Holism.

 

Well, I’ve got some good news and some bad news. Which do you want first? Spinach, then cake, or vice-versa? Right, then … let’s start with the bad news. Astronomers have discovered a super massive black hole 1.6 billion times more massive than our sun. It subsists on a diet equivalent of 25 suns a year, so it’s the deep space equivalent of the proverbial hungry hungry hippo. And it’s HEADED THIS WAY. Or not. That’s the bad news.

The good news? Well … it’s 13 billion light years away. So we’ve got some time. That said, I’ve already talked to our mad science advisor, Mitch Macaphee, about this terrifying celestial object. That may have been a mistake, because he appears to be obsessing over the thing. He has already proposed some kind of top secret space mission to learn more about J0313-1806 (the code name for the black hole inside a quasar). Mitch is proposing to send a volunteer – namely Marvin (my personal robot assistant) – in a specially designed space craft straight into the dark heart of the object, then bring him back so that he can report on what he saw there. How would he do that, given the irresistible power of the black hole? Well, there’s this rope, you see? And he’s planning on tying it to the marble statue of Grover Cleveland that stands in the nearby town square. (I think he was just spitballing at that point.)

Well, when Marvin heard about this, his lights started blinking frantically. At first I thought it might be Morse code, but it was probably the fight or flight circuitry Mitch built into him using spare parts scavenged from his central HVAC system back in Vienna. I kind of think Marvin doesn’t want to do this mission. Frankly, I can’t blame him. The stories I’ve read about flying into the center of black holes are not very encouraging. I mean, best case – he could be sent into some kind of time-space worm hole that would lead him to a previous era on Earth when dinosaurs ruled …. or perhaps when men with six-shooters ruled, depending on where he hops off. It might also, I don’t know, send him into the future, or drop him into a weird cave-like nether world inhabited by one-eyed freaks and Michael J. Pollard. Or (somewhat more likely) it might crush his atoms into a singularity long before he gets within light years of it. Either way, not a day in the park.

Fortunately for Marvin, Mitch hasn’t even started work on the spacecraft yet. Frankly, I don’t think he has much to worry about. Mitch gets these bugs sometimes, and they usually pass. Like when scientists were receiving radio signals from the Jovian moon Ganymede. Next thing I knew he had a radio telescope in the backyard, vacuuming up every microwave that dared float in his direction. A couple of days later, it was on to the next thing. Still, I’ve locked the rope in a trunk in the basement, just in case. (Sometimes you have to do the right thing, even if it’s not the simplest thing. This is not one of those times.)