Timmy's Singularity

Nine year old Timmy had been drawing fractals all morning. He moved his crayons in repeating patterns until most of the sheet of paper before him was filled with intricate self-similar designs. Lost in thought, he didn’t hear the tinkle of glass cracking across the room.

He did hear the thunderous implosion that followed.

Suddenly, the room was filled with a screaming vortex directed at nothing in the corner. Timmy’s bureau was gone and everything loose in the room was flying towards a growing luminous spot. Timmy stood up in horror. He tried to seal the tear by tossing his chair and several large books at it. They were ripped into molecules as they entered it. Timmy knew he was in trouble. He knew Mom would be coming… and she would not be happy.

His mother had heard the clatter from the kitchen and ran quickly up the stairs to Timmy’s room. She tried to open his door, but the relative vacuum inside held it tightly. She screamed for him to help and between the two of them, they were able to force it ajar.

Air from the hallway flowed through the opening, causing her hair and dress to flap towards the disturbance. She was relieved to see Timmy was okay, but was shocked and angered at the phenomenon she witnessed.

”What is this, young man?" Her eyes flashed as she shouted in his ear.

Timmy looked away and dropped his head. ”It’s my black hole."

"I know it’s your black hole. Why has it lost containment? Have you been feeding it?” Her Carol Brady impression with her hands firmly on her hips was very good.

"Just a few photons, Mom. I wanted to see the photon sphere. I can’t do that without the photons.” Timmy tried to look as innocent as he could.

Timmy’s mother didn’t buy it for a second. She shook her finger at him. ”You told me when we bought this that you would take care of it. You promised you would not let it accrete matter until you had it properly contained."

"I know.” He slumped his head even further.

"If you had bought a super-conducting magnetic containment bottle when I told you, this would not be happening!” Mom rolled her eyes in an all too familiar way. “But no, you had to spend the rest of your allowance on a Heisenberg compensator. I swear you waste everything on toys.”

“Mom! You know I can’t transmute matter without knowing where the particles are AND where they are going. The kids would laugh at me.” Timmy raised his head and looked mom straight in the eyes. “Larry Swain got one and now he’s got his own universe.”

“This is the same Larry Swain that created life in his bathroom?” She asked.

Timmy nodded.

“That’s a great example. Now life is contaminating half the planets in sector R,” she reminded. “Is that what you want? Life stinking up everywhere?”

Timmy shrugged. “No ma’am. I was going to get the containment this week. I didn’t think a few photons would matter that much.”

“Just a FEW photons?” Mom eyed him skeptically.

“Okay...,” he confessed. “I fed it some pencils and the planetoid Grandma gave me.”

The black hole was visible against the large amounts of matter being sucked into the accretion disk. Books on Timmy’s shelves wobbled and leaned towards the rift in space-time. It precessed slowly, allowing the gamma-ray jets at its axis scorch a smoking ellipse through the ceiling and floor.

“We have to get rid of it, I’m calling the cosmological control board,” Mom left the room with Timmy at her heels.

“Do we have to? Can’t Dad fix it when he gets home?” Timmy pleaded.

“Your father is much too tired when he gets home.” She said flatly. “Besides that man wouldn’t know a muon from a boson if his life depended on it. I doubt he could handle this.”

“But I won’t get another one until I’m sixteen if you call the control board. Can’t we just flush it down the toilet?” Timmy was grasping at straws.

Mom looked at him sternly. “Do you know what happened to the last little boy who flushed a black hole down his toilet?”

Timmy shook his head.

“His mommy and daddy were forced to buy a new plane of existence for everyone on the block. Now, is that what you want?”

“No, I guess not,” Timmy replied.

Timmy’s mother dialed the emergency number. The professional voice on the other side assured her it could be dealt with. Soon a man with a large magnetic grapple appeared at the front door. He used his Higgs eliminator to make the dolly massless and maneuvered it up the stairs and into Timmy’s room.

Timmy’s room was bare. All of the furniture was gone. The carpet was beginning to loosen from the tacks that held it down.

The man from the control board pressed his fingers rapidly on his pad and a containment field sprang up around the hole. The noise and radiation that filled the room ceased.

"Wow, good thing you called us when you did,” the man said happily. “A few more minutes and you would have lost this part of the house.”

He sized up Timmy and his mother, both were beet red.

“Here’s some ointment for those radiation burns.” He held out a small blue tube which Timmy’s mother accepted. “You should put on some now or they might leave marks.”

Timmy had a tear in his eye as the man left taking the singularity with him.

“What will they do with it, Mom?” He asked with pain in his voice.

“Oh, I think they dispose of them in the super massive at the center of Andromeda,” she answered.

She turned on Timmy fiercely. “You are grounded young man!”

“Oh Mom!”

“Don’t ‘Oh Mom’ me,” she continued. “What kind of mother would I be if I let you break the laws of physics and get away with it. I’m taking away all your quasars and you can’t time travel for a week.”

Timmy was crushed. He tried several times to get her to relent. She remained firm. He watched in silence as his mother used her portable replicator to restore the items in his room. She shut the door behind her as she left. She knew she had been rough on the tyke, but he had to learn.

“Little boys,” she thought. “Why couldn’t he just sculpt nebulae like his sister”.