Sergio De La Pava - A Naked Singularity

“Citibank?”

“No, the display below it.”

“Okay. 6:08 p.m. Well 6:08 but I know it’s p.m.”

“Okay but keep looking. Wait. See that?”

“Yeah?”

“What does it say?”

“Six.”

“Six what?”

“Six degrees. It’s six degrees out, what’s your point?”

“What’s my point? It’s pouring rain out there and the temperature is six fucking degrees! How can that be? Does water not freeze at thirty-two degrees anymore? Is that what you’re telling me?”

“Hmm, maybe it’s not rain?”

“Oh no? What is it then?”

“It’s like a type of snow or sleet.”

“It is?”

“Let me see. No you’re right, that’s pure rain baby. Maybe the temperature’s wrong.”

“I just came in from out there and if it is it’s too high.”

“You’re right again. I hate rain Casi. When I was a kid whenever it would rain my mom would say it was God crying. Believe that? Then one time when I was thirteen I said something like fuck him, we’re the ones should be crying . You can imagine how that one went over.”

“I’m waiting on that explanation, this is no fat actor.”

“Shh, it’s starting.” Angus made Television louder and sat on the floor. “Did you know Tula is mostly a local story. Thank God I came back when I did huh?”

“What the hell is this now?” I said.

“Shh!”

On the screen was a genuine red carpet in front of black limos. A disembodied voice came on to explain that we were live at the legendary Ed Sullivan Theater in Times Square where a select list of invited guests was preparing to view the world premiere of the Tula Abduction Video. And as the voice spoke tuxedoed men opened car doors to let smiling actresses out and the cameraman would capture the precise yummy moment when their outer leg would first pierce the slit on their black dresses. The voice gave the background: about the crime and the Vigilantes and how the footage was originally to be shown at a City Hall press conference but how that plan was foiled by an untimely power outage, how said outage damaged the footage to the point that only the dedication and tireless expertise of the FBI’s Video Reclamation Lab was able to restore the clip so that it was fit for viewing but how such great expense was incurred in doing so that an enterprising FBI intern came up with the inspired and unprecedented idea of hiring a hot young Bollywood director to cut the footage into a PG-13 feature length film to be released in New York only, with children and senior citizens charged double and all proceeds going to the restoring lab. This was the premiere of that film and the proud mayor was set to take the opportunity to make a major announcement as well.

So it was that, under a giant red Campbell’s Tomato Soup canopy erected to shield speaker and audience from the rain, Toad announced the formation of T.O.A.D. or the Team to heap assistance On Actors and other Destitutes. He began by identifying what he called the two biggest problems facing New York: homeless people and unemployed actors. Seems the inhumanly frigid nature of the past few weeks was causing the homeless to drop like flies or attrit at record numbers . The crowd didn’t seem to know how to respond to that information but then Toad began to describe the difficulties of making it as an actor in the city and his audience voiced audible support.

Toad’s solution called for the city to pay unemployed actors to attend funerals for the recently dead homeless and play the part of bereaved friends and relatives. In that manner would the homeless be afforded the final dignity of an appropriate funeral ceremony complete with the illusion of concern while needy actors will gain valuable experience not to mention a nice paycheck to boot . Congratulations were exchanged and everyone went inside, where it was warm and dry, to see the highly-anticipated movie.

“I suppose that was okay huh Angus?”

“A little weird maybe but that’s to be expected.”

“And the rain? There’s just no explanation.”

“Oh there’s an explanation. For the rain and everything else. I’m just not sure it’s one you’re going to like.”

“What is it then? What’s the explanation for these people?”

“People? Surely you can’t think this is about anything as jejune as people or human nature can you? Because it isn’t. This is exactly why I had to switch from Psychology to Physics. People like you always trying to explain and understand human conduct. The fault, dear Casi, lies not in ourselves but in our stars.”

“Huh? How’s that?”

“Physics my friend. Only Physics can adequately explain what’s occurring. Don’t look to the person across from you or even the one in the mirror, look to the cosmos. Don’t look closely, look out and afar into the great distance. Because to explain you need a telescope not a microscope as the explanation lies in the very nature of our universe.”

“So what is it then?”

“Singularities. You know what they are.”

“Singularities?”

“Right. Picture a star turning into a black hole as happens from time to time. It does this through gravitational collapse right? In other words, we know that, put crudely, the term gravity refers to the attraction by matter of other matter. Obviously then in a massive object such as a star its component matter is constantly attracting itself while other forces generally counteract gravity to keep the entity from collapsing in on itself. Now with gravitational collapse the counteracting forces don’t do their job well enough and the object begins to shrink, for lack of a better word, and become denser. Of course as the object’s density increases so logically does its core’s gravitational pull so that the shrinking continues at an accelerating rate. Ultimately the shrinking will end in a point so dense, with an internal gravitational pull so strong, that nothing, not even light, can overcome its pull, thus forming a black hole, black because even light is irretrievably sucked into it if it gets past the hole’s event horizon. And at the center of this black hole is a spacetime singularity right? A point of infinite density. A point where concepts such as space and time have no meaning, where the laws of science break down and the future lacks even the slightest predictability. Singularities like these are not mere inventions Casi. They are predicted by a little thing called the General Theory of Relativity. They are, as I’ve said, the centerpiece of black holes, another actual and verified phenomenon, and they are thought to be in some sense the origin of the universe just before The Big Bang and its likely end after The Big Crunch. Now fortunately until now singularities have only existed in black holes, locations that by definition prevented them from having any effect on our world since remember that no information can escape a black hole.”

“Until now?”

“Well you wanted the explanation man and that’s it. Our universe is collapsing into a singularity. Slowly, I admit, but it’s happening. And not the kind of singularities found in black holes either. No. What we’re headed for is what theorists call a naked singularity. One not cloaked by the shadow of a surrounding black hole. One apparent and visible with effects we’re all feeling. Predictability, Space, Time, the physical laws, they mean less with every passing second and soon enough they’ll mean absolutely nothing. Why now? Why the collapse? Too much matter dude, causing too great a pull. My theory is that certain things that used to have no mass now suddenly do and they’re multiplying. Either that or the mysterious invisible force that had previously served to combat gravity and drive universal expansion has now abandoned us or otherwise failed.”