
Infinitely in All Directions
by Willow Gatewood
Once there was an alien who told me he expanded infinitely in all directions, but I didn't believe him, in part because the tubes supplying me with oxygen in this emergency suit slowly cracked and vacuum-kissed cold was creeping around my neck, under my armpits, and into my lungs, and I was dying, but also in part because the idea seemed ridiculous and implausible to me at the time--expanding in all directions? I don't believe in infinite things. I did not believe the alien in part because it was the first alien I had ever met and I did not know if they were trustworthy beings or if they had dispositions similar to some humans, particularly my mother, who embellished every truth with about three half-truths and a lie. In part because my brain painfully pushed at the inside of my skull, from pressure or necrosis and from worry about my friends who were also, somewhere outside the range of my vision, floating outwards from the fiery, bursting belly of our ship and partly because I was beginning to wonder if this alien was the perpetrator of the explosion, but probably erroneously because I always tended to think of the worst. I must have had told the alien that I did not believe him because he asked why, but I could not answer, because by the time he finished speaking I was already outside of myself and floating infinitely in all directions.
The End
This story was first published on Thursday, July 8th, 2021
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Daily Science Fiction does not have a paywall, but we do have expenses—more than 95% of which are direct payments to authors for their stories. With your $15 membership, less than 6 cents per story, we can continue to provide genre fiction every weekday by email and on the website to thousands of readers for many years to come. You may also choose to support us via patreon.
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