He never could adjust to the quiet of the vacuum. It was as familiar to him as thinking, and still he saw it as totally foreign and unnatural. He didn’t know whether his love of hearing enhanced the strangeness of the event, or whether the oddity of it had cultivated his appreciation of hearing. In spite of spending the majority of his life in the soundless void of space, he couldn’t rid himself of the unsettling, surreal sensation which veiled every silent moment.

The cataclysm before him now would have once sent such incomprehensibly tremendous physical sensations through his earthbound predecessors that they probably would have collapsed, both physically and mentally, in total hysteric dysphoria. On Earth, seismic and sonic pressure would have forced all surrounding atoms to collide and tear with ferocious intensity – rupturing ear drums, and flaying skin from flesh. The flash would have exponentially dwarfed a solar flare, permanently burning shadows onto nearby surfaces. The planet’s great oceans which once bathed its surface would have vaporized instantly; its forests would have incinerated as insignificantly as a wad of paper in the bombing of Hiroshima. In place of mountains, once towering and stoic – perhaps the most singular and universally perceived natural symbols of strength and solidity – would be endless plains of glassed earth. The atmosphere which would have allowed these phenomena would have become totally unstable and destructive, engulfing the entire planet in flames; or it would have been blown molecule by molecule into interplanetary space. In either case, 6 billion years of inhabitability would have been effectively terminated by a sort of cosmic neutering from which recovery would be impossible.

But none of that could happen here. From here, the most enormous and destructive event ever seen or theorized by a conscious being may as well have been the dropping of a leaf to the ground. Virtually immeasurable quantities of superheated matter were ejected from the once great hypergiant. The stellar fragments glowed and drifted outward in a manner that might be (with not a little naïveté) considered tranquil.

Behind the self-adjusting photosensitive pane, the glare was tolerable; still, his eyes burned. The pervasive nothing before him acted as a buffer to both his tactile and aural senses. The sight of the hypernova was – to drastically understate – only an intangible image, but that didn’t prevent him from jumping.

The spectacle, coupled with his understanding of the event, caused his mind to actualize sensual stimulation where there could be none. Unable to stand his ground against the blast which he would never feel, he crumbled under the weight of his own body. He trembled uncontrollably in the awesome horror of the explosion. It was the closest he could imagine to being in the presence of God, and was, as far as his understanding allowed, a religious experience.

Across the gulf of material-less space, the transmission of sound was impossible. The cosmic silence penetrated every facet of his thought and being, and deafened his ears and mind. The only sound to be heard was that of his weeping.