Supermassive Black Hole

"There’s no time,” the voice on the radio says. “You must come now.” I look around the cockpit of the spaceship—my spaceship. The control station, the thick, curved glass of the windows, the sleek engines quietly humming in the hull below—all of it is my design. I spent years building this spacecraft, painstakingly attending to each detail so it could do what no other ship has done. I put my heart and soul into this ship. How could I leave it behind? But then I look out the window at the black hole looming before me. A star-sized abyss that light itself cannot escape. Luminescent gas swirls around it, but the glow abruptly stops at the black hole’s edge as its inescapable gravity pulls everything around it into eternal darkness. I can feel the black hole’s gravity wrapping around every cell of my body, pulling me closer. I thought my spacecraft would be able to withstand the gravity at this distance, but I was wrong. I’m being pulled in, speeding toward the darkness, and it’s only a matter of time before I’ll be swallowed up forever. “Your ship isn’t fast enough to escape this level of gravity,” the voice says. “But mine is.” I turn to face the opposite window, where another spaceship hovers adjacent to mine. I can see the faint outline of a figure sitting in the cockpit. It must be the man whose voice is coming through my radio, telling me he can save me. He speaks again, his voice calm but firm. “You need to come aboard my ship now.” I look at the screens and blinking lights around me. All my work—my ship, the data I’d collected, everything I’d accomplished to further human understanding of black holes—would be lost forever. But then I look out at the black hole again, feeling its gravity more acutely, and I realize it’s all going to be lost anyway. Nothing can escape a black hole. Except for this man, whose voice is crackling over my ship’s radio. He can escape it. Somehow, infinite gravity and darkness are no match for him. “Alright,” I say, turning my back on the computers, the cockpit—my whole life