Aphelion Issue 292, Volume 28
March 2024
 
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The Long Horizon


by Jean-Paul Garnier




I don't know how it came to be that I ever volunteered for this crazy mission.  There was never any doubt in anyone's mind that there would be no return trip.  By nature it had to be a one-way mission.  What I was to study would not be known by the rest of humanity for years to come, if at all. I was to go where no one has ever gone before, where no one would want to go, a place that had only been available to theoretical physicists through numbers.

#

  Where I was headed was known to be so dangerous that most would never have even dared to dream that it was possible, yet in order to gain an understanding of the most powerful forces of nature the only way was to visit. Robotic spacecraft had been sent before, all to no avail. It was then understood that only a man could make the split-second decisions necessary to transfer data regarding black-holes back to earth. I agreed to go, for my fascination with black-holes had become so intense that it had moved into the territory of obsession. I knew that there would be no coming back for me, and all that would remain of my life would be whatever data I was able to transfer back to earth before I reached the event horizon, if it were possible to live that long.

#

  My training for the journey should have taken years but had to be completed before the window of opportunity closed. We were going to utilize one of the magnetic vortexes created whenever earth's magnetic lines overlapped and reconnected with the solar wind. The one that we needed to use, the one that was powerful enough to send me to the heart of the galaxy, would be open for only a short time. If we were able to reach the vortex then I would be put into cryo, for even with the warp it would take decades to reach the center.  When the craft was close enough I was to be awakened and begin scientific experimentation immediately. The hope was that the information could be transferred back through the vortex and reach earth within several decades time from the transmission.  It would be the last that anyone would ever hear from me before I would supposedly be stretched into spaghetti by gravitational forces.

#

  I was traveling at relativistic speeds. Already centuries had passed on earth, and perhaps my mission would all be but forgotten by now. As I approached the black hole the swirling light and color around me was like nothing I had seen before. The twinkling of the stars seems to be slowing down, or had they stopped altogether? I could not feel that my mass had changed, but I knew that something had. Now, taking measurements with the chronometer I witnessed time slow down, and as I approached the event horizon I am not pulled and twisted into a strand of spaghetti, instead I stay frozen, gazing at the millisecond hand which has stopped, forever.



THE END


© 2014 Jean-Paul Garnier

Bio: Jean-Paul L. Garnier lives in Los Angeles, CA, where he is an audio technician.  He has no professional publications to date but has a story recently published in the UK's Schlock! Webzine.



E-mail: Jean-Paul Garnier

 

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