, easy to exhaust.

  The Aldirans presented themselves as children of cosmological serenity. They sought to submerge arrogant humanity—those who had severed themselves from that divine calm—once more in silence. And they were arrogant enough to undertake this mission alone.

  Eventually, I sent signals to them, conveying everything I have written here. I transmitted my messages through coded frequencies. By then, Earth could have detected me if it had wished to. I doubted that Aldiran instruments would even recognize these Morse-like rhythmic signals as intentional communication—yet they did. They located me and responded.

  I managed to decipher their reply. It was positive. It felt as though I had made contact with a civilization from another dimension. I had never experienced that sensation with the transmissions I sent to other states; to me, they were inadequate. Instead of fascination, I filled those messages with veiled threats, merely to amuse myself. They deciphered them as well. After this, the world knew that I existed.

  When my writings began to circulate within Aldira and I learned that they had somehow become a global phenomenon, I was reminded once again of how humanity drifts from one fixation to another like a herd—just as the media had once surrounded me during my career on Earth. Something new appears, and attention shifts instantly. I found it almost comic how easily people could be directed. One needed only to stimulate them—give them excitement, give them dopamine—and they would call it love.

  Once there was a man named Nietzsche who spoke of the übermensch. Just as the National Socialists twisted that concept to serve their ideology, Aldira exploited my writings to extend its influence. Just as Iliya’s diary was politically absorbed, my own writings met the same fate. Aldira was a kind of monster, devouring everything. An authority that sees itself not as a state among states but as a reshaper of civilization cannot be engaged with. That authority will inevitably absorb the individual, either as a tool or as a symbol for its mission, but never as an ally or a friend.

  This had not been my intention. Yet because I did not regard it as ‘wrong,’ I felt no urge to resist. I allowed it to proceed. From such a distance, the planet no longer stirred me enough to rage or mourn over it. I was no longer an earthly being, which I had never been spiritually, but now it was physically absolute.

  As time passed, I watched the world descend into chaos. There were even those who plotted my destruction. From here, it all appeared absurd. Even if I were to die, nothing would truly change. Life and death are not opposites; they are the same condition viewed from different angles. There was little left binding me to existence. I do not insist on survival. I merely exist. And if that, too, were taken from me, I would not care.

  I continued sending coded transmissions to Aldira. All of our communication took that form. What I sent gradually shifted from the intellectual to the personal. At the end of one long frequency-letter, I nearly allowed myself to write something impossible: ‘Please… come to space.’

  By that point, I had also read Arnold’s articles and Iliya’s diary. Arnold struck me as a maniac obsessed with mind control; Iliya felt more sincere and emotional, though still speaking from behind a wall. She was no longer alive, while he remained in his laboratory. I thought about contacting him. And I did. It was not a long message. I asked only one question: ‘Why worms?’

  His reply, when it arrived, was just as brief and sharply precise: ‘Because humans themselves are worms, and worms must be cleansed by other worms.’

  In April 1994, I learned that a coalition had formed against the Order. Yet I knew Aldira had already transcended its borders. It had dispersed across the world; there was no return from that. When I later witnessed its downfall, what saddened me was not its destruction but the realization that I would never again be in communion with something so profoundly otherworldly.

  When the self-destruction of the Aldiran elite entered history as the largest mass suicide in human existence, I reacted as well. But my response did not arise from shock or disbelief. It came from recognition—from the understanding that what had happened was inevitable, something I had always expected. I never imagined Aldira as an entity meant to endure for centuries. I would not have wished it so; longevity would have made it false. It was not founded to rule land or govern people, but to merge with the cosmos itself. It was a rare treasure—appearing and vanishing swiftly, like a brief flare across the void—leaving those who witnessed it unable even to comprehend what they had seen. A terrifying treasure. And perhaps that was precisely what made it one.

  As I observed the world afterward, I saw a kind of new humanity emerging under the influence of the parasite. They were closer to my own kind—yet even among them, I felt estranged. During the years I had spent here, I had grown detached from every other consciousness. I began to suspect that everything might be a projection of my own mind, for I had become excessively independent, even from perception itself. Connection began to feel like contagion.

  At times, I wonder whether I have always carried an instinctive urge to distance myself from all living beings. Just as I never enjoyed human contact, I felt the same aversion toward plants and animals. Nothing alive appealed to me. The inanimate and the abstract were my true domain. Aldira, with its faceless leadership, fulfilled that perfectly.

  Time passed this way. A long time—decades, in fact. How could an entire lifetime slip by here? Through abstraction and imagination. I lived almost entirely within my own mind, and in doing so inhabited thousands of lives I could never truly live. With endless time and nothing to divert my attention, I sometimes became completely absorbed in these imagined worlds. In short, I bent reality inward.

  If I lived through dreams, what kept me alive here? I suppose it was the quiet murder of desire. Desire burns in confinement; deprived of air, it dies peacefully—almost gently. At night, I watch Earth drift beneath me, its cities glowing like the desires I once carried in my youth. I do not long to return to them. I long instead to understand why I ever wanted them at all. I could have survived in a prison on Earth, but there would have been noise, chaos, intrusion. I prefer this solitary space prison to the human hell below.

  I should note that the station is enormous—perhaps not as large as a cruise ship, but easily a quarter of one, and certainly larger than some villages I once passed through. Its size is both burden and blessing. Maintenance is relentless: systems age, filters clog, pressure valves whisper. Yet the vastness grants a peculiar freedom. Everything has its own compartment: a biology garden, a chemistry lab, a space for mathematics. I spent long hours in each, enjoying the company of myself. I often spoke aloud simply to remember how speech sounded. Anyone imagining lush hydroponic forests or gleaming pools would be disappointed. These were modest, outdated constructions—after all, the station was built in the 1980s.

  For many years, I also sent transmissions to random people on Earth. I selected addresses the platform detected and beamed signals toward their devices, half-mocking myself with the thought: ‘I wonder if they’ll figure it out.’ After the 2000s, as the internet evolved into its restless web, I became entangled in it as well. I began sending emails—messages without origin or signature. Most contained fragments of poetry; some, entire stories.

  Imagine it: a child comes home from school, safe and ordinary, opens a computer, and finds a long, untitled piece on the screen—lyrical, melancholic, inexplicable. The child stares, puzzled, but does not think, ‘This came from space.’ Yet as the pattern repeated and gradually became known, I was exposed. When people began receiving strange, untraceable messages—half literature, half hallucination—my name became one of the first whispered.

  Messages soon flooded in, and I could no longer respond to them all. Even in orbit, I found myself buried beneath correspondence. I enjoyed replying, but that was all it was. I deliberately avoided deeper connection; intimacy itself felt like a threat to my existence. For the first time, people did not gather around me as admirers seeking signatures. For the first time, I sensed depth in their words. Yet by then, I had already descended beyond even that depth. Nothing could reach me anymore. I had gone too far inward.

  By then, the New Humanity had begun venturing into space. From my window, I can see their enormous vessels, as if lifted from the pages of speculative fiction. I admire their technology. The species appears to carry its own ghost, for it has become that ghost itself; the living and the remainder are indistinguishable. I write these lines while gazing at massive stations that eclipse even the Sun’s brightness. Perhaps I am witnessing the birth of a spacefaring civilization. At its core, all of this traces back to Aldira.

  As I reflect on this, the vastness of the universe returns to me. Even the observable universe already feels infinite—but what if it is no larger than an atom within something greater? Might that be why no galactic empires exist? I once found the universe boring because it contained only humans—no other intelligent species—and humans themselves were foolish enough already.

  Scenes of multidimensional wars drift through my thoughts—conflicts unfolding in distant layers of existence, so far removed they cannot even be dated. Perhaps they occur thousands of times each second, each in its own direction. The more I think about such things, the more my mind begins to spin.

  I feel as though Aldira is still with me. My relationship with it was strange, and that strangeness lingers like a curse—a constant sense of presence. The parasite everyone else carries does not exist in my mind, yet I feel haunted by its ghost. I do not experience loneliness. How can a political entity make me feel as though it occupies the same room? How can I feel the urge to embrace a government, merely to see how it would respond?

  I like to imagine the Council’s members secretly listening to traditional musicals or romantic songs behind closed doors and crying, because imagining them this way feels impossible—and that, after all, is where all art resides. Aldira had nothing to do with love. I never sensed it there. It was composed instead of resoluteness. But even if it was not human, did it not possess something like feeling? Had it ever been loved? Or did it become incapable of love precisely because it had never encountered it? The Order stood alone. Even when the entire world sought to crush it, it remained upright. Did it never tire of that weight? Did it never wish to rest? Did it have hidden softness, shown to no one?

  The Aldirans—yes, they still exist—are utterly unlike anything else. They do not live within the world’s reality, but within their own. Attempting to penetrate that reality feels like approaching a place to which I was never invited. When I linger there invisibly, I leave the same way I arrived—empty-handed. Does Aldira have a door at all? Could one knock? I have never found such a thing. Perhaps Aldira itself is the door—unyielding, indestructible.

  I should rest now. I will make some coffee. I brew it from the plants here, and I like its taste. Then I will lie down and drift back into dreams—to escape from this dream.

  I am tired. I will stop writing here. Perhaps I will write again later—another note into silence, one more letter into nothingness...”