Great Old One:
That the observed changes in the presence of the observer is an interesting aspect of quantum physics known as the Observer effect. This principle affects quantum objects—those found at the atomic and subatomic scale—scales so small that they are difficult for human beings to comprehend, and whose laws are counterintuitive and intellectually challenging to us.
The goal of quantum physics professors is for students to achieve such a level of knowledge in this area that they understand as little as the former do, but if possible, that the latter do not understand even less.
The question Professor Rufus was asking himself at that moment was the following: if a being of impossible dimensions and non-Euclidean angles were to unknowingly manifest itself in our universe, would the fact that it observed the world change the nature or properties of that very world?
Lately, strange cases of mutations were occurring across the globe. Anything could be affected: from human beings to buildings or entire cities, extending to flora and fauna, transforming whole landscapes or even dimensions like the space between sound and silence—now occupied by a sort of constant static, yet no different from silence itself.
Some living beings died in grotesque and unpredictable ways. And yet, where the most changes had apparently originated, no measuring instrument showed anything unusual: there was no increased radiation, no shifts in atmospheric pressure, nor any variations in the components of the air or water. If the corpses or the buildings, distorted into spaces beyond imagination, were inspected, no special substance or trace could be found.
At the human level, the planetary scale was, for the moment—and, given the situation, possibly forever—the maximum scale a problem could present. Due to a complex juxtaposition of elements, this worried the professor on many levels.
Furthermore, it seemed that the problems were escalating in intensity. A couple of days ago, they had discovered that simply looking outside from the protection provided by the four walls of a building was enough to make a person mutate grotesquely and, in many cases, die.
There was probably no salvation, nor anything as banal as meaning.
Fortunately, in his apartment building, where everyone knew each other, they tried to support one another—whether in the form of food, medicine, tales and stories to tell, or by providing emotional support, even at a time like that.
The first to commit suicide were those optimists who set arbitrary dates for a great miracle to occur, that whole lot of misnamed "alpha males," and the type of people who do not know how to process their feelings and constantly repress them. That is to say, all those who had some excuse to avoid being in touch with their emotions, whatever they might be.
And it was completely understandable: there didn't seem to be anything in reality itself that was going to change the course of events, and the only ones who could bear living like this were those who possessed curiosity or a purpose in life. Of course, given the situation, many of them ended up committing suicide too.
Human beings need each other to survive, and without being able to go outside, it was only a matter of time before they died of hunger or disease—if not from terrible mutations. So, Rufus did the only thing he knew how to do to feel alive: learn.
By that point, Rufus had more curiosity than fear, so one night he took his telescope and began to observe the sky. His appearance began to shift; his teeth started falling from his gums while a new mouth began to grow on his head. That process turned out to be extremely painful, but not incapacitating, so, carefully weighing the circumstances, he decided to go up to the rooftop with his telescope.
Finding something striking in the sky that night was much easier than he thought. Over the night horizon, he saw a silhouette eclipsing the stars and a powerful core of light moving from side to side, as if some strange creature of cosmic proportions were approaching planet Earth.
He looked through his telescope: that core of light looked like a white hole, and the being was unmistakably heading in his direction.
Rufus wondered if a creature so large could even perceive planets.
“Probably not,” he thought.
And he wouldn’t be lying if he said he would have liked to live just a little longer to confirm that, indeed, it couldn't.
Great Old One © 2026 by Marta Roussel Perla is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International. To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/