We were the first ship to make contact with It. We have no idea what It is, but many people are calling it God, a higher power, simplifying the creature so their minds can understand. I don’t believe It is some kind of God. I don’t believe it has supernatural powers. I do believe It has great powers. I do believe that it has more knowledge of the universe than we do. Vastly more knowledge then we can hope to achieve in a millennium. We have dubbed It Titan.

I digress. The ship was called Genesis, captained by Samuel Monrel from England. The ship was a worldwide cooperative effort to create the first ship to be able to traverse the stars and we accomplished that. The ship employed people from nearly every country that wanted to participate, both small and large ones included. The ship’s maiden voyage ended in receiving a message from an unknown source. The source, as we know now, was Titan. Let me explain what happened.

Genesis entered the Oort Cloud sixteen days after launch. Going faster than light, we were all astonished the system actually worked. Anyway, it took the ship five years to finally get through the cloud due to its thickness and all the debris. We will have to better advance the systems to clear it faster. It was at this point, most of the crew on the ship realized we will need to go even faster if we ever want to travel to other systems. We finally cleared the cloud and excitement was running rampant through the ship. Even the overseers of the mission back home were ecstatic. We celebrated with the best champagne that the French brought on board, various tribal music that the African countries brought along, and some of the best food from around the world. The Chinese really know how to prepare Peking duck.

After a few days the revelry died down and we were back to being focused on the mission. Sixty days after clearing the cloud, we hit something. Fearing the worst, I checked the ships internal systems integrity. All lights were green. I checked the external shielding and paneling. No damage. Whatever we hit, it didn’t cause any damage. I told the captain and he said to continue forward. We attempted to, only to realize we now couldn’t move forward. The captain told the cannoneers to fire at whatever was in front of us once we backed up a few thousand miles. They did and they hit what seemed like nothing, but it was certainly something. That is when a man from communications came running onto the bridge with fear the likes I have never seen before in his eyes. That was our first contact with Titan. The message: “Don’t. You’ll let the monsters in.” The captain contacted Earth and told them about what just happened. Their response was to try and talk to the creature and see if we can figure out what is blocking us.

The captain relayed these orders to Communications. They said they had been trying to do just that, but they couldn’t pinpoint the source of the message. Then, they received another transmission. “Don’t leave the xyliphenite cube. It protects your kind. You are one of the few perfect creatures left in the universe. You, and others like you, are being protected by us. It is not your time to leave. It is not your time to fight. It is not your time to understand what all there is to understand.” That is when the panic started to run wild. The captain quickly brought it back under control.

During this, I stared out the window into the space ahead of us. Towards the wall of the cube. That’s when I saw it. I saw Titan’s eyes. It was a creature blacker than black as if it was sucking in all the light like a black hole or Charybdis. It had a humanoid shape, but I could only see what looked like its head. In the giant circle I called its head, there were two tiny pinpricks of light assumedly its eyes. It spoke to me, only to me. “I see you looking at me. I see your future and your past. You will be the ancestor of the first human I will allow out of the cube. They will be the first to see the monstrosities I speak of close-up and they will be the ancestor to the first that manages to end one. Much like how you are the first to see me. I see little past that.” Titan’s voice was both masculine and feminine at the same time; it had no definitive tone or pitch. I tried to ask it questions through my mind, but it gave me no response, only the faint twinkle in its eyes allowed me to know that it heard me.

I felt my blood run cold. A shape appeared behind it. It resembled an elongated anglerfish including the bulb of light hanging from it. That light, which looked similar to a blue star, allowed me to accurately detail it. The space fish didn’t have scales. It had a bony plate on its head and its eye were glowing a red that resembled the flames of Hell. It had teeth that were larger than this ship and this ship was 55,000 meters long. Its body didn’t have any covering, it looked like flesh-red muscle and pure white bones could be seen where ribs normally go. The spine also had a bony plate protecting it. All the plates made it start to look more like a dunkleosteus than an anglerfish, but the head was what truly cemented the similarity. The bone plating was a dull brown-rocky color. And just like it appeared, it was gone. Seemingly frightened by the shape of Titan. “Make that the ancestor of the first to tell the story of the monstrosities.” Titan restated.

Remembering my notebook I always keep on me, I managed a rough sketch of the fish creature and of Titan’s head. I also wrote down what Titan said to me. Its words were not easily forgotten. “That was one of the monsters inhabiting the realm your kind calls space.” His voice burst through my head and I nearly passed out. I labeled the fish “monster” before I went to my quarters and lied down. I at some point fell asleep.

The captain woke me up a few hours later to tell me to come back to the bridge. He told me he sent out an engineering team to get a close-up look at the xyliphenite wall in one of the explorer pods. They were gone for nearly twenty-four hours before Genesis was hailed by them. They brought back a chunk of the wall the size of a water bottle cap. They also told us what happened to them out in the abyss of space.

They said that all was well on the flight, but once they started drilling into the wall, the lights in the pod started to go crazy. Flashing on and off and once their terror raised to a certain point, they pulled the drill back in. Immediately, they started to fly back to the ship. Only once they hailed the ship did they decide to check the drill for anything.

Samuel contacted Earth and told them that we had a sample of the wall and will be returning home shortly, after we try to contact the messenger again. They tried and tried for two days with nothing to show for it. They gave up and we returned back to this side of the Oort cloud. The side we knew. The five years it took to maneuver through the cloud was when the rumors started. The rumors calling it a god. A higher being, but no one truly knows what it is.

Once we returned to Earth, we were sworn to secrecy to never tell a soul of what happened. I disappeared into the general population of the United States. Of course, someone eventually blabbed about what happened. Probably someone who became an alcoholic after this. Or, maybe someone told their significant other about the expedition. Either way, word got out to the general public and that’s when the rumors picked up steam. Cults formed in its name. I have a feeling that Titan is watching all this unfold on Earth and is shaking its head disdainfully at us for thinking that this is the route to take to please it. Many of the older religions started to burn the the cultists, whom they called heretics. This only lasted a year before a stop was put to it. I would have liked to say that humanity has grown from this newfound knowledge, but no, it has digressed. Far too many people are holding on to their old ways of life, hindering the advancement of technology so we may break free of our prison and explore the universe. Thankfully, I do know that these old ways will eventually end. That humanity will grow and learn to work together to save our planet and our future.

Titan has changed my way of thinking. It has restored my faith in humanity, but has left me with questions that will never be answered in my lifetime. What is Titan? What does he call himself? What happens to it once we are ready to leave our cube? What other monsters are there? I hope whoever of my lineage follows in my footsteps is able to answer these questions.

A year after Genesis’s maiden voyage returned, I resigned from all forms of space travel. I still keep in contact with Samuel and he tells me what all humanity has learned from that journey to wherever. I won’t say all he has learned, but we are not the only creatures alive in our solar system. Europa has a thriving ecosystem living under its icy shell. He couldn’t even begin to describe those creatures. The photographs don’t help either, but they are majestic creatures. Almost mythologically majestic.

Three years after the maiden voyage I married a woman and had three kids. I couldn’t help but wonder which one them would continue the line towards the first one to leave the cube. The oldest became a thriving businessman, the middle became an engineer for spaceships, and my youngest became an astronaut himself. I’m proud of them all.

Two years later, I got news that Samuel died somewhere in the abyss. Genesis never returned to its dock. A few days after a note appeared on the counter saying “I am sorry. I will remember. He was a good man. He advanced your race.” I could assume who it was from. That was the last I ever heard from Titan. How it got the note on my counter, I do not know, but my wife did have a weird dream last night.