15 January
Predictably, the feds got involved. Experimental work halted for several weeks as a variety of unmarked black vehicles delivered suits into the prefab offices surrounding the site. Blake had to remove most of the team, but managed to keep me around as the one most familiar with the void. Construction began anew. This time a sturdy silo was erected over the kaaba. I furnished my measurements of the void’s position and dimensions and was shooed out of the way.
A belt conveyor was installed, feeding into the top of the silo from an adjacent receiving building, and by year’s end trucks began arriving on a road built to the site. The void was now a trash can.
I arranged monitoring for the first test dumps. The chute was a steel pipe, just over a meter in diameter, positioned directly over the void with a gap of about 20 cm. Some kind of internal trap door held air pressure and the waste material while the loading door was open. They told me the first dump was depleted uranium. Background radiation measured slightly lower close to the void, so I positioned detectors in the corners of the room. Radiation increased during the drop, then tapered back down to normal as the material vanished.
Trucks continued to deliver loads through the winter. From my vantage point among the outbuildings, I couldn’t see what they carried, but judging by the HAZMAT gear it was the sort of stuff Yucca Mountain wouldn’t take.
Word must have leaked to the EPA, because disposal work halted and I was called in again to check on the void, see if it had indigestion. Holding a stethoscope up to a black hole was unnerving enough, so I tried not to think about what had been dumped in there and kept rad monitors in my socks, pockets, and under my hat.
During my time off I had time to plan some more exacting measurements than can be done with broomsticks. Connected to the tether I couldn’t get near enough to the sphere to hurt myself, but I had some leeway with equipment. The bismuth stack had been removed. I brought a rolling equipment table and a modified jack-in-the box toy through the airlock. Using a stack of books, I positioned the spring-loaded launcher under the lowest point of the sphere. I pulled the table back and loaded the launcher with the biggest ball of fused quartz I had been able to lay hands on, calling in a favor from a school pal at NASA. I wound up the jack-in-the-box and could feel the vibration of the mechanism turning inside, though the cheerful music did not carry through the vacuum. I had about eight seconds to position the table back under the center of the sphere, then stop breathing and wait for it to pop. Without a hitch, the quartz ball popped up and intersected with the void, dropping back down as a hemisphere.
Analysis showed a radius of 104.243 cm. The earlier paper measurement was not perfectly precise, but it was clear that the baby was growing on its diet of atom bomb cores and spent fuel rods.
Radiation was still absent, slightly lower than background. There was nothing I could throw from one side that could be detected at the other (they wouldn’t allow me to test with firearms, perhaps fearing that I would damage their plutonium sink).
Testing for refraction of radio and light near the sphere’s edge gave me the idea to test for gravitational aberrations. I imagined recreating the Cavendish experiment but couldn’t work out a design that wasn’t too finicky for the airlock and close quarters of the containment chamber. Instead, I used a lab scale to weigh a block of titanium at the side of the kaaba, and again directly under the void. The block lost 1.5% of its weight under the void, and other materials gave similar results.
All this went into a 50-page report, which would have done as much good if I fed it to the void. Dumping resumed at an accelerated pace, with two to five trucks arriving daily with their loads of nuclear waste and enemies of the state. I resumed playing with a Newton’s cradle in my windowless container office a kilometer away from the secured site, on call as the world’s foremost expert in the world’s least understood singularity. Now and then someone wearing a decorated uniform would demand a report on the feasibility of transporting the void to another “theater of operations,” presumably one with more sand and bad guys than New Jersey. I imagined it would make for an impressive demonstration of destructive capability, if you could only load it on a battleship without sinking it.
7 May
There’s been an accident. They wouldn’t tell me what they were dropping, but it somehow missed the target. Must not have been a smart bomb. A lot of it got swallowed, but enough high explosive fell past the void to set off an impressive dirty bomb. The recording showed a bunch of junk crashing to the floor, then a bright flash that wrecked the kaaba, then no more video. The sarcophagus was also depressurized, so after the blast weakened its walls, it imploded into the center and disappeared. Outside, we heard a bang, then the fantastic roar began again.
From a distance, the void was visible as a perfect black sphere hovering over a crater twenty or so meters across. The explosion must have smashed the foundation and caused all the nearby concrete and soil to get sucked in. Trees had been removed from the area, so there wasn’t much visible movement, just a steady wind that flattened grass in a radial pattern toward the crater.
Without the building’s floor to judge by, it was hard to tell, but it seemed to me that the sphere was a good bit lower than where it started. It was also larger. That night we projected a diffused laser from a safe distance toward the sphere and measured its shadow on the side of a truck. It was approaching three meters in diameter.
By morning the sphere was not visible over the edge of the crater when viewing from a safe distance. The airspace was closed, but satellites and drones showed the sphere was still in the center of the crater, which was also getting larger by the hour. I decided to clear out.
21 May, USS Arlington
Those grad school connections come in handy. I packed a rucksack while making calls, and talked my way onto the biggest ship with good satcom I could manage. It was docked in Norfolk, and I drove through the night to get there by dawn. Word was not yet out, but I didn’t think it would be long before things would be conspicuously out of whack.
New York City went dark sooner than I expected. Someone at the Pentagon must have noticed a giant hole in New England, assumed the worst, and we got our sailing orders. We went north, for lack of a better idea. I didn’t say anything, figuring it was only a matter of time one way or another.
We were never close enough to land to see anything, but TV news was covering the story of a lifetime. There was seismic activity all over the northeast, and Yellowstone National Park was closed without explanation. Before New England fell apart, we saw helicopter footage of what looked like a sinkhole a mile across, a big brown hole in the Earth. I couldn’t see any sign of the void. Later helicopters must have become unusable, or maybe fuel ran out, and we saw satellite images of a vast and growing dark circle.
29 May
We turned east, whether under orders or not I have no idea. Communication has been spotty, but I get occasional messages from West Coast colleagues who are anxious to move somewhere stable. For once, being an astronaut seems like a good career choice.
We end up in the Mediterranean, probably because the captain is Greek. GPS is acting funny, or else the maps no longer resemble the territory. When we picked up fuel in the Canaries the water was several meters low at what should have been high tide.
Captain Noeides searched for a place to dock but the ports are now a kilometer inland. We sailed back toward the Atlantic on dead reckoning, keeping the Rock to starboard, and ran aground in the strait and got stuck. There have been some scenes on board, but we have a year’s supply of food and unlimited water and nothing to do but wait. We drop supplies overboard to the occasional small craft that does not appear piratical.
One day we hear rumbling in the distance, then an hour later a large swell carries us out to sea. We drift. There are no signals on the air and no reason to go anywhere. We stargaze by night and read to pass the days. The atmosphere is perversely festive, on this warship cruise ship at the end of the world. People tell stories and perform comedies, recitals, and concerts. Liquor and tobacco are scarce, and the gym is a diversion, so many on board are taking care of their long-term health, and making merry. I am inclined to join them.
[Here the record ends.]
I was totally sucked in too. Even a 5-ton rated titanium cable wouldn't have restrained me. You had me going. The story reminded me of Michael Crichton's "The Andromeda Strain," where a team of epidemiologists in Ebola-prevention type suits investigates why everyone in a mid-Western died of an unspecified epidemic -- with the exception of a crying baby. Also brings Nevil Shute's classic book, "On the Beach" to mind -- where the radioactive cloud spreading across the planet after an all-out nuclear exchange descends toward Australia, the last habitable continent, and how the locals react to their fast-dwindling lifespan. In Shute's book, much like in your story, a team of Navy scientists goes to New York City to investigate why unusual communications signals keep emanating from one isolated office in a moribund city. This is really good stuff and might be part of a welcome new genre of writing -- much like "The Martian," for example, where the reading public gets to learn science in an absorbing, almost detective-like way. Stylistically, I liked many of descriptive phrases like 'long, lazy jets from the deluge guns' I also liked the use of technical jargon, since it gave me a sense of being a voyeur, which added authenticity. But I admit -- a few times I did get lost. An occasional peek into the hero's mental state would have been welcome as a change of pace. I also would have welcomed the story occasionally presenting the technical details in a way that encourages the reader to ask himself, 'How would I tackle this or that situation?' - much as "The Martian" did. Very original, very absorbing ... and of course, scary!
Thank you, Darian, I appreciate your kind words and especially your suggestions. I am a Crichton fan, and I am glad you did not say you were reminded of Sphere, which I found a bit disappointing. I have heard of On the Beach, and it looks like a great choice for next time I am on the beach. I have learned the value of bringing fast-reading thrillers on vacation, rather than heavier stuff. The "occasional peek into the hero's mental state" is challenging. I think I would find it hard to do this well, though I recognize that internal drama makes for more compelling reading. The Martian kept us reading with a new problem on every page, making up for a psychologically flat hero.
i found that a really effective way to get into "the occasional peek into the hero's mental state" is to ask yourself what the hero wants at a particular moment. If you know what he wants, then the drama can unfold. Several years ago, I discovered someone's technique to analyze and build scenes. The technique closely mimics real life: Establish what the hero wants; Present the obstacles; Allow the hero to fail -- that is, an obstacle bring temporary disaster; the Hero recoils defeated, unsure what to do; the Hero then weights new alternatives, none of them perfect; the Hero implements an alternative (a new "Want") and the cycle continues. Several of the stages in the cycle present opportunities to explain scientific alternatives that the hero is mulling over. When I write a scene now, I find it fun and exciting to use this technique, which usually yields a lot of new insights and enriches the writing.
Well, I'm a little bit late to this party, but I've really enjoyed A Void. Thanks for sharing, and for bringing it to my attention, as I had totally missed its arrival. The story definitely pulled me in, and along throughout, and I very much enjoyed the progression through different media of storytelling, from 3rd person narrative to excerpted document to journal entry. I also really enjoy the progression from matter of fact realist narrative, where we begin, to something far more whimsical-feeling in terms of content (although the realist style of account remains constant throughout), which actually echoes of Borges, to my ear. I think he's someone who frequently combines fabulist content with the realist tone ... as you would expect in anyone sometimes credited with fathering magical realism. Although, a further credit to your story, given what we know about space, blackholes, etc., the content of your story isn't really at all fabulist -- just unprecedented, as far as we know. Nice work, and thanks again for sharing! More thoughts to follow, perhaps via e-vox?
Many thanks for your kind words, some excessively so, mentioning heroes I ought to be reading more of rather than aspiring to imitate, however distantly. I was glad to be done with this short effort, which was in draft for some years, and it gave me a profound respect for those who can grind out a novel with fewer blemishes than my little tale. I look forward to further discussion over e-vox or, perhaps, in person.
This is really great. It reminds me in some ways of Lovecraft's short stories. By leaving out some details, the story pushes us to use our imaginations to fill the rest in. This can make a story even better, and you've come up with something great here.
Thanks! Lovecraft is on the list, with Heinlein, and Le Guin, of authors I am ashamed to have neglected. The short story is a great format for sampling an author and some, like Borges or Kafka, shine brightest in their shortest works. I'm curious to know more about the "formula" behind a lot of science fiction. It seems like a common pattern is to ask one unlikely indulgence of the reader -- that aliens exist, a deadly windstorm on Mars, or an alternative twist in history -- in order to see where it takes things. This story owes a lot to H. F. Saint, a one-hit wonder whose single thriller is one of my favorites. I understand he quit his dull job in finance to write it, then sold the rights to make an awful Chevy Chase movie, and retired to the south of France, never to be heard of again.
Could be a standalone chapter of Fine Structure. Writing is pretty similar too, I'd say.