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The first time the icy indifference of space gathered outside the windows of his basement apartment, Art West was lying in bed, reading his father’s copy of The Count of Monte Cristo. A long, squat row of windows eye-level with the front yard ran along the top of the wall across the room. But now there was no yard, only blackness. But then more than blackness: Stars. Too many of them, like he was seeing them from the dark side of the moon. He rolled his desk chair across the cement floor to the wall and carefully stood on it, gazed out at what he thought was the end of the world, terrified. There were two great starry bands—gashes of blue and pink and white—intersecting one another. Two galaxies, merging.
More stars. Nothing but stars, as if the whole house floated through spac
