Jack woke up at 3 AM. He slept at 11 PM yesterday, so you would think that waking up at 3 AM would be excruciating.
Yet he got out of bed with robotic indifference. He has a lot to do today.
His head hurt. Probably hangover, but it didn't even cost him one second of his time. He continued as if it didnt even exist. His girlfriend was sound asleep.
He added to the cold brew in his fridge coconut milk, sugar, orange syrup and whipped cream.
Who drinks their coffee black? Weirdos. Wasting precious moments of your life in discomfort? Until you get acclimatised to the coffee, the bitterness would feel horrendous.
He remembered his dad on his deathbed. Skin a sickly yellow due to the bile spilling out of his body. Silly dad. Should have cut down on the vodka, dad.
'I don't regret a second' his dad said. He wanted to look serene, but...something ....was off. He didnt know what. But the part of his brain which had evolved for billioms of years, which was responsible for empathy made its neurons release chemicals that made Jack feel icky. 'Life is short, son. Enjoy every moment of it.'
He tasted his coffee. Mmmmm...its missing something. He looked outside of his window. The stars were not present as much here in Hobart.
He could see his constellation, Pisces. Just very barely. Any normal human couldn't. Also, just any mage from the house of Stellamancy couldn't see it either. Jack's astrology bound him with the Fish stars.
Every star mage's constellation would always be visible to them. At night. At day. Even when the moon or the Earth itself is in the way. It always glowed neon red, whenever the mage wanted to get in contact with it.
And in that constellation, his star was the Omicron Piscium.
He stared at them for a while. He could see them.
Suddenly, he was there.
In front of Omicron Piscium A. He was a mere 50 kilometeres away from the star and he could feel it.
Not the heat.
He couldn't hear anything either. Sound doesn't travel in space.
He just silently stared at it. He was 50 kilometers away from it, and yet it was as if a flat, white-hot square infinitely long was in front of him.
Of course it looked like that. The star was about 5 times bigger than the sun.
He craned his neck up and only saw white. Occasionally explosions took place which tore off planet-sized chunks of the star away for a few moments, but its gravity was so immense that they simply got sucked back in. And when they did, they sent ripples across the surface of the star.
He could not see even a hint of a curve. Billions of nuclear explosions happened every millisecond. A tongue of hot plasma wasn't there. And then it just appeared in front of him. It was thicker than Jupiter. Hotter than the sun, and was plain white. It passed through him and was already flying a hundred thousand kilometers away. This wasn't 'yellow' like the shit seen on TV. This was pure white.
This star was the visible part of the pinprick that made up the Pisces constellation. Behind it was the Omicron Piscium B. The bigger one's "husband". He was smaller, dimmer and as a result, his contribution to the Pisces was completely overshadowed by his ginormous wife's.
Both of them flooded his brain. The stars whispered the secrets they heard that was scuttling through the universe. God had the tendency to talk to itself as it was shaping the future, and some of its whispers echoed through the universe.
Jack slingshot back to his body in 5.64 seconds and came back to his kitchen. The giant wall of flames was gone. The unearthly quiet had been replaced with the regular quiet which suggested the presence of a gas-based atmosphere.
Of course, if Jack's REAL body had gone there, he wouldn't have even noticed that he was near a star about 30 times bigger than the sun, and he would stop being biology and instantly devolve back into physics. He didn't exactly astral project to the stars. The star astral projected to him.
It would be expected for someone to have talked to a star and been about as far away from it as a police station to go insane, or at the very least pee themselves. But Jack had been talking to A and B for about a decade now, so this was quite a normal occurence in his life.
So he just shrugged. The stars didnt tell anything super-significant. He then proceeded to do the same thing he had been doing for the past 7 years. He drank his coffee, did his morning routine. Went outside at 4:30, met his friends in an abandoned park. Smoked, talked about random shit. Drove around the shithole slum area he lived in. Drank a lot of alcohol. Went to a bar. Drank some more alcohol. Fucked a random girl. (Average humans were desperately thirsty for mage seed. Getting fucked by one had a 0.001% chance to 'infect' you with magic). Gambled all his money away betting on the wrong pig. Drank more. Brought a pack of cheap cigarettes. 17 hours went by in a blur. Good.
Life is short. Enjoy every moment.
He said goodbye to his friends, and stumbled back home.
He couldn't make it. He fell down to the mud. His head swum and his thoughts were jumbled. One might think he was in agony…but that was not the case. As the cold mud pleasantly contrasted the warmth he felt inside from the alcohol, it sent shivers of pleasure along his back. He definitely did not mind the incredible view of the sky. There wasn't much light pollution in the shithole he lived in. But there was plenty of other forms of pollution to make up for it. 'I'm enjoying every moment, dad.' He said to the star Aldebaran.
Funny how from the outside it might seem like a horrible thing Jack was experiencing. Drunk out of his mind, on the ground. Covered in mud. In absolute poverty. Wasting all his money on gambling and alcohol. Living with a bitch. But this day had been perfect. So has every day for the last 5 years. If his girlfriend yelled at him, or behaved like a typical woman he'd just leave. Slapping was the last resort option, as she'd slap back, and her slaps hurt. Domestic abuse was all about timing. The slap should not only sting physically, but fuck her up bad emotionally, so that she'd be stunned and give him enough time to back off and walk quickly away to give the illusion that he won. He shouldn't linger though, because if she got over it, she'd run towards him twice as mad. Yikes.
She started to lose hope in him, which was good. Freed him up more. Made life more beautiful. More pleasured to chase...
Something wiggled into his mind. He was magically gifted. His fate could have been….much 'better'. Mages earn about 180,000 dollars per year on average. He felt something in his chest.
He quickly swatted that thought away. It was stupidity to dwell on such thoughts.
"Keep your lives free from the love of money and be content with what you have, because God has said, 'Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you.'"
—
Hebrews 13:5
See? God itself told Jack that his way of life was perfect. It wasn't just the Christian god who condoned Jack's way of life. Every religion and smart person says that money doesn't matter. Happiness does.
The annoying thought disappeared. Jack is living a good life. Jack has every…thing.....
Jack fell asleep on the mud. And later he would piss himself.