Guess I didn’t have to eat that big crystal, huh? Yup, guess so! I’m… Actually kind of happy about that, cuz the temple was actually really cool, all things considered.

...I hope I’ll be able to visit it again sometime without being too big. Hopefully. Yes.

I spread out my arms, getting a feel for my new size and the 18 new secondary arms. Asteroids are already crashing into me, causing literally no damage at all. I’ve returned, stronger, bigger…! And now, I guess, it’s time to eat.

A somewhat large asteroid approaches me. I grab it with my grabby tentacles, crush it, and feed the smaller parts into my primary tentacle. Smaller debris is caught in my network of tentacles. I eat and I eat and I eat. Even the largest of asteroids now fit in my grip and are crushed with practised ease. One after another, viewing the world through 400 eyes and touching it through too-many tentacles and eating it through 180 mouths I slowly fall back into the rhythm of it. Eat, eat, eat. Think, think, think.

Minutes pass.

I eat and I eat and I eat.

Hours pass.

It feels like the endlessness of space is seeping into my mind. Blackness and dots of white ideas.

Days pass.

I can’t tell if I think anymore. My mind keeps track of only three things. The act of eating everything around me, keeping track of how many points I have, and using these to upgrade anything and everything. Sometimes I save up to increase size. Sometimes I splurge on a skill. I rarely think about anything beyond this endless repeating cycle of eating and buying. I am eating space, but as I eat it, space is filling me with its 99,9% of empty space.

I am absorbed by the act of monotony.

Eat, spend, repeat. My eyes grow heavy and weary.

Grab, crush, eat, repeat. My body moves fast but my mind is like half-dried paint.

Hold, chew, destroy, eat, repeat. My mind is spread thin, unrecognizable, and tired.

God, I’m tired.

Is this all my life has become? Hardly better than my life as a student. The only difference would be that I’m not actively failing everything I try at. My parents aren’t upset at me for everything I didn’t do. No professor to tell me I should attend their courses if I want to have any chance of passing. Nothing to force me inside my dorm inside my room inside my head.

Nothing.

Yet I remain unhappy. Despairing.

I thought thoughts of death had slipped my mind, but here, when my mind is away from my body and my body does nothing but eat, now my mind lingers on the inevitable. Assuming I can still die. My body might not even age. If I continue growing larger and stronger at this pace, I might never become killable.

Has death been denied me? Must my eternity be spent consuming?

...I guess, should it be the case, then I must.

I eat.

Time passes.

Until it doesn’t.

I grab a rock. I eat a rock. I grab a rock. I eat a rock. I grab a rock. I eat a rock. I grab a rock. I eat a rock. I grab a rock. I eat a rock. I grab a rock. I eat a rock. I grab a rock. I eat a rock. I grab a rock. I eat a rock. I grab a rock. I eat a rock. I grab a rock. I eat a rock. I grab a rock. I eat a rock. I grab a rock. I eat a rock. I grab a rock. I eat a rock. I grab a rock. I eat a rock. I eat a rock. I grab a rock. I eat a rock. I grab a rock. I eat a rock. I grab a rock. I eat a rock. I grab a rock. I eat a rock. I grab a rock. I eat a rock. I grab a rock. I eat a rock. I grab a rock. I eat a rock.

I grab a piece of scrap metal. I ea-,

My hand stalls. Four hundred eyes turning to what the thing in my hand is. It’s dull. A bit heavier than a regular rock. Shaped into a firm, flat form. Parts torn and destroyed.

I inspect it with one of my smaller eyes. Faded red paint. Details.

This… This was a part of something. Something man-made.

And then the rest appears. A small cloud of metal shrapnel, some parts small, some parts large. A thruster, a cracked windshield still in the surrounding pane, a spoiler, a rocket, a-,

A human.

He drifts slowly into my outstretched hands. Helmet cracked, arm gone. I want to look at him from afar, to see no details, but my eyes are on my hands and I see his distant eyes, as black as the endless mind of space, as gone as time. Frozen moisture clings to his eyelashes. Skin as pale as a winter’s cloud. His body is rigid and immovable.

G-, gah!!

Cold white terror claws at my mind as I cast him aside, but the cloud of shrapnel, of what was once a ship, continues to hover about me. Bodies. Dozens and dozens of bodies. Some have cracked glass helmets, others wear nothing but boxers and shirts. Those who still have eyes stare into nothing. Those without them peer into that very same nothing. They are all so small, tiny - I’m barely able to hold one before I release them again, watching bleary-eyed as they drift off into their final grave.

I wish I had a shaky breath to take. I wish tears would pool in my eyes. I wish I could give anything for these.

I’ve never seen a dead body before, apart from my late uncle. I was a child and he was too young but I had hoped never to see another body again, not like this, not like these men and people and crews who float like bloated pillows of water in a pool of regret, not like these unhappy fellows who will never find true rest, who slink away into the depths of space like phantoms in the night, who pass me without a whisper, without a shout for me to call their name by.

My hands brush them all by. I hold their hands as they float to the next world. My hands shiver and shake but theirs are rigid and cold and I don’t fault them for it.

A man in white armour. More shocked than afraid.

An older man in a black, double-breasted suit. Regretful, pained.

His helmet is whole but his suit is torn. Mournful.

Cold, cold, cold.

Every body I touch and hold is cold.

Until I touch one that isn’t and my eyes light up and my mind fires up like a flare in the night.