Intro: Into the pit
Na-Yeli Maya approaches the alien object with a mix of pride, trepidation, and curiosity. Unsure of her exact roleâchampion? explorer? scientist?âsheâs well aware that she may be the next in a long line of adventurers that went in, but never came out.
An impenetrable, perfectly black sphereâonly blocked-out starlight, a fast-rotating magnetic field and a massively complex gravitational footprint betray its presenceâwith two opposite holes, dubbed the Enigmatic Object. Its radius is approximately 86 kilometers, or exactly 2(to the power of)132 Planck Lengths, as one brilliant mind deduced. One hole is blocked withâwhat seems to beâa spherically shaped, highly charged piece of strange matter. For referenceâs sake, itâs called the South Pole. The other oneâthe North Poleâis not covered, and nicknamed âthe shutterâ. The rest of the sphereâthe outer shellâis an invisible, impenetrable barrier that reduces any normal matter touching it to its atomic constituentsâa process named âspaghettificationâ as the molecules are strung out until they breakâand has proven impervious to exotic matter like neutronium, quark matter and strangelet, as well.
Most of the time, through a cycle so complex it verges on the chaotic, the North Pole is closed. At unpredictable times, it will open in a truly minuscule mannerâmicrometers, possibly even nanometersâand then be fully opaque, again. Only once every two-hundred-and-thirty-three human daysâor exactly 2(to the power of)168 Planck Times, as calculated by the same brilliant mindâit opens, bang on schedule, wide enough to let an object with a diameter of one meter through.
Its widest opening remains for just over two seconds. Barely enough to let one vessel out, and another vessel in. Through carefully negotiated treatiesâafter a number of intense interstellar wars over access to the Enigmatic Object decimated several galactic civilizationsâeach alien species gets a turn and is only allowed to go in during the second second, in order to let someoneâwhoever it isâout first. Timing is everything. Timing is sacrosanct. Timing is make or break.
Not only is the window of entry short, but the tidal forces surrounding it formidable. Anything with more than one hundred kilograms of mass, or bigger than one meters across will be irresistibly drawn towards the ominous outer shell, and âspaghettifiedâ into its atomic constituents.
Na-Yeli is dropped from her mothership and the spherical pod (with an exoskin of metamaterials that can both transform and shape-shift) in which she will explore the unknown objectâwhile its one hundred-and-seventy-two kilometer diameter makes it cosmically small, inside it is said to contain whole worlds in miniatureâis weighed and manufactured to the picogram and picometer. Her aim must be true and her timing must be right: one nanometer off, or one millisecond late and sheâs toast. Or more accurately spaghetti on toast.
Using the lasers of the mothership for course correctionsâso she can enter the black enigma with the maximum possible amount of life support and equipmentâshe aims at the opening, dead center, in a perfectly perpendicular approach. Maximum acceleration at full laser power, so her passage time is as short as possible. Her pod heating up just short of cooking herâthis has been rehearsed to exhaustion, and dog knows she might need the extra energyâshe races to the forbidding gate, wondering if other explorers were cutting it as fine as she is. A mental brace, a sharp gravitational tug from all directions at once and ⌠sheâs in.
