the big things are still there

on the Other Side.....the clouds of dark matter, for one thing.....and the vacuum energy behaves the same as it does in our mundane human reality....if it didn't, the ship wouldn't work. But many things are different.....perhaps most notably the time-flow.....that's why we can go "faster-than-light".....when we translate to the next plane over, hardly any time passes for us, on the ship, while the years keep spinning merrily away for the rest of humanity.....so when the ship slides off the astral plane back into "normal" space, we think we have traveled a long ways.....that always seems backwards to me, but that's how it works.

Time doesn't really "flow" in any direction after all, that's the crux of it....that's how we can get back home later, nothing has really moved from where we left it. There are still stars and planets and what-not on the other planes of reality, most of them anyway.....the "higher planes" tend to do without what we call the physical, the hard stuff of matter.....the folk there are pure energy.....but we don't have to deal with them very often on a simple trip like this one....all we are doing is re-tuning quantum probability wave-fronts a little sharp or flat, depending on which way we need to go, "away" or "back"......

When I'm off watch, I have to switch mental modes, and remember how to interact with other people, instead of singing harmony with the Powers.....to me, this is the hardest part....it doesn't help very much that my shipmates tend to treat me like some kind of weirdo.....a bona fide space-case, one who leaves mundane reality for a living.....oh well, there are perks....you've got a pretty high rank in the shipboard scheme of things, and cute young female passengers seem to find excitement in the company of the mysterious dashing Astrogation Officier....