Loud beeping.

The ship was ready to lift off.

Qurong tilted his head. He listened to the sounds all around him. There was a deep rumbling -- the spaceship preparing itself for take-off.

He heard the clickety clacking of computers, the hiss of water jets, and talking over the intercom announcing important things, all working in unison to help him take off the planet.

He heard everything.

He saw nothing.

Qurong, his entire race, was incapable of sight. They’d been blind ever since the first of his race had been birthed. And now, they did everything perfectly well without sight.

Qurong ran his fingers over the button, felt the embossed image of the rocketship on it, and breathed in sharply. The button would inject fuel into the combustion tube, shoot the rocket forward, and jettison send him to the huge unknown… into space.

He was tense, and to ease some of the tension inside him, he thought of his wife. The touch of her skin, the texture of her hair, the taste of her lips, he remembered it all. He was going to miss all of that.

“I’m here love,” he heard her voice over the radio, almost in response to his thoughts. “I’ll be here when you come back.”

Qurong smiled. “I love you too,” he said, and breathed more easily.

When he was more relaxed, he pressed the button.

“Lift off in 7… 6… 5…” the computer spat out mechanically. Qurong prepared himself for the journey ahead.

When the countdown reached zero, fuel shot into the combustion tube, a fire lit the bottom of the rocket, and the rocket shot towards the sky.

Qurong was on his way, to space!

The sounds that filled his ears were wondrous. They were deafening, but they were wondrous. He was flying out into space, he was going to be one of the first of his kind to ever break out of the planet’s orbit. He was going to be a hero.

And then he couldn’t hear his rocket ship anymore. He couldn’t hear anything anymore. He was in outer space.

The fuel stopped burning, then the engine switched to inertial propulsion. The rocket floated in space for an hour. It was headed for the first planet in space and it would take approximately a month to reach there.

Qurong unstrapped himself, and let himself float in the spaceship. This was--

The ship pierced a translucent shield of some kind.

“What the heck?” Qurong tilted his head to perceive what he’d just broken through. He tapped a few keys and the computer barked at him. “Envelop covering the planet, breached. In outer space now.”

“What?”

Then, his computer barked at him again -- “Manmade space station, 15 degrees to the left.”

“What-made?” said Qurong again. “What is… that’s not possible. What’s… what’s happening?” His heart was beating faster, his pulse was quickening, Qurong was not okay. So he calmed himself down. He walked, quickly, up and down the spaceship (artificial gravity had been engaged), and after a few minutes, he’d calmed down. Then, he spoke to the computer. “Adjust course, head for the space station.”

The spaceship did just that.

It took an hour to arrive at the space station, then another to get the spaceship to dock at the space station, and ten minutes for Qurong to get off the ship and into the space station.

It was strange, walking down something that was man-made, something that none of the people on his planet had made. Unless this was some kind of government conspiracy. Had his government already put a satellite in the sky to spy on them?

What the hell was this thing?

And then he realized what this was  -- it was God’s abode.

Yes.

Yes!

He was in heaven. Or, perhaps, a gateway that led from his world to the world of god. This was finally happening, he was going to meet god.

He stopped suddenly. He was at a door and he didn’t know how to open it.

Whoosh!

The door opened suddenly.

“That’s… I… I don’t know how that happened.” he thought to himself, and stepped in, cautiously. Qurong walked a few steps until he was sure he was before someone. He didn’t know how he knew, but he knew.

“God?” he said.

He got no answer.

“God?” he repeated, louder this time.

“Mmpff?” the being before Qurong mumbled. “Huh?” it repeated. Then the being’s eyes shot open. He had spotted Qurong. “What the heck?” the being shrank back to the wall as it stared at the man with no eyes. “What… who are you?”

“I’m Qurong?” said Qurong simply.

“Qurong? You’re Qur… you’re…” the being realized who Qurong was. “You’re from the planet…” he got paler. “No, no, no. You shouldn’t be here. You shouldn’t be here!”

“Are you god?”

“What?”

“You’re god, aren’t you? You’re the one who gave birth to us, you… you created us, you gave us form.”

“I’m not god, no. I’m just a--”

“But you gave us life. You gave us shape and form. You’re the reason we’re here. You’re everything, aren’t you? You’re god. You have to be.”

“I… it’s…. yes, we’re the ones who gave made you, but…” the man sighed. “Listen, man, I’m just a glorified space technician, I’m not god. I just sit in this…”

“What… what do you mean?”

The being calmed down. One of the natives had flown up, somehow, and they were at the space station. This was terrible, but not salvageable. Besides, this was one of the parameters of the experiment.

“Alright,” said the man. “Sit down.” He got out of bed and sat himself down on the bed. He motion towards a chair, asking Qurong to sit down too. His mind had finally grasped the situation and it was time to smooth things out.

He looked at Qurong walking towards the chair and realized that in spite of not having eyes, Qurong knew exactly where the chair was. This surprised him.

“So many years I’ve been studying you guys, but it still amazes me that you can tell exactly where things are.”

“What do you mean?”

The man sighed. “Look, you’re… you’re an experiment.”

“An experiment?”

“Yeah, you see, several, hundreds of years ago, one of us wanted to find out what happened to people if they lived in an environment where there was no sight. And this person, he was a millionaire. So he took a bunch of blind orphans, some three thousand of them, and he took their eyes out, surgically, or, rather, got a bunch of scientists to take their eyes out. It was humane, the whole procedure was humane. So he took their eyes out and...”

“Eyes?” Qurong was confused. “What are eyes?”

”Yeah, eyes, see, eyes are a part of a human body, that… that allows people to see. It’s… it’s a new perception, basically. It’s a way for humans to experience the world, like your smell, and your touch, and your hearing. It allows us to ‘see’ things. Anyway, some of us, we were born without eyes. And we were incapable of experiencing the world the same as the others, and we took some of these people, and we took out their eyes, and we made sure when they multiplied, future generations would be born without any eyes.”

“Why would you… you took something away from us?” something deep inside Qurong began to push out, something tiny, but something angry. “Why would you do such a thing?”

“The millionaire had, from what I can tell, one objective: to see if humans could survive nature in spite of this limitation. You people, you were a small population. You were about three thousand in total I think. So, this millionaire hired a bunch of us to keep an eye on you guys, to study you. We wanted you to breed, to hunt, to basically live out your lives as normally as possible. Well, as normally as possible for blind people.”

Qurong gripped the chair he was sitting on. This was getting a little too personal.

“Anyway, you guys were three thousand when you started off, and a few years later the numbers began to dwindle, but few more years passed by, and you guys got back to three thousand. Now, you’re three million. That’s quite an achievement, really. Anyway, you guys multiplied, and you guys lived your lives, happily mostly.”

“Why would you do something like this?”

“I don’t know. I really don’t know. This was some millionaire’s weird idea. I just, I just get paid for this man, quite a bit.”

Qurong got up and began pacing.

“Anyway, you guys,” the man continued, “have been through so many generations, and over time, the millionaire died. But, the experiment continued. The money kept coming in, so the experiment continued. It’s just an anomaly, see. We get paid for doing nothing, really.”

Qurong felt a long metal pipe of some kind, lying on the table. He picked it up.

“But as the years went by, fewer and fewer people were posted at this space station and eventually, it was just one person, me, for the last six years.”

Lead pipe in hand, Qurong stormed towards the man.

Not noticing, the man continued. “And I’m here now, watching these--”

Qurong struck the man.

Blood shot out.

Qurong struck again.

More blood shot out.

Qurong struck again, and again, and soon blood was everywhere. 

He brought the pipe down over and over again until there was nothing left but a pulpy, bloody mess.

Qurong collapsed on the floor and he sat there for a while, breathing hard.

Then he threw up.

Qurong sobbed. He felt more rage than what he had ever felt in his entire life. No, this was not going to work. He was going to have his vengeance on everyone who had put him there. He was going to war with his creators.

Qurong made his way back to his planet. It was time to rally the forces. The humans were going to pay.

This isn’t a great story. I didn’t like it. And I’m not sure why I published it. I rewrote it a bunch of times until it was sort of presentable to the world, but it’s not a great story. If you liked it, great! At least it was good to some people, this story. Enjoy it, hate it, that’s how your relationship with most stories work anyway.