Chapter 6: A Man, A Plan, A Canal, Panama
I am the universe. I always was. So are you. I still don’t remember what I was, only that I was something else before I was a black hole. Someone else.
At my edges I am not discrete. I bleed out and the universe bleeds in. It’s how I am able to see the solar system around me.
Sending a message to this ship that brought me here works sort of like that, at least the way the voice explains it to me.
-We’ll be sending a palindrome.
-What?
-Symmetrical. We have to send you out in a sequence and then the same thing in reverse.
-Why?
-The first time gets you there and then the second time sets you there.
I don’t get it but I don’t have to.
-Imagine it this way. You’re going to fall, drop, the places you’ll fall into place to before you fall into place in them.
-I’m sending myself there to send myself there.
I think I understand it.
-More like, you’re sending yourself there to pull yourself there.
-Like an egg-laying animal and an egg, and which came first?
-Not quite. More like, if you were your own grandfather.
But first I have to find it.
-No, it can find you.
Why do I have to be reminded I’m a black hole?
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I push out, I can feel more of the quantum foam around me rip. I am getting bigger.
Eventually the ship shows up.
I can feel the probing again.
-Probe back.
It makes sense and I feel myself getting pulled out of myself and then I am on the ship, receiving myself.
I am in the bottle, on the ship.
I can see the scientist and a youngling, or a youngling of a youngling of the scientist.
I am here now and the voice is gone. I can feel the place it was and I know it’s back there in the space of the black hole, but I am here, on the ship.
Where am I supposed to be?
A ship is like a living thing. It takes energy and it can sense its surroundings.
It’s not the first time they probed me. My memory since I got here seems so clear, but when I try to look back it feels like clear means empty sometimes. They scanned me, right? How does a scan work?
And then I’m there, at the scanning dish.
I am so lost.
The black hole.
Me.
The scientist sees me.
-Hello!
The youngling jumps back from the console, like I can see from the dish all the way through to the control room. I know the scientist sees me.
-I am here!
-You are still in the black hole, the scientist tells me.
I can see him working the console and I can hear the message just to the side of where I hear the voice but I don’t know what he’s doing.
I can tell by the youngling’s face they’re distrustful. They think it’s a trap. There’s no such thing as sentient black holes.
-Hello!
It’s like I’m stuck in place in the word of greeting I try to communicate.
I am in the black hole.
I point my hello there. Oh, hell.
Here I am. I am here.
I understand as I pull myself in and it’s as if I was in the black hole all along, and I speak now in the part of me on the ship. Entangled.
I always was.
I am the universe.
But I am not a trap.
-I am not a trap!
It scares the youngling. I can’t read minds, I don’t think. I observe. I observe because I am.
-Why a trap?
-Big trouble for bringing you here.
They did bring me here. I was someone else. Now I’m something else.
Not just a black hole. World-ending.
-Not a trap. Big mistake.
-Science, the scientist responds. I don’t know how I know their language. I don’t know anything about them. I can’t even tell which planet they’re from.
Then I am back at the black hole. What happened?
-The ships are returning, the voice tells me.
-You can’t tell me there?
-No, I’m not there, I’m only here.
-I need to be there. I was finally starting to get somewhere with the scientist.
-Then you’ll want to keep them around and not see them blown away by these incoming ships.
-How?
-Open your pocket universe, the scientist communicates to me.
I am on the ship again.
-My what?
Then there’s a jolt and I’m on the ship and in the black hole and in between.
I don’t like it.
