Another collaboration between myself (the writing) and @justclickindiva (ONE GLORIOUS PIECE of fractal art, worthy of being the whirlpool formerly known as a black hole in an interstellar gravity lake -- the touch of blue and gold was what SET IT OFF) -- enjoy!
At last meeting Dr. Shaaka iMaru – an imposing figure with violet-black skin, coiled hair very like my Black father's though naturally red leaning toward violet, with violet eyes. I thought of him as black charged with ultraviolet. He moved with that kind of energy as well, moving his six feet and five inches lightly.
Capt. Rufus Dixon, my contact with Dr. iMaru, had told me: the good doctor was so energetic that Capt. Dixon literally had never heard this man's footsteps on approach to his office, as large as he was, and had joked about him materializing out of thin air at outside of the office door. I laughed, but not for the reason Capt. Dixon had – he as a commercial captain did not know how many high-ranking officials in the galaxy did that.
I had a personal transporter as a full fleet admiral wherever there was a fleet presence – I could and did materialize and surprise people, and there were admirals just below and peers with me who used that as their regular way to travel. I didn't do that because I knew the potential of a transporter accident increased with regular usage, especially where fleet presence was more sparse for the distances covered – too many relay points of failure for the signature my life consisted of. But, on the other hand, I wasn't a high official of the Uppaaimar, who basically could fold a quilt – or a handkerchief as a more personal item – and be anywhere in the Local Group of galaxies that could be represented on that key-cloth.
Quite befitting his true stature in the galaxy, Dr. iMaru upon meeting me halfway between Pramerania and the Uppaaimar homeworld talked of what to humans was extremely complex science like it was a walk in the park.
“Your colleagues call a black hole a hole correctly, but fail to understand how right they are, Admiral,” he said to me with a smile that lit up his violet-black face. “Suppose a hole has been made in the bottom of a gravity well by the collapse of a sufficiently large star. It must also follow that what cannot escape the gravity of said hole is going through it to somewhere.”
“So, the black hole is the intake for energy and a white hole the exit,” I said.
“Precisely – which is why if you were dealing with a true white hole, it would be unmistakable. If you have to even ask the question, it isn't a white hole.”
“In your study of Uppaaimarn civilization, Doctor,” I said, “is there any evidence of white holes that the Uppaaimar or their civilization's peers discovered in the galaxy?”
“No,” Dr. iMaru said. “However, the existence was not held as theoretical; it was known that they existed, but just not in this galaxy.”
For a moment I had a glimpse of the universe from the Uppaaimarn perspective. Where humanity tended to think of vast, uncrossable distances, the Uppaaimar thought of the universe as we thought of planetary watersheds as a whole: still vast, still mysterious, still partially unknowable, but interconnected with the life of all other things, and full of points of connection to be discovered that joined things together that seemed distant.
Space-time reconsidered as a vast connected web of life and energy – to some level, anyone who had spent 50 years as a fleet officer as I had knew this was possible, but being a quarter-Vulcan had given me the longevity and extended youthfulness to be still working as the realization came … a black hole was a kind of interstellar whirlpool draining an interstellar lake, and somewhere, downstream, what drained through bubbled up again...
When I came back in my thoughts to where I was standing, I noted that Dr. iMaru's face had budded to a smile, and his violet eyes were shining as they had not been. Of course that might have had to do with what he had to say next.
“In the halls of the Uppaaimar homeworld, there is recorded a common prayer of space travelers that ties into the general theme of the conversation,” he said. “On the day the last Uppaaimar citizens left the world upon which they were created, they recited the prayer and each one carved a portion of it into the wall. The part of interest here was thanks to the Creator for placing the Uppaaimar into a galaxy which was both given and thus giving.
“Of course this has to do with this galaxy being the site of what humans think of as the Messianic prophecies around Christ, whom the ancient Uppaaimar only knew of as the promised Redeemer of the universe after the fall of said universe under the curse of disorder and death. This prayer is actually explained by Uppaaimarn theologians in this way – so, this galaxy was given to all the others as the site of the Redeemer.
“But, in further study, one finds that is also the basis of Uppaaimarn understanding that there are things that do not happen in this galaxy – we are an entry point, so “giving” stellar material, but not receiving. There are in this quadrant of the galaxy, for example, no black holes or neutron stars near enough to either the Uppaaimar homeworld or Earth to shower either with a relativistic jet full of deadly gamma rays. There are black holes here, into which everything around them enters, but there are no exit portals in the galaxy for all that matter and energy, transformed in ways that neither the Uppaaimarn nor humanity are prepared to deal with.
“For humanity, one shedding sun would be too much. For the Uppaaimar, one shedding sun was survivable, but not two. What would either of us do with a white hole, then, Admiral?”
I noted that Dr. iMaru, as ever, talked of ancient Uppaaimar things as his own, that he spoke of the Uppaaimar as living, and that he neatly ended his exposition by mentioning us as representatives of the respective civilizations. Thus, Capt. Banneker my mentor was correct. Dr. iMaru had just told me that he was at least as much a living, walking, talking breathing Uppaaimar male as I was a human female – perhaps not entirely, but at least three-quarters or so.
However, this was not the topic of conversation for the day.
“Well,” I said to glide away from that whole turn of conversation, “since interstellar lake systems are apparently not meant to be our course of direct exploration, we can leave the whole white hole question alone, except for who has done a model and sent it toward Pramerania.”
Dr. iMaru laughed heartily.
“Your mind wrapped around that well, Admiral!” he said. “You captured the power and the beauty!”
“Beauty I know and love well,” I said. “but I'm an admiral, not that experimental of a scientist – I solve the problems so that others can later confirm the beauty in the science. Back on topic: was there anything like this model recorded in the Uppaaimarn accounting of history?”
I could feel the weight of his personality, and perhaps even his mind, pressing upon me … he had been testing me, and I passed, and he liked me tremendously for it – not in any kind of inappropriate way, but just … however you say in Uppaaimarn, “Ah, I have found a worthy friend!” … that was it.
“No, there is nothing quite like the anomaly you are studying,” he answered, “but only because that would be laughed at as a functional model of a white hole to any civilization that understood white holes. The anomaly is as much like a white hole as an oscillating fan is like a tornado – there's rotation, and wind, but that is the end of the resemblance.”
I had to stop and consider that for a long moment … the anomaly, quite by itself, could tear up any star system it passed near, but if one thought about it as a kind of an oscillating fan around which gravity would be pushed, that made sense.
Once the fact of the anomaly being a white hole was taken off the table, that led to another disturbing realization that already I had sensed was possible. A tornado or white hole had something in common: they were natural occurrences about which the only thing you could do was just to get out of the way. But, an oscillating fan could be moved around at will by its builder or owner.
Since the anomaly had left no track of star system damage and seemed to have emerged just 25 light-years from Pramerania, and with the interstellar space between the Prameranian system and any other star system being 100 light-years, the fact of the anomaly not being a naturally occurring white hole led to the unsettling reality that the anomaly threatening the Prameranian system most likely had come from within the Prameranian system.
In other words, since Pramerania was the only world with sentient life, the threat to all that life on Pramerania had most likely come from right there on Pramerania... Pramerania, upon which even light speed and warp speed travel was a thing unknown to its masses who were living what someone like me would consider a quaint 21st-century Earth type of life … someone there was building anticyclonic, anti-gravity oscillating fans with edge units that made Jupiter's Red Spot look like a sidewalk eddy full of red autumn leaves.
This also meant that everything the fleet and the consortium it served thought it knew about Pramerania was wrong – subtly wrong, for again, people like the shopkeeper from whom my husband bought things for me were sincere. People like her, too, were being taken for a ride – but by whom? And who had used her to bring me, a full fleet admiral – whom she had been coached to approach as on a level with the Prameranian queen – into the matter?
“Doctor,” I said, “do the Prameranians figure into Uppaaimarn history in any significant way?”
Dr. iMaru's face grew grim, though with a level of satisfaction.
“At last, Admiral,” he said, “there is a question our size, that we can work with.”