Black Hole Highway

Black Hole Highway

by Georgia Flight

This book is dedicated to my three beautiful kids. Stay curious and keep laughing.

You’ll understand when you’ve forgotten what you understood before.  

- Italo Calvino, Cosmicomics

Preface

I almost didn’t write this.

Ever since that day, the day that has gone down in infamy as Supernova Saturday, I’ve been painted as a villain, an alien, a terrorist, and (depending on the source) either hellbent on the Earth’s destruction or too stupid to stop it. The rumors about me are so out of control that even now, on a planet dozens of light-years away, I still can’t even go to the supermarket without getting whispers and stares.

 In order for you to really understand what happened, I need to explain what I was doing there at the scene of the crime in a spacesuit carrying a proton torpedo. I get it—it looked bad (I mean, not the spacesuit, which was pretty flattering to my figure, but in a guilt-related sense). As you may or may not have heard, I was severely injured in the blast and was not able to explain myself that night. By the time it became apparent that the blast had accidentally sent the moon hurtling out of our orbit, I had been taken to a secure location before the shocked citizens of Earth formed a mob and silenced me—and the truth—forever.

I know it’s too late to clear my name. That’s not what this is about. I lived on Earth long enough to know that once people have found a scapegoat to blame, they’re not interested in the truth anyway. The reason I’m writing is much more important: I know how to solve the problem.  

I can get the moon back.  

Not by myself, of course. I’m human. I’m not an engineer or a scientist. I’m not even a real astronaut. On the surface, I’m just a girl from Montauk who got mixed up in the craziest misunderstanding of all time. But my experiences beyond our planet have given me an entirely new understanding of the universe and everything in it, and I know for a fact that not only does the technology exist to get the moon back into its orbit, but I can guarantee its return with the people who will help us do it.

I know that if I just show up back in our atmosphere, the military will shoot me down faster than a Chinese spy balloon. So I need to lay it all out here and request permission to return to Earth with my non-Earth team to come in and activate the plan. Obviously, I don’t expect you to take my word for it. I’ve attached detailed plans in this transmission, complete with examples of successful orbital realignment projects that have been completed in four other solar systems. I’ve even given you my exact location, a planet known on Earth as Kepler 452-b, a planet Earth scientists believe to be habitable but is too distant to observe directly. (Spoiler alert: it’s very habitable).

The clock is ticking. Every minute the moon spins further and further out of its orbit, and the tilt of the Earth becomes more and more precarious. What more can we lose by being honest at this point? Even before Supernova Saturday, the Earth was on its way to destruction. Not only were we destroying it ourselves through climate change and the specter of nuclear war, we were on the cusp of an alien attack of unimaginable proportions. This event, however catastrophic, was necessary in order for us to have any chance at all.

         My story will be a lot to take in. But you need to listen. After all, if history has taught us anything, it is that there is no idea as dangerous as ignorance. These guys are coming back. The question is: Will you be ready?

Chapter 1: Air Base

It was a warm Saturday morning in September, which was to say it was the best part of the best kind of day. The lakes and ponds around Montauk, dazzling at the end of the island one-hundred miles from New York City, shimmered in the inviting sunshine, creating sun-dappled shadows through the nearby trees and giving anyone with indoor plans a compelling reason to scrap them. Nature was showing its harmonious side, its generosity, and its tolerance of all we have done and continue to do to destroy it. This is why I found it especially jarring when I witnessed two hundred birds crashing frantically into Fort Pond and thrashing their way to a violent death.

You might have heard about this on the news. It wasn’t a major event, but it happened in several places at once, and it was written up in the kinds of sites and publications where they assume the readers care about birds. There were plenty of witnesses that day in Montauk, too, and within about twenty minutes the fire department had arrived, though no one remembered calling them, or what they were expected to do to intervene. They kind of came to everything. Eventually the last of the birds either drowned or flew erratically away. Looking back on it now, knowing what we all know, I think we can agree we should have taken this and many other signs a lot more seriously.  

        Before I get into it; no, I’m not claiming I was on to the whole thing. I was never a conspiracy theorist, I didn’t own a gun, or a truck, or listen to late-night talk radio while wearing a tin hat. I wasn’t beamed up and probed in the middle of the night. But I did get abducted by aliens that day. More or less.

        This was at the end of last summer, and things weren’t going well for me. I was in what one might call a transitional phase. I had recently been crushed by a very painful and humiliating breakup, and I’d quit my job writing for a business technology website. I have never had any interest in either business or technology, and it showed. So I did what people do when the shit hits the fan and you’re twenty-eight—I decided to move from the city back in with my parents and go back to school. My parents lived in Montauk, which is over two hours from the nearest college, but I had both free time and a car, so I enrolled at Stony Brook to become a high school English teacher. The plan had a few holes—the commute was brutal, the process was demoralizing, and the best possible result at the end would be a low-paying job with bored and/or hostile teenagers. And I still had two years of classes left before I could begin begging people to give me unpaid full-time work as a student teacher. But at least it was a new direction. Forward, if slightly downward.

        So clearly I’d made some questionable decisions. Given my loose schedule, sometimes in the mornings, I would go for short and ineffective runs at Camp Hero, the abandoned Air Force base up by the lighthouse.  

        I’ve never liked running, and that may be a reason why I was so easy to abduct. People are always a little surprised to see me running. I’m not one of those people who talks about or really engages in fitness, and I have a sort of graceless shuffle that makes me look like I’m late for something, and at my speed will likely still be late.

        I was feeling a little shaken up from the bird strike incident, so I opted for a motivational track on my headphones. The voice was condescending and British. It murmured knowingly. Your life has not happened yet. You are creating your reality moment by moment. The man’s voice sounded full of rain.

I disagree , I remember thinking. Why would I create Chris cheating on me with my boss? And those dead birds? And war?

Feel the life-giving breath…

I coughed. I guess I was creating my cough, too. My weird, forced breathing distracted me from the road, causing me to step awkwardly on a rock. The back of my left leg seized up in a hamstring cramp.

I stopped running and grabbed the back of my leg in pain. I took off the headphones and cursed loudly. Thankfully, there was no one else around to see my sad little display, less than a mile into my intended four (well, two, with frequent walk breaks). The air was oddly still for that time of year, and it had a sticky, unpleasant heat to it that was rare this close to the ocean at the end of the island.

Because it’s at the end of the end, adjacent to the lighthouse, water surrounds the Air Base on three sides, and most days a steady breeze can be counted on to bring waves and shivers to those of us who live here. In fact, it’s kind of the main selling point for a town a hundred miles from a major airport and an hour’s drive to a hospital. But today was stagnant (like my life, I remember thinking melodramatically). As I rubbed my leg, for just a second, I thought I saw something silver darting through the trees over to my left, but when I looked up, there was nothing but the motionless branches and a thin layer of high clouds.

I’d run at the abandoned Air Force Base many times before, so I’d become quite adept at not thinking about how incredibly creepy it was to be there. Low concrete buildings in varying states of decay, all plastered with Keep Out and Danger signs, wide paved paths leading nowhere, and a looming, improbably massive defunct radar tower perched on a high hill overlooking the Atlantic Ocean in three directions. So, basically: the set of a horror film. Nothing official had happened there since World War II, though plenty of rumors circulated about secret government experiments deep below the ground, about tunnels leading to the sea, about time travel experiments gone wrong. It was a wild and foreboding place at the very end of the long island that lived up to its name. But it was a great place to run. Montauk was awash with celebrities and rich assholes with shiny surfboards, but this remote corner was quiet, almost private. Even on the busiest summer weekend, there were rarely more than a handful of people walking its eerie roads, and that September Thursday morning, it was deserted. I stood there and listened to the breathing guy while I waited for the cramp to subside.

There was nothing to look at in this particular part of the Base except dense, nondescript trees and a two-foot-high concrete wall that had partially collapsed. The giant, lifeless radar tower loomed above everything, a decaying monolith of a paranoid time. From here, you couldn’t even see the ocean, and on this airless day, you could barely smell it. Someone had halfheartedly spray-painted the wall with the words Luke wuz here, except the final e had faded away, leaving an intriguing gender mystery behind. I wondered if I was going to have to start caring about things like spelling wuz wrong when I became an English teacher. If.

Center yourself in the power of your breath, the voice in my headphones commanded. It wasn’t a bad idea, so I breathed in deeply. A bug flew into my mouth. Not a small one. I spat it out on the cracked pavement in a panicked reflex. Okay, that’s it,  I thought, I’m switching to the Caliente Miami Dance Party station and getting this run over with.  I tried to scroll through my phone to change the music, which was challenging given my oddly sweaty fingers, when all of a sudden I had the ice-cold feeling in my stomach that I wasn’t alone.

I glanced up. Not one, but four people were surrounding me at evenly spaced intervals, about ten feet away. I had no idea how so many people could have sneaked up on me that quickly, let alone why they would stand in such a weirdly formal configuration on the grass like a high school cheerleading squad. My heart raced. Run away , my brain suggested helpfully. I agreed but didn’t move. Suddenly the Caliente Miami Dance Party station came blaring out of my headphones. The people stepped back, alarmed. In unison.

Aside from witnessing the bizarre bird strike earlier that morning, this was without a doubt the strangest thing that had ever happened to me. My fight or flight response hadn’t really been tested up to that point, and it turns out I fall into the third, lesser-known but still very valid freeze category. My mind went blank and I just stood there. Like a deer. A deer with a hamstring cramp.

They all stepped forward timidly.

Hello, they said. In unison.

My brain’s signals started firing again. What on earth would bring a group of coordinated people out to the middle of an abandoned Air Base? They must be some kind of actors or influencers making a show or a prank video or something. After having just been humiliated by my ex-boyfriend Chris, the last thing I needed was to be the object of some obnoxious viral video stunt. Very quickly, my fear turned into a defensive irritation. I was going to have to let them know that in my baggy sweatpants and taco-stained college T-shirt, I wasn’t in the mood.

I looked the person directly in front of me in the eye and said, No thanks. Whatever you are doing, I’m not interested.

This is approximately the point where things went from weird to beyond explanation.

All of their expressions changed at the same time, in the same way, resulting in a look of hurt and confusion. How were they doing this? If they were an acting troupe, they were well-rehearsed. I hesitated, not sure if I should run away. They weren’t behaving like normal people at all. I now noticed they were all wearing matching uniforms or costumes, sort of shiny and brown, as if workers from UPS had formed a gymnastics team. Even their physical features were very similar—brown hair and eyes, very pale skin. One of them (sort of male-looking?) stepped forward.

The Earth needs our help, he (?) said. His voice was much lower than his small size would have indicated.    

Okay, so it’s one of those provocative environmental groups, I thought. An oddly synchronized environmental group. Maybe this was a new trend. Good for them.

Yes. I know. It’s really a mess. It’s terrible. Birds are dying. I completely agree. But look, I’m running, I don’t have any money with me...

They did not seem to expect this answer, and an awkward silence fell. A mosquito bit me on the arm and I angrily swatted it away. I am delicious to biting insects, and I knew that within moments that mosquito would have told all of his friends about the buffet and I would be itching for weeks. The sun was getting hotter and I really needed to get going if I was going to complete this run. Or just generally live and not be killed by the UPS gymnastic team. The four of them were still staring at me expectantly.

We have come from another planet to help you.

So. They were digging into this performance. That actually helped with my decision-making. Crazy people are impossible to reason with, so I just needed to get out of this situation fast. That is really nice of you. If you really want to make an impact, you should probably fly your spaceship to the city and get those people involved. It’s at the other end of the island. Although, the traffic this time of day… I trailed off.

We know we are in Montauk. We have been here many times before. We have come to help your civilization with the shield. Do not be afraid. The shield is blerg.

I pinched the top of my nose and rubbed my eyes in exhaustion. What? What the hell is blerg?

They exchanged embarrassed glances and pulled out square devices from somewhere near their hips. They fumbled with them awkwardly like elderly people with iPhones. If they really were from another planet, I wondered if it were possible for aliens to be from a less advanced civilization. How would they have gotten here?

Sorry about that. The translator must have malfunctioned, one of them said. They proceed to tap and blow on them like a Nintendo console in the ’80s.

I started to feel a little sorry for them. They were trying so hard. The whole situation had evolved from alarming to annoying to borderline tiresome in the span of two minutes. As I swatted away another mosquito, I finally allowed myself to look closely at these people. They were all dressed alike and seemed about the same height, like short adults—maybe 5’2’’? Even if I believed in aliens generally, which I wasn’t 100% sure that I did, there was just no way the budget-Walkman brigade were actually from another planet. The outfits, brown shiny tops and bottoms, were ill-fitting and lumpy, and how could a team really travel between planets if they couldn’t even make pants that fit? It was probably a film crew trying out a new interactive reality show concept. Montauk is a popular area for filming, especially in the late summer when prices for hotels drop from crazy-expensive to extremely expensive. Admittedly, there were no visible cameras or film trucks, but this was probably all drone or cell phone footage. Half of the birds could have been cameras; you never knew in those days.

This realization changed my calculations. I’ve always supported the arts, even eccentric outdoor theater and improvised jazz. I had long harbored a secret desire to perform stand-up comedy, but the almost certain humiliation had kept me safely in the audience. Putting yourself out there creatively took a particular kind of bravery that I wasn’t sure I had. Okay, I was sure I didn’t have it. So in my heart, I wished these weirdos well. Good for them for trying something new. We all have to get through the day somehow. Go have your fun show, I remember thinking, before some asshole like Chris comes along and ruins your day. Maybe they needed a writer for their scripts. I had a very expensive degree in creative writing that had so far been working out exactly as everyone had predicted when I had announced my choice of major. The loan servicing agencies were getting bolder in their tactics. I didn’t really want to be part of their little Air Base show, but maybe I could leave my contact info and we could all part as friends and potential future collaborators if this whole teaching thing didn’t work out.

I said, Alright, good luck with the show, guys, put my headphones back on and started to run back the way I’d come. I half-expected to be stunned or at least chased, even if it was an acting group, just to add drama to the scene, but I ran for several hundred yards without anything happening. What the hell was that about? I started to wonder. Feeling like I was a safe distance from which to turn around, I gave the briefest of glances over my shoulder. They were gone. Relieved, I turned back around and saw them standing in a V-formation ten feet in front of me again. I stopped dead. The electric shock came back.

I tried to sound calm. Look, I’m kind of having a rough day, so what do you want from me, exactly?

You are running towards our transport, one of them said. Would you like to come with us?

Oh my god, this is getting a little over the top , I thought. But before I could figure out what to say, I saw it.

Imagine a spaceship. Is it silver? Circular? Shiny? Maybe you saw the footage from Supernova Saturday of giant metallic disks with rotating lights? Well, the transport I saw on the side of the path behind the brown jumpsuit crew was none of those things. If anything, it looked like a VW bus, but about twenty times the regular size and with fewer windows. Like the rest of their gear, it was brown and dumpy-looking. They’d clearly spent some money on props, but this wasn’t exactly a major studio sort of production. Maybe someone’s uncle who used to be an army mechanic fixed this thing up for them. It showed a lot of effort in any case. And honestly, they were unlikely to run into anyone else here for a while, so I took a deep breath and decided to play along for a bit. I obviously wasn’t going to get rid of them without a conversation, so I smoothed my hair (which was frizzing in the sticky heat) for the cameras and put on my best people-pleasing smile. So, is this your spaceship? I tried not to use the tone you would employ for a little kid showing you a cardboard box, but it came out that way anyway.

One of the not-people stepped forward. He or she seemed to be weighing their words carefully. Forgive me for not introducing us. We are Vengans, from the planet Venga in a galaxy not too distant.

Sure.  

They waited politely for me to say more.

Okay, I added.

         They continued, The Earth is in danger of interplanetary attack, and we are here to place the devices that will create the protective blerg around the planet. We have just placed a transmitter there, he gestured to a metal object about the size of a fire hydrant near the foot of the radar tower.  

I couldn’t help but ask, Why wouldn’t you just put your signal thing on top of the radar tower?

        The lead not-person smiled. It is not that kind of transmitter. It has to be precisely positioned to create the protective blerg.

Shield? I suggested, not wanting to have to wait for them to