I didn't think it would feel this quiet. It's not the kind of quiet you get at night, when everyone else has gone to bed and you can still hear the odd car passing, or someone coughing in the next room, and it was not even the quiet of snow, which at least has a sort of softness to it, like the world's been wrapped up in cotton wool. This was something else entirely. It was the kind of quiet that isn't really quiet at all, because there's nothing there to be quiet. It was just me and the hum.

There's always a hum. They don't tell you that in the recruitment videos, do they? They show you the rocket launch (obviously), and the smiling engineers, and that one shot of Earth getting smaller in the window like it's something poetic instead of something deeply unsettling, but they never mention the hum. It's low and constant and it's not loud enough to annoy you, but not quiet enough to ignore. It sits somewhere just behind your thoughts, like a word you can't quite remember.

I've started talking over it. Not consciously, at first; it started with whistling to myself, then little things like Reading checklists out loud, commenting on procedures like I'm presenting an educational programme for an imaginary class.

"Temperature stable," I said earlier, to nobody. "All systems normal." I even nodded, like someone was agreeing with me, and that's when I realised something might be off. They did say there'd be a delay, to be fair. That was the whole point of the mission, really, it was the first proper deep-space flight. Way past Mars, past anything anyone's ever actually been to, and far enough that communication lag becomes ages.

"Psychological resilience is key," the woman had said during the final assessment. "You will be alone for extended periods. You need to demonstrate that you can maintain cognitive stability without real-time human interaction." I remember laughing (not out loud, obviously. That would have been a bit of a red flag). I'd spent most of my life alone. Or at least, functionally alone. Being surrounded by people doesn't really count if none of them want to talk to you. You learn to fill the gaps yourself and you get good at it, so when they asked me if I thought I could handle isolation, I said yes. I didn't even hesitate!

The messages from Earth come in bursts now. Pre-recorded, obviously. There's too much delay for anything else. They still pretend it's a conversation, though.

"Hey," said Commander Evans yesterday (or technically, two weeks ago). "We're getting good data from you. How are you holding up?"

I answered immediately. "I'm fine," I said. "All good here!" Then I waited for an answer that I knew wasn't going to come for weeks anyway.

It started on Day 43 (Or at least, that's when I wrote it down). I was running my usual systems check and I heard something. Not the hum, but Something else; a sort of click. It sounded just like a switch being flicked and I remember freezing, just for a second. Then I laughed. (Actually laughed, this time).

"Brilliant," I said, out loud again. "Spaceship's haunted." I checked the logs, but there wasn't anyhint. I ran level-one diagnostics and they were all clear. I even went through the panels, just in case something had physically shifted, but everything was exactly where it should be, so I ignored it. It was probably stress or fatigue. (That's what Commander Evans'd say, anyway.)

It happened again yesterday, but not a click this time. It was a voice. Now wait, I know how that sounds: If this were someone else's log and I was reading it, or some case study they made us analyse during training, I'd already have known the answer: Auditory hallucination due to prolonged isolation. But that's the thing, it didn't sound like a hallucination. It definately sounded external, clear. Almost too clear, right behind me.

"Hello?" it said.

I didn't turn around. I don't know why. Maybe because turning around would have made it real. Or maybe because part of me already knew what I would see: nothing, just the empty cabin with its consoles, blinking lights, and the endless sea of black through the window.

I stayed very still. The hum filled the silence again, and for the first time, I was pleased to hear it.

Suddenly, after a moment: "Hello?" it said again. It was softer, this time. It sounded curious.

I just sat there with my hands still on the console, fingers hovering over buttons I'd already pressed. Like if I stayed exactly where I was, nothing else would happen. Like this was some sort of test, and the correct answer was 'don't react'. The hum carried on, same as always. For a few seconds, I managed to convince myself I'd imagined it and that it had been part of a memory, or something from one of the recordings. The brain does that, apparently: it fills in gaps and replays things without asking permission. It's all perfectly normal!

"Yes," I said quietly. "That makes sense." Then I realised something: I hadn't been thinking about voices. so there wasn't anything for my brain to replay. I turned around very slowly (not dramatically like Blowfeld in Dr No, just careful and controlled). There was nothing there. Of course there wasn't. It was just the same narrow cabin with the same shiny panels and the same slightly worn patch on the wall where my shoulder brushes when I float past too quickly. I stared at it for a bit longer, just to make sure it didn't suddenly become something else.

"Right," I said. My voice sounded normal which was reassuring. I didn't log any of this, which was probably the first mistake, because there's a protocol for everything. If something unexpected happens you're supposed to record it with the time, conditions, what happened, possible explanations, blah blah blah. They drilled it into us over and over again at the academy. "Trust the data, not your interpretation!" But I already knew what it would look like: Day 44. Crew member reports hearing disembodied voice. No corrobarating sensor data.

They'd flag it immediately and probably even discuss aborting the mission. I'm not going back because of something that probably isn't even real, so I didn't write it down and I just carried on.

That night I played one of the recordings from home and listened to Mam's voice. She'd tried to sound normal when she recorded them, putting on a cheerful smile and talking about completely ordinary things like they mattered enormously.

"Your father's finally fixed that gate," she said, in one of them. "Only took him five years. He tightened the screws with a butter knife because he couldn't find his screwdriver."

I smiled at that, as I always do when I watch this message. There's something comforting about the fact that some things don't change, even when you're this far away. I closed my eyes. For a moment, it almost felt like I was there again, sitting at the kitchen table, pretending to do homework while listening to them argue about something completely pointless.

"Is that her?"

I opened my eyes but didn't move. I didn't breathe. I just listened.

"Is that her?" the voice said again. Closer, this time, like it was right besides me. I turned my head; there was nothing there (of course), but it didn't feel like nothing anymore. "It sounds like her," the voice continued. It was thoughtful, like it was analysing something, or trying to work something out. I reached over and stopped the recording and the silence that followed was immediate and heavy. For a second, I thought that might stop the voice too, but it didn't.

"Why did you stop it?" My mouth suddenly felt dry (which is ridiculous because the humidity levels in here are perfectly regulated. I should know; I check them all the time).

"I didn't," I said. That wasn't true. "I mean-- I just--" I stopped. Waited. Nothing. "Right," I said again, a bit louder this time. "Okay." I pushed myself away from the console and floated across the cabin. My shoulder hit the wall harder than usual. That helped; pain is grounding. I checked the systems again: everything normal. Oxygen levels stable. Temperature stable. No irregularities in any of the internal sensors. No unexpected signals. No anomalies. Nothing to suggest that anything, anywhere, was out of place.

Except: "why do you keep checking those?" the voice asked.

I closed my eyes. Just for a second. This is fine. That's what I told myself. This is exactly what they warned you about. It's Isolation, sensory deprivation. Your brain is just trying to compensate, it's perfectly normal!

"You know I'm not on the panels," it said. I opened my eyes again, very slowly.

"Of course you're not," I said, calm, measured, and in control. "There's nothing there." There was a pause that was not long, bBut long enough to feel deliberate.

"Then why," the voice asked, very quietly, "did you look?"

I didn't write anything down for a while after that, but not because there wasn't anything to write, but just because it didn't seem important anymore. I think it was Day 50 when I noticed the clocks didn't agree. There are three of them in the ship: one on the main console, one on the backup system, and one on my wrist. They're all supposed to be syncronised automatically

Except:

The console said 14:12.
The backup said 14:19.
My watch said 13:56.

I remember staring at them for a long time, not panicking, just trying to work out which one felt right. That sounds strange, I know, but that's exactly it: I wasn't interested in which one was right, but which one felt right.

"None of them," the voice said. I didn't react (that was my new rule).

"They're all wrong," it continued. "You've been asleep longer than you think." I checked the logs, or at least, I tried to: that was when I noticed the gaps.

Day 45: complete.
Day 46: partial.
Day 47: missing.
Day 48: one entry that just said don't forget to and then nothing.

"I didn't delete that," I said.

"You didn't write it properly," the voice replied.

I scrolled further and found way more gaps. One had a timestamp repeating over and over again, like it had gotten stuck:

03:17
03:17
03:17
03:17

I rubbed my eyes, but that didn't help.

"You keep going back there," the voice said.

"I don't."

"You do."

"I don't."

"You will," it said.

I stopped checking the logs after that and started sleeping more. Or less? I'm not entirely sure. At some point I found myself sitting by the window, just looking out. There's nothing to see, obviously. Just stars, and so many of them that it stops meaning anything after a while. They don't twinkle out here, they just sit there.

"You missed it," the voice said. I didn't ask what it meant. "It was right there," it continued. "You were looking the wrong way." I leaned closer to the glass, but there was nothing. There had never been anything!

"You're too focused on the inside," it said. "That's your problem."

"That's where everything is," I replied.

There was a long pause.

"Not everything."

I frowned, because that didn't make sense. There isn't anything else out here: that's the whole point (that's what makes this a mission!).

"You know that's not true," the voice said gently.

I shook my head. "It is!"

"No it's not."

I closed my eyes for a second, and when I opened them again, I was standing, but I don't remember getting up. Now I was on the other side of the cabin, near the airlock, pressing my face up agains the tiny porthole.

"You see?" the voice said, very quiet now, very close. My hand was resting on the control panel. "This is what you were sent for."

"That's not--" I started.

"It is."

I looked down at the panel. It was desplaying the emergency procedures. Clear instructions with multiple safeguards. "They're for when things go wrong," I said.

"Yes," the voice agreed. "They've already gone wrong."

I laughed again, but it didn't sound right. "No," I said. "No, they haven't. Everything's--" I stopped because I didn't know how to finish that sentence. Everything's what? I mean, the hum was still there, the lights were still on, the systems were still--

"You don't need them," the voice said, interrupting my thoughts again. I looked at the window, out at the black nothing.

"It's not nothing," it said. "You just can't see it from in here. Out there," the voice whispered, "everything lines up."

I swallowed. For a moment - just a moment - I imagined it: Stepping out.

No hum.

No panels.

No delay.

No waiting.

"You won't be alone," it said.

I closed my eyes.

And then--

I think--

I reached for the hatch release.

Or maybe I already had.

I'm not entirely sure.