this is not a place of honour

*OUTGOING TRANSMISSION*

Nobody can hear a scream in the vacuum of space, or so they say. That is a given; nobody can hear anything in the vacuum of space. There is no medium for sound to travel through. Space is the ultimate silence; we knew this when we came here.

However, we found that we were wrong.

Did you know that a black hole can make noise? This one does. Nothing that can be heard by the human ear, of course; it comes in the form of sound waves that ripple out through the gas in this cluster. It is the deepest sound in the universe. 57 octaves lower than middle-C, to be exact. A million billion times deeper than our ear drums can hear. To make them audible, you have to extract the frequencies, resynthesise and scale up.

What you end up with is the equivalent to the note of a B-flat.

It cannot be heard by the human ear. We simply do not have the capacity for it.

But we started to hear it all the same. The black hole…singing, for lack of a better term. It was singing to us, is singing -

Oh. But I’m getting ahead of myself. Sorry. I’m agitated, excited; let me try again.

This is Radio Engineer Suruthi Bhat of the Research Vessel Odyssey. I am recording this on what would equal June 3rd, the year 2189, Earth time.

If you are receiving this transmission, you have come into range of our vessel, here just beyond the event horizon of the black hole, Sagittarius A*. We first arrived seven months and three days ago, as part of a science mission to monitor its expansion and behaviour. It is the closest humanity has ever come to the supermassive compact object at the centre of our galaxy.

We had a crew of five; myself, Chief Scientific Officer Fang Shing, Second Scientific Officer Ayor Akech, Captain Lara Jansky and Medical Technician Oscar de la Cruz.

They are gone now. As of yesterday, I am the sole remaining crew member of the Odyssey.

This transmission is a warning. It is not a distress beacon. If you are receiving this transmission, I imagine you might be a rescue vessel, looking as to why our ship went radio silent. I don’t know how long ago that was. When are you hearing my voice, listener? Has it been ten, fifty, a hundred years? That’s a strange thought. I will be long dead when this reaches another human being, if it ever reaches another.

Who are you, listener? Or perhaps there is no listener and I am sending this out to the void, my voice floating out to nothing and nowhere. How lonely. I hope that someone, someday, listens. I want someone to know that we were here, we were alive, and -

Oh, damn it. Sorry. There I go again. What a terrible transmitter I am. Lara would have been much better. She was the Captain, you know - oh, of course. I already said that. Lara was our Captain. A great Captain too, one of the best. I wish she were here. She could speak so well, so succinct. My job was to interpret sounds, not make them. She would know what to say -

Shit! Focus, Suruthi. She’s not here. I’m here. I’m the last one left.

God, the singing. It’s getting stronger. Lara, forgive me. Everyone, forgive me.

Listener, please; this is not a place of honour. No highly esteemed deed is commemorated here. Nothing valued is here.

These words are not my own, but I find them to be appropriate. You will find them written at Yucca Mountain in what was previously known as Nevada, United States of America. It is where, nearly two hundred years ago, nuclear waste was buried. I remember watching some documentary about it, about how our predecessors, before we learned how to properly harvest the power of the sun, used nuclear power plants. Their radioactive waste was buried deep within the earth. To prevent future civilisations from disturbing it and unleashing the danger, that message of warning was placed above it.

I can’t remember the rest of the message, but that bit stuck with me. I hope it sticks with you too.

Do not come here. Humans are curious by nature, and that is what led us on this mission to begin with. I beg you, do not follow. Turn away, now. Stop your engines and turn away and never return to this place. Carry my message back with you.

I suppose I should elaborate a bit more. I want to tell you this story. I hope that by doing so, you are less inclined to go searching for an answer. But I also want to tell you because I need someone to hear it. I need someone to know what happened to us.

As I said, we arrived here some seven months ago. Our mission was to collect data on Sagittarius A* by getting as close as possible, just beyond the Schwarzschild radius, more commonly known as the event horizon. The point beyond which, nothing can escape from the gravity of a black hole. Nothing, no mass or light. A black hole does nothing but devour. Entire solar systems, whole nebulas. All gone. Deconstructed, I suppose would be the best term.

One day, even the Earth, our home, will be taken by it. How terrifying, knowing that there is something so completely inescapable. It’s a frightening thing to sit on the edge of. But like I said; humans are painfully curious creatures.

It’s my fault. I’m the one who interpreted the sound waves into something we could hear. We had heard it before, back on our research base. We would play it over the speaker and mimic the sound back; all of us sitting in the lab droning our best attempts at a b-flat. We thought it was funny, like we were singing with it, some sort of cosmic duet between us tiny humans and the crushing weight at the centre of our galaxy. We thought it was beautiful, thought of the sound as almost the last farewell hymn from the systems that had long since passed the event horizon.

Humans have a knack for personalizing almost everything. We even nicknamed it Sag A, called her she. But it is something of such great magnitude that we can never fully comprehend.

When we arrived, I re-tested the soundwaves. It was my job but it was also more than that; I had a burning desire to hear it again, to see what new note might be sung. Maybe it had taken hold of us before we ever arrived here. Perhaps our fate was written from before the start.

I was right. It was different. I cannot say how; there are some things that are beyond what human language can communicate. The only way I can try to describe it is that it is like the sound of the sea. It calls to you. At first, we were so excited. Sag A singing, greeting us hello. That was all it needed. One listen.

Fang was the first one it took. I say took because I have no better word for it; lured, maybe, but still, that doesn't seem right. I don’t know why we went in the order we did, no more than I can explain why I am the last one left. Maybe it’s my punishment - I played them the song, so I live to see the consequences.

But Fang was first. It took a few weeks before signs started being exhibited. Fang was practical to a fault; he lacked imagination and liked what was solid, provable. He didn’t indulge in the creative, like stories or art or the spiritual. So it was strange when he began to speak about his dreams. Previously he had told me that he never once remembered dreaming, but suddenly he could now, in vivid detail. He said he could hear the singing in his dreams. Not in a distant, hazy way, the way specific details are in dreams. But with perfect, sharp clarity, every note as loud and pure as the ringing of a church bell. He said that it felt like it was coming from all around him, from everywhere all at once.

That’s how it started with all of us; the dream of the song. I know now that it wasn’t a dream at all. We were hearing it sing to us through our very subconscious, infecting us from within. I hear it now, hear it always.

In our bunks, I would wake to the sound of Fang humming in his sleep, a sound that sounded nearly inhuman, something achingly familiar, yet alien. By the time he was hearing it during his waking hours, Ayor began dreaming. Slowly, it took us all. Then Oscar, then Lara. Now me.

By the fourth month, we knew something was wrong, but we were steadfastly ignoring it. It was the isolation, being in the presence of something so monumental, so immense. We were scientists, after all. We clung to reason as children cling to their teddy bears, desperate and in denial.

Anxiety and fear began to creep at the back of our necks as the song grew louder. In a fit of nervousness, I deleted all my recordings and disabled my software. Then I sabotaged our ship's comms system, somehow convinced that the recordings were playing through it day and night.

Lara didn’t even discipline me, which was the most frightening of all. She ran the ship with a tight fist, caring for its maintenance and wellbeing like it were her child. But she just watched me take a screwdriver and dismantle the comms with a passive face, eyes tired and glazed.

Another month and we stopped talking and barely ate. We completely forewent our duties of the mission. We didn’t ever discuss leaving. What was most horrible was that we didn’t want to leave, not the way we came. We wanted to go further. We wanted to go past the event horizon. To the black hole.

God, the singing. Just let me finish this, then I will give in. I’m coming, I’m coming, just let me finish, please…

Let me breathe for a moment. Please grant me a moment of respite. Just let me finish!

…Apologies. I wasn’t speaking to you, listener. The call, it nearly has me. I will try my best to finish this message before then.

How far did I get…yes, we began to feel that need. The need to answer the call. Lara tried her best, but she was just as affected. We were powerless against it.

As I said, Fang went first. But not before he destroyed our long-range transmitters. He left a note while the rest of us slept, exhausted from resisting. He said he was afraid that the song would go out, would somehow poison our communications with others, that it would reach out across the universe. He said that it was hungry and wanted more, always wanted more. The note was rambling, near incoherent. He begged forgiveness. He begged absolution. Fang…you needn’t ask. It is me who should be asking you.

He took one of our life pods and went in. He crossed the horizon.

Do you know what happens to a human body going into a black hole?

We can’t know for sure, because of course, we cannot see beyond the event horizon. But we can make a calculated hypothesis based on the science. It’s called ‘spaghettification’. Such a macabre word, but accurate. Once you reach the singularity, the gravity becomes so immense that it simultaneously compressed and elongates, unravelling you right down to your DNA strands. You become unmade.

Before that, you would still be able to see out past the horizon. You could see the universe, all the stars in the great big sky as you fracture and break, as you are wholly consumed.

Did Fang look back, did he see our lonely ship on the edge as he passed into nothingness, became nothingness? Did all of them? Will I?

Next was Ayor and Oscar. They went together. A month after Fang. We had disintegrated, splintered. I locked myself in my office and played white noise at all hours, trying to drown out the song. I had no desire for food, for water. I choked down rations just so that I wouldn’t die from malnutrition.

Do I look frightful? I suppose I must. I’m a shell of who I once was. All that echoes around inside me is the song.

One night, I heard screaming on the bridge. I hadn’t seen the others in weeks, afraid of myself and of them. I emerged to see Ayor and Oscar. Lara was there too, in her captain's chair, her body slumped like she did not have the energy to get up. They were unrecognisable to me. Gaunt and haggard strangers that I no longer knew.

Oscar and Ayor were fighting. She was trying to get him to leave with her, but he was panicked, weak. They were the closest pair of the crew and now they were tearing at each other like beasts, inhuman in their movements and sounds. I don’t know how long it lasted. I could not move or speak. I only watched as Ayor, completely consumed by the song, finally knocked Oscar unconscious. There was a terrifying strength in her skeletal body as she dragged him away on all fours like some kind of creature, out of the bridge and towards the life pods.

I heard over the song in my mind as the life pod departed, then saw out the window as it flew away and to the event horizon. They were there, and then they were gone. So quick, so easy. I envied them. I was terrified of that envy.

Blood was on the floor of the bridge. Some of it had gotten on Lara. But she just kept sitting there, impassive, staring out to the black hole. I went back to my office.

Time became irrelevant to me. All there is and was is the song. I had no idea how long we had been here until I checked the date just now. Seven months. It could have been a day. It could have been forever, too.

Lara finally went yesterday. I was sleeping when she came to me, fitful and feverish. I knew my time was coming to an end. That I would have to answer the call soon.

I felt her stand over me like an apparition, some gentle and hazy presence that hovered at the edge of my slumber. She leant, her hair, long and unkempt falling around our faces like a cocoon that blocked out all else. I felt her kiss my temple, and her lips moved with words that I could not hear or understand. A final farewell from my captain.

When I woke with her scent still lingering in my room, she was gone. And I was alone, here on the edge of the void.

That was yesterday. There is nothing left now keeping me here. I was staying for them, in a way. Waiting for them to go first. I can finally give in.

I have used the last of my strength and free will to fix the transmitter than Fang destroyed. I am recording this and sending it out so that any ship that gets within a certain radius will receive the broadcast. If that is you, hello. Hello and goodbye, I suppose. Thank you for listening to me.

I have no family to tell what happened to me. None of us did. It’s why we came here, why we signed up. They were my family and now they are gone.

Remember my warning. Once you recieve this transmission, destroy it. Maybe I have infected you already. But I had to send out a warning. I’m sorry. Remember. This is not a place of honour. No highly esteemed deed is commemorated here. Nothing valued is here.

Now you know why.

I feel it! Oh god, it’s happening. I’m frightened. I’m so frightened, I don’t want to die. What is that poem? Do not go gently into that good night…I’m afraid I must. I cannot fight anymore.

Forgive me, Lara. Forgive me Fang, Ayor, Oscar. Forgive me, listener. I have never believed in a higher power but now I think I do. It lives just there, across the horizon, in that black hole. It is calling me. And now I must answer and go to meet it.

This is Suruthi Bhat, last remaining crew member of the RV Odyssey, signing off.

Thank you…and good luck.

*ERROR: TRANSMISSION FAILED*