Then, leaving her family to Galápagos wildlife and Texas negotiations, she swapped her plain gray sweater and jeans for loungewear—glad to wiggle out of her bra, since its underwire had sprung loose earlier in the week and was jabbing her ribs—and settled down on the couch under a fan. She smoothed the fluttering pages of her magazine. Her hands were suddenly shaky. She’d read “Pandora Rising” many, many times, but that had always been in the privacy of her room, within the privacy of her own head.
Now, though?
Now, other people would read her fable about a skeleton crew of astronauts as they took their final voyage away from a ravaged Earth. When thePandora Rising’s propulsion mechanisms failed and she fell past the event horizon of a black hole—accurately described as a lightless, featureless space, rather than Star Trek’s visible, energetic implosion—her team despaired. However, upon asking themselves what it was that they’d leave behind in death, they discovered that their losses weren’t so terrible. They’d already given up their Earth-That-Was, made desolate by a changing climate and human destruction. They’d just intended to drift to the edges of their understanding and consciousness… though they’d hoped for one last miracle in the expanse, of course.
They’d found that miracle in their black hole.
It wasn’t the miracle of salvation, but of curiosity in the face of the unknown. Their fall was a careening dance toward mystery, toward something that, out of all humanity, only they would experience. They found their peace and their excitement even while they vanished, because without the dull downward drag of earthly gravity, thePandora Risingwasn’t falling into the black hole at all. She could just as easily be ascending toward it; if gravity was still a law of mutual attraction in space, it was also free from any planet’s upward or downward binary. They fell, or they rose, and they would see what no other eyes had seen. They would bear witness to each other’s awe.
There is tremendous power in a black hole, in darkness and in fear.
But there is no match for the power of human curiosity.
Their wonder was the last thing to leave them.
The words surged to meet her, thrilling and somehow new again, and when she turned over the last page, smiling and breathless with a wonder of her own—
A pen and ink illustration of a black hole.
Immediate, irresistible—it drew and held her focus. The geometric darkness had ensnared a sun, sucking it close to swallow the light, and its pull compelled her forward, too, tilting her into its nothingness, daring her to brave the secrets beyond its event horizon. The lines of the piece were angular. The demarcation between light and shadow was so stark as to be almost painful. The compulsion to let herself be devoured by this mesmerizing menace was overpowering.
“Hunger.”
It wasn’t an illustration for “Pandora Rising.” But it might as well have been. And though the piece had no relationship to her research paper on the consumption of stars by black holes,still…
So she stared, tracing the sun’s final orbit until she fetched up against a miniscule word in the bottom right corner of the page, half-hidden under the staples inGalactica’s spine.
Bannister.
The artist.
She flipped to the contributor credits at the end of the magazine.
Bannister: “Hunger” (medium—pen and ink). Contact at www.bannisterart.com.
Nothing else.
Her listing as Aaron Forster was similarly brief.
Maybe Bannister was a pseudonym, too?
Fumbling for her phone and ignoring the flood of Monaghan messages continuing to chirp in the chat, she located Bannister’s website. It was as spartan as the artist’s credit, with just two screens: abstract prints for sale and a contact page. No headshot, no full name. But it listed a phone number and an email address for purchase inquiries.
Erin watched her hands move.
She muted the Monaghan thread.
She tapped Bannister’s number into a new message.
Erin
Hi, I saw your illustration in Galactica Magazine. (I have a short story published in the same issue: Pandora Rising.) You’ve captured in a single visual what I’ve spent months trying to articulate with words. It’s extraordinary. I’m honored to share page space with Hunger.
Her thumb was steady now and didn’t hesitate to pressSend.
Ping.
Before she could second-guess the wisdom of messaging a random person through a number she’d found on the internet, a typing notification bubbled up on her screen.
