singularity surfing

The kinetic battledress wraps around him, its liquid feel enclosing him like a secret fish in its subconscious. Their ship is approaching the black hole on a known, safe vector, or at least as safe as the techs can manage, and so long as the timings are correct then he and the suit should survive long enough to encounter whatever it is buried deep within it.

For a long time black holes were considered inescapable. What goes in stays locked inside forever, not destroyed, but hidden. For all he knows, this is still true. Then the techs found that some black holes are not quite what they thought, being a spinning clockwork of singularities held in a special balance that protects what is contained within the mechanism without destroying it, but distorting the time and space within to create a a kind of sub-space, or ur-space, or something. Civilisations would hide themselves inside them, protected from the many and varied dangers of the universe, waiting for a moment when they might emerge, more powerful than their rivals, and conquer their galaxy. Or maybe just hide inside forever, looking to survive the heat death of the universe. Either way they make rich pickings for those with the secret of how to crack the eggs open.

(inspired by Rudy Rucker's blog. Read it.)