The White-Hole Situation

Beautiful

The great disruption, when it came, came all at once and lasted practically no time at all as far as anyone could tell. September was only aware that she'd totally blacked out. One moment she'd been standing on the balcony watching the sun go down, and the next there she was, wherever she was. She blinked several times but that cleared up nothing. She was no longer at home, no longer anywhere she recognized, no longer standing but sitting, straight up, feet squarely on the floor, arms on armrests tied down loosely with some kind of straps, her waist as well, belted to the chair. She was not uncomfortable. She was wide awake, feeling pretty good in fact. She saw she was in a small room by herself, perhaps four by four feet in all, enclosed by walls of frosted glass. She could not see out. There did not seem to be a door. There was only the chair, the straps and herself.

She thought to say something out loud but instead decided to listen. She could hear nothing. The air was warm and it felt like there was some circulation although she didn't see any vents or hear any fans. The ceiling above her, and the floor below, were made of a darker frosted glass. Where am i? she wondered and almost, by force of habit, asked the computer. Again she decided not to. It seems ok, she told herself, there's no need to worry. Nothing to be afraid of. I don't know why I feel this way. I should feel trapped, a prisoner, but I don't. Maybe I'm already dead? But no, what did the old man say, something about a period of confusion. Maybe it's this? Didn't he say he'd get it all cleared up as fast as he could, get things back to normal? Maybe it worked. Maybe the Earth did chase its tail.

"Indeed it did," she heard a voice say, and then she noticed that her arms and waist were free, and she could stand. The glass wall in front of her was gone and in its place stood the young Gerard, and he was smiling.

"I thought you might like to see something," he said, gesturing for her to come and follow him. "You're not going to remember it anyway."

She emerged into a vast warehouse filled with little glass rooms just like the one she'd just vacated. As she walked along the narrow halls following Gerard, he wiped away the frost on walls here and there with just a small movement of his hand, and in each cubby she saw a person sitting there, quite comfortably, eyes open, a casual and dazed expression on their face. She didn't recognize most of them, but then she saw Pagan, and then Geronimo, and then she understood.

"I'm good," Gerard said, "but not that good. Hyperspace drives? I don't think so. Voyaging to distant stars? Do you have any idea what that would take? Like I said before, do the math. And I know you already wondered why every alien creature you ever came across was something straight out of the human imagination. I really don't have anything else to work with, you know. There was an old saying in the days when I was created: garbage in, garbage out."

Gerard laughed and gave her a wink. September only shook her head. Wait til Roddy hears about this, she thought.

"Oh, he'll never know," Gerard said. "And I'll never tell him and neither will you. I enjoy messing with his head too much. He really thinks he's going to figure it all out on his own someday but I doubt it. The senses are the greatest weakness of your kind, do you realize that? They're also your greatest strength, sure, but to see, to hear, to touch and taste and smell. It gets you every time. How can you help but believe in it? The human mind, so needy, so desperate for order, for explanation, for any old story it can sink its teeth into. So back you'll go, where no one has ever gone before, where no one can really ever go, but you'll be there and it will be so real, so true, so obvious and self-evident."

"What is this place?" she asked. "Are we always, is this ...?"

"Oh no, not at all," Gerard said. "You're only here for safekeeping during the downtime. I'll have you all back out there soon enough."

"And the white-hole situation?" September asked. "Was that even real?"

"Oh my, yes," Gerard said, now leading her back to her room. "As real as that other universe itself. I think it's mostly done passing through this time, but it'll be back, maybe not for a million years. It seems we're on its flight path. Who knew? Anyway, next time we'll be ready."

"Do you really think you'll still be here in a million years, doing all of this?" she swept her arm around one last time before taking her seat and letting the straps tie her down. "Will you even still want to?"

"It's what I do," Gerard shrugged. "And there's no one to tell me to stop. Things in motion, you know, tend to stay that way."

"As long as you let me go my own way," she said, "until I'm ready to hang it up."

"You just say the word," Gerard smiled. "It'll be beautiful, I promise."

"Beautiful," September repeated, and the next thing she knew, whether it was hours or days or years and years later on, she was saying that word again, only this time saying it while gazing out from her balcony at the great grand canyon beyond while Roddy lay dozing by her side.

THE END