Galagog, Part 3
Obscure Sorrows. 3,000 words, 15 minute read. With Claude Sonnet and Midjourney.
The universe unfolded itself to Elena Novak when she was seven years old. Her father had driven three hours to a meadow high in the Blue Ridge Mountains, far from light pollution, timing their arrival for the new moon.
"Look up, Ellie-bean," her father whispered as he lifted her onto his shoulders.
As her eyes adjusted to the darkness, what had been a simple black canvas pricked with distant points transformed into a churning river of stars, the vast glowing arm of the Milky Way spiraling from horizon to horizon.
Her small hands clutched at her father's hair. Her perception shifted violently—the stars were no longer above her but around her, and she was looking out into an infinite abyss. The Earth became a tiny island in an ocean of emptiness.
"Papa," she whispered, "I feel like I'm falling."
His hands tightened around her ankles. "That's the secret they don't tell you about astronomy. It's not just looking up at the stars. It's falling into them."
Terror washed through her as her seven-year-old mind struggled to process the immensity—billions of stars, countless worlds spinning in a void so vast it made nonsense of all human measurement. Yet mingled with this terror came an electric thrill of connection. She was made of the same stuff as those distant stars; the calcium in her bones, the iron in her blood, all forged in stellar furnaces.
"The feeling you're having," her father said softly, "there's no proper word for it in English. That simultaneous terror and wonder when the universe reveals itself. I call it 'galagog'—when the cosmos makes you feel tiny and infinite all at once."
"Galagog," Elena repeated, the syllables strange on her tongue. The word became a talisman between them, a secret language for a sensation few others seemed to experience or understand.
Twenty years later, Elena hunched over her laptop beneath humming fluorescent lights, walls the color of congealed oatmeal enclosing her cubicle. On her screen, a quarterly sales presentation refused to coalesce into something that might persuade Midwest manufacturers to care about industrial fastener innovations.
Her phone vibrated against the laminate desktop.
Don't forget dinner with Patrick (MY BOSS) tonight. 7pm @ Luciano's. Wear that blue dress I got you for Xmas. Important night for promotion!!!
Mark's texts always came with multiple exclamation points. Elena added the dinner to her calendar, contemplating the evening ahead—another three hours of anecdotes about golf handicaps and vacation properties.
Since her father's funeral three months ago, these corporate rituals had acquired an almost anthropological quality—fascinating in their arbitrary complexity, yet utterly foreign to her essential self.
She glanced at the small framed photo on her desk—her father at his telescope, silver hair wild in the mountain wind. The last authentic moment of her life had been at his bedside, when he'd gripped her hand with surprising strength, his eyes fever-bright as cancer consumed him.
"Remember the stars, Ellie," he'd rasped. "They're still speaking. You just need to listen."
She'd attributed it to the morphine, a poetic hallucination from a dying astronomer.
Now, she wasn't so sure.
That night, at dinner with Mark's boss Patrick and his wife Vanessa, Elena wore the blue dress and her professional persona—nodding at appropriate intervals, asking the right questions about their children's private school and recent Tuscan vacation. But a part of her hovered near the ceiling, observing the performance with detached curiosity.
"So, Elena," Patrick leaned forward, swirling his cabernet, "Mark says you inherited a cabin up in the mountains. Planning to fix it up as a weekend getaway?"
She dabbed her lips with her napkin. "I haven't decided yet."
Mark's hand found her knee under the table, squeezing a warning.
"Property values in those areas are exploding," Patrick continued. "My brother-in-law's in real estate. He could give you a free assessment if you're thinking of selling."
"That's very generous," Elena said, taking a deliberate sip of water.
Mark's fingers tightened on her knee—a signal to enthusiastically accept the offer.
"It was my father's favorite place," she added instead. "He was an astronomer."
Vanessa perked up. "Oh, how fascinating! Did he discover anything important up there?"
The question struck Elena as unexpectedly profound. Had her father discovered anything that would matter to these people?
"He discovered wonder," she said simply. "He helped others see it too."
The silence that followed was like a tear in the evening's fabric. Patrick blinked. Vanessa's smile froze. Mark's hand withdrew from her knee.
Later, as she and Mark prepared for bed, he finally addressed it.
"What was that at dinner?" His voice was controlled, each word measured.
"What was what?"
"You know what I mean. That weird comment about your dad and wonder." He turned to face her. "You've been distant for weeks, but tonight you were practically in another galaxy."
The unintentional astronomical reference nearly made her laugh. "I'm sorry if I embarrassed you."
"I'm not embarrassed, Lena. I'm worried. It's been three months. Maybe it's time to talk to someone professional."
"There's nothing wrong with me, Mark." She looked up at him. "I'm just questioning things."
"What things?"
"Everything. My job. This city. The path we're on."
Mark's face tightened. "Where is this coming from? We have a plan, Elena. Two more years at this pace, then we buy the condo on Riverside, start thinking about kids. You agreed to all this."
"I know what I said." She pressed her palms against her eyelids. "But lately I feel like I'm suffocating under fluorescent lights, counting down the days until retirement. Like we're all just arranging deck chairs, while ignoring the vastness around us."
"Some of us appreciate stability," Mark said, his voice hardening. "Not everyone needs to have some grand cosmic purpose."
The word lanced through her like an electric current. Cosmic.
"I need to go to the cabin," she said suddenly.
"This weekend. I need to follow something, Mark. Something my father started."
That night, Elena dreamed of stars that whispered to her in her father's voice: Come home, Ellie-bean. Remember what you saw.
The cabin appeared suddenly, nestled in a small clearing, smaller than she remembered, its cedar siding silvered by sun and weather. Elena sat in her car for a long moment, overcome with a sensation of standing at a threshold.
Inside, time had stood still. Books occupied every available surface—astronomy texts, physics, philosophy. The ancient telescope stood by the west-facing window. A faint scent lingered—wood smoke, old books, and her father's pipe tobacco.
As dusk settled, she found a manila envelope with her name scrawled across it in her father's distinctive left-slanting hand.
Inside was a star chart with a small X marked in red ink, and a letter:
My dearest Elena,
If you're reading this, I've returned to the cosmos in the most literal sense. Don't grieve too long. We're all just temporary arrangements of atoms, borrowing energy for a brief moment.
Do you remember the night I first showed you the Milky Way? You experienced galagog that night. Few people ever do. Most shuffle through life with their gaze fixed firmly on their shoelaces, never looking up long enough to be changed by what they might see.
The red X marks something I've been tracking for years. According to every astronomical catalog, it shouldn't be there. It appears only under specific conditions, and only from this precise location. I believe—it's trying to communicate.
The coordinates and observation protocols are detailed on the back. The equipment is calibrated and ready in the observatory shed behind the cabin.
Whatever you decide to do with this information, remember that a life without occasional galagog is a life half-lived.
All my love,Dad
Elena turned the chart over, finding pages of meticulous notes—coordinates, timestamps, equipment settings. Her father had been tracking an anomalous light source for over a decade, convinced it represented contact from something beyond current scientific paradigms.
According to his notes, the optimal viewing time would be at 12:47 AM.
At exactly 12:42 AM, Elena settled onto the observer's stool in the small observatory shed her father had built, following his protocol precisely. The telescope was aimed at a seemingly empty patch of sky between Cassiopeia and Perseus. The October night was clear and cold, the stars sharp as ice crystals against the blackness.
For nearly twenty minutes, she saw nothing unusual. Doubt began to creep in. Perhaps grief had pushed him toward seeing patterns where none existed. Perhaps—
The thought died as something changed in the eyepiece. A point of light appeared where none had been before, pulsing with a blue-green luminescence unlike any star she'd ever observed. It seemed to expand, not growing larger exactly, but somehow drawing her in, as if the distance between observer and observed was collapsing.
Elena's lungs seized. Her skin prickled. The sensation defied categorization—vertigo without movement, connection without touch. Her consciousness seemed to stretch, thin and elongate, reaching toward something that simultaneously reached back.
The light pulsed in a pattern that nagged at her brain. Three short bursts, a pause, two longer pulses, another pause. Repeating. Not random.
She lost track of time, lost in a state of perfect galagog—both terrified by her cosmic insignificance and paradoxically elevated by her connection to something vast and ancient. When she finally pulled away from the telescope, her face was wet with tears, her limbs stiff with cold.
The eastern sky had begun to lighten. She'd been at the telescope for hours.
In the following days, Elena found more of her father's notebooks—years of documentation, theories, calculations. In the last entry, dated just before his death, he'd written: I believe contact is imminent. The response patterns have changed. It recognizes my signals. It's reaching back.
When she returned to the city, everything looked different—flatter, less substantial, the people moving through their routines with an ant-like predictability.
Mark was waiting at her apartment, caught between worry and anger. "Four days, Elena. Four days with three text messages. I was about to file a missing person report."
"I know. I'm sorry."
"Sorry doesn't cover it." He ran his hands through his hair. "I've been calling hospitals. I tried calling the county sheriff."
"I found something at the cabin," she said carefully. "Something my father was working on before he died."
She told him about the letter, the star chart, the anomalous light and its patterns. As she spoke, she could see his initial receptiveness give way to skepticism, then to alarm.
"Elena," he said when she finished, "you know how this sounds, right?"
"I know exactly how it sounds. If someone had told me this a week ago, I'd have reacted the same way."
"Your father was ill. Terminal cancer can affect the brain. Hallucinations—"
"It wasn't a hallucination. I saw it too, Mark."
He paced to the window and back. "Okay, let's say you did see some kind of light phenomenon. There are dozens of rational explanations. A satellite. Atmospheric refraction."
Elena felt a flash of anger, then realized Mark was simply trying to protect her—from what he genuinely believed to be a grief-fueled fantasy. He couldn't understand what she'd experienced because he'd never experienced galagog himself.
The discussion spiraled for hours, covering the same ground repeatedly. That night, lying next to Mark in bed, Elena felt a chasm between them wider than any interstellar distance.
She realized she was being pulled by two different gravities—the human world with its comforts and connections, and something vast and unknown that called to her from beyond the atmosphere. A choice was inevitable.
Three days later, she gave notice at her job.
A week after that, she moved out of their shared apartment.
Six months later, Elena sat at her father's desk—now her desk—reviewing her latest observations. The light's pulsations had become more complex over time, changing from simple repetitions to intricate sequences that seemed to be building toward something.
Living in near-isolation had changed her perception. Time itself seemed different—more circular than linear, measured by celestial movements rather than digital displays. She found herself noticing details she'd never registered before—the mathematical perfection of spiderwebs, the fractal patterns in tree bark.
The galagog state had become almost her baseline consciousness—a constant awareness of existing simultaneously at multiple scales, from the quantum to the cosmic. This perceptual shift brought both clarity and a profound form of loneliness.
That night, during her regular observation, the light did something new. Its pulsations shifted to a pattern she recognized as binary code. When translated, it yielded:
Coordinates. Time. Elena.
Her name. It knew her name.
The coordinates, when plotted, indicated a location deep in the mountains. The timestamp indicated three days from now, at midnight.
It wanted her to go there.
Elena hiked for six hours, traveling beyond any established trail, until she reached a small valley sheltered by steep cliffs. At its center lay a perfectly still pool that reflected the darkening sky like obsidian glass.
At exactly midnight, the sky above the valley changed. Not just a single point of light this time, but a rippling curtain of luminescence. The air seemed to thicken, carrying a vibration she felt in her bone marrow.
The light descended into the center of the valley, directly above the mirror-like pool. As she approached, it resolved into intricate patterns, swirling and reconfiguring in ways that suggested organization—perhaps even consciousness.
The galagog hit her with overwhelming force, dropping her to her knees at the pool's edge. Tears streamed down her face as she experienced that uniquely human paradox—feeling simultaneously infinitesimal and profoundly connected.
The light settled over the pool, creating a column of radiance that connected water and sky. Acting on instinct, Elena reached out a trembling hand.
As her fingertips brushed the phenomenon, the world shifted. Not violently, but fundamentally, as if reality itself had been retuned. The light surrounded her, not burning but enveloping her in the glow of a thousand distant suns.
No words were exchanged. Instead, Elena experienced a profound shift in consciousness—momentary access to a perspective vast beyond human comprehension. She glimpsed the interconnectedness of all things, from quantum particles to galactic superclusters. Saw time not as a linear progression but as a complex tapestry where past, present, and future existed simultaneously.
Most overwhelming was the presence—not a single entity, but a chorus of awareness that experienced reality in ways fundamentally different from human perception. They communicated not in language but in patterns, in relationships between phenomena, in the structures of existence itself.
When the light receded, leaving her alone in the darkness, Elena remained motionless for a long time, integrating what she had experienced. Dawn was breaking when she finally began the journey back to her cabin.
In the months that followed, Elena struggled to translate her experience into terms others might understand. She wrote hundreds of pages, drew countless diagrams, developed new mathematical models. The light returned periodically, though never again with the same intensity as that night in the valley.
Eventually, she reached out to select astronomers and physicists, sharing carefully edited portions of her research. Most dismissed her findings, but a few expressed interest. A small network began to form, collaborating on what they called "anomalous celestial phenomena."
Two years after her first independent observation, she published a paper titled "Non-Random Light Emission Patterns in the Perseus-Cassiopeia Region," co-authored with a respected astrophysicist. It was met with skepticism from the mainstream scientific community but sparked intense interest in certain circles.
One evening, as Elena sat on her cabin porch watching the stars emerge, her phone rang. It was a collaborator calling from his observatory in Chile.
"Elena," he said, excitement vibrating in his voice. "We've confirmed your observations. Three separate observatories, using different equipment. The emission patterns match your predictions exactly."
She smiled, a deep sense of vindication washing over her. "Thank you for letting me know."
"This is just the beginning," he continued. "With proper funding, better equipment—"
"One step at a time," she said gently. "The universe reveals itself slowly."
After they hung up, Elena remained on the porch, gazing upward. The Milky Way stretched across the sky, just as it had on that night long ago when her father had first lifted her to see it. She felt his presence somehow, not as a ghost, but as a continuing influence—a pattern that had shaped her own.
Galagog swept through her once more—that peculiar mixture of cosmic terror and wonder. But now it was an old friend, a state of being she had learned to inhabit comfortably. The vastness that had once made her feel insignificant now made her feel profoundly connected. Her concerns were laughably quaint against the scale of stars and galaxies—and yet they mattered intensely precisely because conscious beings like herself were vanishingly rare enough to experience them.
The universe was vast beyond comprehension, indifferent to human concerns, terrifying in its scale—and yet, here she was, a brief arrangement of stardust temporarily conscious, capable of looking up in wonder. That, Elena had come to believe, was the true miracle. Not that something out there might be trying to communicate, but that she existed to receive the message.
She picked up her father's old telescope—now hers—and pointed it toward the heavens, seeking new patterns in the ancient light.
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