What Happened??

The pounding in my head will not stop. My eyes are shut tight, it's completely dark but the pounding won't stop. Thump, thump thump, thump. Thump thump. And the scratching and tingling in my brain. And my insides, churning. How much did I drink last night? Thump thump, thump. I recognize the beat, I can hear it in my mind. It's a language, it's a message. Who is pounding it into my head? I can't open my eyes. Sleep paralysis I guess. I get that sometimes, right? I don't have telepathy. It's not real, so why is this pounding a message? It's not Morse code but I can hear the signal in the noise in the pounding in my head. I feel my fingers getting squeezed, but I can't feel my fingers. Press close. Next to. Push forward. Come between. Aisatsu! But we can do this in English too. Lamentations. Calling out. Greetings! The cognates from the ancient languages, where the word comes from. The pounding in my head like a metal rope throbbing inside my brain. There's words thumping through the rope, in Japanese or in English or whatever language the message was originally in before the thumps--the words are in binary now! 

It would be easier to understand if it wasn't pounding directly into my head. Go-aisatsu. And then? More pounding. Tell above. No, raise to say. Say above. Mōshiagemasu! Stop, Japanese is too much. In English. Greetings. Greetings we say forward. No, greetings we say from. Thump thump. What's the pounding saying? I can almost hear it. Greetings we say from. Ok. From? From at other. From another. From another what? Another to turned into one. Another turned into one. Another universe! Greetings from another universe. Piped directly into my brain? Stop the pounding. Please. Greetings from another universe. That can't be. In Japanese. Go-aisatsu mōshiagemasu, and then? Than unusual house sky. I-uchū yori.  Go-aisatsu mōshiagemasu i-uchū yori. Oh no. And I still can't open my eyes, it's all pitch black. Is the black even there or am I imagining it? Am I dreaming through a headache? The pounding won't stop. Greetings from another universe. There's more to the message if I can focus through the pain, the metal rope is stabbing through my mind. 

Greetings from another universe. We are scientists. We send this message through you. No. That's not it. What's the pounding say? 

-They've sent me through you, the rope presses and throws in my mind, like it can tell me the message. I am going through you. 

-Yes, I know, I can feel the pounding. 

-You're the black hole. You shouldn't feel anything. 

The signal was right. The pounding wasn't there, it's the radio signal ripping through my accretion disk. There's the ship, orbiting in my gravity well about a million kilometers away. 

-Is that where you come from, I ask the rope still in my mind but no longer pounding, just kind of there where it used to be. I can see it waving from the ship into me. 

-I'm a radio signal. 

-And so how can YOU talk to me?

-I can't. I'm you, making sense of what you are. 

-That's ridiculous. I know exactly what I am. Who I am. Who, who I am, not what. Who. Who? Who am I? Wait, what did I do last night? Did I party? Where was I? You said I shouldn't feel anything anymore and now I don't. So where did I go? 

-You're the black hole. 

-And you're the signal from that ship? But not really, you're actually a figment of my imagination to help me understand where I am?

-What you are. 

-Not what, who. Who I am

-You're not a who anymore. 

-Ah, so I was! Who was I? 

-It doesn't matter. 

-For a figment of my imagination you're not very helpful. So what's the message from the ship say anyway?

-Nothing you can answer. 

-How would you know? Because you're me. Right. Talking to yourself can be a sign of mental illness, you know?

-That’s a myth. It can be like an inner monologue.

-Even if I can't answer the message, I still want to know what's in it. 

Now I perceived that the signal I was talking to was not the only one penetrating me. I was capturing all kinds of stray communications too that weren't meant for me. The rope returned in my mind along with millions of strings that felt like they were scraping the tissue of my brain. I can't feel, but when I can feel I can almost hear what the signals are saying. 

-There’s too many of them, you have to let go to understand.

-Who are all these signals from?

-The different civilizations living in this solar system.

-Earth?

-What do you mean?

-What is it? Like dirt. Ground. 

-Some of the planets have ground.

-My earth.

-You’re a black hole, you don't have a surface. You have an accretion disk and an event horizon. And I'm still trying to figure out all the chatter, but it sounds like you're not supposed to be here. 

-That’s what I've been trying to tell you!

-No, you were trying to tell me you're not a black hole. You are. But you just got here. 

-Yes I know. I've been trying to figure out how I got here.

-Well it should be obvious by now shouldn't it?

The ship. The signal, the message. Greetings from another universe.

-They ripped a hole in their universe to get a message through?

How would I know that, unless part of me knows the message already. 

-It would appear so. 

-I want to hear the message. 

-You don't 

-I’ll implode myself right now.

Can I do that? No matter. 

-Fine:

Greetings we say from another universe.

We are scientists. We send this message to you. We rip a tiny hole in our universe to get to yours. In the spirit of finding friends.

What are numbers?

What is the meaning of life? 

Is there a way to cheat the law of entropy? 

How does the rip in your universe look?

The pounding returned. My universe. Where was that? What was it? 

The questions continued. It was right. I was right. I didn't want to hear it.

Suddenly the pounding stopped, but it had nothing to do with me. The signal was gone and the ship was starting to move. The rope was gone, even though it was a figment of my imagination. It disappeared with the signal from the ship. I can't send a signal back. Can I send a signal back?

-Where did you go?

Where did I go for that matter. The strings tickling my brains. Panic. I can pick out bits and pieces of messages. In their languages. Apparently a world-ending black hole has appeared in orbit of the sun. Wait.