Escape Velocity
New fiction.
Image Credit: NASA. Thanks for reading.
Paul is pitching one of the neighbors on an investment scam when I return from the local dump. The two of them sit on opposite ends of the scuffed leather L-couch we fished out of the alley two months before. Paul leans forward, large hands connected at the fingertips, as he calmly explains the potential for parabolic growth in exotic metals stocks. There’s no mention of specific stocks, their cost, or when the neighbor might expect a tangible return. The neighbor breathes through his open mouth and scratches at the licks of sweat on his scalp.
Paul has been at this all week. Drawing the neighbors toward him one by one. Collecting their cash, meager though it is, in a wrinkled, ever-growing rubber-banded wad. He possesses an undeniable talent for exploiting weaknesses.
Now the conversation ebbs and Paul shields his kneecaps with his palms and waits. At last the neighbor withdraws several twenty-dollar bills from his wallet and extends them across the gap. Paul accepts them, his fingers lingering, for a moment, on the neighbor’s hand. You’ve done a great thing, he tells the neighbor. A great thing.
Then Paul pulls the bills away and tucks them in his pocket.
When the neighbor is gone Paul paces the gap between our kitchen and living room and counts the bills he’s collected thus far. I want to say something about not shitting where you eat but I don’t think he’d listen.
Then Paul says, I forgot to tell you. David is gone.
What?
Yeah. Up and disappeared. His room is empty. You should tell Larry.
I go to his door and creak it open. All I find are a few crinkled socks where his bed once stood and a diary in the back of his closet. The diary is small, navy blue and sealed by a metal lock. Paul stands in the doorway and asks when I’m going to call Larry, our landlord.
I’ll let him know today, I say.
Alright, says Paul. We can’t afford to pay David’s share of the rent.
Yeah, I say.
I go in my room and spend two fruitless hours trying to pick the lock for answers. Like me, David is a fellow practitioner of funemployment who until now seemed content with the eke, that is, to scrape along and bounce from cash advance and buy-now-pay-later to the next. I live here because months back Larry paid me to help fix up the place. He’d collected a bunch of state money to buy two Fallston boarding houses and fix them up, but because he was a greedy Millennial out to prove his father wrong, he pocketed most of the cash and opted for a veneer of quality. For me this meant using a spray machine to coat the walls with watered-down paint to cover the fly shit and tobacco stains. When I was done, Larry took me aside and asked if I’d stay and do maintenance in exchange for reduced rent in one of the rooms. Reduced rent meant $100 off an already bullshit $950 but I was tired of borrowing against my family’s patience and agreed to move in on the first day of summer.
I give up on the diary, stick it in my sweatshirt pocket, and text Larry. For a few hours we exchange contextless question marks until he accedes to finding a replacement for David. Then I climb out my window and scramble up the holes in the brick facade to the roof. I watch the streetlights flare and the river blacken. Main Street glows as people flee their responsibilities to make love to their screens for a few static hours. I think about David, who only appeared in cigarette vignettes between concrete sleep and twelve-hour gaming binges. Sometimes he gave me smokes and once told me about a grand-uncle’s inheritance, how he was too scared to find a real job because there was familiar comfort in uselessness. I’d rather stay stagnant, he told me once, maybe the only real thing he said in those two weeks. But I’m bored, man, he continued. So goddamn bored. I didn’t know what to say so I finished my cigarette in silence, and now pacing the roof I wonder how he got his furniture out so quietly. I take a loose brick and smash the diary lock until it breaks apart. Empty pages. I decide to fill them with all the petty wisdoms I possess, but once back in my room I have nothing to say, so I write what I saw or noticed today: how fewer planes cross the sky nowadays; an old woman shuffles playing cards at a table on her uncut grass; two parents push an empty, three-wheeled stroller; this idea of a Late Depression when everybody learns too late that the world has irreparably faltered. Then I shut the diary, bury myself in bed, and imagine the parts of myself drifting away from whichever center the soul resides.
Two days later Larry tells me a black hole will take David’s room and asks me to greet it that afternoon. I wait on the stoop, suckle an old disposable vape, and type “black hole” into my phone. The built-in AI tells me a black hole forms after the death of a star, when all its matter collapses to one inescapable point. Black holes exist at the edge of understanding. Anything beyond is just a guess. Each one possesses an event horizon, the place at the black hole’s edge where everything, even truth, is lost forever. I stop reading to watch Larry’s creaky crossover pull up to the curb. Across the street, an old man sprinkles mulch on his flower beds. His lips quiver to the tune of a mumble as wood chips fall from his long and blotchy fingers.
The first thing you notice about the black hole is its accretion disc, purple-green filament spiraling around it like a frantic plasma hula hoop. As the black hole moves toward me its colors burst in brilliance as if a million light bulbs erupt and reconstruct themselves across its incandescent mane. A bumble bee tumbles too close and it stops beside the black hole, flushes deep red, then disappears.
I look past the black hole, where the old man’s life recoils in reverse. Gone are the canyons of his age, the blood-vessel swamps on his bald and splotchy crown, the stoop of his back, the rotten gaps of his mouth. A wedding band crawls up his finger, then a woman rises from the soil and sheds her own years, skin grey blushes to gorgeousness, then a son appears, first a man, then a boy, then an infant in her arms, then pop!—he’s gone, and the man and woman clasp hands and spin around each other, clothes tearing and sewing themselves again as years of fashion flash upon their bodies, until the wife fades and the man stands alone, flushed with youth, proud, eager eyes buried under a mop of sandy hair, and now he kneels, just a boy, clasping clumps of grass, raising the blades to his watery eyes—
I’m gonna show it around, Larry tells me.
His skin is pallid, eyes insectoid, like he just lost a lot of money but doesn’t understand why.
Okay, I say. Then I tell the black hole, I’m Zack. Nice to meet you.
Hmm, says the black hole.
&
Larry texts me the morning after the black hole moves in and tells me to fix a door in Jake and Alice’s apartment. I grab my tools and cross the hall and find Jake pacing his living room with a laptop balanced on one hand.
It’s the bedroom door, Jake says without looking away from the screen. The one on the left.
Is Alice around? I ask.
No, he says. Library.
I enter a narrow hall off the living room and gaze at the door. The knob now sits at its center. I squeeze the knob, turn, and push, and though the door shakes, it doesn’t move. I push harder and it jerks open. Clothes carpet the bedroom floor, half-filled water glasses rise from the surfaces of dressers and bedside tables, and unconnected phone chargers dangle from every socket. Wind whistles through a cracked-open window. A laundry basket overflows in the corner.
I pull the door shut, then kneel. There’s no damage or scarring in the wood to suggest how the knob might’ve moved. It’s as if it was built this way. I use a screwdriver to remove the knob and peer through the hole. The stench of unwashed clothing drifts through. I reinsert the knob and screw it back in.
So you just found it like this? I call out to Jake.
The floorboards squeak beneath me as he steps into the hall.
Alice pointed it out this morning, he tells me. Not sure how long it’s been like this.
You didn’t notice?
No. I don’t know. When do you ever think about a door knob?
Hardly ever.
Larry needs to pay for a new door. It’s not like we did this or anything. How much does a new door even cost these days?
I don’t know.
Do you know how many jobs I’ve applied for today?
No.
Seven. And it’s not like you can just fire off seven identical applications. You’ve got to write each one differently so it’s tailored to the job you want.
That sounds like a lot of work.
They’ve got these AIs reading every application. There’s no person involved anymore. I’m great at interviewing but I can’t get close to them.
Jake taps his knuckles on the wall and then says, Let’s have a beer.
It’s a little early for me.
Well, I’m having one.
I follow Jake into the kitchen. He takes a bottle of beer from the fridge and sets it on the counter.
I’m working overnight at the gas station so there’s no time too early for me anymore, he tells me. But it’s better than nothing.
Yeah.
I had this one lady come in a couple nights ago, right. She says she wants us to cook her a pizza but I tell her the kitchen closes at midnight. And by kitchen I mean, like, we cook frozen stuff, and technically we could have but somebody cleans it at ten and I don’t want to deal with that before I leave at six. So I tell her it’s closed and she just starts to lose it. Opening bags of chips and dumping them out. Pouring soda on the floor. Knocking over the dick pill display. And like, I wanna go stop her, but the corporate people tell us we aren’t allowed to touch anybody. Because they could sue and make it worse.
Damn.
This shit happens more and more, man. People just snap when they don’t get what they want.
Like everyone is a walking bomb.
As I watch Jake drink his beer the door opens and Alice enters carrying plastic grocery bags. She sets the bags on the floor of the kitchen, takes the beer from Jake’s hands, and drains the rest of it.
Fucking hell, I needed that, she says. Then she says, Hey, Zack. Did you fix our door?
I got it open, I say.
Last night we had to sleep on the couch because it was stuck, she says. Then she says, Jake, help me with these.
I watch them empty the bags. Their apartment is sparse. Unadorned walls. Two bookshelves buttress a squat cabinet and a wide-screen TV. Most of my interactions with Jake and Alice are in passing; shallow but friendly greetings on the stairs, or by the mailboxes, or when I’m dragging their trash to the curb before the garbage truck arrives. One night Paul and I burned an old desk in the backyard and the two of them joined us for a while. The desk was one of those particle board jobs, mostly held together with glue, and for a few hot hours we tore it apart and fed the pieces to the flames. Polished off a half-dozen beers apiece. Jake and Alice seem like a couple with an enviable sense of conspiracy around them. Their own secret code. I think that’s what I miss most about being in love. The passwords and phrases, little jokes and songs, known only to you. This is what you mourn when a relationship ends: the death of language.
How’s the teaching going, Alice? I ask.
A thing of the past, she says.
What? Why?
Well, during my end of semester review I was told in very certain terms that if I wanted the kids to learn art or music I’d need to provide my own supplies. Like, sure, great, because there’s money just coming out of my ass.
So you quit?
I’m afraid so.
What are you doing now?
Well, I’m gonna do some freelance writing and try to stay busy. Speaking of staying busy, Zack, you should come with us tomorrow night. There’s a town meeting about the new data center they’re trying to build along the canal.
Are you fighting it?
Damn right we are. It’s another way for bad money to come in and push good people out. Push us out. Make Fallston unaffordable.
I’ll try to make it.
What time is the meeting? asks Jake.
Seven, says Alice. I told you already.
Can’t. I’ve got a shift.
Call out sick or something.
I can’t. I need—we, we need the money.
This is important.
So is money.
This is important to me.
Hey, I say, and the two turn to look at me. Then I say, I’m gonna go let Larry know you guys need a replacement door.
Their sharp whispers follow me out of the apartment, until I try to pull the door behind me. But it won’t shut right. The frame is warped, slightly bowed at the top corners. I tug until it slams into place. The echo stumbles down the stairwell, as if snarled. The steps, too, look misshapen, the banisters buckled and detached.
&
I see Paul less and less now. When I do he’s often pacing the front walk with his phone. If he’s typing, his gait is slow, sometimes balancing on one foot while the other dangles in front of him, preparing for a long-awaited stomp. If he’s speaking, his pace is quick, in figure eights around the bristly lawn, his free hand flicking or snapping as he goes. Any acknowledgement comes in the form of a short wave, almost like a salute. Otherwise, he’s not home. Sometimes I find balled-up receipts from Boston and New York gas stations on the bathroom floor.
Often it’s just me and the black hole. In the morning I cook eggs and sometimes the black hole will stand with me in the kitchen, a newspaper twisting in its orbit, the print stretched beyond legibility. The newspaper is interesting because usually the black hole sucks up whatever it finds: discarded clothes, cardboard scraps, bits of hair. Our apartment is dustless. But it never consumes the paper. I like to think the black hole is mindful of the newspaper’s necessity, the daily run of new information in its surroundings. Maybe it doesn’t want its existence to be all-consuming.
One morning I ask the black hole about this but all it says is Hmm, the same deep thrum I heard when we first met. There is no shift or lilt in tone. Later I download a book about black holes on my phone, lie in bed and read about the structure of black holes. There’s a thing called the ergosphere that exists just before the black hole’s event horizon. In the ergosphere, everything is on the move. A state of gravitational restlessness. Your last chance to get away if you’re able to retain control. Or maybe it’s just the illusion of control and you can’t really get away from the black hole even if you wanted. How the hell does this author know? Have they ever been inside of one? I wonder if there are other black holes on Earth, paying rent and admitting nothing. I wonder where our black hole came from. Where it was born.
The black hole is watching TV in the living room. A news show flickers on the screen. The anchor’s face morphs between expressions of joy and panic. Indecipherable chyrons race beneath him while news clips about peace agreements and missile strikes on schools pulse in split-second streaks, making my head ache.
I sit on the couch beside the black hole and take my phone out.
Then I ask, Where do you come from?
Hmm, says the black hole.
I type stars on my phone and bring up an image of a red supergiant. Then I hold my phone up to the black hole and ask, Did you look like this once?
The black hole moves an inch toward me. For the first time it feels like the black hole is actually looking at something.
Night after night now I go find the black hole in its room and talk to it. I share things I haven’t shared with anyone. Sometimes these nights feel like the slow crawl of countless hours, and others I blink and through the window the sun rises orange and bright and free. These nights I talk about my mother and how alike we are in the quiet fury of our anxieties. How this makes it hard for us to talk. How scared of relationships, any kind of relationship, this makes me. How afraid I am to give myself completely to someone, even though I want nothing more than to be vulnerable or try being funny, and all that comes out is some sort of polite aloofness, even with Paul or Alice or Jake. I want to know them better, to be known better, and I want this part of me to change, but whenever there’s a chance, an opening, a way in, I rip myself back and let time erode whatever bonds might have formed.
One night I cry and watch my tears spiral away from my face and disappear into the black hole’s innards. Hmm, it says, but softer now. Its accretion disc dims. I begin to feel understood. There’s an urge to lean against the black hole, to be closer to it, but I remember the book’s descriptions of spaghettification and how anything that falls into a black hole is stretched to its limits and beyond, until you’re nothing but endless filaments falling into the black hole’s immortal heart.
I linger in the living room after the black hole goes to bed. Paul enters with a cigarette in his hand. We make eye contact and after a moment he pinches the cigarette out and tosses it into the trash.
Sorry, he says. Busy day.
Paul sits on the opposite end of the couch and types on his phone. Then he sets it on the table and rubs his face.
Then he asks, Can you believe this shit?
What? I ask.
It’s just—ok, so like, I tell people there’s nothing guaranteed. With these investments I mean. How you shouldn’t ever commit everything you’ve got. But also, when you’re me, it’s in my interest to suggest, ever so lightly, how they could, if they wanted, put everything they’ve got in. For a bigger return.
Sure.
So it’s not like I’m telling them that they have to do it, but if they want to, they can. And believe it or not, a lot of people go all-in. Everyone’s a gambler when the time arrives. So yeah, I invest their money, sometimes all of it, but there’s no guarantee it’s going to work. And yeah, you know what? It didn’t work. And now I got people asking me for their money back. First, you never sell when you’re down. That’s just idiotic. Second, it’s not like I can go down to the stock store and pick up my cash. It doesn’t work like that. It’s never worked like that. Why are people so stupid to think it works like that? Am I making sense?
Sort of.
Sort of? Okay, look, Zack, I know you aren’t exactly wise when it comes to money, but even you can understand how once you’re into something, you can’t just, like, pull out of it.
Embarrassment creeps up the sides of my face. Then I ask, What do you mean?
Like, okay, so when I pitched you on this, you said no thanks. So you’re not somebody sophisticated enough to risk their money.
And you are?
I am. I put my neck out. Bringing all these people in it. So in a way I’ve got the most to lose.
Sounds like people are pissed you lost their money.
It’s not fucking lost, alright? It’s not lost. Cut it with that shit. All I’ve been hearing all goddamn day is how I lost their money. As long as I’m still in, we haven’t lost.
I stand and leave the room. I hear Paul call out Zack, I’m sorry, but I don’t turn back. Instead I continue on to the black hole’s bedroom door. I knock, wait, and then nudge it open. The black hole’s room is empty except for a thin white sheet, cut into a circle, at the floor’s center. The black hole hovers above it.
I’m sorry, I tell the black hole. For—well, for all the loud noise.
Hmm, says the black hole.
And, uhm, I’m sorry for sharing so much lately. You didn’t volunteer to be my therapist. I just, you know, it felt like you were listening. But it was rude of me and I’m sorry.
Hmm, says the black hole.
I take a few steps toward the black hole. Then I ask, Could I have a hug?
The black hole says nothing in reply, but it begins to move closer. My blood quivers as my body reacts to the black hole’s closeness. My feet lift off the floor and in my panic I reach into the black hole’s unknowable darkness, the singularity’s heart. I start to streak around the black hole, again and again, and through the window nighttime flares to day and then collapses back into star-maddened night once more, over and over, seasons gleaming, autumn winter spring summer autumnwinterspringsummer while the room stretches like dough, until at last I become a thing unimaginable, beyond the edge of language, where my atoms sing ten trillion hymns, and though I want to stop and wait and listen, there simply isn’t time.
&
On the floor of my room I wake, the bed beside me collapsed, two of its legs torn off. I move to the window and peer out. Derelict cars squat curbside beneath a grey-red clouded sky. There’s a crowd, shimmering with commotion, up the street, in the direction of Fallston Center. Then I collapse to the floor as pain seizes my body. I feel like I’ve been pulled apart and glued back together. Slowly I stand and shuffle to the door, open it, and call out to Paul or the black hole. No one answers. A stale smell hangs around me. I find some of my clothes in the corner of my room, shake the dust from them, and take a shower. The water is cold, smells off, and I only let it run for a minute before I pat myself dry and dress. The pain has quieted but every movement is slow and stiff. Then, someone bangs on the front door, over and over.
I go and twist the knob and then Alice and Jake push their way inside.
Shut it quick, says Alice. She wears a backpack and her eyes gleam with eagerness.
Zack, we need your help, she tells me.
What is it? I ask.
Let’s sit and we’ll tell you.
Alice clears the living room table as I sit on the couch and wait. She removes a map from her backpack and spreads it flat. It’s a map of Fallston. A thick blue circle, made with marker, surrounds the area around the southern end of the canal. Jake squats beside the table.
Zack, I’ll be honest, I should apologize before I say anything else.
Why?
Because I failed. We failed. And if we hadn’t failed I wouldn’t need to ask you for help. See, some people, bad people, rich and unafraid, they are about to destroy our town and everything we love. There’s a war going on here. Did you know there’s a war going on?
I didn’t.
I don’t know how that’s possible but that’s alright, Zack. This war, okay, is going to destroy everything we love unless we do something about it. You don’t want that, right?
I think so.
Great. That’s great. I was worried for a second but I think you’ll be alright. Now the way you can help, it’s really simple, okay? We just need you to be our eyes when we go do something. You just gotta keep a look-out and watch over us. Do you think you can do that?
Do what?
We’re going to blow up the Fallston data center.
It’s done already?
Zack, pay attention. Do you understand what I’m saying?
I don’t know.
We’re fighting a war here and that data center is their weapon. Against you, against us, against everyone here. Making everything louder and more expensive and more painful. I mean, how can you sleep at night? Can’t you hear it?
I don’t, uhm—
Jake stands and sits beside me on the couch. He rests a hand on my knee. Zack, we’re in trouble here, he tells me.
For the first time I really see them: sunless skin, unwashed clothes, driven by pain, the kind you only recognize when it’s consumed you completely and you’ve got no choice but to beg for assistance. From beneath the map I pull a newspaper. I read the date: August 4, 2029.
Okay, I say. I’ll help you.
I watch the weight on the faces fall. A return of color, almost normalcy. Alice reaches over the map, takes my hand, and rubs my palm with her thumb.
Thank you, she says.
I follow them out of the apartment, down the stairs and out into the street. Alice, then Jake, then me, a single-line march up the street toward town. For-sale signs sprout from front yards, many of them old and chipped at the edges. Discarded gas cans busy the curbs next to deflated wheels. The crowd ahead of us gets louder, until at last we’re among them, bodies jostling, their voices colliding in furious confusion. Everyone shoving, everyone angry, no eye contact or purpose or direction. Then a boy cannonades past and a mother’s voice withers in his wake. The din swallows their separation. We escape the crowd, run up Avenue A, then crash down a brush-gnarled hill toward the canal. Down in the concrete-jailed canal the water churns swift and grey. A derelict paper mill, brick-chipped and punch-out windowed, stands on the opposite bank. I follow Jake and Alice across a rusted bridge once used by the mill’s workers. The bridge shivers with each step. On the other side, we pass through a hole in a chainlink fence and then plunge into woods again, no path now, just on through meager branches and leafless vines. I start to hear an endless sickly groan that grows louder as we move. Then, I see it, through another, taller, barbed wire fence: the charcoal coffin of the data center. Jake zips open Alice’s backpack and removes a pair of bolt cutters. He cuts a hole four feet high in the fence, big enough to squeeze through, and the shorn fence digs into my scalp, and I feel hot blood pour down the side of my head, but there’s no time for pain or panic, sprinting now in Alice’s wake, her backpack now worn reverse and hugged close to her breast, across the barren data center grounds. Then Alice stops and turns to me.
Zack, see that road over there? I need you to stay here and watch it. If you see cars coming, police lights, anything—you shout for us. Okay? Can you do that?
Yes, I tell her.
She reaches and cups my cheek, squeezes for a moment, and she and Jake run again, then turn right around a corner and out of sight. I wait, eyes on the road. The tree line bristles beneath the wind. Something flickers, then it’s still, and I begin to wonder how Alice and Jake would hear me over the noise. An alarm begins to peal, a steady bark, then a great convulsion shakes the ground, a shuddering boom, and the trees jostle in their roots, I fall to the ground and my arms ache from the effort to catch myself, and the single alarm grows to a panicked chorus until Jake comes running back into view, his clothes burnt, face blistered and tear-stained, and he grabs me, screaming Alice Alice She’s Gone She’s Gone, and we run back to the fence, police sirens in the distance, down through the trees to the canal, up and over, back into Fallston Center where the crowd’s fury has peaked, storefronts smashed, cars overturned, glass splinters daggering my feet, Jake sobbing and clutching me to pull him along, but his fingers lose hope and the crowd consumes him, and I sprint home and collide with Paul at the front door, both crumpling into each other. He pulls me inside and slams the door.
They’re after me, he says. They’re fucking after me.
What? Who?
You saw it. Everyone. They’re broke. Everyone’s broke. You, me—we gotta get the fuck out of here.
Together we run upstairs to our apartment and lock the door. Paul rushes to the kitchen, turns on the faucet and hangs his head beneath it. Floods his mouth with water. After, he sits on the floor and leans against the sink cabinet. I sit beside him and watch his breathing slow.
What happened? I ask.
Paul opens his mouth and gestures with his hands, as if trying to smear the story into existence between us. Then he begins to cry.
People always used to tell me I was special. Like I was gonna do great things with my life. And here I am, fucking broke, and it doesn’t make sense to me. I believed so hard it would work. Yeah, it’s gambling. You put yourself at risk. But there’s this…this pull inside, right? This good feeling? You know what that feels like?
I think so. It’s sort of like a little fire in the gut.
Yeah, exactly. You know what I mean. I think that’s how a man is supposed to feel. Like they’ve got a fire in them. I remember my grandfather telling me that I’m not supposed to tell people how I feel. Good or bad. But then you just bottle it up. Good days, there’s that fire. Bad days, it’s been put out.
Like a weight.
Yeah.
I know what you mean.
Do you?
Yeah. Like, when you create something or connect with someone. Share a little bit about yourself. Put yourself out there. I don’t…that doesn’t come easy. I don’t share a lot.
We’re doing it now.
Yeah. It’s nice.
Crazy how it took the world going to shit for this to happen, right?
I laugh, and then I say, You’re right.
Then Paul says, People are going crazy out there. Bad feelings bottled up for so long. Someone recognized me and chased me here. I don’t know if they’re gone, but they’re going to come back.
We’ll guard the door. I’ll help.
No, I…I need to face them. I’ve been avoiding them for so long. Face the truth. Feels weird, right?
It can.
Thanks, Zack. I think I need to be alone for a while. While I still can.
Standing, I leave the room and go into my bedroom, then climb out the window and up to the roof. Fallston boils over in every direction. Ambulances swarm and smother the movement of bodies. Screams dominate the air. Helicopters plunge and shear the rooftops while, on the horizon, a great green flame heaves smoke. One of the helicopters blades me with its searchlight and I stand, face covered, in a guillotine of white.
Then I hear the deep hum of the black hole and, turning, see it standing at the rooftop’s center, spinning, its filaments red and gnashing. I approach it and hold out my hand. Its accretion disc slows and a ribbon of light extends and grasps my hand. I feel a pain like nothing else I’ve felt in my life, but I squeeze tight, unwilling to let go.
I’m here, I tell the black hole.
My body swells with feeling. An infinite flood of information. I imagine it to be the emotions of every living thing, the love, the hate, the joy, the pain, collected into one inescapable point. The singularity.
I pull, and guide the black hole to the building’s edge. The street is a thousand feet below, filled with the people of Fallston, tiny specks, a never-ending roil.
The black hole pulses. Hmm, it says.
You’re right, I say.
Then we jump. I give my all and everything to gravity, the anticipated plunge, the black hole beside me, our shared descent slowing until our speed becomes atomic, world stuck in a nightmare it can’t recognize, and my eternal want to comfort them, to let them know that pain is not forever, if only I could touch them, fingers stretched until my muscles split, skin slicing, blood a plasmic drip, the Earth, my Earth, mere moments out of reach.