Of the tens of thousands of complaints the Cosmic Zoning Office received, this one was written with the most care.
I was placed at the center of Void Sector 774, 13.8 billion years ago. There are no neighboring galaxies. Gas supply is minimal. I have not a single celestial body I could call a friend. Meanwhile, galaxies assigned to Filament Intersection A have received abundant material without interruption, and have since grown to over one hundred times my mass. Is this not unfair? Would it be possible to hold the placement lottery again?
The officer, Mor, read the application three times, then reached for the standard rejection stamp.
But she couldn’t bring herself to press it.
She had stamped NOT ELIGIBLE FOR REASSIGNMENT tens of thousands of times. But a complaint this courteous — that was a first. Something in the phrasing made it clear: this galaxy had been drafting this letter, quietly and alone, for 13.8 billion years.
Mor called her supervisor.
“I have a complaint from a void resident. Requesting a new placement lottery.”
“Denied.”
“The thing is — it’s written very politely.”
“Irrelevant. Location is determined by density fluctuations at the birth of the universe. There is no one in charge of it.”
“But our office address is listed as the contact for complaints —”
“That was someone’s mistake. We can’t help them.”
Mor hung up and looked at the application one more time.
In the sender address field, the coordinates of an empty stretch of space had been filled in with meticulous care.
She confirmed the electromagnetic frequency listed as the return address, then slowly began to write a reply. Not a form letter. Her own words.
We cannot change your location. But the existence you have recorded across 13.8 billion years was, just recently, placed on a map for the first time — by a telescope called JWST. Because you were in a place where no one else was, you became a reference point for measuring the structure of the universe.
After she hit send, Mor realized something.
The electromagnetic wave would take several billion years to arrive.
