Author: Beck Dacus

Each time the floor shuddered, all our chains rang like windchimes. The shackles around my ankles were linked to the wrists of the “inmate” behind me, on and on in a long line of us marching forward. As I stumbled I pulled on that man’s wrists, nearly bringing him down as well.

“Accretion disk turbulence,” growled the guard to my left. “Keep moving.”

I pushed up my glasses and walked. One by one they were patting us down, then ushering us through the docking tube into the shuttle. So far no one had made a scene.

We knew there was no way out.

I received my pat-down. I asked the guard, innocent as you like, “You know anything about the appeals process around here?” I could tell she wanted to bite my head off, but it was against policy for her to say anything. No one’s allowed to speculate what happens down there, because deep down they already know.

I shuffled into the shuttle and took my seat. “I heard,” said the chatty inmate across from me, “that we’s gonna get smeared all across the event horizon. Like bugs on a windshield, broke down t’little particles.”

“Nah,” another said. “Just inside the black, there’s a wall of fire. Fire so hot you burn to nothin’, not even atoms left behind.”

Mercifully I had been near the end of the line. The docking door shut behind the last inmate, and the walls hissed as our life support went independent. One final shake marked the shuttle’s detachment; harsh, white light flooded through the windows as we left the docking bay. Outside, the black hole’s gleaming accretion disk swirled close to lightspeed, the shuttle’s force screens the only thing standing between us and the hard radiation it was spewing out. The retrorockets ignited, and we were on our way down.

The guy across from me was a nervous talker. “So which is it, poindexter? You think we’ll get squished or fried?”

“We don’t know,” I shrugged. “That’s the point. The civilized galaxy gets to wash their hands of us with their conscience clean, because it’s not an execution. No one can prove that we’re dead, not without following us down there. So they call us inmates, locked in the perfect prison.

“But the math is clear. The inside is the same as the outside, and… well look.” I nodded to the window. “That used to be stars. Same will happen to us; we just need to get closer.”

Mr. Mouth slapped the guy next to him. “Listen to this! Talkin’ math at me. What are you in for anyway, four-eyes?”

I sneered at him. “Would you like to find out? I could use the practice.”

“Prepare for final crossing,” the autopilot’s voice cut in over the intercom. The accretion disk receded behind us, the nothingness of the event horizon filling the sky, then swallowing us whole. Aside from the cabin dimming, nothing changed.

I looked back at Mr. Mouth and shrugged. “What’d I tell you? Same shit, different spacetime.”

He looked like he was about to spit in my eye when he was rammed forward against his restraints. I was pressed into my seat so hard I almost blacked out, until the acceleration vector changed, pulling us all toward the back of the ship. I saw flashes of green light through the cabin windows, unnervingly close.

“Beginning evasive maneuvers,” the autopilot belatedly remembered to inform us.

“What the hell is going on!?” one of the other inmates said. The autopilot’s response seemed tense, almost afraid.

“It appears we are taking fire. From below.”