Time is a friend like Iago.
Claire knew her time had come. But she was not going to be shoved down the precipice of eternal sleep. Rather, she chose to jump wilfully and with full control of her faculties.
*** *** ***
The years had passed Claire by. Adventures were had like happy-hour pints, foamy, fizzy, and fast, leaving her intoxicated, bloated, bleary-eyed, and satiated. Life’s hangovers had piled up; they began to haunt her in a throbbing rush, pounding her mind and buffeting her soul. She had quaffed her fill of adventures.
Good times came and went like vestals in a sultan’s harem. Bad times lingered like eunuchs at an oriental wedding.
Friends rode away into the sunset, leaving behind dust clouds of lessons learnt and experiences shared. New friends were made, their brains picked clean, and their thoughts rinsed off in tumble-dried conversations.
Lovers were consumed like tropical fruit and spat out like sour pips.
Dreams had seduced her by day, and nightmares had besieged her by night, seizing her by the scruff of the neck and jabbing her innards with forgotten traumas and dormant memories.
Expectations were drawn and raised, slicing at adversity and slashing at fate.
Battles were won and lost; people were met and forgotten; praises were sung; curses spat; vows made; promises broken; hopes dashed; wishes fulfilled; desires indulged. In the end, it all came full circle.
Claire had lived a good life. A full life. But throughout, she was aware that it would come to a crashing, humpty-dumpty end. And once it did, not all the king’s horses and not all the queen’s men could put the eggshells of life back together again.
Claire was comfortable with the idea that life had to end—that was a fact as hard as a bad bargain and as cold as a trombone; a steadfast and resolute fact that never really left her side; it always hung around and gazed at her like a dopey-eyed cocker spaniel; always quick to yelp the minute she forgot about it.
Death, she thought to herself, is an inexorable fact that we cannot seem to accept. To die, to sleep, Hamlet averred. And in many ways, death is like sleep: we do not know we are dead. We can never be conscious of death, just as we are never conscious of the fact that we are asleep. We may feel sleepy, but we never know thatwe are asleep. We may feel ill or we may feel death’s approach, but with death all consciousness ceases. The heart stops; blood circulation ceases; the lungs deflate; and the brain, starved of oxygen, fails; its neurons start to decompose, and before long, all that is left of our body is compost fit for worms.
This may be bleak and macabre. But Claire was able to deal with the knowledge that at any time her future may be scuppered and her attachments mocked. This was the truth she knew. The truth didn’t exist to make her happy—the truth just is.
She thought of the billions of creatures, trillions even, that had died on her planet. Not one had ever come back. She knew there was no coming back. Spirits, séances, souls, seventh heavens—all amounted to nothing but wishful thinking on the part of a species that could not come to terms—whether intellectually or emotionally—with death and the utter loss of personal identity. She thought of how, like lorries stuck in gear, we groan inwardly at the prospect of death. She despaired at how, like sheep in a shearing pen, we bleat about an afterlife. Claire was having none of it. The ideas of resurrection, retribution, resuscitation, revivification, and reincarnation were pulverised and saw their re’s knocked out of the ballpark and the wind kicked out of them.
*** *** ***
Claire had lived her life in major and minor keys. An erratic concert, sometimes high-pitched and shrill with infuriating falsettos in the background, and occasionally low-pitched and deep with rumbling baritones. It had been a scratchy performance, but for all its shortcomings and inadequacies, Claire was always able to keep an open ear for the melodious harmonies. She slept to the accompaniment of double-reed oboes and woke to sounds of soulful clarinets. She lived violin symphonies and piano concertos. She had been through it all: counterpoints in relationships; polyphonies of the mind; cantatas of the soul; and sonatas of the heart. Now the concert was approaching the end. When it did, there was nothing left to do but appreciate, applaud, and make a dignified exit.
*** *** ***
The future is like a wet crow. Black. Inscrutable. Damp. It perches on the electric lines of time and caws raucously as events whizz by and crash past ifs and buts and might-have-beens.
*** *** ***
In the years that Claire had spent on her planet, science and technology trained like monomaniacal gym buddies on steroids, bench-pressing innovations, pumping ideas, and flexing bulging muscles in the mirrors of progressive societies. In the decades that came and went, humans were catapulted outside the confines of the solar system into the vast and bewildering outback of deep space. Hours and days merged with light-years and parsecs, as space tourism, interstellar travel, and galactic jaunts became commonplace. Claire, like any self-respecting supercentenarian in the 22nd Century, found herself in possession of a celestial-class star-car, complete with chrome-plated exteriors, dilithium-powered engines, and matter-antimatter pods. Capable of moving from impulse to warp speed in five seconds flat, the star-car allowed Claire to cruise in hyperspace and thrust through cosmic worm holes as a matter of weekend routine.
Although the thrill of exploring the unchartered universe was indescribably exhilarating, Claire wasn’t fully up to it. She was old and feeble. Each breath required a conscious effort. Her bones ached and her muscles quivered. The rigours of zero gravity and the loneliness of deep space didn’t augur too well for a personage of advanced years. Yet, Claire didn’t long for her youth. Nor did she wish to revisit old memories. She was looking forward to the end of what had been a long, adventurous, and intellectually stimulating life.
It was during one of her sojourns through the delta quadrant of the Andromeda galaxy that an idea descended upon her like a dove in Galilee. The more she mused on it, the more sense it made. Pretty soon she had made up her mind. She sat in her star-car, kicked it into warp drive, and headed for the centre of the galaxy.
*** *** ***
Claire found herself in Blackness. Infinite blackness. Pitch-blackness sprinkled with ebony, wrapped in a sable shroud, hidden in a dark, sooty corner of a coal room in a forgotten cellar of the universe.
Gradually, Claire began to perceive something. As her eyes got used to the feeble light, she could discern spots of light. Millions of specks—above—below—all around—everywhere. She was surrounded by starlight.
But lurking up ahead was a monster to beat all monsters, a celestial bogeyman, a million times more perplexing than the sphinx and infinitely scarier than the basilisk. A million miles away a cosmic black hole hovered before her: a black fruit dangling on a nonexistent chord from the supernal boughs of some unfathomable astronomical tree.
As she got closer, she saw the first evidence of something out of the ordinary. Space is mostly vacuum. But there are a few atoms lurking here and there even in deep space. They don’t do much—just hang around and spin. But the presence of a black hole with its massive gravity draws deep space atoms closer to it.
Atoms from all around were moving towards the black hole, like clubbers to a dance floor or ants to a sugar lump. The atoms that were farther away moved slowly towards the black hole. But the ones closer were being pulled faster.
This is because the closer you get to a black hole, the stronger its gravity becomes. In fact, gravity is so strong that, as the atoms get nearer and nearer the black hole, they are pulled in almost at the speed of light.
*** *** ***
So, what is a black hole? To put it simply—if something so staggeringly mind-boggling can possibly be put simply—when a massive star dies, its gravity is so strong that it begins to collapse upon itself. All the matter that it was made of begins to get compressed and squeezed into an infinitely tiny point called singularity. Ultimately, the gravity of a black hole is so strong that nothing can escape it—not even light.
*** *** ***
Claire had known about black holes, but she wanted to see it, experience it, live it, and die it. This particular black hole was a non-rotating, uncharged, Schwarzschild black hole. Claire could see gas streaming towards the black hole from all directions. These gas molecules took on shimmering hues of red, orange, blue, and green.
This was because as gas particles approached the hole, they began to collide with each other. The more they collided, the more they vibrated. The more they vibrated, the hotter they got. The hotter they got, the more radiation they emitted. Ultimately, Claire ended up seeing that radiation as light.
But closer to the hole the vibrations were so intense and the heat so immense that the radiation changed from the visible end of the spectrum to the X-ray and gamma-ray end of the spectrum. Powerful X-ray fields could be found near the black hole.
*** *** ***
Light is merely radiation—electromagnetic waves that vibrate or oscillate. We can only see a narrow band of this radiation—our colours of the rainbow. However, on one side of this rainbow spectrum, we find infrared waves, microwaves, and radio waves, and on the other side, we find ultra-violet waves, X-ray waves, and gamma waves—all with different wavelengths. We use instruments to detect the non-visible radiation. However, creatures like bees can see in the ultraviolet part of the spectrum. Thermal imaging cameras use the infrared part of the spectrum. Who can tell if there are creatures in other parts of the universe that can “see” using X-rays or microwaves. Light is made up of massless particles called photons. Could creatures in other parts of the universe have evolved the ability to “see” their world by registering other lightweight particles like neutrinos? What would reality look like if they could? It is perhaps beyond our comprehension.
*** *** ***
This black hole—which Claire nicknamed Melanin—was somewhere in the centre of the Milky Way galaxy. It was massive, with a mass tens of thousands of times greater than the sun. Melanin wasn’t spinning. But there are other black holes that do and as they spin they pull the fabric of space round and round into a twisting vortex. Anything caught in this space would also be forced to follow a twisting path around the black hole.
Claire decided to release a blue beacon out of her star-car. She watched it as it floated towards Melanin—slowly at first, and then picking up speed. Just as it approached the surface of the black hole, much to her horror and delight, it began to change colour—turning first to green, then red, and then…it vanished.
*** *** ***
There is a simple explanation for this phenomenon: the Doppler effect. As waves move towards an observer, their frequency increases, their wavelengths decrease, and they appear more energetic. So, sound waves become louder and light waves move towards the blue end of the spectrum.
But as waves move away from an observer, their frequency decreases, their wavelengths increase, and they appear less energetic. So sound moving away from us sounds fainter and light moves towards the red end of the spectrum. A classic example of the Doppler effect is when we hear a police or ambulance siren approach and then recede.
As the blue-light beacon fell in towards the black hole, gravity began to suck it in faster and faster. As it sped away from Claire at increasing speeds, the wavelength of light emanating from the beacon towards Claire became longer and longer due to the Doppler effect. It changed from blue, to green, to red—but it didn’t stop there; it carried on into the infrared, microwave, and radio wave end of the spectrum. If Claire had the right instruments, she would probably still have been able to detect the “light” from the beacon—although its wavelength would have been unimaginably long.
*** *** ***
Claire had had enough of this. She was old, and time had taken its toll. She decided the time had come to end it all. She was going to allow herself to fall into Melanin. She had no compunctions about ending her life. She knew back on earth there were still some fringe lunatics who believed any form of suicide was a sin. But Claire held the belief that if she had the right to live, then she had the right to die. And it was nobody else’s brazen, brassy business whether she chose to end her life or not.
Claire felt not the least bit remorse or regret. She realised she had lived a decent life. She hadn’t screwed anyone over. She hadn’t climbed the corporate ladder while trampling on everyone beneath her. She hadn’t become revoltingly rich by exploiting the weak and the vulnerable. But rather, she had explored the wonders of the world and experienced the magic of people. She had expressed herself creatively and preserved her spirit in her art. She had experienced the entire gamut of human emotions: love hate, envy, rage, regret, remorse, excitement, wistfulness, compassion, nostalgia…and life was all the more sweet for it. She was grateful for the good times and she was grateful for the bad. As a civilised and intelligent being, she wasn’t going to go kicking and screaming against her will. But rather, she would make a dignified exit on her own terms. She switched off the power thrusters of her star-car that were keeping her in orbit around the black hole.
Immediately, she began her decent towards the black abyss. At first she didn’t feel anything. But gradually, she began to notice that the black hole was starting to get larger and larger, which meant she was getting closer and closer to it.
The seconds ticked away. The black hole loomed menacingly close. Soon much of her visual view in front of her was covered by this vast circular blackness. No descriptions of Hell could possibly come close to conveying the sense of fear she felt. Like curious meerkats, the hair on the back of her neck stood on tiptoe and then shrank back in quivering horror. Her toes were like frozen popsicles, and her brain felt numb. Her heart raced like a greyhound on amphetamines, and the blood in her ears pounded. Her breath grew faster and shallower. Adrenaline flowed through her veins, and she couldn’t stop her hands from shivering. None of this was within her control or volition. Her body was on autopilot as was her reality.
The closer she got, the more the blackness grew. She was filled with an appalling sense of terror. There could be nothing more horrifying, even in the darkest corners of Hell. The blackness no longer seemed confined below her, but rather, began to grow along her sides, darkening her lateral vision. Claire began to feel hideously claustrophobic. She felt like she was in some cosmic coffin. Her palms grew sweaty. The smell of mortality clung to her clothes. Her bones throbbed. Her muscles quivered. She felt an odd sensation in her feet—and then in her head. She realised these were the powerful tidal forces she had read about.
*** *** ***
Tidal forces are the same forces that cause the high and low tides on earth. The part of the earth closer to the moon experiences a greater pull, and therefore the oceans bulge towards the moon. The part of the earth away from the moon experiences a lesser pull and therefore the oceans bulge away from the moon.
The same forces were acting on Claire. Her feet were closer to the black hole, so they were being pulled more strongly than her head. If this had been a smaller black hole, the tidal forces would have been so great she would have been stretched to a spaghetti noodle by now. The fact that Melanin was a super-massive black hole was the only reason she could approach the event horizon without being stretched and ripped to shreds.
As the seconds ticked away, the star-car began to fall with increasing speed. Just as she was about to approach the surface of the black hole—what scientists call the event horizon—she decided to switch on the thrusters for one last time. The thrusters managed to keep her hovering on the outer edge of the event horizon. Claire decided to look away from the black hole and turned to observe what was happening behind and above her. She was absolutely flabbergasted by what she saw. It was an extraordinary visual spectacle. Above her, the entire night sky—with all the visible stars of the universe—was now concentrated in a circle, surrounded by the blackness of the black hole. Claire was lost for words.
*** *** ***
And well might Claire be lost for words, for what she was gazing at was a truly astonishing phenomenon. But utterly bizarre though it is, the phenomenon does have an explanation. Melanin, like all black holes, was acting like a lens. As Claire got closer to the event horizon, all light began to bend towards her—as it would for any other observer in any other part of the event horizon. Even light from beneath Claire—on the opposite side of the black hole—was bent so drastically that it appeared to come from up above her. This is truly an exceedingly fascinating sight—reserved only for those brave enough or foolish enough to approach the edge of a black hole.
*** *** ***
All movement was now difficult. Melanin’s gravitational pull was enormous. Just outside the event horizon, the laws of physics still applied. It was only once she fell through that she would be lost forever. Claire knew this. She moved with great difficulty to her chair and strapped herself down. Crouching low would reduce some of the painful effects of the tidal forces.
This was the end. When she switched off the thrusters the star-car would hurtle through the event horizon on its inexorable journey to the centre of the black hole: singularity, an area of space infinitely small into which all matter is infinitely compressed.
There were no last-minute prayers or hasty orisons. No hymns or begging for forgiveness. No prostration or kowtowing. No supplication for blessings or reading of last rites. No mewling and whimpering at the feet of supernatural entities. Claire would have none of that. She was willing to look death squarely in the eye. She would face death with dignity and grace and on her terms.
She reached out before her and switched the thrusters off. In an instant, she was through the event horizon. This was no hard surface—just a mathematical fact. Her visual field of the entire universe shrank to a dot and then disappeared into blackness.
For a few seconds, Claire felt no change. But in her mind she knew she had passed the point of no return. Nothing in the universe could help her escape. Entire stars get swallowed by black holes—so what hope for her? She was firmly in the clutches of the most powerful force in the cosmos: gravity.
Things began to happen almost instantaneously. The tidal forces overwhelmed her. Her body began to stretch, and all the molecules in it were ripped apart in an instant. Her neurons were obliterated from existence and reduced to figments of absence and fibrils of absurdity. All memory was annihilated in a fraction of a femtosecond. Protons sailed to the right. Electrons danced to the left. Neutrons revolved in a corner like demented wallflowers. Muons ran hither and thither and round and about. Gluons head-banged to a hebephrenic riff. Bosons appeared from nowhere and slapped seven shades of nothingness out of the other particles. Baryons and fermions hobnobbed together like Glastonbury junkies. Mesons and leptons giggled deliriously like vacuous cheerleaders and were then snuffed out. Particles and antiparticles rubbed elbows for an instant and then destroyed each other like squabbling siblings. Quarks rioted and rampaged like soccer hooligans at an away game. Space undulated, flapped, frizzled, frazzled, rippled, rolled, riffled, hooted, tooted, grinned, warped into infinite dimensions, and disappeared into absolute abstraction. Time zipped forward like a Canadian dope sprinter, rotated like a dreidel, turned back, split in two directions, twisted itself into reef knots, spread out like rancid butter, and finally square-rooted itself into meaningless, gimcrack nonsense. All the calculations, computations, and equations of quantum physics were turned on their head and punched in the guts. Spin, charge, symmetry, momentum…everything that was fundamental to a fundamental particle disappeared. In effect, nothing was left and nothing made sense any more—and if nothing made sense anymore, then everything was crystal clear. At singularity, everything came to an end—or went back to the beginning—depending on how one looked at it.
*** *** ***
An observer outside the black hole would have seen Claire approach the event horizon. But the final moment when she passed through would never be visible to anyone ever. The last photons of light from her body would never be able to leave the black hole and thus would never appear to any observer.
In effect, to an external observer, Claire would appear frozen on the edge of the black hole forever.
