Chapter 4: Hope follows
A gentle voice stirred me awake, “Captain, wake up,” it said, “We’re all ready to continue with the meeting.” I let out a heavy sigh: relief from another forgotten nightmare.
Everyone had been seated around me and their eyes looked eagerly at me as though they waited for me to reveal some perfect solution. “Right,” I say as I stand up from my chair, “has anyone thought of something we haven’t considered yet? There are no dumb ideas; at the very least it may lead us down the path to a more viable solution rather than none at all.” I scan the room but there is no reply and everyone avoids my gaze. I felt like a grade school teacher. “Alright fine, I thought of a few solutions but unfortunately we don’t have a five mile long rope, a hatchet and a horse on board.” The crew looked at me with raised eyebrows. I continued, “I supposed a zebra would work just as well, any large quadruped really.” Now they turned to each other with bewilderment. I rambled on unperturbed, “It can’t be too large either I’m afraid, so an elephant is right out.”
That was when one crew member shouted, “My God, the Captain is having a stroke!” and everyone else took it in earnest. I couldn’t help but laugh when two medics were already on their feet to come check on me. I gestured for them to remain in their seats and calmly said to everyone, “There are no dumb suggestions."
It was as though I had issued a challenge. Everyone was up in arms trying to outdo one another with wilder and sillier solutions,
“We should shoot everything we got at it!”
“Let’s plug it up with a giant cork!”
“Let’s write the black hole a strongly worded letter!”
Everyone started to laugh. We no longer shot down ideas but encouraged one another and even considered them no matter how ludicrous. I sat, smiling silently as I watched my crew. Then one crew member shouted, “Let’s pray to it and sacrifice a virgin in its name!”
That word rung in my ear: “sacrifice.” Why does that word send shivers down my spine?
Suddenly another member shouted, “Let‟s find a bigger and meaner black hole to get rid of this one for us!” followed by more bursts of laughter.
I wished we really were dealing with a monster rather than a cosmic maelstrom. At least monsters can be bargained with a virgin sacrifice, or killed by a bigger monster, or even distracted. I asked, “What if we think of the black hole as a monster? What does this monster want?”
The crew thought for a moment until one replied, “mass?”
After a short silence I jumped to my feet, “Exactly! We don’t need to kill the monster, but distract it with mass.” We looked at our top physicist, who was already mid calculation. Again, even his name escaped me. He stopped suddenly and said in a hushed whisper, “it works.” then in a holler, “it works!”
Held breaths turned to cheers and shouts. Finally a solution! A glimpse of the first rays of hope pierced through our bleak futures. Insurmountable walls came crashing down. For just a moment the room grew brighter. Tears of bliss were beginning to form in my eyes. We will survive. My crew will survive. I will survive. It only took the voice of flames four words to snuff out the light, to crush me with shattered walls, to drown the room in darkness yet again. Tears of bliss turned to despair and resignation. With only four words my life was forfeit: “What will we sacrifice?”