One More Hug Before Bed

*Author's note: I didn't have time to research the right terminology for black holes and how they exactly work. Or about pressurizing humans in spaceships. Please allow for a little grace as I'm also currently trying to finish my novel.

Penny sat slouched in the cockpit of her starship. At first glance, you might think she was bored out of her mind, staring blankly out of the cockpit shield at the black hole she was being pulled into.

She welcomed what would be her demise with open arms. Her ship had run out of food a few days ago and she was in the throws of starvation. Water would soon be gone, too.

Her ship's power had been depleted for a while, meaning that her mission was effectively over and there was no way she was getting back home.

Looking out at the black hole singularity, she wished for it to take her rather than natural death from having no food and water. She longed to see the inside of this mysterious phenomenom though she certainly expected to be pulled apart in a million little pieces. But at least she could get to see a little bit of it before her ship disintegrated around her. Maybe it would give a little protection just to see what no one else has seen.

The stars seemed to move faster as the hours went on. She couldn't be certain if it was the black hole pulling her in more quickly or if the hunger was making her see things.

She sat up in her captain's chair and woke her dashcomp out of its drive sleep. Power was being diverted now to the dashcomp so she could continue to get a reading on the black hole and keep the comms open in case someone was looking for her.

She laughed out loud at that last thought. If someone was coming to find her, they would have rescued her already. Why waste the mental engergy even entertaining the thought? she said to herself. She closed her eyes. Just for a few minutes she told herself. Just to rest my eyes.

Hours later her dashcomp seemed to angrily beep at her. She knew it wasn't good because the beeping was accompanied by violent shaking. The hull started to creak as she steadied herself in the chair.

There was a good shake and she was thrown to the floor. It took every last ounce of engergy to get back in the chair, fighting exhaustion, dehydration and the power of the greatest destructive force in the known universe. Once in, she buckled the saftey harnesses.

With each violent shake, the harness bit into her flesh. She thought she might not be able to take the pain and wanted to risk flying around the ship with the gravcontrol off.

She was going to press the buckle release when all the light from the stars around her started streaking. The ship stopped shaking. Silence filled the cockpit. Then there was black as the streaking light of the stars ended like comets flying out of sight in the Montana night sky she grew up under.

She honestly didn't know if she was dead or alive. She hadn't been ripped apart. She hadn't been vaporized into stardust, disintegrated back to raw elements of the universe.

In her body, she could sense a speeding up though you wouldn't know it looking out the cockpit shield at nothingness. But something was happening around her and to the ship.

She risked unbuckling herself from the chair and getting closer to the shield to see anything, but there was nothing. It was like the entire galaxy had been erased.
Then she heard it. A knock. Had something hit the ship? What could have it been? She was in a black hole. Unless ... she wasn't alone in it.

Two more knocks. This time she got a better handle on the sound since she was listening for it. She didn't understand. She couldn't comprehend it. Her feet naturally took her toward the ship's airlock.

More knocks. They got louder the closer she approached the first door of the airlock. She could see through the window that no one was in there. So it's coming from outside? Outside the ship that's inside a black hole? She had to steady herself against the door and get her mind clear.

Knock. Knock. Knock. They were steady. Like someone who was patiently waiting on the other side fully expecting someone on the inside to answer and open the door.

"I must be dead," Penny said. "This isn't real. I'm dust and this must be some sort of consciousness I'm living in or passing through now. How can it be anything other?"

Feeling like this couldn't be happening in real life, she opened the first door of the airlock and stepped in. The door closed behind her. She stared at the big red button, lighted in all it's cautionary glory. It turned green as the room pressurized.
Her hand slowly reached for it. She felt it under her palm, warm to the touch from the light inside. She took a breath and pressed it.

The airlock door slowly opened. Penny wasn't sucked out into the cold vacuum of space. She was planted firmly in the airlock looking at blackness as the door kept opening out into the black hole.

As is it started to pull back against her ship, a figure came into view. At first, blurry and distorted, but as it moved closer the figure began to become clearer. It was now only feet in front of her.

The face. She couldn't believe who she was staring at in the middle of the airlock inside a black hole. She had to be dead because it was not possible that her father was standing in front of her. A father who passed away when she was seventeen. A father whose death shattered her world when he left to the great beyond.

"Hi, potato," he said.

Penny crumpled to the floor, sobbing uncontrollably. Her father stepped inside the airlock, closed the door and sat beside her, holding her close as she shook with every emotion in the human existence.

"I'm here," he said. "I'm here."

"How," Penny asked. "This isn't possible. I saw you die. I saw you in the casket. They had to pull me off it to lower you into the grave. Those were real memories I lived through. This," gesturing to them sitting in the ship, "can't be real."

He squeezed her hand gently. “You feel this?”

She nodded.

“Squeeze my hand,” he said. She squeezed it. “Feels real, right?”

She nodded again.

He pulled Penny up to her feet. “Let’s get a cup of coffee and see how you’ve been doing.”

He helped Penny into chair at the kitchen table where she continued to stare wide-eyed at the man who looked, sounded and smelled exactly like her father.

“We’re out of everything almost,” Penny said. ”You won’t find any coffee.”

“I won’t?” he asked. There was a playfulness in his eyes. He opened a few cupboards and let out an “Ah ha” after the third try. He pulled out a glass container filled with coffee grounds.

Penny sat up. “Nothing’s been in there for weeks!”

“Maybe you didn’t look hard enough, potato. You always had a bad habit of giving up too quickly looking for your toys when you couldn’t find them. I’ll make you some pancakes, too, just like we used to on Saturday mornings.” Tears ran down her cheeks.

As her father prepared breakfast with food that hadn't been there before in weeks in a kitchen she hadn't stepped into in the same amount of time, she studied this figure who had all the characteristics of her father.

She strained her memory, but not as hard as she thought she had to. Past images came back more easily and the destructiveness of not having food for days that plagued her mind seemed to wane.

Like looking at old photographs, she recalled her dad being the exact same person as the one standing in front of her. Short dark, almost midnight, black hair. Thin and tall with olive-tan skin. Bushy eyebrows and a five o'clock shadow.

He wore a hooded sweatshirt just like he used to around the house and those same old sweatpants fraying at the cuff above his ankles. Even his tennis shoes were worn a bit.

He looked healthy and in shape. The same as he did right before his heart attack. The shock of it all was deep for her given how he didn't fit the type for a heart attack. But that was life, as her uncle put it, on the day he died.

"One minute, you're hugging your family. And the next ... well ..." He gestured down the hall to his brother's room where doctors and nurses were going in and out.

She broke out of her memory gaze to see her dad flipping pancakes. His laugh was just as she remembered it, too. It had to be him. Who else could it be?

They sat in a few moments of silence eating pancakes and drinking coffee. Penny couldn't believe she was actually doing this or that it was the most delicious breakfast she'd ever have.

"So, space explorer, huh?" her dad asked. "Alway knew you'd do something great. Even when you were young, you were always dreaming big dreams. I don't know if I could be more proud of what you've accomplished."

"Dad, can I be honest with you?" Penny asked.

"Of course. You know I love you no matter what."

"I failed this mission. I was sent to try to find a new planet for the human race to inhabit, and instead, I got sucked into a black hole having breakfast with my dead father."

"Hey, you didn't fail anything. You got as far as you could go and you never gave up. I know what's in those vials on the counter. At any point you could have taken on, but you didn't. You held out to the end and you did your job."

"But I failed the human race."

"No, potato. The human race failed you. They put you in this tremendous position of finding a new planet. The constant warring ravaged our planet, causing the nations of the world to embark on these missions. You can rest knowing you did your best."

"I hope so." Penny took a napkin and wiped her eyes.

"How are the pancakes?"

"The best. Always the best." She shoveled in a few forkfuls to appease the days-long hunger inside. They sat in more silence eating and drinking.

Penny and her father walked along the corridor catching up and reminiscing about times long past. She started to get a little wobbly and her dad propped her up on his shoulder.

"Let's get you to bed."

They walked a little ways to her room and the autolights came on as soon they entered. She took her shoes off and got under the covers. He sat down beside her and stroked her hair.

"Thank you for this, dad. I don't know how it happened, but I'm glad it did."

"Me, too. potato."

"Can you sing to me? 'Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star'?"

"Sure thing." Her dad sang in a sweet, low tone she recognized immediately as her eyelids fluttered open and close. Soon, she couldn't hear him anymore or feel the stroking of her hair.

"Dad, one more hug before bed?" she asked in almost a whisper, eyes heavy and closed. In her dream-like state, she could feel warm arms around her squeeze tight and then gently let go.

In her room, Penny lay on the bed, alone. There were no sounds coming from anywhere in the ship.

Her hand uncurled and a single, plastic vial fell from the bed and bounced on the floor of her room.

Outside Penny's window, the black hole was drawing in everything around it but the tiny ship.