Into The Void

by Ryan Frieda

  Captain Steele focus on the ship. 50 feet... 40.... 30.... 25... He turned himself around so that his feet were facing the ship. 10 feet. He used his DSSM to try and slow himself. He braced for impact as he hit the hull of the ship and entered it at close to the all of the energy released from the explosives during World War 2.

  Captain Steele entered the ship at an angle and lost enough speed that he didn't go through the bottom of the ship. He was knocked out when his DSSM suit did another shock call.

  “John! I need you!”

  Captain Steele came to. He got up and grabbed another tether, attached it to something in the ship, and told Jamie to deactivate life support and gravity.

  “Why?” Jamie asked.

  “I'm leaving through this new hole in the ship. I got to get that fuel valve turned,” Captain Steele said.

  “John we-”

  “Do it.”

  “But-

  “DO IT!”

  Jamie deactivated the gravity and Captain Steele jumped and had the gravity of the black hole pull him toward the hole in the hull his entry created. He climbed outside and started to make his way to the engine as a gravity wave hit the ship. It tossed the ship to the side. He climbed to the back of the ship and got behind the engines and found the valve. He grabbed a spike from the gear sack on his DSSM, planted it in the hull of the ship, and made sure it was secure. Another gravity wave hit the ship pushing him against the ship and propelling the ship forward. He grabbed the spike, grabbed some neutron star fiber cable, turned the valve on, then tied the string around the valve so that it would always stay on, and attached it to the spike.

  Captain Steeled started to feel like he was being pulled apart. He felt like the he was being stretched longer and longer from head to toe.

  “We are about to start entering the point of no return! When we enter it everything will stretch,” Jamie yelled.

  Captain Steele looked behind him into space and could see light being stretched. The light from his flash light was being pulled behind him over his shoulder. He started to climb back up the ship when he started getting pelted with small objects. As soon as he was clear of the engines he told Jamie to hit the engines at maximum speed.

  Captain Steele started to climb up around the ship and started to cut apart the first tether he used. If he didn't cut the first tether it could pull the ship apart when they activated FTL speeds because of the black hole pulling on it as it was wrapped around the ship. He started cutting it when he looked behind him. All he could see right behind him was light being warped and stretched. It was so close it looked like he could reach out and grab it. He felt like he was about to be pulled apart from top to bottom. He looked straight ahead in front of him and could see the light from the stars being pulled into the black hole pass by them and go into the black hole's point of no return. He climbed up the ship as it shook violently. It almost seems to grow in length as he walked over it.

  “Punch it Jamie!”

  Captain Steele continued to climb the hull to try and reach inside the ship. He knew if he was in the ship he could control the ship even though it wouldn't protect him from the black hole.

  “GO JAMIE!”

  His arm looked to be stretching out before him. He felt like he was getting thinner. He felt extreme pressure on his pelvis and stomach. His feet and his DSSM was being stretched with the pressure.

  “GO NOW JAMIE!”

  Captain Steele looked ahead and couldn't see anything but bits of light in front of him and nothing but darkness behind him. He decided to forget cutting the rest of the tether and crawled into a hole in the hull. He ran to the bridge and noticed the atomic clock was ticking at an extremely slow speed. He counted the seconds, Mississippi style, and saw the atomic clock was running significantly slower than he was counting. He looked at Jamie's holographic form and saw that it was flickering and being stretched. He pushed the engines to the maximum speed possible. This ship was still being pulled backwards. He looked out the bridge window of the ship and saw one of the stars off to the right. He could see the light being pulled in right next to them. He knew he was close to entering the point of no return.

  Captain Steele felt as if time was stopping. He knew he had to do something to get out of this situation. He quickly ran many scenarios through his head. Then it hit him. He ran to the lab, grabbed the Dark Space Dragon's scale, then ran to the engine room as the ship shook violently. As he made his way to the engine room the ship started to buckle and the metal screamed as it was starting to be pulled apart. As he was running down the hallway, the hallway started to appear more roundish with a black circle at the center of the hallway. He knew this was the black hole's gravity bending the light around in a circle. It seemed as if he would be walking into the point of no return on a black hole.

  When approaching a black hole light would bend, looking like it was stretched around the black circle and after entering the black hole suddenly it would be the exact opposite. Instead of the black circle being at the center of everything and growing bigger and bigger, the black circle would be on the outside of everything making everything look smaller and smaller.

  When Captain Steele looked in the direction of the black hole everything appeared to have a large black circle at the center with everything else in existence visibly bending around it.

  Captain Steele was just outside the engine room when it seems as if time itself had stopped. All his actions seems to take forever. Everything seemed to be vast distances and everything seemed to be bent around a dark circle with everything just out of arms reach and growing further and further away by the millisecond. He entered the engine room and turned to look at the engine on his right side, putting the black hole towards his left side. He looked at the engine and it looked like it was being stretched up and and down like someone was smearing a fresh oil painting. All sound stopped.

  Captain Steele reached for where he knew part of the engine should be and pulled a piece of the engine off. Light appeared so smeared, just like an oil painting, that nothing appeared to be where he could feel it was. It made him nauseous to see everything so twisted and contorted. He looked to his left and could see the end of the ship being torn apart at the molecular level. It looked like a cloud of gas was being pulled away from the ship then compressed at almost the exact same time. He turned his head back to face the engine. Suddenly everything became dark. The dark circle had over taken him. After a fraction of a second, he could see again. The only difference was that everything he could see was becoming more and more compressed as a dark circle was now on the outside of everything. He had just passed the point of no return. It was too late, but he wasn't going to stop.

  Captain Steel'se left arm started slowly to vaporize starting with his fingers. It started to be pulled apart bit by bit, turning it into a cloud of gas that compressed before tearing the physical material apart at the molecular level. His fingers started to burn, evaporating before his eyes, into a cloud then the little that was left crushed. He threw in the scale hoping something would happen.

  He looked at his outstretched left arm that was pointed away from his body. Slowly it started to grow really long looking. The tips of his fingers started to vaporize into a cloud of atoms before being crushed. The ship started to slowly do the same as it was pulled inward by the black hole's gravity and crushed. The light started to flash different colors. He looked at the engines and a violent flash came from them burning his eyes. He felt like his eyes were melting. He felt the same pain as if his eyes were being vaporized. He felt as if he was being completely vaporized. He saw a giant flash of light unlike anything he had ever seen. A flash of light that was black in color. Then, just as suddenly as it appeared, it was gone.

  Chapter 19

  The End Of All Things

  Things were falling apart. Ever since Jamie sent that transmission that Captain Steele had died, all faith in humanity failed. That was a long time ago. The Milky Way didn't have too long then and it has only become
shorter. All efforts to survive has only expedited the inevitable end of all things.

  “How much time does the galaxy exactly have Counselor Atwell?” asked General Lancaster.

  “Only 40 years. All attempts to extend this time have just either been unsuccessful or have not brought forth the results needed,” Counselor Atwell replied.

  Galactic civil war had broken out. Corporations with vast supplies and resources were blockading whole star systems and demanding other to join their cause. They would harvest and stockpile in an attempt to survive long enough to outlast others while everyone else died out. They would promise protection for joining them but they wouldn't follow up on it. Solar systems that were relativity plentiful in resources compared to other system were quickly drained by pirates, smugglers, or greedy individuals and corporations. The galaxy was a big place and not all of it could ever be properly regulated.

  “40 years...” General Lancaster said, “It matters not now. We have started taking drastic measures in hope that it helps.”

  “I never wanted to see it come to that. Turning on our own people to reduce the population. Destroying entire planets at a time. Surely there is still another way? What about Captain Steele? Are we still getting his transmissions?” Counselor Atwell asked.

  “Captain Steele did not die on that planet as his AI said but unfortunately we have stopped receiving his transmissions for some time now. We have kept the fact that he has gone dark a secret for the sake of keeping people calm. Some still believe that he can still save us. Some people still have hope, and we can't take that hope from them. Not now, not at this time.

  “We have started putting hundreds of millions of people on several hundred planets by telling them it's to help distribution of limited resources. After everyone is one one of these planets we will destroy them. We would cut the population by 90% across all nations and races. People are being selected by a draft. Those selected will die, those who refuse to go are considered guilty of treason by refusing to help keep the galaxy alive and are shot on site. If everyone was going to go peacefully only nine trillion will die but that has not been the case. Most don't trust the galatatic government so lots of have resisted.

  “Once this has been done, we will then be careful about population growth and resource use to prevent this situation all over again. People traveling from worlds will need to have a good reason to do so. After several thousands of years the non-renewable resources that take millions of years to considerably build up will start to renew again. They will be carefully harvested.

  “The people who die on those planets would be harvested. Their deaths will create enough non-renewable resources to last us tens of thousands of years. The plan is a secret and the general public doesn't know about it and only a few select individuals know about it outside the highest ranked military leaders in the galactic community,” General Lancaster said.

  When the announcement was made for new regulation so the galaxy could survive the citizens of the galaxy reacted in a violent manner. Corporations defied laws in an attempt to harvest as much as possible then put a massive hike on the prices. This put people out on the street because they couldn't pay for them. The corporations then recruited those people to join them and made them their slaves. They made them do everything from sabotaging other corporations to murder and then left them to rot in jail. People changed careers for more money or to steal resources leaving necessary things like custodial work, maintenance, and the agricultural industry in dire need of help.

  Law Enforcement requested the additional help of the armies of the nations because there just weren't enough resources for them to enforce the law across all systems. These armies were summoned to help in dealing with corporations who defied laws and failed to answer for those crimes. The corporations built star ships outside of well patrolled space so only the additional help of the military could help search and combat corporations. This angered the citizens because the mission of law enforcement and military were fundamentally different but yet they were working together. This caused war to brake out between various governments, corporations, citizen groups, and independent nations who took this as a reason to isolate themselves.

  One race decided to try and harvest the black hole at the center of the galaxy but failed. Another tried harvesting heat directly from stars but it became too costly to bring that energy back to planets. It was the same result with solar wind. Another tried harvesting the energy of gravity but it was hard to find many suitable place to harvest it due to the price of the harvesting technology and places where it could easily be accessed. There just wasn't enough money to run it long term, which is what was needed.

  On top of all that several nations called the galactic counsel liars and said they were just betraying them to push an agenda. As the debate grew, these nations decided to give complete tax breaks to those who had more than three children as a retaliation against the galactic counsel. This increased the population in various parts of the galaxy incredibly fast, making dwindling resources skyrocket even more in price and significantly drop in supply. Some of those nations that thought that they were being tricked to believe that there were not enough resources rebelled against those who did believe. This caused a war on many fronts dwindling resources even faster on things that they didn't need to be spent on. Other nations learned the price of their tax breaks the hard way by near extinction.

  “Well then. Thank you for letting me know where my fate was headed General. It has been a pleasure working with you.”

  “The honor was all mine. I am sorry that I was not selected and you were.”

  “Just tell me one thing General...” Counselor Atwell asked, “Did the Head Counselors take part in the draft as well?”

  “We all did,” General Lancaster said.

  Chapter 20

  Dimensional Rift

  “John? Can you hear me?”

  Captain Steele started to come to on the floor of the engine room.

  “What happened?”

  “You threw the scale into the engine John.”

  “Last thing I remember is my arm starting to vaporize.”

  “John come to the bridge.”

  Captain Steele looked at his left hand. All his fingers were there. There was just a small bit that was missing on the very tips of his fingers.

  “Am I dead?” he asked.

  “John come the the bridge.”

  Captain Steele got up and walked to the bridge. The ship looked like it was frozen in time. Objects were floating in the air slowly rotating but not moving in any direction. All the spots in this ship that had hull breaches had gravity and life support. Everything looked normal and okay. He even walked by one of the hull breaches he made when he flew through the ship and there were no sparks coming from any of the wires that had broken open. He walked all the way to the bridge to see Jamie's holographic form floating above the floor.

  “John...” She said.

  “What's going on? Nothing is making any sense. Gravity is normal, there's life support where their shouldn't be, and broken electrical cables that don't seem to have any sparks emitting from them. It's like everything just stopped.”

  “We are frozen in time John.”

  Captain Steele paused for a minute.

  “How? Did the black hole eat us?”

  “No. The point of no return was incredibly deep. It wasn't a single point, but was really several hundred feet deep. It was more of a band than a single small line. We had entered it and part of the ship was just further into it then the rest.”

  “How can that be?” Captain Steele asked.

  “I am still analyzing the data on the black hole, but it looks like the center of a black hole has gravity so strong that causes all matter to be packed into an incredibly tight spot and the schwarzchild radius, also known as the point of no return, increases as the matter inside the black hole increases. At the center of a black hole the gravity is the strongest and because of that, all matter gets packed
in so tight that time itself freezes because at that point because gravity is so strong. This causes all the material to take only one form of matter, most likely a solid, or a state of matter similar to the black dwarf. Apparently there is a point somewhere on the black hole that is always growing when it is consuming matter, but the point of no return also has to overcome the pull of the black hole's gravity causing time to tear and stretch at that point. This makes the point of no return not a narrow line but an extended point where the black hole slowly changes into normal space.

  “At the point of no return many things change. All matter is changed into highly compressed matter as it passed through the point of no return into the core of the black hole, temperature drops rapidly to absolute zero as it passes through the point of no return and then into the core of the black hole, and that all matter freezes in both temperature and time. However, because the mass of the black hole is so great it still has gravity and gravity is still pulling in things that have yet to reach the point of no return, even though at the core of the black hole everything has stopped. This causes the mass of the black hole to increase creating more gravity,” Jamie said.

  “Can I get it in plain English please?” Captain Steel asked.

  “Certainly,” Jamie said.

  “Imagine dropping a pebble into the middle of large perfectly still lake. The pebble that was dropped will create a single ripple, which we will call ripple 1, and that will create more and more ripples that get bigger and bigger and move outward equally in all directions. After a while there will be more and more ripples. Let's say there is a ripple number 50 way, way, way, out there from ripple number 1.