The Event Horizon

Nobody can hear a scream in the vacuum of space, or so they say. They also claimed that an alien invasion wasn't possible or that we would never survive a black hole, but here we are. They were wrong.

"Go, go, go!" I screamed into my mic as four-hundred space crafts flew through the universe at the speed of light, leaving a doomed, freezing Earth behind. That was also something we never thought we'd be able to do, but then the aliens came and changed everything.

We call them the Ravens because their actual species name is too difficult for us to pronounce with our human dialect. Interestingly, it wasn't this generation that named them, but ten generations into the future when humans meet aliens for the first time.

The Ravens looked more human-like than other species of extraterrestrials. However, they resembled what humans would call angels. They had giant wing-like structures on their backs, and their heads had many eyes, which allowed them to see at every angle. You could imagine we were terrified when they first visited.

They came through a supermassive black hole they created in our universe, stating that black holes were the gateway to time and interdimensional travel. If you were wondering why Earth is freezing and doomed, it's because of their arrival.

The supermassive black hole the Ravens created began pulling Earth out of its natural orbit, leading to months of freezing temperatures. Although, according to the Ravens, it didn't matter because we would be annihilated in the future by a carnivorous extraterrestrial species.

The Ravens that came to warn us were the last of their kind. The plan was to escape into another dimension through M87 - the supermassive black hole at the center of our Milkyway, which we have since named Elpis - as it is our last hope.

"Enemy incoming," I heard a voice say. The radar next to me showed many enemy crafts approaching, and a few of our own fell off the map. I turned my ship around, and a few others followed me. I began firing the plasma missiles at their ships, and all hell broke loose.

That was also a side effect of the Ravens coming back. When they opened the black hole, they opened a doorway that these Lizards could also get through. They brought a futuristic war to the past with them. We'd been fighting for months as we prepared our escape.

Many people died at the hands of the Lizards, and others died due to the Earth freezing. The bodies of water became ice cubes, and everything died: our farms and our livestock. Anything we rescued was shipped to warehouses and plants that were reconstructed into greenhouses and sanctuaries so we could feed our people.

Raven crafts came from the distance and began firing at them as well. We swarmed and dodged through the space around us. It reminded me of the footage you'd see from previous wars when air crafts would fight each other in the sky. This was different, though.

It was different because there was no threat of crashing into rocks or mountains. There was no threat of falling into a large body of water or ending up speared by a tree. Space was an endless vacuum. If anything happened to a craft up here, it would just float forever and then maybe collide with a planet or asteroid.

Maybe it would even come across a black hole and end up in another time or dimension. Perhaps it would end up on a past Earth, discovered by an archaeologist in the 1900s or 2000s, and studied for years. The thought of the Raven's precious metal being found in our past is mind-boggling.

The plasma missiles flew all around as the war continued to break loose. My spacecraft spun and flew. Plasma missiles hit enemy warcrafts and exploded, but more kept coming. "Everyone, keep moving forward! We've got these!" I said into my headset as I rested my finger on the big purple button.

"I need everyone currently fighting to fall back. I'm going to blow the Lizards, and I need all of you to be out of the way." The Raven and Earth crafts began leaving the scene as soon as I said it. They flew past me and lined up, narrowly dodging the enemy missiles.

"We got you," someone responded. I took a deep breath, and as I exhaled, I pressed the purple button. A bright, sparkling flash erupted from my craft, and the ethereal missile flew through open space toward the Lizard crafts. It was silent—more silent than the plasma missiles and deadlier than any weapon we've ever encountered.

The purple button compares to a nuclear bomb on Earth. That's because the missile is made of dark matter, a concept foreign to humans before the Ravens. No one knew much about dark matter or ever thought we would harness a substance so powerful. As I said before, we didn't know a lot of things.

As we watched the purple missile fly, we started to turn our crafts around and take off, hoping to escape what would happen. The missile made contact with one of the lizardcrafts and silently exploded into a large cloud of dark matter, destroying every lizardcraft in its vicinity.

That's what harnessing something like dark matter does, especially when someone weaponizes it. If we were still on Earth, people would argue it's too dangerous, and no one should have that kind of technology - just like we did when atomic bombs and other nuclear weapons were created. However, this is a different time with different players involved.

We aren't fighting other humans anymore. We are fighting advanced species with children's weapons. Who knew we would ever call an AK-47 a child's weapon? I guess things do change as technology and knowledge progress.

The force of dark matter pushed us forward, and we didn't look back. We continued our path to join the rest of the human race as we fought to stay alive and keep our people from extinction. Within a few minutes, we'd made it back to our group, and I was at the front again, waiting to lead my people into another dimension, or maybe another time.

According to the Ravens, there wasn't a set destination for black holes, especially ones that haven't been explored. M87 could lead us anywhere, but where ever it led, it was safer than freezing to death on a doomed planet and then being shredded by a black hole, so there's that.

In the distance, I saw Elpis approaching, and my breath caught itself in my throat. The lump got bigger and bigger as I took in everything around me. We weaved in and out of nebulae, ranging from blue to magenta and red. Some of the nebulae in the distance held colors of green and shades of cyan.

In the center was Elpis, a giant hole of nothing was darkness inside like that tunnel I came across in a field behind my house. But unlike that Earthly tunnel, there was no graffiti on its walls or weird stench from years of trespassers and rotting food left behind by rebellious teenagers.

The black hole was, by itself, silent and introverted. It was mysterious and brought a sense of peace with it. "Alright, everyone, we are approaching M87. Turn on your anti-gravity and radiation fields. It's about to get warm." I spoke into the headset as I pushed the necessary buttons. The spacecraft made a few noises and confirmed both fields were locked into place.

I kept my eyes on M87 the entire time. How could I not? The ring was bright - almost blinding but it didn't matter to me. If someone had approached anyone on Earth six months ago and said we would see what a black hole looks like, that person would be called crazy, but here we are, looking right at it.

As we approached, I used the camera feature on the craft to snap a photo. The ring border spun and dipped. I started to speed up as fast as possible, wanting to make it through before the Lizards found us again—no need for them to know which black hole we were entering.

I spotted the event horizon and took a deep breath. "Alright, everyone, we are approaching the event horizon. Say your goodbyes to our universe because there's no going back now." I said into my headset. I heard a few goodbyes and funny remarks as people spoke into their headsets, making me laugh a little.

I was right. There was no going back now. The event horizon is known for being the point of no return. Why would we want to return anyway? There's not an Earth to go back to. Just as I thought about that dark thought, I passed through the ring and the event horizon, and then there was nothing.

Nothing but darkness was so black, the only light I could see on my spacecraft. Everyone disappeared from my radar; it was just me and the void. It was just as peaceful as I imagined it was first seeing it. Calm and mysterious like stage one of sleep when you aren't quite awake, but not quite asleep yet.

This was a moment when I figured meditation would be at its finest. The moment I could become one with the universe. I closed my eyes, let go of the steering wheel, and quieted my thoughts. It felt like floating in a pool despite feeling myself being propelled through what is now called the Cauchy horizon.

Even though my craft had an anti-gravity shield, I could still feel it pulling my craft through its immense expansion. For the first time, I couldn't stand human language. There weren't words to explain the sensations or experience, and I wanted nothing more than to describe what was happening.

There was a small beep, and I opened my eyes to see the other crafts appearing on the radar as they were also entering the Cauchy horizon. Black holes were said to be where space and time stopped, and I wondered if that is what we were all experiencing. It was a frozen moment in time, where it didn't move forward or back. Where everything just seemed to stay still.

As a human, staying still is a foreign concept. There was always something to do on Earth and a place to be. There were societal milestones and social norms. There was traveling, cooking, shopping, school, and work. There was never a time anyone could experience a moment of stillness, of total and complete nothing. That was a thing for the dead.

And even then, some people thought we would continue to live even after our physical bodies died. Can you imagine being overworked in your life only to die and have to continue working and living? Can't anyone rest for a moment?

Being suspended in time was a different kind of stillness. As I quiet my mind and accept the darkness around me, I suddenly feel as if I am floating rather than being pulled toward something. It never occurred to me that our bodies could feel time move until now when it wasn't.

And then I was jolted back to reality as the pull-induced speeds even faster than light and what sounded like screams filled the space around us. Not our screams, not the screams of space crafts, but a sound coming from the black hole itself. As if it sensed our presence and is forcing us where we need to go at its peril.

Nobody can hear a scream in the vacuum of space, or so they say. They also claimed that an alien invasion wasn't possible or that we would never survive a black hole, but here we are. They were wrong. Humans witnessed a massive star collapse and create a black hole.

Several modern generations experienced an ice age and watched our planet be destroyed. We left our planet to travel through time and dimensions. We met aliens and fought a war against another species. We harnessed dark matter as a weapon and protection.

We made strong radiation fields. We created anti-gravity fields. We used precious metal that doesn't exist on our planet or in our universe to make space crafts that only existed in movies - movies that no longer exist with people who are no longer alive.

It's incredible how many things used to matter and seem so important, and now as I'm watching the end of the black hole open and spin, I realize none of it ever did. The black mass of nothing began to light up and a hazy spiraling tunnel formed. There was a bright light and a sudden glitch in reality before the spacecraft completely shut down, and we plummeted through the wormhole.

I looked all around me as I spun around over and over again. Through the energetic wall, I could see what looked like the universe we had just left but slightly different. The dark matter lay all around us, surrounded by what looked like nebulae of different colors. There was yellow and orange, grey and brown. Every color that has ever existed surrounded us, including colors I'd never seen before.

Some asteroids looked like gemstones rather than rock - a whole belt that weaved around giant planets with many moons surrounding them. In the distance, there seemed to be another black hole hanging out with rings of what looked like fire circling it. I admit it looked enticing.

The wormhole propelled us through all of time and space. Everything on the outside began to blur as we spun faster and faster. My brain felt clouded, and my stomach didn't like what was happening. I let go of the steering wheel and braced the sides of the seat as I felt my last meal rise in my throat.

However, I didn't vomit. My mouth watered, and my chest heaved, but nothing came out. It felt like we were being released from the wormhole as soon as we started. Suddenly my spacecraft was sitting right side up in the middle of the new universe.

New nebulae surrounded me, as well as many stars and celestial bodies. And my craft sat as if it hadn't just plummeted through a tunnel of time and space. It sat as if I were still sitting in front of Elpis like the whole trip never happened.

As the rest of my people ejected out of the wormhole, I saw their crafts land just like mine had. I could feel time start to move again and knew that my moments in the black hole did not affect my age. It made me wonder if that could somehow be harnessed to create immortality.

"What's the plan?" Someone said into the mic. That's right, I thought to myself. We need a plan. We made it to the other side, but now we need a home. These crafts wouldn't last forever. Plus, we would need food and water.

"Let's find us a planet," I said.

This story was inspired by my Introduction to Earth Science class when we had to do our first discussion. The assignment was to find something extraordinary in the sky or space and share it with the rest of the class and our thoughts on it. I found a video about black holes that were made by national geographic. Black holes have always fascinated me, and it was during this class I began to ask fundamental questions. Questions like, "Could someone survive a trip through a black hole?" and "What could be on the other side?" And those led to more questions until I debated how we could harness the power of dark matter to make everything possible.

I came up with the idea of this story when I asked, "Wouldn't it be interesting if someone discovered a way to make it to the other side of a black hole?" Then when I had heard about NASA's discovery of something being propelled out of a black hole for the first time ever (which you can watch a quick video about it by clicking HERE), I started to wonder how something like that could occur and how it would change my story.

But I didn't start researching or thinking about writing the story until the New Worlds challenge popped up. So, I wanted to thank Vocal for pushing me to dive into the world of science fiction for the first time, and I hope my next book will come from this experience.