Black in Time – Part 3
by Ryan Hsu, 10
A May 2025 Monthly Story Challenge Winner
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Their question hung in the air like a blade over their heads, its weight pressing onto both of them. Barley stood there, standing still. His mind raced with fragmented knowledge pulled from years of learning theoretical physics along with his extremely intensive training to become an astronaut. He was piecing together how they had traveled back in time and more importantly, how they were going to return to their home in the future.
He was lost in thought when he was interrupted by the feeling of small tremors beneath his feet. Untrained people would not even detect it, yet alone recognize what it could be. Barley’s eyebrows shot up and he gasped. He knew that these tremors were not random—they were the vibrations of the tether destabilizing, a cosmic warning of imminent collapse. The air crackled with tension, the feeling of the unavoidable savaging at his thoughts.
“If we don’t stabilize the tether,” Barley said, his voice still tight with urgency, “this entire timeline could collapse into a singularity. The future and past will start folding into each other, creating a temporal implosion. It’s a chain reaction we can’t stop once it accelerates.”
Chuck paced back and forth, his boots clunking heavily against the polished marble floor. The ornate room surrounding them seemed a world away from the catastrophe unfolding beyond the palace’s walls. Carved wooden beams, gilded in gold, loomed high above, depicting fierce dragons entwined with orbs of power—symbols of control over chaos. Yet no symbol could contain the chaos that was hurtling toward them from the sky.
“Okay,” Chuck said, dragging a gloved hand over his helmet in frustration. “You keep talking about this ‘tether,’ is it some kind of bridge? What is it, exactly? How does it even work?”
Barley stepped closer to the window, his eyes scanning the darkening black sky. He pointed, and Chuck followed his gaze. The faint flicker of stars in the distance was interrupted by rippling distortions—a strange, fluid warping of light that shimmered unnaturally across the area.
“It’s almost like a space elevator,” Barley explained, his voice muted, but urgent. “You remember the Earth-to-Moon elevator concept? The idea of a cable connecting Earth to space, anchored to the ground and balanced by a counterweight in orbit?”
Chuck slowly nodded. “Yeah, I remember it. Carbon nanotubes, graphene, all that sci-fi material. People said it’d make moving cargo into space cheaper than rockets.”
“Exactly,” Barley said, the words spilling out of his mouth now, his mind working faster he could speak. “But imagine this: instead of a physical cable, it’s an energy tether—one that connects specific points in space and time. We must have been pulled through the tether to this historical time through that burst of energy we encountered in the black hole. The tether is what’s keeping us anchored here, while hopefully leaving us a pathway back to our own time. But someone—or something—is destabilizing it.”
Chuck’s brow furrowed as he processed the implications. “Look at the faint ripples in the sky…”
“Gravitational waves,” Barley confirmed with a grim nod. “They’re being amplified by the collapsing tether, just like how the ripples on a pond spread when you throw in a stone. But in this case, those waves are distorting space-time itself.”
He paused, his voice dropping as he recalled the words of a physics professor he’d once idolized. “Gravitational waves are like echoes of massive cosmic events—black holes colliding, stars exploding. But this? This is different. The tether’s unraveling is creating an artificial distortion, and like I suspected earlier, it could be pulling everything in its path toward a singularity.”
Chuck’s heart thudded in his chest as he turned to face his friend, his words faltering. “So you’re telling me this whole timeline could get sucked into… what? A black hole?”
Barley’s expression hardened. “Even worse. Let me explain the idea of temporal singularity. The laws of physics as we know them won’t apply. Past, present, and future will collapse into one endless moment. It’s like time itself will fracture, and everything… will cease to exist.”
Chuck let out a shaky breath, glancing around the opulent palace room. The Emperor’s guards stood frozen in place, their faces impassive, oblivious to the cosmic crisis unfolding above their heads. The world outside seemed calm, peaceful even, but now Chuck noticed the subtle anomalies that no one else seemed to perceive—shadows bending unnaturally, faint whispers echoing in strange patterns that made the hairs on the back of his hands stand up.
“So, how do we fix it?” Chuck asked, his voice trembling despite his best effort to stay composed.
Barley frowned, his gaze distant as he mentally mapped out their dwindling options. “Perhaps the satellite we were working on before we got pulled into this place somehow attached to the tether’s energy source. Could that have destabilized the tether all together? If we can somehow amplify the signal and stabilize the connection, we might be able to snap back to the present. But…”
Chuck’s voice tightened with impatience. “But what?”
Barley turned to him, his expression grim and raw with the weight of what they were facing. “It’s not just about fixing the tether. The energy destabilization is radiating outward, which would create a massive buildup in the Earth’s atmosphere. If it hits critical mass anytime soon, it’ll release an explosion strong enough to incinerate half of the Earth.”
Chuck stared at him in disbelief, his mind struggling to grasp the enormity of the situation. “So, let me get this straight. We need to fix an invisible, time-warping tether, save the timeline, and stop a planetary explosion? Great. No pressure.”
Barley managed to let out a faint smirk despite the dire circumstances. “Welcome to time travel.”
Just as Chuck let out a frustrated laugh, another violent vibration coursed through the ground. This time, it was stronger, more insistent. The golden lanterns above them swayed dangerously, their warm glow casting distorted, flickering shadows on the walls. The sky outside—what was left of it—grew darker, as if a great weight was pressing down from above. The faint flickering of distant stars vanished, swallowed by a creeping, unnatural darkness that seemed to be spreading faster than Chuck’s head could process.
“We need to find the source of the tether signal,” Barley said, snapping into action. His tone was steady, but there was an edge to it now. “If we don’t fix everything,—their past, and our future—ends here.”
Chuck was already moving, his mind fully engaged as he felt the weight of the impossible task ahead of them. “Where do we even start?”
Barley turned, pulling up a holographic map of the satellite they’d been working on before being pulled into this timeline. “There’s a relay station in the outer ring of the station. If we can reach it, we might be able to use the communication systems to transmit an amplification signal.”
Chuck clenched his fists. “So we find the satellite, get to the relay, and hope that we’re not too late?”
“Pretty much,” Barley replied. He glanced at the guards, still standing in silent formation, and still unaware of the impending catastrophe. “We’ll need to move fast.”
Fortunately, the guards were not even paying attention to them and the astronauts easily slipped past them. The two of them stealthily made their way toward the palace exit, the sense of time—both the ticking of the clock and the unwinding of it—pressing heavier on them with each step. The door slowly creaked open, and they were met with the harsh, unsettling surroundings of the Emperor’s courtyard once again. Despite the grandeur of the setting, the air felt colder than it should have been, tinged with the unshakable feeling of being watched.
Barley’s mind raced as he calculated their next moves, but with each passing moment, the tether unraveled faster. Outside, the sky had darkened almost entirely, now an ominous void that beckoned the unraveling of time itself.
"Time is running out," Barley muttered, his words barely audible over the distant rumbling that seemed to reverberate from every corner of reality itself.
Chuck looked at him, a new resolve hardening his features. "Then let’s make sure we find a solution."
With that, the two of them stepped into the unknown, toward a future that no longer existed—and a past they could only hope to save.
Works Cited
- Ash, Arvin. “What Exactly is Spacetime? Explained in Ridiculously Simple Words.” YouTube, 4 October 2021, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3khY_bwf5FY.com. Accessed 24 January 2025.
- Cohen, Stephen, and Clara Moskowitz. “Space Elevators Are Less Sci-Fi Than You Think.” Scientific American, 25 November 2022, https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/space-elevators-are-less-sci-fi-than-you-think/.com Accessed 28 January 2025.
- “Is Time Travel, Especially Into the Past Possible? | Matt Szydagis | TEDxSchenectady.” YouTube, 16 January 2018, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m2-I5HUwfRg.com. Accessed 24 January 2025.
- “Is time travel really possible? Here's what physics says.” BBC, 12 November 2023, https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20231110-doctor-who-is-time-travel-really-possible-heres-what-physics-says.com Accessed 24 January 2025.
- “Live Science.” How a Space Elavator could Work-and the Challenges It Faces., https://www.livescience.com/how-space-elevators-c.com. Accessed 24 1 2025.
- “Nasa.” The Science of Gravitational Waves, https://www.nasa.gov/gravitational-waves-explained.com. Accessed 22 1 2025.
Photo: Timothy Chan on Unsplash