Part 37: Black holes are discussed at length

"That reminds me - yesterday, because of a certain assistant, I was unable to announce the operation name, wasn't I? The serial D-mail experiments we performed from last night to today. Operation Urd consists of those--"

"The experiments had results."

Assistant interrupts my words again.

"At the very least, we know we can do something with D-mail."

Placing the empty noodle cup on the table, Kurisu pulls the whiteboard out of the development room. Then, she writes some sort of list.



"And, well, it's like this. Any suggestions of objections?"

Nothing especially. She's summarized the vital parts. Nobody raises their hands. Mayuri's staring blankly with her mouth half-open. Looks like she doesn't understand.

"The upper limit of what can be sent in a D-mail is 36 letters in English, or 18 characters in Japanese, which is inconvenient. It's something I'd like to improve."

The dozens of experimental mails we sent were received in three parts of 6 full width / 12 half width letters each, and any text after the 18th - for half width, the 36th - would disappear.

"But isn't it great we discovered we can control when it goes to?"

Though we can only set it in one hour increments, we can control how far back D-mails go using the Microwave Ophone (Temp)'s timer.

"There's no point to settle for just discovery. We need to find out the principle. What I've written here is nothing but verified phenomena."

"Investigating the principle, huh. Certainly, unless we figure that out, we can't make a true time machine. We can only send 12x3 letters. What's the cause?"

Daru and Kurisu remain silent. Suddenly, Mayuri, who had until now been staring at the ceiling in confusion, started raising her hand for some reason.



"Don't shorten it..."

According to what Mayuri had confirmed, the karaage that returned to the freezer had indeed become gelatinous.

"And so, for D-mails, you can send 36 letters, but everything past that disappears, right? So, I think maybe you can't send big things, or a lot of things... Ah, maybe the Curb black hole..."

"Uhh, it's Kerr black hole."

"The Curb black hole..."

"Like I said, Kerr black hole."

"The black hole's hole is too tight--"



"Hole is too tight--"

"This is outrageous!"

"Don't make her say that, Retardaru!"

Damn sexual harasser. Since Mayuri has a field of flowers for a brain, she doesn't even realize she's being sexually harassed, leaving a horrible end result.

"The hole is tight... huh. That might not be entirely wrong. Perhaps it has the same problem as SERN's time machine. Since they can't fully control the lifter, they can't make the singular points perfectly naked, therefore limiting the sending capacity."

"Setting aside karaage and bananas, 6 full width or 12 half width characters' worth of data is 12 bytes, right?"

Thinking about data unit conversion is a really Daru thing to do.

"Bytes? Not kilobytes?"

"Ohhhh? So Makise's the weak-at-machines type?"

"Pff, is that so, Assistant?"

"Sh-Shut up. Lately, you don't see things measured in bytes, so I was just making sure..."

"Well, email isn't just comprised of text, though. There's more to it, like the sender's and the receiver's mail addresses, the header, and various other things. As an estimate, we can send three batches of 12 bytes of data, then? Ah, by the way, I don't know if using a subject or not changes anything."



There's still the question of whether you can even do that in the first place.

"Since each grain of salt is tiny, it's possible they could be converted to less than 12 bytes."

"Does that mean that a large mass would get crushed by super gravity?"

"It might not be mass. Data doesn't have mass."

"In any case, since the singular points aren't made naked, the object is forced to pass through the event horizon. Inside the event horizon, space and time switch places, causing the subject who arrived at the ring singularity to reach ultra-high speed... The data crushed and destroyed by super gravity is shot out of the black hole..."

"...As a jellyman."

"But I don't think having small mass would allow an object to go through. Both have to get out of super gravity, right?"

"If the hole is too tight, then just increase electron injection."

"I don't think it's that simple. I mean, SERN should've tested that method, but it's been 9 years since they started experiments and they haven't gotten any results. It's not something as simple as increasing the amount of electrons."

"I-I see..."

"In the first place, SERN does have a Lifter, but we don't know what substitutes that Lifter in the Microwave Ophone. Then there's the problem of adjustment."

Certainly...

"We don't know what replaces the Lifter, but at least we know for certain that by its effect, we've created a path to send up to 36 bytes of data through the ring singularity."



Mayuri, finished with her karaage, looks for help with a perplexed face.

"You can think of a ring singularity, the entrance for the event horizon, as the gate to the Demon Lord's castle."

"Demon Lord?"

An army of hundreds of soldiers attack the heavily fortified Demon Lord's castle gate. The soldiers can use the magic called Lifter to force the castle gate open... but they can only open it for a moment before it quickly closes. During that moment, only 12 soldiers can cut through. The soldiers can only use Lifter magic three times. Those 36 soldiers who entered the gate those 3 times triumphantly return as the heroes who slew the Demon Lord.

However, the soldiers who could not cut through the gate are seized as prisoners by the Demon Lord's subordinates. They're taken the castle's prison cells and turned into slimes. The heroes save them after defeating the Demon Lord, but they unfortunately go home as slimes.

"So the soldiers who went home as slimes are jellymen, right?"

"But there's an exception."

The hundreds of soldiers can use a forbidden special move, "unison", to transform into a Super Soldier with the strength and size of a hundred ordinary soldiers. The Super Soldier has the power to defeat the Demon Lord alone, but since his body is too big, even if he opens the castle gate with Lifter, he can't pass through. And so, deprived of his magic's effectiveness, the weakened Super Soldier is seized by the Demon Lord's underlings, turned into a slime, and goes home as a giant slime without defeating the Demon Lord.

"Wait. What's with that absurd setting?"

"It's to illustrate that the object can't be too big."

"I see! That's really easy to understand."

"Really?"

"Leaving Okarin's metaphor alone, does this explain the jellyman effect?"

"Hmph. Everything's thanks to Mayuri's hint."

"Was Mayushii helpful?"

"Yeah. Great insight, Mayuri."

"Ehehe, that's good!"

"But it’s still a hypothesis. It hasn't been proven."

"How would you prove it? Human experiments like SERN?"



"Human experimentation sounds kinda dirty, if you know what I mean... but I refuse. I'd rather be the giver than the receiver."

"Same here. No, not in the way he's implying."

"Idiots."

Kurisu gives us a cold stare, shrugging her shoulders in amazement.

"The problem is where the Lifter's substitute is in the Microwave Ophone."

"That and one other thing. How come the discharge phenomenon and jellymanificatoin only happen at certain times?"

"There are things we don't understand, but since we completed the art of D-mailing, isn't that our Final Answer?"

"Sending mail into the past is amazing, isn't it?"

"It's not like we can send people to the past firsthand, so it doesn't feel like a time machine, though."

"A research facility like SERN has been trying that, but they keep failing. If you go by Titor's prediction, won't it be another 24 years before they complete it?"

I nod when Kurisu sarcastically brings up the subject.

"Physical time travel certainly is impossible for us at the moment. We lack the funds and the facilities available to SERN. And yet, we still brought time travel to realization. We sent data into the past."

"We should further inspect the Microwave Ophone. We need to understand what's going on."

"I want to use D-mail for more fun things."

"I understand that feeling, but we can't today. If we shake the building again, Mister Brain is sure to give out his ultimatum. We can do a detailed examination after tomorrow... but I will declare this."

I step onto the couch and look around at each lab mem.

"You have to take off your shoes, it's dirty."



"August 2."

"Today, August 2, 2010, is a date which will live in infamy, forever in the memory of mankind! For on this day today, our Future Gadget Laboratory, has developed the first successful time machine in the history of mankind!"

"But it's not the first, is it? SERN beat us."

"And you can't even say developed. You just coincidentally made it."

"Hmph, looks like Assistant doesn't know the meaning of the word 'serendipity'. Penicillin, X-rays and dynamite, among many others, are inventions born from coincidence!"

"That's true, but..."

"But Cris said before that time machines don't exist, right? She just admitted it now, didn's she?"

"...It's just that I have to admit it at present. If we investigate the principle, it might turn out to be something that only seems like a time machine."

"Tch, does nobody have any respect for my grand declaration?! If I claim the development of the first - no, maybe second, whatever - time machine in human history all for myself, don't complain to me afterwards!"



"Wait, that was a Round Table Conference? I didn't know. And it's even the 66th."

"It doesn't matter if it's a round table or whatever."

Kurisu gets up from the chair and stretches.

"I'm gonna go home, take a shower, and sleep."

"Mayushii has to go to work soon, too."

I'm incredibly tired, too. Let's just sleep today.



Curiosity grows inside my heart. Though, I still have anxiety in my heart that we've stepped into the world's unthinkable darkness...

Sending mail into the past. We've obtained that dream-like power. Now, when I start thinking of how to use it, my imagination spreads out infinitely, driving away all anxiety...