...what it means to speak across eternity? An eternity of cold and silence?
Pulsar #T0468 (rhythmic, like a metronome): "Can... you... hear... me?" (A powerful beam of radio waves cuts through the abyss, aimed at a faint point in the distance. Years pass).
Pulsar #H6638 (its reply, fainter, arriving centuries later): "I... hear... But... so... far..." (Its own signal, once proud and bright up close, scatters, weakens on the journey to its neighbor. It knows this).
Pulsar #T0468 (again, unaware if its first question was heard): "I... am... here... Not... fading..." (It spins like a top, emitting rays of strict periodicity – a lighthouse in a desert, unaware if anyone sees it).
Pulsar #H6638 (static sadness in its "voice"): "I... know... I too... But... my... beam... weak... for you..." (It detects a faint glimmer of #T0468 in its data, realizing: it's an echo from the distant past. A conversation from yesterday).
Pulsar #T0468 (almost desperately): "Speak... louder..." (Its own pulse – a scream into the void. It feels its spin, the source of its voice, inexorably slowing. It is aging).
Pulsar #H6638 (softly, like a sigh): "Trying... But strength... fades... And you... grow... quieter..." (It catches its neighbor's signal – it truly has become slower, weaker. They are both fading. Their dialogue is a countdown to silence).
Pulsar #T0468 (a final attempt, barely a whisper on the ether): "We... are... close... in this... void..." (Its beam, once fierce, now a shadow. It points to where #H6638 was centuries ago).
Pulsar #H6638 (its reply, if it ever arrives, will be a faint echo): "Yes... Close... in eternal... solitude..." (It radiates into emptiness, knowing its words, like its neighbor's, belong to the past. Their "now" is separated by light-years and unyielding physics).
Silence. Only the cold, rhythmic groan of their rotation and faint, dying signals drifting through the interstellar void. Two magnificent stellar hearts forged of neutron star matter, two cosmic lighthouses. They flicker in the abyss, sending messages across centuries and space, doomed to monologue, to scream into the vacuum, to eternally await a reply that comes too late or not at all. Their tragedy lies in the impossibility of true connection, in a dialogue stretched across time into meaninglessness, in a closeness forever illusory, trapped in beams of light racing through eternal night.
