Odin's Eye

By Mark Arvid White

From my observatory, I could see into the deep corners of the universe. The giant Odin telescope, set up on the Moon only three years ago, was thirty-seven times more powerful than the Earth-orbiting Hubble. It was said that with Odin, one could see the hairs on the neck of the Horsehead Nebula. What was I to make, then, of my discovery on day sixty-two of a three-year mission to Moon Base Armstrong, when I had looked through Odin to the edge of space, just past the furthest known galaxy, the lovably-named MG3 J225155+2217, and had seen not streaking comets, or new planets, or dying stars, but the unmistakable image of an immense, and very human-looking eye?

It wasn't a lens problem, or software error. I ran countless tests, recalibrated the system, and everything was working as it should. Was I seeing things? I had taken the Moon mission to get away from the press, from people who were constantly referring to me as a new wunderkind of astrophysics. I didn't want that kind of attention. On the Moon you could find time for your own thoughts, which didn't usually include hallucination. I checked my data against Hubble and some of the larger Earth-based observatories. They verified that something was in that sector, but even for Hubble it was no more than a speck in the sky. Odin and I had found something truly spectacular, and I decided to keep it under wraps. I had not counted on Jenkins.

"Wow, Tom! This is a great picture you made of an eye next to the galaxy. Did you make it using PhotoSpaceshop?"

"Um, not exactly, Jenkins. What do you make of it?"

"A cool shot. Whose eye is it?"

"Hmm. Not sure. Check it out for me?" This I said to put Jenkins onto something and away from the source of the photo. But he had asked something I hadn't considered. If there was a huge eye on the edge of the universe, who or what did it belong to? Was it God? Some advanced but curious alien culture? I returned to Odin's interface, looking intensely at the galactic-sized eye, which by now seemed to be looking right at me. I shuddered slightly, just as Jenkins pulled up beside me.

"Optical tests are clear, Tom. It's your eye." He grinned, "You have to show me how you did it."

My eye? My mind began to reel. What could this mean? Had I stumbled onto some space-time continuum glitch? Was the boundary of space closer than we thought? How could it be my eye? I frowned. In the Norse myths, Odin had sacrificed his own eye for knowledge. I knew that from now on there would be tests, and questions, and the press, but I too would have to sacrifice. I reached for the button on the base intercom.

"Attention.... everyone. Please meet me at the Odin interface. I've something to tell you."

For science, I thought. And the unknown.