Life As We Know It Read online

on board. We came to this agreement as my cooking skills were pretty much non-existent and the others simply hated to cook.

  Normally our conversations around the lunch table was about our families back home, but the closer we got to our destination, the less we talked about home and the more we talked about what was waiting for us.

  “I think it’s aliens.” Buck said as he chewed.

  “Aliens?” Anna was sceptical.

  “Aliens.” Buck insisted, “What else could it be? And why all the way out there here? The nearest star is thousands of light-years away. There isn’t anything in our solar system that could produce a black hole.”

  “What about God?” Peter asked – he was normally the quiet one.

  “God?” Buck hissed, “You think God exists?”

  “Don’t you?” Anna asked.

  “I’m a man of science.” Buck said, “I have no place for religion, and besides – religion clashes with my scientific beliefs.”

  “In what way?” I asked.

  “Science tells us that the universe came into existence after a big bang that lasted thousands of years while your bible says God created everything in seven days.”

  “Six actually.” I said.

  “Huh?” Buck sneered.

  “Six.” I reiterated, “God rested on the seventh day.”

  “Whatever.” Buck said and took a mouthful of mashed potatoes.

  After a moment of silence, Anna spoke, “I think it’s been there all the time. We’ve just never been able to see it until now.”

  Everyone just stared at her waiting for her to continue, “I mean, if it wasn’t for the space-dust that just so happened to drift close enough to it to be sucked in, we might never have seen it and it might’ve stayed hidden forever.”

  “Why are you here again?” Buck asked annoyed.

  “To prevent you from dying after I poison your food.” She responded swiftly.

  Buck stared down at the mashed potato on his fork and chewed slower and slower as he inspected his food for traces of poison. It wasn’t the first time the two of them had an argument and he wouldn’t be surprised if she poisoned him.

  After lunch I went to the diary room – which wasn’t really a room where you write down your thoughts, but rather a room with a video recorder you could use to send messages back home. Despite knowing that my message might never reach home since we lost contact with Mission Control a few weeks earlier, I still recorded a message for my mother.

  “Hey mom.” I said with an awkward smile. I hated video recordings, “It’s day 401 and we’re almost there. It’s so quiet out here, especially after we lost contact with Mission Control. I’m not sure when or if you’ll ever get this message, but I decided to record one anyway – try and keep myself from going insane. Anna says hello.”

  That was all I could think of saying in my message. It hit me at that moment that the only person who cared about me and would miss me if I died was my mom. I was 35 and still living with my mom. How sad does that sound? But I liked it. We keep each other company. When my father died three years back, I decided to move back home to help pay the bills and to be honest, I didn’t really miss living on my own.

  The farther away we travelled from earth, the more I missed my mom. I was excited by the trip and about discovering something new, but I was also excited about returning home and seeing my mom’s smile again. Her smile could warm even the coldest winter’s day.

  She always said that I was a catch and that one day I would find a girl who’d appreciate me for the unique person I was. It could be that she was just saying that because she’s my mom, but then again it could also be true… I mean, I think I’m pretty cool.

  On day 643, we finally reached Pluto and from what I saw, I wasn’t quite sure why it was ever downgraded from being a planet. Though it was small, it was still pretty big and deserved to be classified as a planet in my opinion.

  There it was; a black sphere that punched through the fabric of space only a few thousand miles from Pluto and you could hardly see it except for the few space-dust particles that got dragged in. It was an amazing sight to behold and was nearly one fourth the size of Pluto.

  This was it – this is why we came here: to inspect the black hole which science can’t explain why it exists in this space and time.

  I put on my space suit and ventured out into the coldness of space – hoping to get close enough to see something, but not too close so that I get sucked in, but as Murphy’s Law would have it, I got sucked in. You’re probably wondering what I saw or what it’s like being sucked into a black hole. It’s all relative, basically; depending on who you ask. If you asked one of my crew members (perhaps Anna), she would say that she saw me circling the event horizon faster and faster until finally I was stretched out like spaghetti and disappeared forever.

  Though Anna saw me die a horrible death, from my point of view things were completely different – I found myself drifting towards the black hole pretty much normally, except for the fact that I could do nothing to stop myself from being dragged towards the hole. At first, when I felt the unseen force pulling me in, I couldn’t help but stress… but I’ve stopped stressing, because I’ve been circling inside the event horizon for about ten minutes and accepted my fate as I gradually circle faster and faster – so fast that to me it felt like I wasn’t even moving at all, but to Anna it seems like I was being stretched out like spaghetti (think of the streak of light the flying superhero leaves behind as he jets through the air – he’s still in one piece and though he’s long gone, you can still see the trail as if he’s stretched out).

  Anna could no longer see me as I’ve crossed the event horizon – the point of no return – and she fears the worst… but I’m still pretty much alive. What happened next is what every astronomer and scientist have been wondering about for decades. Nobody knows what happens inside a black hole, because nobody can see into one… except me. I know exactly what’s going on inside a black hole, because I’m in one. I couldn’t recall ever reading a report about an astronaut that fell into a black hole, so as far as I know I was the first. I could still see the spaceship and stars outside the rim of the hole as I gazed up while spiralling down towards the singularity – a singularity I might never even reach. Einstein theorized that going down a black hole might be the same as drifting through space and that you might be able to die of old age before you ever reached the “bottom” of the black hole... something that worried and intrigued me at the same time for I might be falling for the rest of my life.

  As I drifted downward in an orbit motion, I realized that the theories of black holes being death traps might’ve been exaggerated a bit seeing that I’m still alive and well. There’s nothing inside the black hole, except me and the darkness, a few dust particles and scattered rays of light – all spiralling down towards who knows what.

  I tried to keep my mind occupied by thinking about everything I knew and thought I knew. Thirty minutes ago I was on our ship and I knew for a fact that certain death awaited anyone who ventured too close to a black hole… but I made it over the event horizon and was still alive to tell about it – then I remembered a theory that was frowned upon by scientists around the world – the theory that the event horizon is visible, not because of the way light and space dust interacts with the black hole, but rather because it is a wall of fire and radiation that would incinerate anything before they ever got the chance to spaghettify. That theory was debunked the moment I crossed the event horizon and made it safely into the abyss of the black hole. Well, thank God for that. I might be falling forever, but at least I didn’t die in a cosmic blaze of fire.

  I gazed up at the rim of the black hole above me – I was still pretty close to the entrance, but could see that the spaceship had begun it’s return home and was about a light-year away despite the fact that I’d only been in the black hole for about twenty minutes… that’s because the rules of space and time no longer exists in the black hole – the mere definition
of time has no meaning anymore. A day could pass in a second and a second could pass in a year – it’s all relative from where you are.

  Anna saw me get sucked down into the abyss within ten seconds and probably spent an hour mourning me before the captain ordered them to return home (Anna and I were pretty close). To her it seemed like I disappeared in a matter of seconds while in fact I’d spiralled down for ten minutes. The closer you get to the middle of the black hole, the faster the particles move, but the bigger the orbit it has to make.

  I tried to wrap my mind around the strange predicament of time I was in and tried to think of something else, but it’s hard to not think about the black hole I was in. At some point I tried to spin myself around to see where I was headed, but saw nothing but darkness, so I spun back around and gazed up at the stars beyond the rim of the black hole – the rim was now slightly illuminated by the gasses trying to escape the clutches of the chasm as they get dragged down.

  The illuminated rim reminded me of the centre of the Milky Way.

  It’s only been a few years since the discovery, but we now know that there’s a black hole at the centre of the Milky Way that rotates our galaxy. The sheer magnitude and the gravitational pull of the supermassive black hole at the centre of our galaxy is a billion times the size of our own solar system