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Sci Fi & Fantasy / Black/White 2nd draft
The story begins and ends with a voice; Jack’s voice. He’s out there, he’s screaming “Help”, loud and clear. The others can hear him, safely from the ship, but there is nothing they can do: the line is broke, he’s too close to the hole, he will be sucked in…
“Falling through a black hole I see time. It doesn’t appear as a clock or a white rabbit, it doesn’t seem to flow forward as we’re used to picture it. It’s just there, standing ever so still, like a transparent sphere floating in nothingness, made of nothingness. Me, I’m just my eyes; my conscience. I have no earthly body; I’m my subtlest ethereal substance, floating outside time, observing it. It’s not moving in any direction, not growing old or tired, without any desires or fears; it just stands still, without even standing… I just watch absorbed the gigantic circle of time. It seems to get bigger, but then I realize it is me who is approaching it. For Time cannot grow or diminish its size. As I get closer the sphere is no longer transparent, I can see things moving inside it. I want to know what they are, I try to move in faster, although I see no way to speed up when I don’t have a body to command. Still I get there, in time.
“In-time I have a body and it is falling slowly out a black giant hole. It seems the most extraordinary thing to happen, given the black holes’ tendency to absorb all matter that approaches them. I realize I’m flying faster every second, along with millions of other particles of all sorts, out, ejected into open space. I don’t understand what physical force could ever have given me such an impulse. I felt it for a moment, the velocity at which I was traveling through space, but then it seemed as though I wasn’t moving anymore. I knew I was, because slowly the panorama changed as I advanced. All the different forms of matter had been dispersed in different directions; I could barely visualize any of it anymore. When I managed to turn, to see the hole that had erupted me, I saw it wasn’t a black, but a white hole. Bigger than any star I knew of. Only its center was black. Like in a permanent explosion, matter burst out of it, causing the bright white glow. Whatever was I to do all alone out in space? Nothing; waiting for death was all left for me to do. Time didn’t even matter anymore. I remembered the visions I had had when I was traversing the hole. I had been outside time and space; I had seen our entire universe was only a crack in The Universe. I was sure at some point I would starve to death, but somehow I didn’t. So I went about wondering through space for years and years. I thought it was impossible for my body to keep on living, but I saw hundreds of stars appear and disappear from my sight, while I felt steadily fixed on the same spot. I thought for sure I would grow old and die a natural death, but I didn’t. My skin was as tight and young as ever. I could perceive no sign of age anywhere in my body. It felt like more than a lifetime had passed, it felt more than fifty lifetimes, and I kept on going. Never speeding up, never slowing down, always on the same path. Forever. And ever… An eternity or two… And then it happened…
“Jack! Jack” I heard the word, I just didn’t realize it was my name. I hadn‘t heard it in such a long time. “Jack, wake up god damn! Look at me. Jack!” I was opening my eyes; I heard loud voices and saw blurry figures. It took me a while to focus. Then I suddenly realized it was Captain Jenkins standing in front of me. What? How..? Hadn’t I just been traveling through eternity?
“Jack say something, for god‘s sake”. I wasn’t able to make out the meaning of his words, I was blinded by the lights, and all I heard coming out of his mouth were plain sounds. I tried so hard to focus his eyes. Was I dreaming, still floating out there? No, this was real; as real as my journey through space. I finally had a glimpse of my old friends look and suddenly, just like that, I remembered the life I used to have, the words I used to speak.
“What happened?” that was all I could think of saying. Jenkins and the others around me cheered and sighed when I finally spoke. They didn’t tell me everything right away, not until I had been comforted. I was tucked in and had had a nice warm protein drink…
“.. After the cable broke you were thrown out to space. We didn’t immediately realize you were entering the hole’s gravitational camp. We were setting up a crew to go get you, but it was too late. You were being sucked in faster than we would’ve expected. There was nothing we could do, or we would’ve been sucked in too. I’m sorry Jack. We were all sorry as we watched you disappear inside the monster’s mouth. We even called home, asked them to sort out a rescuing plan, Intelligence is all over the case, but how do you recover something from a giant black hole, Jack? They haven’t come up with anything yet… It’s been five days since we thought we’d lost you. Then today we spotted you on the heat radar. We couldn’t believe it, it seemed impossible. You were unconscious as we hooked you up and reeled you in. Then we brought you here, and I called you, tried to wake you up. It took me several minutes to get you to open your eyes. What happened Jack? How did you get out of there? We all saw you disappear Jack, how could you possibly..?”
“I don’t know Captain. After falling in I had a vision of timelessness, and then I went out the other end, out a white glowing hole. I have been lost in space for what seemed as thousands of years. Is it possible that I was transported back through time when I fell into that horrible hole, thousands, maybe millions of years back in time, and that I have traveled for so long that I have reached my initial spot? Is my luck so grand?”
My own voice sounded so strange, weak and inhuman almost, deep and so very far away from myself.
“But that would be impossible Jack; you would have died of hunger in less than three months, of thirst in less than one week.”
“I told my self that a million times over the lapse of an eternity.”
“Somehow you got out of the hole; somehow you canceled its G-force effect upon you and you…”
“Does that seem more likely than my story Captain? And yet you doubt my word? I have no reason to lie to you; I don’t even have a reason to talk to you. Reason left me long ago, as did all the emotions I ever felt. I am tired, I am ageless. I don’t understand how or why. I just need to sleep…” My eyes began to close involuntarily. “I’m sorry Jack, I’m sorry, I’m just glad we found you, hang on there my friend, stay with us” I was as warm and cozy as I could ever remember. So happy. At last I could rest; at last I could fall asleep.”
Captain Jenkins was at his side when it happened. The last thing he said was “I just need to sleep…” Then he closed his eyes and expired his last deep breath. The Captain held his hand and shook his head, everyone followed. Suddenly they were regretful no more, but terrified. The body laying down on the bed began to age. Within seconds it was an old shrunken body. In less than a minute it had completely turned to dust. They sent his ashes back home, to his wife, they thought that was where Jack would’ve wanted to rest.
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SirJohn1955 reviewed Version 1 -
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Extremely well written, kept me rivited entirely through. Jacks journy through the black hole and then across time was visualised very well. His thought processes as his journy progresses is very well imagined. The sudden awakening was totally unexpected and the conversations and disbelief of his fellow crewmen was very believable. I loved the twist at the end with his death and quick progression from flesh and bone to shriveled body then to dust, with the final added touch that they sent his ashes home to his wife because they felt it was what he would have wanted. I can tell you have labored over this one and I can’t wait to read more from you.
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jamesholmes reviewed Version 1 -
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nice work – i liked a lot of your imagery, and the way you set up the story. I also really liked the description of time and space, it was vivid in my mind. There were a couple of iffy sentences that just need a word adding. ‘we’re used to picture it’ and ’’I just watch absorbed the gigantic circle of time’ and
‘I tried so hard to focus his eyes’. but that’s all i could find wrong – well written and imaginative. look forward to reading more.
Scribble reviewed Version 1 -
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This has a nice feel to it. I like the ideas behind what you are exploring and you do well to introduce us to the events that are happening. But be careful to repeating the information you are giving us. We hear three times that Jack has been sucked into a black hole, (at the beginning by the unseen narrator, then in Jack’s mind, then by the Captain) is it necessary so often?
Tense is a issue you should be careful of… not until I had been comforted. I was tucked in and had had a nice warm protein drink… ...this doesn’t actually make sense. It should be not until I had been comforted and tucked in, after a nice warm protein drink. or not until I had been comforted. I was tucked in and given a nice, warm protein drink.. or something similar.
There is a massive blurb of dialogue, that I found a bit wierd to read. There are hardly any tags or any interactions between speech. I felt like that, after being up close and personal with Jack in his mind, I was now at arms length. I think this needs work.
As black holes are still mystery, you can pretty much do as you wish with how this story pans out, and although I like the idea of how Jack feels when he is in the hole and when he comes out of it and your explainations of his perceptions, I think if this is for magazine it would need to be a bit more interesting. I found myself beginning to skip lines during his inner monologue bit, because it started building interest but went on and without reaching a peak. Lastly I’m not sure the ending is powerful enough to make this a stand-alone story.
Well done for your ideas behind it, but I think the plot and characters need furthrt development.
Good luck with it, I did enjoy it.
Scribble
Zakari39 reviewed Version 1 -
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It’s a grand idea – and your description of the Black Hole and it’s horrors and eerie fascination is very good – but I can’t help but feel the story is rushed – several eternities pass that quickly?!
Jack’s certainly been on a pretty big 2001: Space Odyssey type trip beyond the Event Horizon – but how did he pop back where he started, and in the right time to meet his colleagues?
Danes reviewed Version 1 -
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This struck me as odd…but it wasn’t bad. The view of the black hole and traveling through space was kinda cool, but how did he survive? I mean was he wearing a space suit? I don’t think that was ever specified. The dialogue at the end, where Jack is talking was a bit odd, but it worked if he did travel through time like that.
Overall a good story, I didn’t notice any spelling errors. And the story flowed pretty well. Your description of what it was like in the black hole was a bit confusing, but I don’t think that was from any wording problems, I think it’s the concept.
Shane.
Calypsoidal1 reviewed Version 1 -
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Like Neil de Grasse Tyson’s “Death By Black Hole” (he’s an astrophysicist) but with a little metaphysics thrown in. This story still needs more (but I haven’t read d1). Where are they? Why are they there? Just a word or two would fix the ship in the reader’s mind. Unless Jack brings back something useful, like a prophet from the wilderness, then I’d rather see the captain and crew lose him, search for him, find him, and witness this bizarre delayed aging that happens at the end. The device of experiencing eternity is such a huge canvas, and we’ve seen it in everything from Dune to X-Men comics to 2001. There’s got to be more you can give us! Right now, the story doesn’t deliver anything that hooks me. Stick with the ship, the rescue – that’s my advice – unless you’re going to bring in the spiritual/metaphysical/cosmological revelation.
bbot reviewed Version 1 -
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The paragraphs are rather large, making reading the piece a bit of a chore. Splitting them up would imbue a greater sense of the passage of time; as it is the formatting conveys the sense of being hurried through the scene.
As for the science, well:
1.) The event horizon (of a normal, non-rotating point source singularity) would seem to recede indefinately from the viewer. There is no way to “pass through” a black hole, as we understand it. You would be trapped there, forever falling, until one of two things killed you. (see below)
2.) Depending on the radius, and thus mass, of the black hole, tidal effects would tend to align an infalling mass along its long axis, and then apply (considerable) force along that axis. For a small (100-1,000 solar masses) black hole, tidal effects would pretty much instantly shred anything larger than a baseball. Even if your space suit was infinately strong, the tidal forces would still tear you apart inside the suit. This would kill you, very painfully.
3.) As light falls into a gravity well, it gains energy, like any other physical object. Since the individual photons of a beam of light can’t go any faster (they are, by definition, moving at the speed of light) they gain energy by decreasing in wavelength, and increasing in frequency. This is called “doppler blueshifting”, because colors move towards the blue end of the spectrum as they decrease in wavelength. In the extreme case of black holes, light blueshifts all the way to gamma-ray energies. This radition would kill you, very quickly. Even if you had some sort of magical perfect mirror, there will be no way to radiate away the body heat trapped inside your suit. This will also kill you, somewhat more slowly.
Nyko_Morgan reviewed Version 1 -
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For me it all begins with the first sentence. Yours is very strong. I like it.
The idea of having someone experiencing a black (or white) hole I find very interesting and I’m sure there is a lot of potential in that.
Just at some points I had problems following you, following the mood and atmosphere you try to create. Sometime you have a very strong voice but then again it weakens. Phrases such as “of all sorts” are to me a bit redundant, because either you explain to me what sorts, or you should leave it out altogether.
I am also not too sure about your perspective. I see you change from Jack’s point of view to an omniscient narrator, which is fine is a story like this. But why are there quotation marks? Is Jack telling anyone? Whom? Because obviously he talks about it later again.
I also wonder whether the Captain of a ship would hold such a long speech about what they tried to do aso. Would that not rather be one of his friends, who’d do that? And would Jack be able to talk about his unbelievable experience so freely and eloquent just right after it happened? These are just some thoughts I had while reading it.
I also liked the idea of him dying and aging in the end. Just the last sentence is a bit weak, maybe you can find something more of a punch line there.
All in all though it is an interesting story with a lot of thought behind it. Keep on working on it! :)
onlywish reviewed Version 1 -
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This is my first read of this story. You have a great original concept. That need very little work. So here it is. To me it seems very choppy ,hard to explain but I found it hard to keep flowing along. I found myself backtracking a lot . It’s a great story but seems to me it’s a little out of order. I can’t put my finger on it it just needs arranging I think. OK an example is where this sentance starts.
“I can see things moving inside it.” You should shows what you see. Try not to use it’s black and things. It’s a black hole yes, but you can now see new colors, shades or outlines. How are you are advancing. There must be a sensation of some sort for you to know you are moving closer.
You have the right idea, but it is not flowing out the way I think you want it to. I can see the panic and excitement of this person not knowing. I also think you can word it just a bit better.
Wish I had a better way to explain what I am talking about. That’s why I am not a good writer yet.
TheHeretic reviewed Version 1 -
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No offense but this didn’t really work for me. Was Jack beyond the event horizon? Because its theoretically impossible to return at that point; I know that was part of the point of the story but still…
Space-time is thought to stretch toward infinity as one approaches a black hole, correct? So if those in the ship were watching Jack get sucked toward the black hole, there would come a point when he wouldn’t even appear to be moving to them; his passage through time would be warped and stretched out for millions of years. Also, if he was screaming “help” (presumably through a radio?) as he approached the event horizon, the word would also be stretched out for so long that those on the ship wouldn’t be able to understand it.
This sentence didn’t sound right to me either:
“I just watch absorbed the gigantic circle of time”
I could see no reason for the body to decay at the end either. Interesting to experiment with, but I think it needs a lot of work.
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