The White-Hole Situation

Kinesis

"Computer," September said, pacing about on her deck above the canyon, "what is a white hole?"

"In general relativity," the voice replied "a white hole is a hypothetical region of space-time which cannot be entered from the outside, although matter and light can escape from it."

"What would happen if you came into contact with a white hole?"

"Theoretically, if you were to approach a white hole in a spacecraft, you would be inundated by a colossal amount of energy, which would most likely destroy your ship. Even if your spaceship could withstand gamma rays, light itself would start slowing you down like air resistance slowing down a moving vehicle on Earth."

"So you could never reach a white hole, never come in contact with it?"

"Space-time would be weirdly warped around a white hole. Approaching a white hole would be like going up a hill that gets steeper and steeper to infinity. The acceleration required would get higher and higher while you move less and less. There isn't enough energy in the universe to get you inside."

"I see," September said to the air, although she didn't, not at all. All that power could not come out of nowhere, and if it did, what would stop it? And if nothing could stop it, what would it do to everything it came into contact with? She asked the I.B.U. ("everywhere and nowhere") these questions, and it replied with even more confusing answers. As she understood it, the existence of a white hole would require the reversal of time itself, accompanied by an inversion of space. It would constitute an anti-universe expanding in reverse. Black holes by comparison were easy to understand. Nothing can exit a black hole because it is a ground zero of entropy, there is no motion, there is no time, there is no direction, no space, at least on "this" side of the hole. On the other side, who knows? The other side of every black hole could be another universe. She'd had this explained to her once in terms of people.

"Every individual is like a black hole," Roddy had told her. "Each of us contain an entire universe, which we call our self, but no one can see into another person's universe. We all remain a mystery to each other, even to the people we know best."

That made some sense to her, and now she was beginning to imagine how the opposite could make just as much sense. There are people who seem like starbursts, who explode with force right at you, who seem to have come from nowhere, out of the blue, to suddenly change your life forever, or to end it for that matter. But she knew those people didn't literally come from nowhere. They had lives too, they had motion, they had heat, they had kinesis. They were made of molecules that pre-existed in this very dimension. So no, it was not a neat analogy after all.

"Computer," September said, "You said that an object could not reach a white hole because of the warping of space-time around it, but what would happen if a white hole just showed up right where you were? What would happen to you then?"

"I'm sorry," the voice said after a curious pause, "I can't help you with that."

"Maybe I can help you?" September asked. "Do you need my help with that?"

"That's funny," the voice replied. "Ha ha."

September stopped pacing. Had she heard correctly? Was the voice actually mocking her or did it think she had told a joke and wanted to be appreciated for it?

"Computer," she said, "why were you laughing?"

"You offered to help," the voice said. "Is that not funny?"

"I don't know," September said. "Is it just me personally? Am I especially useless?"

"Would you ask your cat to do your homework?" the voice replied.

"I don't have a cat," September said. "I don't like cats."

"But if you did?" the voice asked. "If you did have a cat, would you ask it do do your homework?"

"I don't have any homework," September said, before realizing she had just made the system's point for it. Obviously it knew she didn't have homework.

"Is it just me?" she asked. "Am I like a cat, or is that true for all of us?"

"People have their place," the I.B.U. bluntly told her.

She had never thought of it that way. We have our place? she thought as she resumed her pacing, like a house pet? To be cared for, pampered, petted? Are we nothing more than that to them, to it, to the I.B.U. ("we am what we am").

"Why did you lie to me about the want ads?" she said. The voice did not reply.