My pocket universe starts at an infinitely small point inside me, and then droops outside of me and outside this universe I’ve found myself in.

  I can’t look at my pocket universe and the universe around me at the same time. Look at. See is more accurate. It’s passive.

  -No, you can look. I don’t think this voice is just me, like it said it was.

  -What do you mean?

  -Everything goes through you. When you don’t let it overwhelm you, you can see what it is. But it’s everything. You can look further, take more. But right now, you’ve got that ship in your pocket universe so you have to turn your sight---

  -Inward?

  -Not quite. Don’t interrupt. You’ll get a hang of it. The tendrils---

  -Don’t call them that.

  -The tendons that connect spacetimes. You’re on one of those, and you’ve got a pocket just outside this spacetime.

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  The voice says spacetimes. It means universe. This universe I find myself in. And the one I must’ve come from. Along one of the tendons. Highways. From my universe.

  -This is your universe. the voice interrupts me this time. Feel the ship.

  I can. I can see the pocket universe and look at it, it’s so small compared to what I get looking in the direction of the universe I’ve torn into.

  I the ship and the people in it so much more clearly now.

  There’s the scientist, and what I gather to be the offspring of its offspring. There are beings of a different alien race crewing the ship. The purple ones.

  I’ve gathered that the scientist, the beings on the ship pursuing it, which I’ve forgotten is on the other side of me but can feel myself tugging on now--it’s sort of like seeing, are mostly from the dominant species of the solar system, but there are at least two others.

  The purple ones are hard to see on their planet but I get a better look here. Their probiscis or appendages do a lot of work here. Physiology seems so unimportant now. But I used to have one too right?

  I can materialize in the ship with one because I can see and be everything in this pocket universe actively.

  My pocket universe.

  I try to take the shape of the alien but the insides don’t matter.

  It’s easier to talk through their thoughts.

  -I’m the black hole, I project to the scientist and the youngling. My name is Tem.

  I don’t know where that came from.

  The youngling looked scare. My attempt to take the shape of the aliens disturbed it.

  The scientist was prepared. It looked like he was amused. Humored.

  -Don’t worry, the scientist says to the youngling. This same thing happened to my grandfather!