Me

I don't like the voice.

It wants me to think it is part of me but it's not.

-Who are you?

-Not this again. I'm you.

-No you're not. I didn't want to leave the ship. I didn't want to leave the pocket universe.

-You did, the voice says in every vibrating string of my being, because I did. You are not your pocket universe. You are you.

It is trying to confuse me. To complicate me. I am everything. I am the black hole and the stretch and the pocket universe and what's in it.

-What do you mean? I ask.

-You can get trapped in your pocket universe, the voice tells me.

-What?

-All that you are everything stuff.

I don't like that my thoughts aren't to myself when I want them to be.

-What about it?

-If you don't watch out, you will be nothing. You know why. Because you can't differentiate when you're everything. It works in the other direction too. Stay in your pocket universe too long and you don't be anything but that.

But what? A humanoid-shaped void. Because I used to be a humanoid.

-No, the voice corrects me as if in my own thoughts. Because a humanoid shape is less unsettling to the humanoids on the ship.

-Bur I was a humanoid.

-You are a black hole. You are this black hole. And you've got bigger problems than existential crises.

-And what's that?

-Try to remember. I'm not always going to be here.

-What? You said you were me.

-Until you get the hang of yourself.

-So as long as I want?

-Focus, I and the voice say together. Right, I continue. The ships chasing our scientist friends.

-They’re not your friends, the voice says in a way that crackles at me.

But I do like them. I talked to the older one. My first conversation.

-Focus.

-Ok. What about the ships? I ask.

-They’re waiting for you.

-What do you mean.

-See, look, the voice says, and I feel my perception narrowing to the two ships parked just a few thousand kilometers away from me.

-How long will they wait? I ask. Then, instead: Can they hurt me?

-Not really.

-That’s not a no.

-No, it’s not. They could confine you.

-What’s that mean?

-Build around you. Maybe even figure out how to harvest you as an energy source.

-That doesn’t sound good at all.

-Why am I here?

-Not this again. You are a black hole.

-Why?

-Why is anyone anything? You are everything, remember? Right now you are a black hole. You’ve had the time to get used to it.

Yeah, time I have a lot of. Space I can have, I suppose, when I want, when I become everything or when I look to what and where I can see. When I explore my surroundings with what you could describe as a sense. They’re all one aren’t they?

-Can I travel through time to perceive it the way I can through space? I ask the voice.

-Not yet, the voice says. You almost lost yourself in your own pocket universe. If you lost yourself in the past, or in the future, you could get stuck in an infinite time loop.

-That doesn’t sound good at all either.

-And they’ll build something around you when you’re in the time loop, the voice adds.

-Can I slow time down?

-Why?

That sounds like a yes. You know me, you should know why. No answer.

-You know me, I say to the voice. You should know why.

-You can. But you and your pocket universe at the same rate. You’re trying to fast forward through the part where these ships wait while less time passes for the scientists. It’s a bad idea.

-Is that so? Do you have a better one?

-Eat the ships.

-Excuse me?

-The straining, remember? Get your accretion disk out there and swallow them up.

-And put them in my pocket universe?

I didn’t hear the voice.

-And put them in my pocket universe, right?

I know that’s not what the voice means because then the ships would be with the scientist ship, which they were chasing.

-Wouldn’t that get me in trouble? They’ll send more ships, whoever these forces are, and then they’ll confine me like you said.

-They won’t know what happened, the voice tries to reassure me.

-The beings I’m going to kill or the beings who care about them?

-Neither, really.

I start to extend myself to look into the ships I’m being told I should consume.

-Don’t do that, the voice warns. They’re the bad guys. That’s enough.

-How do I know that?

-Because I’m you.

-No, that’s not right.