Ted Kosmatka: In-Fall

“What is your name?” the old man asked him.

The boy didn’t answer.

“We need the names of the others.”

“I will tell you nothing.”

“That’s all we need, just the names. Nothing more. We can do the rest.”

The boy stayed silent.

They watched the viewscreen. The black hole grew. The expanding darkness compressed the surrounding star field. The old man checked his instruments.

“We’re traveling at half the speed of light,” he said. “We have two hours, our time, until we approach the Schwarzschild radius.”

“If you were going to kill me, there are easier ways than this.”

“Easier ways, yes.”

“I’m worth nothing to you dead.”

“Nor alive.”

The silence drew out between them.

“Do you know what a black hole is?” The old man asked. “What it is, really?”

The young man’s face was stone.

“It is a side-effect. It is a byproduct of the laws of the universe. You can’t have the universe as we know it and not have black holes. Scientists predicted them before they ever found one.”

“You’re wasting your time.”

The old man gestured toward the screen. “This is not just a black hole though, not really. But they predicted this, too.”

“Do you think you can frighten me with this game?”

“I’m not trying to frighten you.”

“It makes no sense to kill me like this. You’d be killing yourself. You must have a family.”

“I did. Two daughters.”

“You intend to change course.”

“No.”

“This ship has value. Even your life must be worth something, if not to yourself then at least to those whose orders you follow. Why sacrifice both a ship and a man in order to kill one enemy?”

“I was a mathematician before your war made soldiers of mathematicians. There are variables here that you don’t understand.” The old man pointed at the screen again. His voice went soft. “It is beautiful, is it not?”

The boy ignored him. “Or perhaps this ship has an escape pod,” the boy continued. “Perhaps you will be saved while I die. But you’d still be wasting a ship.”

“I cannot escape. The line that pulls us can’t be broken. Even now, the gravity draws us in. By the time we approach the Schwarzschild radius, we’ll be traveling at nearly the speed of light. We will share the same fate, you and I.”

“I don’t believe you.”

The old man shrugged. “You don’t have to believe. You have merely to witness.”

“This doesn’t make sense.”

“You think it has to?”

“Shut up. I don’t want to hear more from a Godless tathuun .”

“Godless? Why do you assume I am Godless?”

“Because if you believed in God, you would not do this thing.”

“You are wrong,” the old man said. “I do believe in God.”

“Then you will receive judgment for your sins.”

“No,” he said. “I will not.”

Over the next several hours, the black hole swelled to fill the screen. The stars along its rim stretched and blurred, torturing the sky into a new configuration.

The boy sat in silence.

The old man checked his instruments. “We cross the Schwarzschild radius in six minutes.”

“Is that when we die?”

“Nothing so simple as that.”

“You talk in circles.”

The old mathematician picked up the scalpel. He touched his finger to the razor tip. “What happens after we cross that radius isn’t the opposite of existence, but its inverse.”

“What does that mean ?”

“So now you ask the questions? Give me a name, and I’ll answer any question you like.”

“Why would I give you names? So they can find themselves in chairs like this?”

The old man shook his head. “You are stubborn, I can see that; so I will give you this for free. The Schwarzschild radius is the innermost orbit beyond which all things must fall inward—even communications signals. This is important to you for this reason: beyond the Schwarzschild radius, asking you questions will serve no purpose, because I will have no way to transmit the information. After that, you will be no use to me at all.”

“You’re saying we’ll still live once we pass it?”

“For most black holes, we’d be torn apart long before reaching it. But this is something special. Super-massive, and old as time. For something this size, the tidal forces are more dilute.”

The image on the screen shifted. The stars flowed in slow-motion as the circular patch of darkness spread. Blackness filled the entire lower portion of the screen.

“A black hole is a two dimensional object; there is no inside to enter, no line to cross, because nothing ever truly falls in. At the event horizon, the math of time and space trade positions.”

“What are you talking about?”

“To distant observers, infalling objects take an infinite period of time to cross the event horizon, simply becoming ever more redshifted as time passes.”

“More of your circles. Why are you doing this? Why not just kill me?”

“There are telescopes watching our descent. Recording the footage.”

“Why?”

“As warning.”

“Propaganda, you mean.”

“To show what will happen to others.”

“We aren’t afraid to die. Our reward is in the afterlife.”

The old man shook his head. “As our speed increases, time dilates. The cameras will show that we’ll never actually hit the black hole. We’ll never cross the threshold.”

The boy’s face showed confusion.

“You still don’t understand. The line isn’t where we die; it’s where time itself ceases to function—where the universe breaks, all matter and energy coming to a halt, frozen forever on that final mathematical boundary. You will never get your afterlife, not ever. Because you will never die.”

The boy’s face was blank for a moment, and then his eyes went wide.

“You don’t fear martyrdom,” the mathematician gestured to the viewscreen. “So perhaps this.”

The ship arced closer. Stars streamed around the looming wound in the starfield.

The old man put his hand on the boy’s shoulder. He touched the scalpel to the boy’s throat. “If you tell me the names, I’ll end this quickly, while you still have time. I need the names before we reach the horizon.”

“So this is what you offer?”

The old man nodded. “Death.”

“What did you do to deserve this mission?”

“I volunteered.”

“Why would you do such a thing?”

“I’ve been too long at this war. My conscience grows heavy.”

“But you said you believe in God. You’ll be giving up your afterlife, too.”

The old man smiled a last smile. “My afterlife would not be so pleasant as yours.”

“How do you know this is all true? What you said about time. How do you know?”

“I’ve seen the telescopic images. Previous missions spread out like pearls across the face of the event, trapped in their final asymptotic approach. They are there still. They will always be there.”

“But how do you know? Maybe it’s just some new propaganda. A lie. Maybe it doesn’t really work that way.”

“What matters is that this ship will be there for all to see, forever. A warning. Long after both our civilizations have come and gone, we will still be visible. Falling forever.”

“It could still be false.”

“But we are good at taking things on faith, you and I. Give me the names.”

“I can’t.”

The old man thought of his daughters. One dark-eyed. The other blue. Gone. Because of boys like this boy. But not this boy, he reminded himself.

The old man looked down at the figure in the chair. He might have been that boy, if circumstances were different. If he’d been raised the way the boy was raised. If he’d seen what he’d seen. The boy was just a pawn in this game.