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[flareofgenius]

[Lucca's plugging away at the systems on her door with a screwdriver- just a plain old screwdriver, so it's taking. Well. Rather a while. She figures it's better than staying stuck inside and doing nothing, though.

Might as well make conversation while she's at it.] While we're here, I wondered if I could get a few things clarified. Black

Comments

[oliverplus]

You know, the captain started spouting something at the party about the course being all wrong. I wonder if the black hole part was an accident after all?

[flareofgenius]

Really? I must've missed that, can you tell me a little more?

It's definitely odd.

[oliverplus]

I can do better than that! I saved it on my sphere. [ plays the relevant footage for Lucca]

What do you think? I can't think of anything else you'd "set" besides a course, especially since he mentions they would've gone missing.

[flareofgenius]

Great! Thanks!

Not in that context, no. So if someone or something altered it, who could it have been? With what objective? Was it the test?

[dawnward]

What gets me is that you shouldn't be able to go into a black hole, period. The gravity would crush us into nothing before we event made it to the center of it. We've always blacked out every time the ship reached the point where the gravity would kill us all.

It makes me wonder if we die each time.

[flareofgenius]

[she nods, listening as closely as she can] I see… So the initial presumption is probably false, then.

[she slows down at the last part, though, attention switching over to him] That's… It sounds possible. And then it what, pulls us back after?

What does that mean for afterwards?

[bit_impossible]

[slowly] Yeah...black holes are something you really don't want to deal with, not unless you're a trained stellar engineer and even then, you'll want to be careful. But the singularity, the very nucleus of a black hole has untold amounts of power that can be harnessed in the right hands and with the correct technological know-how. And going through a black hole, well, that's a different matter entirely. Anything can happen, and I do mean anything, but we shouldn't dwell on the possibilities. Whether or not one of these possibilities was the source of Ganymede's increased paranoid actions, I can't say for certain.

What's important right now is focusing on getting to the bridge and, on the way, Level 3. All our answers should be on those two levels and this time we'll be able to stop it from happening all over again.

[flareofgenius]

So going through- or trying to- wouldn't have been the best way of trying to use that power, is that right?

[nods] Yeah, true. It'll just be getting there.

[bit_impossible]

Correct. Entering it would, in theory, would be very, very bad. To put it lightly. Have to remember it's a dead star collapsing in on itself and black holes are always growing. If the gravity differentials don't kill us, then so will a dozen other things occurring at the same time.

[flareofgenius]

…the sooner we can get all this done with the better, then. [and she thinks she's almost got the door, hurrah]

…Doctor, what would happen if we did die here?

[shoutsforearth]

So you think that going through the black hole was what made him go mad?

[flareofgenius]

I don't think that it would have been a direct cause, but it probably didn't help him any.

[shoutsforearth]

I hope you're right. Otherwise I'd be worrying about us going the same way next.

[flareofgenius]

We'll get out of this before anything like that.