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272 — The Time I Put My Lab-Grown Black Hole in the Microwave

For Saturday, September 28, Day 272 of the 2024 Story-a-Day Challenge

By Gerard DiLeoPublished about a year ago Updated about a year ago 2 min read
It ain't your Pa's popcorn!

Imagine my excitement when I created an actual black hole. A real lab grown, quantum-entangled, tesseract'ual, data-consuming black hole.

Because of containment and needing to be careful not to exceed its draw beyond 342 Hawking-rads, it had to be small. But we're not quibbling over quantitative minutiae (pun intended) here; it's the qualitative I crow about.

And I'd done it.

Safely (I think) self-contained within an enclosure of atom-tight Fribling™ which you can get online at EpherealElements.com (strict limit, 2 grav-bags per order), there it hovered—a BB-sized speck of singularity. Sure it was hungry, but I'm no fool. I could be tempted to give cute, cuddly Mogwai pre-gremlins water after midnight, but there's no way I'm gonna let actual "material" fall into the mouth of God!

I'm not crazy.

But what fun! To have one of nature's most powerful, yet enigmatic, quasi-events establishing horizons to encounter, then cross!

Hell, I'm a sport. Feed it? Never. Play with it? Sure!

I took a spoon of Fribling™ and carefully scooped it. Funny how it sat in the concavity wobbling, like it had a physics of its own.

Oh...what to do? With a spoonful of black hole...what to do?

Of course! Pop that little sucker into the microwave. Oh, I just gotta stream this on TikTok. (Even though I know the Chinese will be keenly interested, it's not anything I plan on actually explaining. I'm in it for the adrenaline.)

Microwave door open. Power "medium" (just out of an abundance of caution). I timed it for one minute, which was a convenience of scientific notation. (I could record my findings in this-per-minute or that-per-minute units. The math is just tidier that way, even though I knew I was mucking about with Time-zero. I think. We'd see after one minute.

I placed it, Fribling™ spoon and all, in the microwave, prayed the same prayer Oppenheimer did before igniting the first atomic bomb whose potential to destroy the universe wasn't zero. You know what happens when one minute becomes zero, without the timer actually counting down 6o seconds? I do.

Who knew that Fribling™ was metallic. They said you're not supposed to put anything metal in a microwave.

They were right.

_________

AUTHOR'S NOTES:

For Saturday, September 28, Day 272 of the 2024 Story-a-Day Challenge

366 WORDS (without A/N)

Accompaniment photo is AI, but singularities just happen.

THIS CHALLENGE GRAVITATES ON, 366 COSMIC BACKGROUND RADS AT A TIME

There are currently three 3-D, grounded Vocal writers orbiting the 2024 Story-a-Day Challenge:

• L.C. Schäfer (Muon)

• Rachel Deeming (Baryon)

• Gerard DiLeo (Peon)

MicrofictionSci Fi

About the Creator

Gerard DiLeo

Retired, not tired. Hippocampus, behave!

Make me rich! https://www.amazon.com/Gerard-DiLeo/e/B00JE6LL2W/

My substrack at https://substack.com/@drdileo

[email protected]

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Comments (6)

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  • Dharrsheena Raja Segarranabout a year ago

    Hahahahahhaha this was hilarious, scary and fascinating!

  • Cindy Calderabout a year ago

    Excellent bit of prose - as always. I've found it to be unusual for a science-minded individual to be so alarmingly and accurately well-versed in the arts (like writing) - and I'm thinking you definitely have some schooling in the sciences. Have to admit I'm thoroughly impressed by not only your writing but also your vast knowledge, especially in areas where I am lacking.

  • D. J. Reddallabout a year ago

    The fact that you sustained the zany, intertextual dialogue with _Gremlins_ is astonishing!

  • JBazabout a year ago

    I like the ‘way over my head’ pun intended line. This is filled with tantalizing tidbits of information I’ll never use in any conversation, mostly because I don’t understand nor will remember. I do like the story.

  • John Coxabout a year ago

    Tantalizing and terrifying!

  • Cathy holmesabout a year ago

    I have no idea what a Fribling is, but the spoon probably didn't help either. Well done. 🤣

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