• “Black holes…are holes, professor.”

    The class laughed. The student that spoke smiled sheepishly. He was an athlete that only just picked his head up off his desk.

    The professor nodded. “A very astute observation, Mr. Greene.”

    He turned back to the board and started chalking the first lecture of the morning beneath the title, “What Are Black Holes?”

    The sunlight spiraled in a lazy beam through the windows, onto five rows of four wooden desks. Somehow, it could also tell it was a Monday. Seventeen out of twenty students were writing. One looked up and adjusted her glasses. Red, horn-rimmed glasses. They popped against her deep turquoise blouse and gold jewelry.

    The professor squinted through his own reading specs, and ducked under the flag in the corner to move across the front of the room.

    “‘Black holes’ are indeed black holes in space, but not in our traditional definition of a ‘hole’,” the professor continued, “though observers could never tell the difference. In fact an observer would never see one at all.

    “A black hole is a point of infinite density – the escape velocity of a black hole is well past three-thousand kilometers per second. Light couldn’t even pass through its event horizon without falling back in. This makes it more or less invisible on a visible-light spectrum.”

    The glasses girl raised her hand. “But on another level of the spectrum, you’re saying that it can be seen?”

    The professor turned around, and tilted his head as if he was looking at her for the first time. “Not necessarily, Miss…”

    “Susan.”

    “…Miss Susan,” the professor grinned after a pause. She shrugged.

    “I like a first-name basis.”

    “Well, Susan,” he continued, “black holes don’t rotate quickly enough to swallow all of the matter that passes it, especially large matter, comparatively. So when matter is ‘swallowed’ by the black hole, massive jets of subatomic particles are ejected from both points of its axis.”

    “Wouldn’t it have only one axis?”

    “An excellent question…I’m sorry, did you say your name was…?”

    Inside her head, her eyes were rolling. It was funny, how professors were so stereotypical in places like Yale itself, just outside of the realm of state universities.

    “It’s -”

    “Susan!”

    Susan jumped up, her head snapping to attention. The bright white lights made her squint.

    “What, what?” she stammered. A kid on the bench next to her snickered.

    “She asked you a question,” he said. He was gangly, sporting a black leather jacket and a shocking pink mohawk.

    Susan stared at the whiteboard-marker scrawl. Black holes and their place in the universe…

    “…Black holes aren’t holes,” she muttered. The teacher sighed, and turned back to her notes.

    “They act like holes, but correct, Susan. They’re not holes, per se.”

    Susan slouched back against the wall. She wasn’t sure why, in a jail cell of a grey lecture hall with three hundred students, she was called on. Being addressed individually at all was weird.

    She ran her fingers through her cropped, black hair when the teacher turned around again.

    “Black holes are one of an option of end-products for dying stars,” she began. “When neutron stars – you’ll remember from Wednesday’s class – become too weak to uphold against the density their mass creates, then they can become black holes.

    “A black hole according to Einstein’s Theory of Relativity is almost like a well in the fabric of space, an infinite curvature.”

    “Where does it curve?” Susan asked. She thought that she was whispering. Apparently the nighttime senses of everyone around her weren’t as sleepy as she’d thought. Heads turned, and the teacher stopped writing.

    She surprised Susan with a wag of her finger. “An intriguing question, Susan. Where does it curve…?”

    She grabbed a different color marker and moved to another section of board. “Einstein had another theory, Susan, that he formed called the Einstein-Rosen Bridge…you should be writing this down…”

    At once pens started scratching at paper, and keys started clicking.

    “The Einstein-Rosen Bridge! Yes, I’ve heard of it Miss Peak,” Susan’s professor answered her, a spritely little man that always seemed to laugh. Susan liked him; he was the only one that…understood her. Where she should be, rather than where she was.

    She smoothed a brown bang that hung in her face back behind her ear. She would redo her bun later.

    “The Einstein-Rosen Bridge is another theory, that two black holes can be connected, even across vast sections of the universe!” he explained. He clicked a button on the remote he held, and the slide on the projector changed to an image of two depictions of black “holes”, only this time they were connected by a tube-shaped link attached to their lower axes.

    “Science nerds like me have dubbed them wormholes, and the phrase has been coined for books and television, yes. However, a more interesting idea has been grasped by humanity than just this bridge across our own universe.”

    He looked around the classroom. Community college classes looked too much like high school for Susan’s taste. She’d already had to suffer her first and second years through the reminder. The desks were old, the rooms smelled like cleaner. She was demoralizing herself by not having applied to any other school two years ago but her one choice, her dream…which didn’t think enough of her, of course…

    She almost didn’t hear what the professor said next through her thoughts.

    “What if…what if, the Einstein-Rosen Bridge connected with a black hole to another universe entirely?”

    Oh boy. Class over. When he started a story, there wasn’t too much hope of recovering the learning. She settled back in her seat, and looked around. Over half the class didn’t bother to come. It was Friday, they probably figured, what harm could a three-day weekend do?

    The professor was looking around too, but rather than count heads he looked each student in the eye. The Dramatic Pause.

    “You know,” he started, pulling back his rolling desk chair and taking a seat, “there is a hypothesis that for every choice we make in life, there is another existence…a dimension, almost…with a version of ourselves that makes the other choice.

    “For example, I packed a ham sandwich for lunch with me today. But I had to choose between ham and chicken. According to this hypothesis, the second I chose ham, another version of me in another universe would have chosen a chicken sandwich. Our existences broke apart, and another path had been created.”

    Susan sighed. That sounded more like fantasy. Maybe the other ‘versions’ of her would have more sense in another life. Maybe she would have submitted to the state colleges like her parents wanted. Or maybe, Yale would have decided to accept her…

    “Do you see what I’m saying?” the Yale professor asked the class. Time had flown by, and early Monday morning had become late Monday morning.

    Susan undid her ponytail, letting her bushy, curly auburn hair fall over her shoulders. The sunlight better illuminated the cream colored walls at this angle, giving the classroom a warm, woody feeling. She loved it here.

    She knew that if she hadn’t been accepted, then she probably would have gone to her local community college. She didn’t apply elsewhere. It was worth the risk though. Every moment here…worth the risk.

    The professor walked to his desk and rapped hard on the surface. He then pointed accusingly to the space where he had been standing.

    “Somewhere, in another universe, I’m still standing there,” he said with such finality that Susan got chills. He was new, still really young, but didn’t have the class size for a teaching assistant. That was nice.

    He straightened himself and looked at Susan.

    “Did that answer your question about the ‘missing’ axis, Miss Peak?” he asked. “I apologize; last names are more comfortable for me.”

    In that fifty minutes, she had learned in so many words that the appearance of a black hole is only still up for deliberation – testing was impossible, let alone lethal. “Yes it did. Thank you, professor.”

    “Yes it did. Thanks Mrs. Strong,” Susan muttered. She wished she were in black hole.

    The mohawk kid leaned over to whisper in her ear. “That would be so sweet man. Like, being in two places at once?”

    “That’s not what she means,” Susan said, rolling her eyes. “Maybe not sleeping in class would be a good plan-A for you.”

    He gave her a Look. “Do you see everyone else? What does it matter -?”
    “Mr. Greene!” Mrs. Strong barked. “Miss Peak!

    "Mr. Greene...well, I would expect as much from you. Miss Peak? See me after class."

    Susan flushed. She sunk as deep as she could without being conspicuous into her seat. What was she thinking, applying to Yale if she couldn’t even keep a lecture class in check? Praise be that her parents convinced her at the last minute to apply to this school. At least it had decent football.

    She looked up at the clock. Nine-thirty at night. She was definitely missing a good show for this; Wednesdays had the best time slots.

    Four o’clock in the afternoon. Coffee and homework time.

    “Class dismissed,” Susan’s professor announced after checking his watch. Susan slid her textbook into her bag and stood to leave. Most of the kids were out the door before ‘dismissed’.

    “Miss Peak?” the professor asked tentatively before she could make it across the threshold. “Can I speak with you for a minute?”

    Susan cringed. He was going to ask her to try again with Yale, she knew it. This class…every day, it was like her own little black hole. She just kept spiraling back.

    “O-okay…Professor Strong.”

    “Good,” he said, and shuffled some papers around on his desk. He fell about a head shorter than her. Granted, she was wearing heels, and the lack of hair couldn’t help his height.

    She waited. He stacked some more file folders. Finally she swallowed.
    “I’m not going to apply again, Professor.”

    He sighed. “There’s still time for early decision. Its only the beginning of October.”

    “Susan?”

    Susan stood up. She had her next class at ten o’clock, so she hadn’t hurried out when it ended. “Yes?”

    She and her professor were the last two in the room. He was fiddling with a pencil eraser on his desk.

    “You seem to be more and more interested in my class every day,” he began, “and with the spring semester coming up…I was wondering if you would consider this as a major.”

    Susan stared. She was a sophomore, and it was high time to think about things like that, but Astronomy…physics, really…a major?

    She adjusted her glasses. “I don’t know Dr. Strong…”

    “All you would have to do is tell me if you’re interested or not,” he continued, “and I can put you down for consideration without obligation. How does that sound?”

    She shifted her weight, books in her clutch. It was a heady decision to make.

    “…Miss Peak?”

    Susan looked up.

    “You don’t tend to pay attention during my classes,” Mrs. Strong started. Susan stared at her feet. Her backpack was already over one shoulder.

    “But you do seem to understand the course material,” she said, “much better than the rest of your peers.”

    She let Susan see a slip of paper that she was holding. Susan looked, and gasped. It was the spring semester final grade. An A+.

    “I understand, too. You’re only a freshman,” Mrs. Strong finished with a tight-lipped smile, “but I’m willing to recommend you for honors placement next year. Will you take it?”

    Susan stared at Professor Strong. “You what?”

    “Attended Yale myself. On a transfer, no less,” he said, clapping his hands together. “I was in your predicament. I made waiting list the first time, applied again…and was accepted. With your record, I should say they would, too. A 4.0 average with honors credit…is very admirable.”

    “I have a transfer application, and will write as an alumnus your letter of recommendation.” He looked up at her. “Will you take it?”

    Susan looked out the window at the winter, watery sun. The brick of the Yale buildings glittered with clinging frost and chips of ice.

    “An Astronomy major…list?” she clarified a final time. Dr. Strong nodded eagerly.

    She took a deep breath.

    Susan shuffled her feet under her baggy black cargo pants. “Honors classes?”

    “Or advanced placement, your choice,” Mrs. Strong added. “How about it?”

    Susan looked up.

    Susan hesitated.

    Susan grinned.

    “Yes.”

    “Yes.”

    “Yes.”

    Yes.