//------------------------------//
// 1) Eternity 
// Story: Inside Where Eternals Die 
// by AppleTank 
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The discovery was a complete accident. Nobody ever went in that direction; it was out of the way, a difficult jump, and led to, as far as anyone could tell, nowhere. Mappers noted it was there, and that was that.

It was only after a fugitive tried running through unexplored dimensions, trying to shake off their pursuers, did anyone realize something was amiss. Out in this far flung corner of nowhere, there was a single chain of isolated, empty universes, twenty jumps deep. 

With each jump, there were less and less stars in the sky. A once beautiful tapestry, becoming colder, emptier, lonelier. Until they reached the twentieth jump, where there was nothing. Not a single star they could detect on even the most sensitive of instruments. They raised the gain on them so much the faint light from the control panels started interfering with its scans.

The only volunteers were unilaterally sarosians who went ahead and sat for hours in darkness so pure, they echolocated constantly just so they could be sure they weren’t floating off into space. And even then, they still felt as if the ship was crumpling in around them. The results came in: there was a complete lack of even a single photon for billions of years in any direction. 

From then on, everyone tried to leave this dimension as fast as possible.

The twenty-first jump reversed this trend, if only slightly. There was a single star as far as the sensors could see. A low-ranged one, though even that could not explain its age. 

A single planet orbited it, though that was almost an insult to every planet. It was large enough to have standard gravity, and that was about it. It had a thin, breathable atmosphere, but the air was so devoid of moisture nobody ever took off their hazardous environment suits for long. Being on the ground was an exercise in boredom. Flat, dry compacted dirt in every direction. Not a single dune, and we had numerous pegasi go check. The poles were colder, but that was it.The wind was slow, meandering, unchanging, barely ruffling a single sheet of paper.

When night came, it became pitch black. No stars, no natural night lights. The first night we realized this, everyone went scrambling back to their ships. All remembered the darkness of the twentieth jump. Days later, hundreds of portable lights were shipped in.

At least when the exploratory vessels went into system orbit to set up telescopes, they had the light of the local star to see by. However, this proved to be useless as well. 

As a last resort, the vessels made random jumps across deep space. The only thing they found were cold lumps of iron floating aimlessly. 

It took weeks until someone found the one unique, and disturbing feature on this dead rock: an old, outdated, but clearly functional refueling station. It used the same standard fuel most ships in the coalition used, though it was near empty. Even had several old, if standard connectors, along with an easily removable detachment point to install different ones. 

In fact, the entire building was made of simple, pre-fab parts, with not a single decorative embellishment. From the outside, it was just a large, concrete grey box with an airlock and dirty solar panels. From the inside, it was an empty concrete box with battery lamps, a few cots,  and some plastic tables. The large fuel tank was bolted to the concrete foundation outside.

However, there was an additional room that broke this connection. The small side room housed a single, massive slab of iron, inscribed with hundreds of languages across the Worlds. They all translated into the same thing, a set of instructions to guide a dimensional jump, distance, speed, time.

On its back, a piece of spray-paint art. A vague outline in black, short, likely quadruped, with purple streaks spreading out like wings. It looked as perfect as if it was made yesterday in this dry, perfectly regulated environment. The iron black too, no moisture for rust.

Everything we found in this place, it only left us with more and more questions. 

How old was this place?

Who made this?