The White Singularity: A Choose Your Own Adventure

Chapter 2: The Forgotten Experiment

You're at a loss for words. "Going to the center of the Earth is impossible, hon," you say finally. "I know I've been saying it for years, but it was always just a pipe dream."

"That's my point!" Zell takes your hand and squeezes it hard. "We can actually make it come true!"

"It's just not feasible," you say patiently, trying to lead her to your chair so that you can sit her down. She's filled with so much energy she's almost bouncing on her heels. "If you're talking about the movie The Core, it's complete nonsense."  

"That's one of our favorite movies, and we've never cared about the errors," Zell says impatiently, hopping onto your desk and swinging her legs like a child. "We found a completely different way to make such a trip possible besides manufacturing an indestructible element.  And we found it—" her eyes gleam proudly—"because of you."

"Me?" You repeat blankly. You have no idea what she's talking about.

"Yes, you.  We accidentally invented it while playing with your equation in the simulator."

"Invented what?"

"A forcefield," your wife says, relishing the word.

You start to say, "But I thought the laws of physics preclude the existence of forcefields—"

"Well, it's not a forcefield in the exact sense of the word," she corrects herself hastily. "But something almost as good. In fact," she pokes you on the chest. "It might be even better. And we couldn't have done it without you!"

"You keep saying that," you interrupt her, completely confused. "Back up a little. How could I have helped without being here?"

"We just used your equation to create a white singularity," Zell says airily.

 Your mind flashes back.  A few years ago, you derived a theorem to calculate the amount of radioactive material you would need to safely detonate within a fixed and extremely powerful electromagnetic field. Since the energy would not be allowed to dissipate, this would result in an implosion, not an explosion, which would squeeze the remaining mass and energy into a single point in space.

You recall the months it took your supercomputers to perform the necessary calculations. The amount had to be exact within ten decimal places. A tiny bit less fuel and the process would create nothing more than a powerful, extremely expensive, and superbly useless implosion. Just a tiny bit more than the field could handle, and the lab—plus everything within a several-mile-large sphere—would be vaporized instantly.

You agonized for months over your decision to transform your theory into reality. The ethics committee and the board of directors hadn't rushed over the decision either, as they made you review everything several times. But try as they might, even by making the most junior scientists calculate your equations entirely by hand, they couldn't find fault with your results. It all looked feasible on paper.

Finally, the experiment was green-lit. A special presidential permit was secured. A lab was built deep underground in a desert hundreds of miles from the nearest human settlement, and just to be extra safe, the surrounding area was evacuated under the pretense of a vaguely worded bomb threat. Even the surrounding wildlife had been flushed out. A brave skeleton crew selected from a surprisingly large pool of volunteers was left to operate the lab. 

 Despite exhortations by the board that you watch remotely from a distant site, you insisted that you supervise at ground zero. Sid also chose to stay with you, threatening everything from scandal to divorce if you refused.

Fortunately, the whole thing was an unqualified success. For exactly one minute and forty-two seconds, you brought into existence something that had previously only been observed from space-based telescopes: a miniature black hole. 

The scientific community rejoiced with you at the accomplishment, although you could not find a practical use for it then. After a few months of television appearances, awards, press conferences, and endless speculations about future modalities, the hype faded. It seemed that nothing would ever come out of it.

Finally, when the only ones still interested were those intent on developing another super weapon out of your creation, you firmly shelved the project and turned your attention to other things. As far as you knew, Zell had given up on it at the same time you had.  It seems you were wrong.  

What the hell is a white singularity?

"Honey," you say uneasily, "what exactly did you do?"