ONE: Epilogue of Hermesh

9. Into Oblivion

As security officers escorted the Captain out of the bridge, an anxious Tekkar turned to Erra, "Commodore, I am not taking his side, but as far as the consequences of our actions go, what Captain Porthel said is not wrong. Once the central singularity collapses, there will be no way to control the blackholes that will emerge. We do this and we may very well risk losing Ralnac."

"Maybe. Maybe not." Muttered Erra as he started scribbling something on the photon paper in front of him.

"How do you know about the 200,000 ships?" Tekkar asked, while observing her mentor curiously. Something about the certainty in Erra's voice had bothered her. 

"I just...do," Erra answered before finishing and handing the paper to Tekkar, "Now tell me what you make of this. I hope you can. Or else, I will have to drag the Captain back in." He looked up at his protege and added, "And I really don't want to do that."

Tekkar, who had already started reading the equations on the photon paper floating in front of her eyes, seemed too shocked and confused to answer the question. Judging from the expression as well as the fluctuating colours of Tekkar's skin, Erra guessed she at the very least understood what he had written down.

"If you don't mind me asking, Commodore, how did you come across this?" Tekkar asked slowly, "Did the Manwatu give it to you?"

"Should they have?" Erra retorted mildly. 

"Do you know what this is, Commodore?" Tekkar asked, turning with wild bewildered eyes.

"I was hoping you could tell me." Erra replied, trying to sound more confident than he felt. 

"This looks like something derived from one of Mondroh Annokh's Unprovables." 

"Unprovable? I was just told he proved how to build wormholes!"

"This is part of Annokh's final works, Commodore," Tekkar explained, "Alongside his blackhole and wormhole theories, Annokh had come up with a series of mathematical solutions that he claimed could potentially bypass most of the problems that he anticipated would be encountered when building super wormholes. We call them Unprovables because even though they look perfect in theory, none of them were deemed provable in practice. At least not by using our scientific knowledge of the time or even now."

"I'm sure, nobody could've predicted we would end up in a situation like this." Erra replied, "But now that we have, are you saying  that Annokh's mathematical theories can be tested in the real world?"

"I dare say, I do. But..." Tekkar trailed off.

"But what?" Erra probed her, anxiously.

"What you have here, Commodore, is much more than what Mondroh Annokh had originally postulated. By the looks of it, somebody has actually taken Annokh's work and expanded on it. That's why I asked if the Manwatu..."

"No, not the Manwatu. But I think an old friend might have told me that it makes sense. Tell me, how is it supposed to work?" smiled Erra.

"What is keeping the two blackhole singularities from merging together, inside the central singularity is a mass of negative matter contained in an artificial structure known as the quasi-geode. Once the codes are transmitted, the quasi-geode will self-destruct, releasing the negative particles. When these particle disappear into subspace, the two black hole singularities will finally merge together as one."

"In the absence of any negative energy radiation, the two black holes will start acting like black holes." finished Erra, catching on quickly. "Then what does this Unprovable change?" Erra asked.

"I'm not quite sure. But if I had to speculate, I'd say, it would change the way the geode self-destructs."

"But are you sure it will self-destruct?" enquired Erra.