The Single Larry Ti, or Fear of Black Holes and Ken

Salt-sweat dotted my forehead by the time I neared the last demonstrator in line, an old Asian woman with a hand-painted sign that looked too heavy for her. Indeed, her arms shook. The sign said NO SINGLE LARRY TI.

The benefits of globalization: bastardized spelling. I pictured a single white guy named Larry in a ragged t-shirt. I wanted to laugh—needed to laugh—but the look on her face stopped me. Fear was fear, and her thin pale lips and wide dark eyes with fist-sized circles under them screamed quietly. She even smelled like fear: adrenaline-sour sweat mixed with something antiseptic. I smiled at her, my hand brushing her shoulder as I whispered, “It will be all right. We won’t eat the Moon.”

Her spittle on my hand was warm, and I wiped it quickly on the back of her dirty gray blouse, a reflex. Cameras snapped, catching the back of my hand sliding against her rough shirt. A deep breath enabled me to quell the urge to run from the reporters. I fixed my eyes on the courthouse in front of me, a rounded faux-brick building with open windows that spiraled up its smooth outer surface.

If I looked up at the building I didn’t have to meet any reporter’s eyes. Ten steps.

I ignored the reporter’s buzzing lips, their questions nonsense garbled on nonsense. A deep male voice screamed above the crowd. “Save us, Mary! Recant!”

Twenty steps and then five more. I passed through the line of rainbow-clad UN policemen into near silence. No voices, just the buzz of swarm cams for a few more steps before they, too, gave up.

Inside, I stopped in the women’s room and slathered disinfectant crystal on my hands, rubbing the grit into my palms over a low metal sink. Hopefully the spit didn’t have any nasty bugs. I splashed tepid water on my face, over and over, sputtering, and then blotted my face with a terry towel.

For the last hour, I’d been worried about getting in at all, but now I was here, and there was no way left to avoid the media circus courtroom. Or to avoid Ken. Or to avoid the death of my professional life. The world was on a deep bender of craziness.

I needed to make the case for science. The already lost case. Me, fifty-something and looking it. Even dressed up in my best gray synth suit, I felt invisible next to the lawyers I’d be dealing with soon. Yes, our side had a lawyer or two or three of our own. Volunteers. The career public defenders of science spitting into the legal wind against a world court where four out of seven members didn’t believe in evolution.

I snorted, wondering how they would spell singularity, or even black hole. Not that they needed to. The trial was over already: the media had hung us up on everything from technical details in the original procurement to papers that had come out in Nature in the 2050s.

Dammit. It was doing myself in again. I whispered to the white tile walls. “Don’t underestimate yourself.” On that cheerful thought, I liberated myself from the bathroom and headed down the hall.

The round courtroom (routing evil from all corners) smelled like plastic and money. There were more press and cameras than real people. The prosecution side of the aisle was a blur of suits and ties and high heels, all the best fabrics, shiny in the fluorescent lighting. Our side… well, my best suit looked all right, but not brand new. Same for our lawyers and the presidents of Stanford and MIT. The scientists on our side looked poor and scruffy. The contrast pissed me off. Not the people, the idea that physics had no money in it, no glory. The days when Brian Greene or Stephen Hawking could fill a major auditorium at a hundred dollars a seat were long behind us. Unlike pharma and genetics and the other sexy sciences, physicists begged for money and dreams.

And now one of their dreams was about to go away, making the last five years of my life a great big zero. Scientists get zero a lot, mind you. But this was just flat-out stupid. I walked down white marble steps, my heels clacking in the near silence. Swarm cams hovered the requisite three feet away from me, humming like summer mosquitoes. Why did they care how I walked down the steps?

Probably hoping I’d hook a heel and fall.

I wanted to be back on the Moon. Now that was a round I believed in.

Jeff Rice from Harvard gave me a thumbs up, looking sheepish and hopeful all at once. He’d had his turn yesterday. Even though I’d heard excellent virtual lectures from him, in this setting, standing in front of people who could kill his career, he’d stuttered. Farther down, Salli Indi bit her lip and watched me silently. She hadn’t helped either; the prosecution had used her three marriages against her in a court of science law.

Maybe if I made myself mad enough I’d talk with enough force to be heard.

On the other side of the aisle, standing with the afraid, my ex-husband, Ken. His cowlick was acting up again this morning, the only imperfect thing framing his perfect face. He kept his face turned toward the bench, but I knew he knew I was looking at him. I made myself turn away from his stiff profile.

I snuck into my place beside our best lawyer, an older man named Jerry King. He leaned over close to me, his breath smelling like stale coffee. “Glad you made it.”

I stepped a little away from him, needing air. “Me too. It’s a gauntlet out there.”

He nodded his head sagely. “Most of them are getting paid, you know. By the Preservers.”

Maybe. But not the woman who’d spit on me. “I think they’ve been scared enough to demonstrate without money. The politics of fear and all that.”

Before Jerry could answer me, the bailiff called out. “All rise.”

We rose.

Seven judges filed in. Three men and four women. The women were two Americans and an Italian; the men were a Russian, a Venezuelan, an Aussie, and a Moonite. They wore rainbow robes. One of the Americans, Julie Ray, was chief justice this year. It wasn’t earned, it just passed from justice to justice, and Justice Ray’s experience was marketing. Marketing law.

The justices sat, folding their hands in their lap, looking important.

Screens around the room sprang to life. Behind the judges, looking right at us, smiling as soon as they saw they were live, the assembled UN support team. Africans, East Indians, Pakistanis, Chinese, and two monks from restored Tibet. People who shouldn’t hate science. Behind me, even though I didn’t—wouldn’t—turn to look, the pay-per-view cams from all the major networks stared down at the back of my neck, and behind the cameras, the eyes of many thousands of scared people.

The bailiff called out, “Please be seated. The Court of All the Worlds is now in session.”

Justice Ray turned to Jerry. “You have one more witness to call.”

Jerry stood. “The defense calls Dr. Mary Johnson.”

The windy breath of tiny cameras followed me as close to the witness box as the law allowed, then hovered ten feet from me. I looked at the black hooded eyes of big cameras and wondered if getting sick to my stomach was an option. After the bailiff swore me in, Jerry came up and stood on the far side of me, so the judges would all have a clear view of my face.

No jury of my peers at this level. Just the damned media.

I looked above my head at the multicolored flags of nations hanging from the ceiling, and looked back at the UN support team. The flags should be a promise to promote diversity; they seemed to beg for unity.

We started out with my credentials (undergrad at Stanford, Masters and PhD from MIT), my experience with the project (doctorate based on Large Hadron Collider experiments, managing scientist for the Moon Ring for the last five years, associated with the project from the first grant in ’52), and my reputation (stellar—except for one failed marriage). I didn’t look at Ken when Jerry brought that out. Surely he knew we’d have to bring it up after what his side had done to poor Salli.

Better to bring up your soft spots than let the prosecution do it.

When Jerry talked about Ken and me, I couldn’t look at Ken. If I did, he’d know I still missed him. Hell, I still cried sometimes after I saw him at a conference. But not now. Not today.

I took a deep breath and refocused. I was here to defend science, not myself. I remembered the woman who’d spit on me, the way her dark eyes had been further blackened by fear. Science shouldn’t scare people. Damned corporations and money machines and dependent press. Damned religious nuts that hated science since sea level rose, and blamed godlessness for the whole thing. Easier. That way, it wasn’t our fault, anyone’s fault. Fuckers probably read Machiavelli. I better not even think words like that—no swearing on the stand.

Jerry’s voice cut in. “Do you remember what happened when the Large Hadron Collider was brought up in 2008?”

I nodded. “Yes. I was at Stanford then.”

“Can you tell us?”

“There were a lot of people who wrote about how it might make miniature black holes.”

“And did it, in fact, make miniature black holes?”

“No.”

Jerry shifted slightly on his feet, painting his face bored even though I was close enough to see how the little muscles behind his jaw jumped. “How many years did the Large Hadron Collider operate without making any black holes?”

“Twenty-five.” I swallowed. “Twenty-five years and three months.”

“In that time, did you see any evidence”—his voice rose—”any evidence at all that the Large Hadron Collider manufactured any black holes?”

Ken had come home one day, halfway into the demise of our marriage, excited about experimental results that showed a nanosecond time lapse between a collision and its results, a tiny flash of photons that might have been, maybe, the briefest flaring of an event horizon, given life for less than the millisecond delay. I’d told him it wasn’t enough then. If I hadn’t believed him then, I couldn’t say I believed him now. Besides, I didn’t. If the results ever again showed even the tiniest tear in space-time, I didn’t see them. Science has to be repeatable.

Ken’s head snapped up and he looked angrily at me.

Of course, he hated the media, too. Even when physicists fight, colleague on colleague, we stop and join in hatred against the media and their scare tactics. The media wars couldn’t be won. We didn’t have any territory on the nets anymore except inside the closed land of the universities. I looked directly at the cameras and smiled reassuringly. “No. No, I never saw any evidence of the creation of black holes.”

“So in your expert opinion, the Earth is in no danger from the Moon Ring?”

I looked directly at the justices. “No, it is not.”

Julie Ray stared right back at me, deadpan, all except her eyes, where I swear I saw the ghost of compassion. Why? Because she knew I was telling the truth?

A small smile crossed Jerry’s face. “Are you the one scientist who’s spent the most active time working with colliders?”

I had to think about that for two breaths. “Yes, I am.”

“And you believe we’re safe?”

A shrill voice from the other side. “Objection! Leading the witness.”

Justice Ray sighed. “Sustained.”

Jerry switched tactics. “Do you believe there is any risk associated with the Moon Ring?”

I cleared my throat. We’d planned this as the most open question. No one objected, so I stood as straight as I could. “All science has some risk. Being human has some risk. We would never have gone to the Moon without risk, never have set up low-g manufacturing or medical labs there, never have built the solar arrays that now power the world.” Subtext—we’d have all drowned from runaway global warming without ready clean energy. But it wasn’t okay to talk about climate change. “The occasional, real risk has kept our species alive.”

A different voice from the other side. Ramona Stutzhaven, the queen of German law, wholly owned by the drug companies, here to keep money away from us and flowing toward pharma. “Objection! Irrelevant.”

Justice Ray again. “Sustained.” I didn’t see any compassion in her eyes anymore.

Jerry was too smooth to show his irritation. “And as a scientist, you believe that some risk is necessary for the human race to evolve?”

Objected to, of course, and sustained, this time before I could do more than nod and smile gently. Ramona would say risk was necessary if this was about medical trials. Stupid two-faced world.

Jerry still didn’t seem to mind. “I rest my case.” He leaned in close to me, his voice low. “Good job. Hold up on cross. Don’t give in.”

Justice Ray nodded to the prosecution. “You may cross-examine the witness.”

Ramona walked over, clouded by cams, head high, blond hair pulled back in a severe bun, little diamonds glittering in her ears. No wrinkles on her face or her clothes. Bitch. Not for that—for what she was about to do to me. She stood where Jerry had just been, smiling sweetly. She even leaned in and smiled at me, and like Jerry, she said, “Good job.”

She didn’t mean it.

She smiled again, pointing her white teeth at the cameras, and when she spoke she sounded like the earnest girl next door. “Dr. Johnson, can you tell me if it is theoretically possible to create miniature black holes from high-speed particle collisions?”

Jeff Rice had stuttered his way through that yesterday. I gave his answer, thankfully without the stutter. “Some scientists believe it is possible, but not probable.”

“And if a black hole is created?”

“It will probably wink into existence for a short time and disappear.”

“Is it theoretically possible that it will not disappear?”

I breathed out. Held it. Took a slow breath in. “Only at the far edges of theory.”

“And if it doesn’t disappear? If it continues to live and grow?”

“It is highly unlikely—less likely than winning a lottery ticket.”

“But people do win lottery tickets,” she mused, pacing half-circles around me now, glancing sideway at the audience and the cameras from time to time. “If people win lottery tickets, perhaps you will also succeed and make a black hole.”

I didn’t think so. Ramona paced past me two more times, heels clicking on the hard floor. Just as Justice Ray straightened and took in a deep breath, Ramona’s voice lashed at me. “You didn’t answer my question. What will happen if a black hole is created in the Moon Ring and it doesn’t disappear? Could it begin to absorb the mass of the Moon?”

We’d never seen a black hole. None of us. Except maybe with telescopes lurking at the middle of galaxies. “That’s science fiction.”

“But theoretically possible?”

I was doing myself in. I gritted my teeth and plowed forward anyway. “It isn’t likely.”

“Isn’t science about the unlikely, the theories?”

It went on like that. When we were done, Jeff had stuttered, Salli had been destroyed, and I’d utterly failed to keep the anger out of my voice. Great. That was the way to reassure the populace. And the judges would almost certainly vote however the media polls told them to.

I hadn’t been good enough.

It was only one in the afternoon when Judge Julie called a final recess, telling us to re-assemble in the courtroom in three hours for a verdict.

I came off the edge of the dais, stepping carefully, keeping my head down. Ken. I stepped back and tried to go around him, nearly falling back onto the stage.

He pulled me in to him like a familiar pet. I hated it that he still knew how, but this time when I contemplated bolting, I noticed a bank of swarm cams nearing us. Hell, since the verdict was assured, why not watch some of the human drama? I stood straighter and smiled sweetly at him. If Ramona could smile before she skewered me, I could smile for the press. “Hi, Ken. You guys made a good argument.”

He nodded, his facial features carefully controlled. “But I’m not sure we won.”

Trust him to be gallant. “I’m sure your side will prevail. The media polls have you ahead 10 percent.”

He smiled and leaned in closer. “The chief justice’s daughter is a scientist.”

Maybe that explained the compassion I’d glimpsed. “She’s one of seven.”

“Two. The other American always votes with her. So if you convinced two more?”

“I still think you’re in fantasyland.” His hand sat easily at my waist. He smelled clean, like unscented soap. He used to keep his own bar of unscented soap in the shower, and if he was out, he wouldn’t use my lavender soap. Now who was in fantasyland? “What can I do for you, Ken?”

He pressed a fat capsule into my hand, carefully, hiding it from the swarms. “Just remember how we used to work together in the past.”

I almost dropped it. The capsule was the right size, a little over two inches long, more than one deep, and a little heavier than I remembered. Back when he’d first shown me the lost nanosecond, we’d both been afraid for a few months. We’d carried these: vials of negative mass, sealed in Penning traps. He’d worked on it as a graduate student in the ‘40s, and he must still have access. God alone knew how. Not that I believed in God.

The only thing we had been able to think of that might destroy a microscopic black hole: feed it some negative mass so the forming singularity would be neutralized.

Maybe we’d live. No one had thrown negative mass at a singularity, because no one could make a singularity to throw anything at. But if we did, we’d have it. Funny safety valve for scientists.

He whispered in my ear. “Take it to the Moon with you.”

I closed my eyes, my heart thumping in my chest like it had so many years ago. It had faded and gone away, this fear. It had gone so far away I was willing to testify on national media streams. Damn him. I’d outgrown this, gone beyond it. It had never happened again. No more bad results, no lost milliseconds, no black hole bogeys under the bed. Just physics and acceptable levels of risk.

Just adult things.

I let my eyes meet his for the first time, looking for what he saw. He saw the young scientist afraid she’d blow up the whole world but bravely moving forward. I’d lost the fear. I’d lost myself. The words came out broken and stuttering. “Th… thank you.”

He leaned down and kissed me hard enough to call up strings of excitement in my belly. String theory. Physics jokes between lovers. I almost laughed. I needed to laugh, but I couldn’t, not here, not now.

Even though I’d gone beyond him, I pocketed the capsule and returned to my seat, to the good guy’s side of the aisle.

I felt awkward in small talk to my colleagues. I felt so uneasy all the way through lunch with Jerry and Salli and Jeff and the CEOs that I completely missed it when Salli told me I’d done well. She had to repeat herself, like a strengthening echo before I realized she’d been talking to me. I should have been hungry, but everything tasted like crackers or mashed potatoes in need of salt.

I gave up and excused myself, returning early to the round Hall of Justice, feeling small and out of place.

The twenty minutes before the next person came in took forever. I stared at the walls, slowly exhaling the smell and feel of Ken. This was why I left him: He scared me. Beside him, the world was always one breath away from dying.

Control returned, followed by the press and the rest of the audience.

Jerry smiled as he sat by me, looking brave in the face of likely disaster. The windows had been opened against the afternoon, and a soft warm breeze made the flags flutter, giving me a faint feeling of hope.

The bailiff called out, “All rise.”

We rose.

The judges filed in.

Three women and four men. Six countries. The minority opinion always went first. I realized I’d stopped breathing and dragged in a deep lungful of stale air, hot from the midday sun.

“We, Venezuela and Russia, find the prosecution right.”

Oh my god. Right. The minority found the prosecution right. Oh my god. I sat up, trying to keep the triumph from smearing itself across my face in a great big smile. The cams. Have to be patient for the cams.

I glanced over at Ken and patted my pocket. This time I didn’t stutter, I just mouthed, “Thank you.”

He nodded, the cowlick visible in all its glory from here. My ex-husband, the scared little boy, sitting on the side of the afraid. But I’d take some of his fear with me. A good scientist remembered the risks, and the old women with fear in their eyes.