At first, the young soldier is conversing with the captain of the large starship about what sort of things change a man, how witnessing horrible things can change your perspective, your life, your morality, etc.

The ship is attacked and the captain and the young soldier deploy two fighters to intercept whatever hit them. After a brief battle, the only survivors are the two fighter ships and a strange automobile-like starship which attempts to escape.

The young soldier, emboldened by his victory so far, chases after the car and blows out the back “windshield.” A strange creature, like a leopard-spotted manta ray chimera with a face similar to the standard alien (large, dark almond eyes, no mouth) flies out into the vacuum, apparently unaffected, and soars over the young soldier’s ship, completely obscuring his vision for a moment.

The soldier maneuvers the ship to face the thing which is now behind him. It swirls until it becomes a hypnotic morass in front of a colorful void, a wormhole seemingly. For a moment the creature hovering in front of the wormhole resembles Michelangelo’s painting on the Sistine Chapel, as seen from the perspective of Adam in the painting, God’s hand reaching out to him.

The ship is pulled into the wormhole, where the soldier now stands — unprotected by ship or suit — in the vacuum, witnessing the galaxies around him as spiraling circles of flame, spinning in their orbits at an incredible rate. The true infintiessimal nature of space is overwhelming and his mind reels. He flinches, unable to tolerate the obscene size of it all. And he seems to be watching it all coalesce in extreme fast-forward, which only makes it more boggling.

He passes out. And wakes on a planet where there are people with their eyes torn from their sockets. He has not been driven mad enough to do the same so he sees their world in ways they cannot. They are peaceful, but ignorant of the problems around them do to their blindness. But he cannot be their savior. He has seen much of what they have seen and cannot forget, cannot blind himself to it.

He eventually wakes up on the ship and it was all a dream. My subconscious really needs to work on those endings.