New Worlds

Nobody can hear a scream in the vacuum of space, or so they say…

But I screamed anyway, regardless. Too terrified to keep control any longer, my nerves shot and my courage long gone.

I was hurtling towards, and getting ever closer to, the endless black expanse in front of me, the unknown.

And there was nothing I could do about it.

There would be no help offered, and no rescue mission on this journey, I was completely and utterly alone.

The sensors implanted in me would feed back to Earth eventually, but who knows where I would be by then, or what would have happened to me. I was sacrificing myself, they knew it, and I knew it.

My parents always told me that my curiosity would get the better of me one day. It looked like that day had come.

I had heard a theory once, arguing that there could be no such thing as 'nothing', that every single tiny spec of space, every breath, had to be made up of something, just that there are things we can see, and things that we can't. We are only humans after all, with our perception, as limited as our intelligence.

And so when, as scientists, when we look at black holes and see nothing, we can only dream of the potential possibilities.

It all began for me when, as a child, I developed a deep obsession with what might lay beyond our universe, and especially with the ideas surrounding black holes.

I could never understand how there could be an expanse of nothingness that could envelope, suck in, and destroy everything that came in it's path.

There must be more to it than that, be another explanation. Maybe a time portal to a different universe? Or to the same universe but in a different time? Other worlds with life forms, as we would recognize? Or completely different, beyond anything out of the minds of our greatest science fiction writers could ever dream up.

And what about the black hole itself, did it expand as it got nearer, slowly creeping towards us, or did everything else move towards it?

I didn't know if it mattered, as the results would probably be the same, but I was captivated by the limitless possibilities anyway.

It was a theory that I was about to test.

And so, when it happened, in my lifetime, a black hole appeared, unexpected, suddenly and without warning, at the edge of our solar system, seemingly expanding rapidly towards us, or us, speeding rapidly towards it, fast enough for us to fear for our very existence, a potential apocalypse, or discovery, unlike anything we could have ever imagined. I had volunteered to, using the latest, and as yet, untested technology, be catapulted deep into space, to somewhere close to Pluto, or beyond, to investigate.

As I approached the edge of the black hole I shut my eyes tight, I imagined it was going to be over at any second, that I would simply evaporate and become part of the fabric of the universe, I was about to understand death. That was what I expected, but instead of speeding up and burning, vaporizing, dying, I opened my eyes and realized that my speed had begun to slow down, and as I began to slow, tiny dots began to appear, hardly perceptible at first, but gradually becoming bigger, and clearer and brighter. Was I still alive? Was this the afterlife?

I paddled my arms and my legs and felt and saw them float surreally in front of me. The sensors still showed signs of activity, they must still be monitoring, and I wasn't dead yet.

My fear turned to curiosity, then to wonder and disbelief, as I was pulled down ever more slowly, into a space unlike anything I could have ever possibly imagined.

Was this going to heaven? Or was this going to be hell. I was about to find out.