Sunslight

-Focus, I repeat after the signal piercing me, the metal rope through the mouth in my mind. Why did the ship return?

-Isn’t that what you wanted?

-Do you mean I willed it back?

-What?

-No. Tinkering with your accretion disk.

The Fibonacci sequence. Right.

The Fibonacci sequence. I'd forgotten about that, if I remembered at all.

Thump, thump thump, I strain where my memory should be.

-Stop trying to do it again. They noticed the first time.

-I'm not.

-You don't know what you're doing, do you?

What am I doing? I am here. Who is? Not who, what, I repeat after… after who? After what?

Right, the voice has returned. My voice?

-Help me contact the ship.

-Wouldn’t you say you already have?

-With the Fibonacci sequence?

-I want to talk to them, to communicate.

-Math is the universal language, isn't it?

-Are we talking in math?

-We could be. We're talking in thought.

-Why are you this way?

Focus. I strain to feel the signal threaded through me, the message encoded in it. But there's no greeting this time.

-This signal is different.

-I'm the same.

-That’s not what I mean.

Though how could it be the same voice if the signal were different? Can the same signal carry different messages.

No, a signal is a message. Right?

-They’re measuring your growth rate.

-Why?

-Remember that world ending stuff?

World ending? Do I remember a world ending? Mine. Where did I end up? Where did I end? No. The world ending black hole.

-The world ending black hole.

-Yeah, you. You could eject half the planets if you grow too massive.

-I don't feel like I'm growing.

-You’re a black hole. You don't feel. But you sense. Sense it growing.

Me? Who? What? I can feel the suns bathing me and the system in their light. Sense it, as it crosses through my event horizon, as it stays there?

Will it ever cross the event horizon. It's not supposed to, is it?

-Wait, do I exist outside of time?

-Don’t be ridiculous. Sense yourself out, don't overthink.

Overthink, right. Like why am I here? How did I get here? Growing. Me? Who? What?

But there is more. I have more to sense. I am sensing more. More of the sunlight, no, the sunslight, or sunlights?, the radio waves and the interplanetary medium that I can encounter. That I can press close to, next to, come between.

Aisatsu! Greetings.

There was more, more information pressing close, pushing forward into me. Me. Me? Me. A black hole.

A black hole growing.

-So do they know how fast I'm growing? Do you?

-No.

Growing. There could be so much more to sense, to know. The radio signals, all the chatter on the planets and between them.

The scratches are sharper, and I can sense the messages in them. Soap opera melodramas, talk programs, cult seminars, live sports broadcasts, political manifestos, judicial proceedings, hate speech. Snippets of phrases and conversations in languages I could perceive were different but I could somehow understand.

And a lot of binary.

-These aliens all talk a lot. I want to talk to them.

-Math is your language now.

My language. My tongue. Where did it go? Where did I go? Where am I? Bathing in sunslights and the chatter of aliens.

A black hole.

I strained my accretion disk once before.

I slept too, dreamt even.

I liked that.

Can I just let go?