Work Text:
If I were asked what life is, I would probably answer with a question of my own.
Ever had insomnia?
Ever felt that your mind is the drumset to a crazy percussionist?
When all you want is to sink into the darkness beckoning you; over there, yes, you can already see the edge. You just need to relax and drift closer, let your mind be taken by those knowing, caring, loving deep places inside of you, of anyone with a soul, to meld with the fabric of the world, where there is rest and peace and forgiveness.
Only you can't.
And you feel so cheated.
Why should that which is available for anyone - anyone! - be denied to you? You grope around, search for the reason, and find your own failing self, inside a body that is failing you - failure! failure! it shouts at you, but you already know that and so the wheel turns around, spinning the same threads around itself, again and again.
"Life support systems activated again."
The friendly, empty voice comes to life together with the blinking of diodes on the control panel. The silence and the darkness, the cold that had turned the last remnants of breath into something beautiful, something like art, painting the dark screen with crystalline flowers speckled with the pinpricks of distant suns, it all flees. It is disgusting. My heart shudders and it beats. Queasiness rides my veins.
Breathe. I pull in the stale air. Pushing it out I whisper: “Status.” Weariness is all I am made from, these days. It is all that lasts.
My discovery had been a blessing, at first, oh, what a blessing I had been. The one who finally defeated Dr. Doom. The tears, the cries of joy, the waves of emotions, the masses lifting me up: I had been a wonder, something holy, worthy of worship, of adoration. I had nearly believed it myself, for a time.
“… is down to 10 percent. Hull integrity is at 89 percent. Distance to the object is approximately …”
I listen to the report, but only with half an ear. It is important, though. It should be. I try to concentrate. Shapes swim back into focus. Yes, the lensing is as mysterious as I have imagined it; there is attraction in distortion.
“Are you sure you want to continue with the operation?”
Why is that voice so soft? A memory lies here, I am sure. I feel comforted and do not know why. That rattles me. I blink and shake off the cloud of thoughts. It is all fuzzy. But what do they expect from me. Then I laugh, half snort, half choke. Nice to see that the laws of robotics are still at work after all these years.
"Sure. There is no return."
I had done nothing. I never did anything. I enter the command to continue, to get closer. Something behind and above me groans.
The Giftless movement, they had put all their hopes into me. Me, raised as one of them, growing up in their slums, toiling away as one of the replaceable workers, a drab face, unrecognizable against the drab background. Until Doom’s raid on the factory.
I know the mechanics of what will happen next, what physicists have long since discovered and written essays about. How would it be, to study something for years, knowing that it is so close, but so unattainable? That you will never be able to actually get there, experience it, touch it? My heart is speeding up its rhythm. I should be fascinated by how it is still pulsing. I am not. Distracted, rather. Annoyed. But what annoys me much more is the voice that breaks the lovely music of plasteel tearing.
“Hull integrity is down to 45 percent. Please. There is still enough energy in the engine system to try for an escape route.”
I had tried to escape - once. The worst thing was that I had succeeded. When nobody else could. I still remember the shock in Doom’s eyes, when they finally settled on me, through the ashes, the clouds of dust, the screams of my workmates. How the super villain had narrowed them when she found that I was not just another body to be cast aside, but her fate. Which I had concluded right then and there, ending her. By doing nothing else than surviving.
I transfer more energy into life support, my mocking answer to the ship computer’s pestering bathing the cockpit in a blazing light. Music starts floating from the speakers, filling the air with a languid song. I will do this with maximal comfort. No need for torment. There had never been a need for torment.
They had found that out for themselves. After they had killed my friends and captured me, quelling the rebellion. When the experiments started. No longer was I a wonder to behold, but an object of scientific interest. How I had laughed at their surprise when they froze and collapsed the moment they had gone too far. Some of them had even been Gifted ones. But none of their powers had been a match to mine.
If you killed me, it killed you.
The music becomes a blare, underscored by the frantic stream of incoherent announcements from the ship. I whistle through it, close my eyes. We have entered the event horizon. I can feel a tearing sensation, teasing in its softness. I thought nothing could shear through my carapace of exhaustion, yet somehow, suddenly, a spark of excitement appears. I hold close to this feeling, trying to remember the last time it had visited me.
I can’t.
I am too old. If you killed me, it killed you. But I, I always survived.
Useful only for murder, but that I did well, and what a dangerous tool I was in the hands of manipulative forces. But I survived, as always. I survived my enemies as well as my beloved ones. When I was finally left alone, I found that my body had survived, but my soul had not.
I remember, vaguely, the day I chose to start my own experiments. To seek the edge. To take for myself what I had been denied for so long.
Of course, I did not chose the sun. Although they all have failed me as much as I have failed them, I do not hold such a grudge as to let it explode and end the entire planet.
I can feel the pull of the gravitational field now. There is pain, but I have long forgotten how to feel it. That sound must be the hull breaking. I gasp in a last breath, not because I need it, but because of nostalgia, I think. Then, there is blissful silence. I open my eyes.
The black hole is actually not black.
Either it will kill me or it won’t.
Oh.
Oh!