I nod slowly in agreement. “I’m aware of that.”
“Tell me about your recovery. How long after the accident was it before you started your research again?”
While Collins is doing her best to define and label me, I don’t think about it in terms that can be explained by a medical journal, with identifying numbers and buzz terminology.
Before the accident, I was one way. I’d spend hours in the Lick Observatory, writing code for telescope systems, running simulations, analyzing galaxy data. I was a machine, hardwired and driven.
After the motorcycle wreck, I became something else entirely.
My tainted gray matter whispers,monster.
“There was a before and after,” I tell her simply. “I spent two months in the hospital. While there, fibers began to irritate me. I could literally feel every particle of my clothes against my skin. The germs in the air—I could see them. Taste them. Sense them crawling into my lungs.”
“Before and after,” she repeats softly, a trace of something meaningful in her expression. “What else.”
I run my tongue over my teeth, thoroughly amused by her. “After eleven months in recovery, I was cleared to return to work.”
After so many years, the memory is somewhat fuzzy to pull forth. But as I hold her gaze, finding those golden stars hidden there, it becomes easier to recall the moment I walked into the observatory. The welcome I received.
And I do remember how empty the space felt, Emma’s absence creating a giant void, a black hole itself. Her research lost with her. When I touched any surface, I could feel the contaminating elements. I could see the microbes, flaring black and pulsing at the corner of my vision. I could hear my pupils dilate, my heart race.
Paralyzing.
The worst part was the way it made my mind feel, discombobulated. Detached.
“My first day back, I spent two hours in the clean room and four locked in my office,” I admit with a chagrined smile as humiliation attacks my ego.
A crease of concern deepens between her brows, and I rub the back of my neck. “It wasn’t long after that I was put on ‘academic leave’ and was ‘redirected to focus on personal research’. Academic bullshit that was intended to maintain my sense of dignity, but ultimately meant I wouldn’t be returning to my role.”
She folds her arms across her chest. “But you did. You started focusing on your own research.”
My jaw hardens. “And I refuse to let anyone take it from me.”
A thick silence builds, heavy beneath the hum of instruments and the ventilation system that insulates us in the dim room. Collins shifts her attention, her gaze landing on the cylinder. She steps closer, extending a hand toward the glass.
“Careful,” I warn.
She withdraws abruptly. “Is it dangerous?”
“No, not dangerous.” By now, she should realize exactly where the danger lies. “But it’s expensive. Leo might have a coronary if anything happens to it.”
She raises a delicate eyebrow, prompting me on.
I expel a slow breath, giving in to her further. “It’s a sonic black hole,” I explain. “Because escape velocity exceeds the speed of light, nothing can escape a black hole. Here, the circulating water in the cylinder simulates that point of no return, creating an acoustic horizon, where the swirling fluid exceeds the speed of sound. Sound waves are trapped in the vortex, unable to move against the current past this point.” I find and hold her eyes. “The way matter and light cross the horizon of a stellar-mass black hole. Beyond that boundary, escape becomes impossible.”
I let my gloved fingers rest against the glass. “I record the frequency downshift, the way the trapped sound waves stretch as they approach the horizon. It lets me sonify time dilation. A glimpse at what spacetime does to information at the boundary.”
The fainttremor of spiraling water vibrates beneath my hand. Echoes held at the threshold of loss.
A thoughtful expression softens her features. “So the sound stays caught in motion,” she says, far too insightful as she watches the swirling vortex. “Like a melody pulled into a riptide, eternally echoing deep under the surface where no one can hear.”
I nod once with a hard swallow, throat tight.
“And this relates to your research—how?” she asks.
“I try to hear that lost melody.”
The broken cadence of hers fills the tense space between our heartbeats.
