text: Our work was experimental. It had yielded results unexpected to even its biggest proponents. But I wasn’t fully convinced it would apply to everything. Nevertheless, we had the funding and resources available to find out. It was a hard sell trying to get a team together. It always was. Ventures like these defined sacrifice. Sure, we’d be able to send our results back, but there was no returning for us. Not to a world we'd be familiar with anyway. Missions like these definitely attracted a certain kind of mind. Curious, but troubled. Brave enough to embark on the journey but lonely enough to survive it. We were commissioned to see if the underlying secrets of the universe could be revealed in the same way we eventually understood tubular flow. I had been sat watching recordings of concert pianists playing music to different animals. It always amazed me how music managed to ignite emotions in creatures who lacked the capacity to express their own feelings as we might. We share no means of communication with them, but can somehow still connect through harmony. It made me wonder whether there might have been a link between the work our colleagues we’re doing in M theory and this pensive afternoon thought. Our friends had been correct in their assumption of one dimensional vibrating ‘strings’ being the fundamental substance of the universe. And these strings have been whispering the secrets of our skies since the beginning of time. The closing symphony of all that ever was, and all that ever will be, baked into the fabric of the universe itself, and all we had to do was listen. Quantum computing had allowed us to decode the messages within nature's song on a larger scale initially with the wind. Listening to the collisions of the atoms in a chaotic environment revealed patterns more beautiful than we could have ever hoped to comprehend on our own. Most of the work was done for us, we just had to point the machines in the right direction. Our work became a revolution. Suddenly, the whole world took notice. What could this mean? How else could this be applied? Maybe there is nothing that can’t be understood. It’s funny, despite this in my opinion being a very optimistic (and quite frankly unfounded) assessment of our work, people we’re still thinking that there’s a chance we could finally create a unified theory of everything. To truly understand all there is to know about the space in which everything resides. The big organisations were fighting tooth and nail with their respective governments to be the ones to fund the project, as if money and power mean anything once the language of the universe becomes fluent to all. Nevertheless, after an arduous few years, a plan was in place. A team selected. And a vessel's door ready to be closed for what might be the final time. In approximately 2 hours we would take our first steps towards HR6819, the closest black hole to earth. We would attempt to record the gentle hum of colliding particles and their counterparts at the event horizon. We would listen to the drumbeat of the gravitational waves echoing out from the black holes heart, and see if amidst all the chaos, the orchestra was in fact playing a specific song. Our team consisted of physicists, engineers, and the requisite male and female psychologists. Some people naturally find it easier to open up to one gender over another, and it's important to have both options on board. Our ship's door closes and we lift off up through the atmosphere. It's a strange feeling looking down at a planet, knowing it will only ever exist like this in your memories from this day on. Once we break the threshold of our planet's gravity, our course is set for HR6819, and the journey begins. I mentioned earlier that these missions tend to attract a certain kind of person. This one was no expectation, nor am I. A few months into the trip and we’d started to dive past the surface level masquerades for our crewmates. I’d taken a particular interest in a lady called Marie. A little older than I, but not by much. Maybe in her early 40’s. Most of us had brought some sort of sentimental curio with us, but Marie’s was the only that lingered in my mind. It was a small slip of paper with the word “Juga” written on in faded ink. It would be a while before she told me what this meant, and subsequently, what it meant to her. Our ship’s design had highlighted a rather peculiar question for us all to consider. It was fitted with 8 separate deployable pods. One for each passenger. We had enough fuel for the return journey... that wasn’t the issue. The issue was whether you would want to go back. Somehow the prospect of returning to a planet you’ve intentionally left behind can be a little too daunting when you understand how long it takes. We had all been assigned individual resources, and we were all given the option of venturing off further into the unknown once our work was complete. We could go in pairs, on our own, in groups, or all stay aboard the main vessel and return back to our planet's distant future together. The importance was simply that we had the choice. It was practically unheard of for anyone to not come back, but somehow having the option there helped to keep people calm. A few sessions in with the psychologist and we had started talking about my life and relationships back on Earth. Why I’d left them behind and how I managed to do this. I explained that although I could still feel the tension of the link from my heart, that the rope was not tethered to anyone anymore. It was merely drifting in an endless sea looking for something to anchor down on to. The feeling was not reciprocated and the reasons we’re my doing. It was this feeling that allowed me to embark on the journey. It was something that had plagued me for years and it became apparent at some point that it wasn’t going away. The timeline of our inception was brandished in my mind. Such pivotal moments meaningless to an observer burnt into my very being. This was scar tissue I normally hid from others, but every now and then I would run my finger along its coarse spine to feel its pain and remember its cause. To see her in a fleeting world where we were still in love. But that world is gone, alive only in my memories and conversations of what once was. At some point I remember stepping out of one of my sessions to see Marie hunched over in a corner. As I approached to see what was wrong she simply got up and walked past me into the psychologists room. We eventually spoke about that evening. She told me she’d overheard my meeting and became overwhelmed with her own issues. She had never truly opened up to either of the psychologists but we stayed up all night talking. Marie was a widow, her late husband Rasmus had died 4 years prior to our trip in a skiing accident. They had met in school and dated on and off during their late teens and early twenties. She described their situation as both having an appreciation of the other's autonomous life. They were in love, truly, but managed to focus on their own individual aspirations in their youth. Once they had settled down in careers they had a more typical relationship dynamic. Both adventurous and passionate, sharing interests and exploring some separately. Rasmus was really into his extreme sports. Marie would join him on hikes, and climbs, but didn’t much care for skiing. One day Rasmus’ group was caught in an avalanche. His body found and recovered, taken immediately to intensive care. He was comatosed, and the doctors told Marie that he would never recover. She was faced with a choice. To keep him on life support, or to resign his soul to the fate we all succumb to one day. Years passed where she worked from his bedside. Praying that one day a sign of life would appear. She told me that being alone is better than being sat by your lover and feeling lonely. And here she was. Alone. On her first date with Rasmus he took her to Valaste, Estonia’s highest waterfall standing at roughly 30m. She was a foreign student at the time and couldn’t speak a word when they met. As they sat there at the top watching the murky waters cascade over the edge in a fury, he handed her a slip of paper. Juga, it means waterfall. After what felt like a lifetime, we had finally made it to HR6819. We would stay in a Geostationary Transfer Orbit around the black hole and send our data back to Earth. The time would come for us to decide whether we would stay for the return journey, or make use of the deployable pods long before we received any word back about the success or failure of our efforts. A meeting was held where we would all discuss our thoughts on the topic. I sat next to Marie. I’d silently hoped throughout our conversations that she would accompany me back to Earth. I’m not saying we were in love or anything so fantastical, just that she was the first person I’d felt truly comfortable with in a long time. The psychologists started off the conversation. I remember noticing a glance they shared that seemed to linger in the air like a feather sidestepping its descent to the ground. They alluded to the fact that the years of sharing in our troubles had taken a hefty toll on them. In due course they would explain that they had decided they would take their pods and go off in search of... well, they weren’t quite sure. To them, they had concluded that both paths would take them on a journey into the unknown. At least this way, it felt like they were moving forwards. The psychologists had played such a pivotal role in allowing us to feel less trapped aboard this ship. They had affected some of us more than others. Marie was seemingly ambivalent. I’d gone off to my room to get away from the panicked squabbling. Marie entered and sat beside me on the bed. I’ll never forget what she said to me. She laid her head across my body and I closed my eyes. I could feel my heartbeat rise in speed and forcefulness. I wished so strongly for it to stop in case the pounding of my internal metronome caused her to leave. I remember holding my breath so as not to disturb her with the repeating tide of my chest. But she didn’t. My feelings towards her all but spelled out in the rhythmic orchestration of my body. It was only at that moment I’d realised them for myself. We returned back to the group as the psychologists were preparing to leave. I could still hear her last words ringing in my ears. As the three pods eventually ejected into the vastness of space I remember looking out, rooted to the ground beneath my feet, wishing nothing more than to be aboard one of them myself.