Star-Bather

Listen, friend, let me tell you about Raúl Mendoza. He was a poor bastard who thought he knew what loneliness was. That was until he met something that had been alone for maybe a thousand years. It was floating in the cold between stars like a discarded cigarette butt in the cosmic gutter.

Raúl was one of those maintenance types. You know the kind. They are the guys who fix things while everyone else sleeps. They are the invisible ones who keep the ship from becoming a very expensive coffin. They called him the third-shift hull monkey. However, they never said it to his face. Raúl had fists like asteroid chunks and a temper that could melt titanium.

The Esperanza—what a name for a rust bucket held together by prayer and duct tape—was limping toward Proxima Centauri. The hull breach alarm started screaming like a colicky baby at 0300 hours. Captain Martinez, that fat bureaucrat, didn’t even get out of his bunk. Just buzzed Raúl on the comm: “Fix it, monkey. And don’t wake me unless we’re all gonna die.”

So there’s Raúl, suiting up in the equipment bay, muttering curses that would make his grandmother spin in her grave like a centrifuge. The suit was older than democracy, patched more times than a barroom drunk’s liver, but it was all they had. Budget cuts, you understand. Always the damn budget cuts.

Outside, the void waited with infinite patience.

The breach was on the starboard hull, Section 7-Delta, where the metal was thin as tissue paper and twice as fragile. Raúl clomped across the hull in his magnetic boots, following the yellow safety line like a blind man’s cane. Stars wheeled overhead—or underfoot, directions being relative in the emptiness—cold and distant as the hearts of accountants.

He found the breach easy enough: a jagged tear about the size of his head, probably from micro-meteorite impact. The edges were smooth, melted, which was strange because micro-meteors usually left rough holes, but Raúl wasn’t paid to think, just to fix. He pulled out his plasma welder and got to work.

That’s when he saw it.

At first, he thought it was debris—some chunk of ice or metal caught in the ship’s gravitational wake. But debris doesn’t pulse with its own light, soft and rhythmic like a sleeper’s breathing. Debris doesn’t unfold itself like origami made of living starlight.

The thing was maybe three meters long, translucent as jellyfish, with what looked like veins of pure light running through its body. It hung in space about fifty meters off the hull, perfectly motionless relative to the ship, and it was… Christ, how do you describe it? It was basking. Like a lizard on a warm rock, except the rock was the cosmic background radiation and the lizard was something that shouldn’t exist.

Raúl forgot about the breach. Forgot about the plasma welder cooling in his gloved hands. Forgot about everything except this impossible creature that floated in the void like a prayer made manifest.

The thing seemed to notice his attention. It turned. If you could call it turning when something has no obvious front or back. It regarded him with what might have been curiosity. Its light pulsed faster, colors shifting through spectrums that had no names: infraviolet, ultrared, the color of longing itself.

“Jesus Mary and Joseph,” Raúl whispered into his helmet comm. He forgot that the channel was open. His words were being recorded. Somewhere in the ship’s belly, computers were dutifully logging this moment for posterity.

The creature moved closer, graceful as thought, beautiful as sin. Up close, Raúl could see that it wasn’t solid—not exactly. It was more like organized energy, matter held together by will and wonder. Through its translucent skin, he could see what looked like organs. However, these organs served no biological function he could understand. They pulsed and swirled in patterns. The patterns hurt to look at directly. They resembled geometries folding in on themselves like Klein bottles made of light.

And then—God help him—it spoke.

Not with words, not with sound, because sound doesn’t travel in vacuum. It spoke directly into his mind, thoughts arriving like email from the infinite:

Hello, small-warm-metal-wrapped-life. You fix-mend-heal the shell-home-ship, yes? I have watched many cycles, many star-turns. Your kind interests me.

Raúl tried to speak, choked on his own spit, tried again. “What… what are you?”

I am what your language cannot hold. I am old-deep-ancient, from before your star was born. I feed on radiation-light-energy, the songs of suns. You would say… star-eater? Light-drinker? Your words are so small.

“Are you… are there others like you?”

A pause. The creature’s light dimmed, and Raúl felt a sadness so profound it made his bones ache.

Once, yes. Many-all-countless. We swam between stars like your fish swim in water. But stars grow cold, galaxies drift apart. Now I am alone-singular-last. I follow your metal-homes seeking warmth-company-not-aloneness.

The hull breach alarm was still shrieking in Raúl’s helmet, but it seemed distant now, unimportant. Here was something that had outlived civilizations, that had watched stars be born and die, and it was lonely. Christ, it was lonely in a way that made human solitude look like a minor inconvenience.

“How long?” Raúl asked. “How long have you been alone?”

Time is… different for my kind. Your sun has made perhaps one thousand journeys around the galaxy-wheel since I last spoke with my own-kind-family.

A thousand orbits. A quarter billion years, give or take. Raúl’s mind tried to process this and failed spectacularly. This thing had been alive when life on Earth was just slime and ambition.

I have a request-favor-asking, the creature continued. Your ship travels far-far-distant, yes? To other stars?

“Yeah. Yeah, we’re heading to Proxima. Colony ship.”

I would… accompany? I am tired of the cold-dark-emptiness. Your ship has warmth-energy-life. I could feed on your fusion-fire-heart, harm nothing-no-one. In return, I could share knowledge-memory-wisdom. I have seen things…

And suddenly Raúl’s mind was flooded with images. He saw civilizations that spanned star systems. He envisioned beings of pure thought living in the hearts of quasars. The birth of the universe itself was seen from a perspective no human could imagine. It was too much, too vast, like trying to pour the ocean into a shot glass.

Raúl was unconscious and floated against his safety line when the visions stopped. His suit’s auto-systems pumped him full of stimulants to keep him breathing. The creature waited patiently, its light subdued, apologetic.

Forgive-sorry-regret. Your minds are more fragile than I remembered.

Raúl came back to consciousness slowly, like a deep-sea diver rising to the surface. His head felt like someone had used it for soccer practice, but he was alive. The creature still floated nearby, patient as a saint.

“I… I can’t make that decision,” Raúl said finally. “The captain, the crew… they’d need to—”

Yes-understand-comprehend. But you are the fixer-mender-healer. You understand the ship’s needs-requirements-necessities. Perhaps you could… suggest?

The hull breach alarm chose that moment to remind Raúl why he was out here in the first place. He looked at the tear in the hull, then at the creature, then back at the hull. An idea began to form, crazy and desperate and probably suicidal.

“You said you could share knowledge?”

Yes-true-certain.

“Technical knowledge? About fusion reactors, hull integrity, life support systems?”

The creature’s light pulsed brighter. I have observed-watched-learned from ten thousand civilizations. Your technology is… primitive-simple-young, but yes, I understand its workings-functions-purposes.

Raúl made his decision. Maybe it was the isolation. Perhaps it was the wonder of meeting something truly alien. Or maybe he recognized a kindred spirit. It was another maintenance worker keeping the universe running while everyone else slept.

“Okay,” he said. “Here’s the deal. You help me really fix this ship, not just patch it. I’ll talk to the captain about letting you come along. Can’t promise anything, but I’ll try.”

Agreement-accord-bargain. But first, small-warm-metal-wrapped-life, you should know: I am not the only one watching your ship.

Raúl’s blood went cold. “What do you mean?”

The creature turned toward the distant stars, its light shifting to wavelengths that registered as unease on Raúl’s instruments.

Others hunt-seek-follow the warmth-life-energy as I do. But they are not as… gentle-peaceful-kind as I. They consume rather than coexist. They are coming-approaching-nearing, drawn by your fusion-fire-beacon.

“How long do we have?”

Perhaps two of your star-turns. Maybe three.

Two days. Maybe three. Raúl looked at the hull breach. He thought about the Esperanza‘s failing systems. He considered the skeleton crew and the thousand colonists sleeping in cryo-freeze. They wouldn’t stand a chance against whatever was coming.

Unless…

“Can you teach us to hide? To defend ourselves?”

Yes-possible-achievable. But the learning-knowledge-wisdom comes with a price-cost-exchange. Your minds would be changed-altered-evolved. You would become something… more-different-other than what you are.

Raúl thought about this for exactly three seconds. Then he reached out with one gloved hand and touched the creature’s translucent skin. It felt like touching liquid starlight, warm and electric and alive.

“Deal,” he said.

And in the space between heartbeats, between one moment and the next, everything changed. Knowledge flooded into Raúl’s mind. It was not the overwhelming torrent from before. Instead, it was a steady stream of information that his consciousness could actually process. How to repair hull breaches at the molecular level. How to increase fusion efficiency by 300%. How to shield a ship from detection using quantum field manipulation.

But more than that. He could sense the creature’s emotions. If that’s what they were, he felt its desperate hope. He also felt its ancient loneliness. There was gratitude at finally having someone to talk to. And underneath it all, a bone-deep sadness remained. It mourned for all the civilizations it had watched rise and fall. It grieved for all the friends it had outlived. It lamented all the songs that would never be sung again.

When it was over, Raúl found himself floating in space. Tears were freezing on the inside of his helmet visor. His head was full of impossible knowledge. The hull breach was already beginning to seal itself, the metal flowing like liquid to close the gap. His suit’s diagnostic systems were going crazy, registering energy signatures that shouldn’t exist.

The bargain-agreement-pact is made, the creature said, its light now a warm, contented glow. I will teach-guide-instruct your people. In return, you will carry me to the stars.

“What about the others? The ones that are coming?”

They will find your ship changed-protected-defended. And perhaps… perhaps they will find something else as well. Something they have forgotten in their hunger-need-consumption.

The creature pulsed once, bright as a newborn star, and suddenly the space around the Esperanza shimmered like heat mirage. To anyone watching from a distance, the ship would simply… disappear.

Raúl finished his EVA in a daze, his hands moving with newfound precision, his mind processing information at superhuman speeds. The creature had told him its name. It was a concept-sound-color that meant “Light-Between-The-Stars.” It followed him back to the airlock. Somehow, it passed through solid matter like it wasn’t there.

The hard part would be explaining this to Captain Martinez. But as Raúl cycled through decontamination, he found he wasn’t worried. He had knowledge now and power. Most importantly, he had a friend who had been alone for longer than human civilization had existed.

In the ship’s corridors, the lights began to pulse in new patterns. The hum of the fusion reactor shifted to a frequency. It sounded almost like singing. The colonists slept on, unaware that their transport had just been upgraded by technology older than the solar system.

In the space between spaces, dimensions existed that human mathematics could barely describe. Something had been hungry for millennia. It paused in its approach. The prey-ship it had been stalking was… different now. Changed. And in that change, it sensed something it had not felt in eons.

Hope.

The universe, it seemed, still had room for miracles.

Even for maintenance workers and star-bathers, they float in the dark between destinations. They find family in the most impossible places.