The Hole

by Brandon Q Morris

  “The thickness is not as important as the density,” Watson objected. “It would even be an advantage if the disk is thinner. We definitely have to run the calculations. For the next step we are going to need the instrument to cause vibrations in the accretion disk.”

  “The megaphone,” Sebastiano said.

  “If you want to call it that.”

  “How much time do we have?”

  “Until the next periapsis,” Watson replied.

  “Peri-what?” Sebastiano asked.

  “Periapsis,” Maria explained, “the cusp with the shortest distance to the central body.”

  “That would be tomorrow at noon,” Doug added.

  March 30, 2072, Earth Orbit

  The youngest passenger, a ponytailed 15-year-old girl named Indira, was supposed to give the launch signal. She won her place aboard the Ark in the general lottery. The minimum age was supposed to be 16, but Indira’s parents—poor Indian peasants—had used money from the entire clan to bribe a few civil servants and they had obtained a forged birth certificate. A news outlet revealed this fact, but public opinion did not turn against the young woman and instead called her an involuntary heroine. Therefore it had been out of the question to take away her ticket.

  Indira floated in front of a red button, which was oversized so it would look impressive to the billions of viewers worldwide. In actuality, the button did not really fulfill any function. The AI controlling the ship was going to start the engines the moment it saw that Indira had finished her task. Karl Freitag was watching the scene from the entrance of the Ark’s command module. Indira, the person everyone was focused on, was not yet used to zero gravity. However, most TV viewers would not even notice, since they had never been to space.

  About 30 people were gathered in the module, mostly from the part of the crew that earned their places through special efforts during the preparation of the flight. At least ten passengers, the ship doctor reported, were in their bunks suffering from acute space sickness.

  Three young men, two Asians and a black man, wore white shirts and black pants, which marked them as waiters. They were serving canapés among the persons gathered there for the occasion. There had been long discussion about whether alcohol should be allowed on board the spaceship, but in the end the decision went against it.

  At first sight, the mood was almost cheerful, like at the beginning of a vacation trip. Those present were conversing in low tones, but there was also a tension behind the seemingly-relaxed atmosphere. Karl was sure he did not just imagine it. He even checked the pressure gauge to rule out a physical cause.

  For several hours the loudspeakers hidden in the walls of the ship had been playing the national anthems of all countries on Earth. Not all of these countries had representatives on the ship, which led to a few diplomatic squabbles. In the end the issue was solved by affirming that the Ark was a private initiative. Nevertheless, the leaders of the most important nations had insisted on giving farewell speeches. Each of them had been allowed two minutes, but not every government head kept to this time limit.

  Karl yawned. Lately he’d had a hard time sleeping, because he was still waiting for the proverbial ‘shit to hit the fan.’ He was annoyed at himself for it. Why couldn’t he be more optimistic? Things were going to be okay. On the other hand this instinct had saved him more than once by causing him to take a closer look than absolutely required.

  The Chinese president was finally finished—as the representative of the most populous country, he was allowed to be the last speaker during the event. He had just declared all 100 passengers to be ‘Heroes and Heroines of the People.’ Karl laughed. He was definitely going to remember that one for a long time.

  A currently popular teen-pop group played their greatest hit, live—that had been Indira’s special wish, and now she was about to perform her assigned task. An older woman behind her carefully pushed Indira toward the button, obviously intent on being seen by the cameras herself. Vanity truly dies last, Karl thought. The young woman from India smiled. She did not know which camera to look into, even though she probably had been told often enough. The cameras were remote-controlled by the TV studios on Earth. A short moment of confusion occurred when the cameras of two competing networks collided.

  Then everything calmed down again. The pop band played their last note and an awed silence descended on the control center. Everyone was looking at the floor. The emotion swept over Karl like a wave, impossible to be ignored. They would never again see Earth in all its glory from such a short distance. Once the young woman pushed the button, they would leave, as far away as Jupiter. Then they would wait out the deadly storm and maybe return to a planet no longer recognizable.

  Perhaps some people would survive in bunkers, but those who did would be completely on their own, just like the crew of the Ark. The ship would be unable to land, and the bunker dwellers could not fly into space. If they did not die out right away, the two parts of humanity would develop independently of each other.

  Karl had already talked to some members of the leadership. His idea of starting a journey to Alpha Centauri had gained some supporters. Maybe the majority of the one hundred passengers would agree. Sometime in the future, their remote descendants would grow up under a foreign sun. By then he would have been dead tens of thousands of years.

  Indira pressed the button. The mechanism seemed to be stuck, so she had to exert some force. Tears were streaming down her face. Karl imagined that she thought of her parents who had sacrificed everything to give her this opportunity.

  Somewhere ahead of them there was a clanking sound. The AI must have activated the engines. Hot particles streamed from the jets, and the counterforce of the impulse they carried away slowly pushed the heavy ship forward. The acceleration phase would take half an hour, so all of them would have enough time to get to their cabins or workplaces.

  Forgotten snacks tumbled to the deck, which now became the floor. The passengers, including Indira, were leaving the center. The red button slipped from the loop it was attached to and fell down. The three waiters scrambled to clean up everything they could reach. The black man came near Karl. The guy was almost two meters tall, and he gave Karl a friendly smile.

  “Could you please hold this,” he asked. He handed Karl a tray with leftovers. In doing so, he leaned forward so Karl could read his name tag: ‘M. Oldfield.’

  He started feeling hot. “Oldfield, Mike?” Karl asked.

  The waiter laughed. “Well, my father must have been a fan of his. Did you know him?”

  “Is there another ‘M period Oldfield’ on the ship?”

  “Another Oldfield? I would definitely know that. And then with a first name starting with M?” the waiter asked.

  Karl felt dizzy. He threw the tray toward the man.

  “Hey! What the hell?” the waiter yelled.

  Karl had to reach the helm as soon as possible. The control center was not very large. While the AI controlled the ship all by itself, there was a captains’ team consisting of three crew members, each working alternating shifts. They were able to give new orders to the AI. Karl ran forward, stumbling over a stool rolling around in the room. Even though it took only a few steps, he was out of breath when he reached the control crew.

  “You absolutely have to cancel the acceleration phase!” he called.

  The two women and one man turned around to look at him. He hoped they would recognize him.

  “Karl Freitag, the Security Director,” said the woman sitting in the chair to the right.

  “Yes, that’s me. Don’t you hear what I am saying?”

  “I hear you, but I don’t understand,” the woman replied. “What do you want?”

  “You have to cancel the launch procedure!” he ordered.

  “But it is much too late, as you should notice by your weight.”

  “The AI must turn off the engines right now!”

  “What would the ten billion people on Earth say if we decelerated already
?” the man interjected.

  “Could you explain what makes you react in such a panicky manner, Karl?” the woman asked.

  “I met a man, Mike Oldfield...” Karl tried to explain.

  The man laughed. “Like the musician?”

  “That’s irrelevant!” Karl was getting louder, “When I saw him outside, he was in a spacesuit and working on the structure anchoring the fusion drive.”

  “A worker, sure,” the woman said.

  “Then he was a Caucasian. And now I just met him as a waiter, and he is black.”

  “Freitag,” the woman asked, “are you quite sure? There is all this contrast in space, only black and white. Could you simply have mistaken him for someone else?”

  “I am quite sure,” Karl said. “Someone joined the crew under a false name in order to sabotage the ship. You must turn off the engines immediately!”

  He screamed those last words. He was angry because the three just did not understand, but also at himself for not checking things more thoroughly.

  “Listen, you have to deactivate them!” he yelled again.

  “Just a moment. If you are getting so aggressive, we have to call security to take you away,” the man said.

  Now Karl suddenly remembered. The man is a former company lawyer. Why does he have to be sitting here, of all people?

  “I am the security director!” Karl yelled.

  The man attempted to unbuckle from his seat. Was he going to attack? Karl laughed out loud. The guy really made a mistake! But the laughter cooled down his anger a bit. He took a deep breath.

  “AI, describe origin and appearance of crew member Mike Oldfield,” he said in a deliberately calm voice.

  “Mike Oldfield, 27, is a citizen of Namibia who worked in the British oil industry,” the AI described. “He is 1 meter, 98 centimeters tall, weighs 92 kilos, and is dark-skinned.”

  “You see? The Oldfield I saw outside cannot have been genuine,” Karl said.

  The two women and the man did not answer. They were staring at the monitors in front of them. Suddenly Karl’s chest tightened and his heart hurt. He jumped forward and saw what the exterior cameras were recording. The struts connecting the fusion engines to the ship had separated in several places. They were supposed to withstand an acceleration of at least 5 g, but the ship had not even reached 0.5 g. The supposedly-strong metal struts bent like matchsticks. Someone must have very diligently sabotaged all the joints. It was the fake Oldfield. Karl sweated. This is going to be a catastrophe.

  “Deactivate engines,” the man in the chair said, and the two women confirmed the command.

  “Turning engines off,” the AI control said.

  By now the reactor had almost completely separated from the ship, which was also still accelerating. The main engines could not simply be turned off by pressing a button. If the control system wanted to use them again, they had to be shut down properly. A strut on the upper part of the reactor separated itself. It must have been under an enormous strain, because it practically jumped downward and hit the fusion drive hard.

  “AI, how long are the engines going to keep running?” Karl asked.

  “Complete deactivation in 45 seconds,” the AI reported.

  Karl had to hold on to the monitor, because he was gradually becoming weightless again. Now the reactor was moving sideways, toward the stream of hot gas still coming from the engines.

  “AI, maximal thermal tolerance of the reactor?” Karl managed to utter.

  “2500 degrees Kelvin on the outer shell.”

  That should be enough, he thought. Another 20 seconds to deactivation, but soon the reactor would enter the hot gas. Then it did so, and luckily there was no damage. The outer shell held, but the motion of the reactor increased significantly. It was not a huge effect, but they still needed that thing. It was supposed to get them out of reach of the radiation storm and it couldn’t be allowed get away from like this! Yet the reactor did not listen to his wishes, it simply obeyed the laws of physics.

  “Can you see this?” Karl pointed at the movement vector of the reactor, which was definitely aiming away from the ship. The former lawyer nodded in his seat.

  “No matter what happens next,” Karl began, “we just lost the drive that would have allowed us a different fate than the ten billion people down there. Before a mutiny starts here, or riots, we have to talk to Earth about what we can do.”

  March 31, 2072, Object X

  Watson could hardly believe there was neither 3D nor VR technology onboard Kiska. The crew instead had to use a white bed sheet as a substitute for a projection screen to enable the AI to show them the black hole in all its glory. A two-dimensional presentation could never be entirely exact, Watson had cautioned, but Doug was even more curious to see what the thing really looked like. They dimmed the light in the command module.

  A field of stars appeared first on the makeshift screen. Doug thought he could recognize the Orion constellation, even though it was upside-down.

  “Do you see it?” asked Watson.

  Doug examined the display but could not find anything unusual. “Is this a test?” he asked.

  Instead of answering, the AI marked an area to the right of the center with a red circle. And there was actually nothing there, not a single star.

  “Space seems to be empty there,” Sebastiano said.

  “It seems to be, but that is an illusion,” Watson said. “I am slowly switching into the infrared range.”

  Some stars disappeared in front of their eyes, while others shone more brightly. In an area where the crew had not been able to detect anything previously, a reddish glow appeared, which had an approximately spherical shape. It seemed to possess a kind of glowing belt.

  “This is the thermal radiation emerging from the area around the black hole,” Watson explained. “The whole area warms up because particles lose energy when they collide with each other.”

  “Friction,” Doug said.

  “Precisely,” Watson praised him.

  “Teacher’s pet,” Sebastiano said, teasing.

  “Why is the red sphere smaller than the area in which we don’t see anything?” Maria asked.

  “Good observation, Maria. Optically, the hole seems a bit larger than it really is because it bends rays of light trying to pass nearby,” Watson said. “It works kind of like an umbrella for light and dims its surroundings. Rain doesn’t fall below an umbrella, you know. At least this applies as long as we have not disappeared into the black hole.”

  “And once we are inside?”

  “It is not going to happen, Doug, but if it did, the black hole would seem to be far ahead of us. This is one of the strange phenomena of ‘the theory of special relativity.’”

  “Thanks for the warning,” Sebastiano said. “So as long as we think we are inside, we are actually not inside and therefore safe. But as soon as we breathe a sigh of relief and think we are not in there, we are dead.”

  “That is a perfect summary. Now I am going to change to wavelengths shorter than that of light. You will notice it in a moment. Here the black hole appears brightest.”

  The reddish glowing sphere disappeared again. Instead they now saw a ring, a bit smaller than the red sphere and growing brighter. Its upper half folded forward so it floated like a glowing beam in front of the circle. The upper part of the circle was thicker than the lower one.

  “That looks much better!” Doug cheered. “Now the thing finally has a face!”

  “Kind of reminds me of the London Underground logo,” Sebastiano aid.

  “Unfortunately I have never been to London,” Maria remarked. “The beam must be the accretion disk, but what about the circle?”

  “That is also the accretion disk,” Watson replied. “The disk runs around the black hole. Therefore the part that would be behind it, from our perspective, is normally invisible. But the black hole’s gravitation acts like a lens and bends the light issuing from the rear part, so we see it as a circle. This is called an
accretion halo.”

  “So in reality space is black there?” Doug asked.

  “What is reality? Whatever we can see? In that case there is nothing there. Whatever we can measure? Then there is ultraviolet and X-ray radiation there. The black hole bends space. It does not make an accretion disk appear as if by magic at a location where it isn’t. Instead, it shows us a part of space we couldn’t see without the gravitation of the black hole.”

  “Practically speaking,” Doug asked, “where would we begin if we wanted to get the accretion disk to vibrate?”

  “You can see that,” Watson said.

  “Excuse me?”

  “We cannot affect the part of the disk lying behind the black hole, can we? Therefore, we have to—”

  “Start at the beam,” Sebastiano added.

  Kiska was hurtling through space.

  “Congratulations,” Watson said after an hour and a half. “We just broke the speed record for spaceships.”

  Doug listened to his body. Shouldn’t he feel a little bit of dizziness? He pushed off slightly from the floor and slowly flew through the room moving vertically upward. At the ceiling he held on to a pipe and looked down. Could it be that he arrived not exactly above his starting point?

  “Watson, didn’t you say we were in free fall?” he asked.

  “That is correct.”

  “When I push off, my trajectory does not appear to be exactly straight.”

  “That depends on the direction in which you’re moving.”

  “Why?” Doug asked.

  “In a rotating system the Coriolis force appears. During movements it acts vertically to the rotation and increases with the angular acceleration,” Watson explained.

  “So that’s why I didn’t arrive exactly above my starting point.”

  “I doubt it, Doug. While we are moving at high speed, I cannot believe you could detect the deflection caused by the Coriolis force with the naked eye. The command module is too low and the distance wouldn’t be sufficient. You just pushed off at a slight angle without noticing it.”