The Three Descents Of Jeremy Baker I

He waited, his hand hovering above the appropriate bank of lights, for the Warton-Purg drive to drop the Raven into space proper. The lights went out. Immediately, he ran his hand across the row, illuminating them again.

Simultaneous with the clutch of the tidal forces, he felt the explosion from the rear of the vessel. The manual had been right. Reactivating the drive immediately following shut down was hazardous to the health. He pulled on his helmet as a sheet of flame flashed toward him. The suit's insulation protected him from the heat as the Raven came apart. This time he did not see the jumpsuited figure.

Again, he drifted.

When Nik rescued him, he told him the story.

"... So, either way I lose," he concluded.

"So it would seem," Nik said.

When the CTC ran its course and Nik went off to report the results of the latest trip to Vik, Jeremy looked toward the event horizon with his enhanced senses.

He was aware of his antigrav field now, could even manipulate it with his mind. He was certain that he could control it sufficiently to keep himself unstretched or unsquashed at least between here and the layer beneath the violet band.

"What the hell," he said.

He wondered what sort of final image he would leave for eternity. II.

He descended quickly toward the devouring sphere, and soon it was a if he fled among the curtains of an Aurora Borealis. At one point it seemed that Nik might have called after him, but he could not be certain. Not that it mattered. What had he left of life even with the kindly Fleep? His suit's oxygen, water, and nutrients would dwindle toward an unpleasant end and there was no chance of anyone coming to his rescue. Best to pass in this blaze of glory seeing what no man had seen before, leaving his small signature upon the universe.

As the waves rose to embrace him, the colors darkened, darkened, were gone. He was alone in a black place and without sensation. Had he actually penetrated the black hole and survived, or was this but his final, drawn-out thought in a time-distorting field?

"The former," Nik said from a place that seemed nearby.

"Nik! You're here with me!"

"Indeed. I decided to follow you and give what assistance I could.

"As you entered did you see the image I left behind on the event horizon?"

"Sorry, I didn't look."

"Are we into the singularity?"

"Perhaps. I don't know. I've never been this way before. The process may be one of infinite infall."

"But I thought that all information was destroyed once it entered a black hole."

"Well, there is more than one school of thought on that. Information is necessarily bound up with energy, and one notion is that it might remain coherent in here but simply become totally inaccessible to the outside world. The information ca

"Then it must be so."

"On the other hand, when your body was destroyed as we entered here I was able to mn you quickly through the process by which I became an immortal energy being. Thought you might appreciate it."

"Immortal? You mean I might be an infinitely infalling consciousness here for the effective life of the universe? I don't think I could bear it."

"Oh, you'd go mad before too long and it wouldn't make any difference."

"Shit!" Jeremy said.

There was a long silence, then a chuckle from Nik.

"I remember what that is," he finally said.

"And we're in it without paddles," Jeremy noted. III.

"There is another factor in our case," Nik said after an eternity or a few minutes, whichever came first.

"What is that?" Jeremy asked.

"When I talked to Vik he mentioned that we've messed so much with this black hole and its rotation that we might have provoked an unusual situation."

"What's that?"

"It's theoretically possible for a black hole to explode. He thought that this one was about to. Seeing it happen is son of a once-in-a-lifetime affair."

"What goes on when it blows?"

"I'm not sure and neither was Vik. The cornucopion hypothesis would seem most in keeping with our present situation, though."

"Better tell me about it so it won't come as a complete surprise."

"It holds that when it blows it leaves behind a horn-shaped remnant smaller than an atom, weighing about a hundred-thousandth of a gram. Its volume would be unlimited, though, and it would contain all of the information that ever fell into the black hole. That, of course, would include us."

"Would it be any easier to get out of a cornucopion than out of a black hole?"

"Not here it wouldn't be. Once our information leaves our universe it stays gone."

"What do you mean 'not here'? Is there a loophole if it gets moved someplace else?"

"Well, if it could be bounced past the Big Crunch and the next Big Bang and wind up in our successor universe its contents might be accessible. We only know for sure that they're barred from release in this universe."

"Sounds like a long wait."

"You never know what time will be doing in a place like that, though. Or this."

"It's been interesting knowing you, Nik. I'll give you that."

"You, too, Jeremy. Now I don't know whether to tell you to open your sensory cha

"Why? Or why not?"

"I can feel the explosion coming on."

There followed an intense sensation of white light which seemed to go on and on and on until Jeremy felt himself slipping away. He straggled to retain his coherency, hoped he was succeeding.

Slowly, he became aware that he inhabited a vast library, bookshelves sweeping off in either direction, periodically pierced by cross-corridors.

"Where are we?" he finally asked.

"I was able to create a compelling metaphor, allowing you to coordinate your situation," Nik replied. "This is the cornucopion within which all of the information is stored. We inhabit a bookshelf ourselves. I gave you a nice blue leather cover, embossed, hubbed spine."

"Thanks. What do we do now, to pass the time?"

"I think we should be able to establish contact with the others. We can start reading them."

"I'll try. I hope they're interesting. How do we know whether we've made it into the next universe and freedom?"

"Hopefully, somebody will stop by to check us out."

Jeremy extended his consciousness to a smart red volume across the way.

"Hello," he said. "You are ...?"

"History," the other stated. "And yourself?"

"Autobiography," Jeremy replied. "You know, we're going to need a catalogue, so we can leave a Recommended Reading List on top."

"What's that?"

"I'll write it myself," he said. "Let's get acquainted."