Whoosh! The passengers emerged from the black hole; for some miraculous reason, they passed through the center of its torus shape, shooting straight through, gaining speed, gaining speed, going faster, faster fasterfasterfasterfastfastfast.....
They had swung around and the ship was slung at speeds higher than any craft before it. And there they were, passing by Alpha Centauri at a blink, past all the galaxies they had dreamt of visiting some futuristic day, miraculously missing major asteroids, planets and stars as the universe flew by like a gentle spring rain.
After years of applying the brakes, they finally arrived. To their surprise, there it was, the Terran system, their home. Had they been dreaming? Or had they actually done it, looped around the fabric of the universe, ending up where they began?
The next few posts will focus on my experiences over the most insane weekend of this semester, which felt very much like falling into a normal-flavor black hole. I'm still surprised I'm not ...splat... a mere dot on its surface still.