A Man, A Plan, A Canal, Panama

I am the universe. I always was. So are you. I still don’t remember what I was, only that I was something else before I was a black hole. Someone else.

At my edges I am not discrete. I bleed out and the universe bleeds in. It’s how I am able to see the solar system around me.

Sending a message to this ship that brought me here works sort of like that, at least the way the voice explains it to me.

-We’ll be sending a palindrome.

-What?

-Symmetrical. We have to send you out in a sequence and then the same thing in reverse.

-Why?

-The first time gets you there and then the second time sets you there.

I don’t get it but I don’t have to.

-Imagine it this way. You’re going to fall, drop, the places you’ll fall into place to before you fall into place in them.

-I’m sending myself there to send myself there.

I think I understand it.

-More like, you’re sending yourself there to pull yourself there.

-Like an egg-laying animal and an egg, and which came first?

-Not quite. More like, if you were your own grandfather.

But first I have to find it.

-No, it can find you.

Why do I have to be reminded I’m a black hole?

I push out, I can feel more of the quantum foam around me rip. I am getting bigger.

Eventually the ship shows up.

I can feel the probing again.

-Probe back.

It makes sense and I feel myself getting pulled out of myself and then I am on the ship, receiving myself.

I am in the bottle, on the ship.

I can see the scientist and a youngling, or a youngling of a youngling of the scientist.

I am here now and the voice is gone. I can feel the place it was and I know it’s back there in the space of the black hole, but I am here, on the ship.

Where am I supposed to be?

A ship is like a living thing. It takes energy and it can sense its surroundings.

It’s not the first time they probed me. My memory since I got here seems so clear, but when I try to look back it feels like clear means empty sometimes. They scanned me, right? How does a scan work?

And then I’m there, at the scanning dish.

I am so lost.

The black hole.

Me.

The scientist sees me.

-Hello!

The youngling jumps back from the console, like I can see from the dish all the way through to the control room. I know the scientist sees me.

-I am here!

-You are still in the black hole, the scientist tells me.

I can see him working the console and I can hear the message just to the side of where I hear the voice but I don’t know what he’s doing.

I can tell by the youngling’s face they’re distrustful. They think it’s a trap. There’s no such thing as sentient black holes.

-Hello!

It’s like I’m stuck in place in the word of greeting I try to communicate.

I am in the black hole.

I point my hello there. Oh, hell.

Here I am. I am here.

I understand as I pull myself in and it’s as if I was in the black hole all along, and I speak now in the 

part of me on the ship. Entangled.

I always was.

I am the universe.

But I am not a trap.

-I am not a trap!

It scares the youngling. I can’t read minds, I don’t think. I observe. I observe because I am.
-Why a trap?

-Big trouble for bringing you here.

They did bring me here. I was someone else. Now I’m something else.

Not just a black hole. World-ending.

-Not a trap. Big mistake.

-Science, the scientist responds. I don’t know how I know their language. I don’t know anything about them. I can’t even tell which planet they’re from.

Then I am back at the black hole. What happened?

-The ships are returning, the voice tells me.

-You can’t tell me there?

-No, I’m not there, I’m only here.

-I need to be there. I was finally starting to get somewhere with the scientist.

-Then you’ll want to keep them around and not see them blown away by these incoming ships.

-How?

-Open your pocket universe, the scientist communicates to me.

I am on the ship again.

-My what?

Then there’s a jolt and I’m on the ship and in the black hole and in between.

I don’t like it.