We Are Legion (We Are Bob)

Book 5: Chapter 65: The Black Hole

Icarus

June 2345

Sagittarius A*

Twenty-three million kilometers. That was the diameter of the event horizon. Of course, that wasn’t tremendously big on the grand scale of things. The red supergiant UY Scuti was reputed to have a diameter of more than a billion kilometers, and that was just a garden-variety star. From our distance, we had to use our SURGE-based telescopic image enhancement just to see Sagittarius A* as more than a point source.

We’d approached from forty-five degrees to galactic north, per the instructions on the star maps. The black hole had an accretion disk in the galactic plane that extended several light-years, and you wouldn’t want to fly through that. Even from above, the magnetic fields threw off enough crud to make this area of space interesting, in a bad way.

But the black hole itself was … incredible. Of course, we took pictures and videos aplenty. And spent unmeasured time just staring at the thing. This was the fabric of the universe in its raw form.

Bobs, and post-life physicists and astronomers as well, would have our guts for dinner if we failed to take every possible measurement. We made sure we covered all the bases.

Finally, though, it was time to leave. Dae had started his good clone/bad clone routine again, and I could feel his eyes boring into the side of my head.

“Fine, Dae. Let’s pack ‘er up and go. But if we forgot something, that’s on you.”

“Yeah, okay. Seven years for the return trip. Let’s make ‘em quick.”

A thought occurred to me as we were bringing ourselves around for the flight back to the antimatter fountain. “I wonder if the administration station would answer other questions.”

“Worth a try.”

Since we had communicated with the station, we had its SCUT address in Federation network standard format. I opened a link. “Central Antimatter Works, this is the Roanokian vessel, uh, Croatoan. Can you answer some questions for us?”

“Possibly.”

Huh. Not big on courtesy, obviously. “What is the nature of the antimatter fountain?”

“It is either a white hole or a wormhole from a region comprised predominantly of antimatter.”n/o/vel/b//in dot c//om

“You can’t tell which?”

“That information is not available.”

I said in an aside to Dae, “Didn’t take long to get to that, did it?” Then to the station, “Can you tell me where the population of the Federation went?”

“That information is not available.”

“Can you tell me why?”

“The imminent destruction of the galaxy made emigration necessary.”

Whaaaaaaaaaaat? I turned to Dae, my jaw dropping almost to my really quite pointless navel. His face registered the same level of shock.

“Can you tell me how the galaxy is about to be destroyed?”

“That information is not available.”

“How long until it happens?”

“That information is not available.”

“Is there somewhere that I can go where that information is available?”

“Are you asking me to tell you where to go?”

I laughed reflexively, and Dae spit his coffee out. “No way that was unintentional.”

“Apparently, we are annoying,” Dae muttered.

I addressed the station. “Yes, please tell us where to go.”

We both scrunched up, fists balled and uncontrollable grins on our faces, waiting for the comeback. It would be worth it.

There was an unaccountably long pause before the station replied in a totally straight tone, “The Capital Archives would have the greatest chance of satisfying your curiosity. Far better than ongoing dialogue here. Routing instructions attached. Good voyage.”

Dae chuckled. “I bet it was fighting its programming there.”

“Yup. ‘Good voyage’ was not the intended salutation.”

“Should we ask a few more questions? Just because?”

“Now you’re just being mean. Let’s hit the road.”