Cosmic Dawn

Nobody can hear a scream in the vacuum of space, or so they say. And for how things are currently looking, space may no longer even exist if our plan to reverse its contraction does not work. So scream your lungs out.

For the longest time, humanity believed that the universe would forever expand, hurling its cosmic guts into the darkness beyond to light it up. Something changed though as its expansive outer reaches began to cool and its ability to create new galaxies dwindled. At first its reversal was slow, believed to be a temporary situation that would correct itself before continuing to expand again. That correction never occurred though and rather it began to contract more rapidly.

Watching from afar with our modern satellites and telescopes, humanity had just rejoiced in its recent ability of interstellar travel. Oh and that was mostly due to our first contact with extraterrestrial life.

You heard me right! We found life outside of our planet, or I should say they found us. They were years ahead of us in terms of technology and really only revealed themselves because they needed help countering the contraction of the universe as well. To them, interstellar travel had just become a daily routine, but for us it became an incredible achievement and stepping stone for our species.

We were able to expand beyond Earth with new geoengineering technologies from them as well as new ships to carry us further, faster. Just in time to realize that it may all come to an end fairly soon. The extraterrestrials, or Outers, as humanity would come to call them, calculated the universe had about 25 years.

And some lunatic just had to propose the idea of blowing up black holes to possibly counter that contraction… yep, that was me, Connor Dryslan. Now before you think I am too crazy, hear me out. I figured since black holes contain immeasurable energy and seemingly infinite resources from sucking up anything that comes in contact with it, that it just may happen to have the ability to counter a contraction of the universe by reigniting it, once exploded. The only thing is, it will most likely take several black holes. And the aftermath of the resulting explosion was unknown for the very galaxies which host said black holes right at their centers.

Now I really just said it in jest to some Outers and scientists along with their constituents, but of course their calculating brains pieced probabilities together and said aloud that it could theoretically work. Or was it hypothetically?

And me with just my averaged sized pilot brain, realized that I would have to be the one to carry the payload if they could create the technology to actually detonate a black hole.

Well guess what? They just so happened to go and create such a device. I would go ahead and explain exactly what it does, but I dozed off in the middle of most of their briefing on it until they got to the part of the video where it went boom. And holy shit, was it one hell of a boom!

A message popped across the screen of Connors computer interface: USER TIMED OUT. MESSAGE HAS BEEN ARCHIVED.

Connor smacked the screen a few times to no avail before he got up from the computer.

“At least give me a warning that my time is almost up.”

Connor left the workstation and made his way outside where an automated car picked him up. It dropped him off at a NASA facility where a large, futuristic looking spaceship was docked. Admiring it for a while, Connor knew this would be his home for the next several years in space to the Milky Way's black hole and to several more beyond which no human had ever traversed before.

He eventually made his way into the facility and went right to the kitchen to ask for his final Earth meal before departure. He went with an eggplant parmesan hero and a cold beer, taking his time to finish both to savor the flavors.

After that, Connor made his way to the spacesuit lab, where he was fitted with his protective suit for take off. Only hours before he would be departing, Connor waited with his fellow crew, a collection of Outers and other human experts in their respective fields before they made their way to board the spaceship.

Holding his helmet in his hand, Connor gave one more look around to cherish his home planet's scenery, before equipping the heavy metal to his head and sealing it shut with a solid click.