As I sweep the curb
I can hear those turbo engines blazing a trail through the sky
I look up and think about the years gone by
And one day,
I'm walking to JFK
And I'm gonna fly!
It won't be long now…any day.
-"It Won't Be Long Now," In the Heights
The event horizon of a black hole is the point of no return; it is the bending of visible light around a black hole's edges.
Or, rather, it's the last bit of light one sees before one falls into absolute darkness.
"Gentlemen," said Robert, "I present to you the Aperture Science Space-Point Analyzation Core. Or," he added with a smile, "the 'Space Core' for short."
The light of the auditorium was blindingly bright, and the sound of applause filled the room. Robert ruffled Space Core's curly auburn hair.
"He is built as a personality construct, and can even operate as a Raw Personality Core if need be." Robert paced a slow circle around Space Core. Space Core, as instructed, stood rigid and quiet. "But he primarily functions as a portable computer for Aperture Science's supernova research. Bring the child to an observatory and plug him in, and all of your data is at your fingertips. He keeps the scientists company, too. Say hello, Space Core."
"Hello," said Space Core.
Robert smiled at the audience. "Cute as a button, as you can see. But the amount of data he can store is extraordinary."
The scientists in the audience scribbled on their notepads. Space Core blinked up at the auditorium lights.
Despite all the positive attention, he really wished he were somewhere else.
They led him out of the auditorium. He walked in the middle of a ring of engineers, with Robert leading the pack.
"I want to sit down," said Space Core, but the engineers ignored him. After a few minutes, Robert responded.
"You'll be sitting down in a few minutes, Space Core." Robert didn't take his eyes off the concrete hallway they were walking down. Every scientist that passed congratulated Robert. He stopped to smile at them, shake their hands, listen to their praise, but before they could talk for very long, Robert ducked away and continued walking. None of the scientists looked at Space Core.
Space Core, so much tinier than the men around him, struggled to keep up with their quick pace. The hallway gave way to catwalks, and suddenly Space Core found himself walking over a huge chasm.
This part of the facility was unfamiliar. He struggled to remember what had happened before the presentation that evening, but it was a blur of labs and people laughing at him and prodding his back and taking notes and teaching him how to walk. Nothing was clear to him.
All he knew was that he was going someplace strange.
He looked down at his boots.
All too soon, Robert and the engineers came to a halt. Space Core slammed into one of the engineers, but he was too focused on the door in front of them to notice. Space Core peeked around him.
Robert was fishing around in his lab coat pocket. He produced a key, and stuck it into the door's lock. He turned the knob and pushed the door open, revealing a dark and narrow stairwell.
The procession continued. Space Core had never climbed stairs before, and had to be coaxed onto them. He gripped, white-knuckled, onto the railings, and let the engineers push him along. Robert took the steps two at a time, and three flights later, the engineers were struggling to keep up, and Space Core could hear his extra fans kicking in.
After several more flights, the team of engineers and the Space Core caught up to Robert, who was waiting for them in front of another door. The engineers around the robot slumped over, breathing heavily, while Space Core waited.
Robert looked down at him, and Space Core straightened up.
"Welcome, Space Core," he said, "to your new home." And he smiled and pushed the door open.
An enormous observatory greeted Space Core's eyes.
Enormous computers lined the room, their screens flickering. Beeps and whirs filled the air. It was dim, the only real light coming through a large slit in the ceiling. A huge telescope, connected to the computers in the room, poked through the opening. It was pointed, at an angle, towards the night sky.
Space Core, wide-eyed, stepped into the room. He stood in the doorway, focused only on the night sky beyond the telescope. Wheat fields for miles around surrounded Aperture, and their darkness brought out all of the stars. If he peered hard enough at the sky, he could see a purple strip of the Milky Way.
It was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen.
The engineers and Robert pushed past the core, who was still staring up at the sky.
"Alright, boys," Robert said with a clap of his hands. "You know the drill."
The engineers took their place at various computers around the room. Space Core shook himself out of his trance and watched as engineers climbed up to the telescope's platform, turned on computers, turned off other computers, whipped out notebooks from file drawers and licked the tips of pencils. It was all clockwork, more mechanical than the movement of Space Core himself. It almost felt rehearsed.
This was their territory, and Space Core crept towards the door, feeling like an odd duck amidst the professionalism of the engineers.
"We've had a great night so far, but supernovas don't find themselves. Let's get going."
Once all of the engineers were in place, Robert turned to Space Core and beckoned him closer.
He led him to a larger processor on the left-hand side of the room. Several cords stuck out of the bottom part of the computer.
"This is yours," Robert said, pointing to the processor. He put a hand on Space Core's shoulder and guided him closer, letting him examine all of the lights and knobs and screens on the processor's surface. "We'll have you stationed here while we work."
A nearby engineer turned to Space Core and smiled at him. "You ready to get going, kid?"
Space Core's head snapped up, and he smiled at him. "Yes, sir."
"Jacob, get the Space Core plugged in," Robert said. He gave Space Core one final pat on the shoulder before walking to the telescope.
Space Core let Robert unzip the back of his jumpsuit, revealing the black plastic spine where all of the Space Core's wires were plugged in. Jacob unplugged several and let them dangle down Space Core's back.
"Alright, kid," Jacob said, turning to the wires on the processor and sorting them. "You can have a seat on the floor. Face the telescope."
Space Core did as he was told, sitting cross-legged while Jacob plugged the processor's wires into the empty ports in his back. Each connection stung. Space Core gritted his teeth, his tiny hands forming fists.
To distract himself from the pain, he watched the night sky. Robert and the engineers were already examining the stars. Space Core had a perfect view of the sky from where the processor was; if he ever got bored (which he doubted he would), he could watch Robert direct his team instead.
He was going to like this job.
Jacob spoke up from behind him.
"Alright, here's the last one. Brace yourself, kid."
And the final wire went in with a small click.
Space Core gasped.
Before him were dozens of holograms: graphs, spreadsheets, pictures of the night sky in neat rows. A mishmash of equations were off to his right. Space Core reached out towards the holograms, and the images scattered, following his fingers. He swept them through the air. Wherever his eyes went, the holograms followed, and he realized that the holograms were not some hallucination , but projections from his eyes' camera lenses.
He experimented with the data in front of him, twitching his fingers and swirling the images of space together so that they made a spiral. Everything responded to him. Whatever equation he wanted to examine, he focused on, and it would enlarge itself in front of him. He pushed certain images off to the side and put graphs in different corners.
What's more, all of the data before him made sense. Space Core had never seen anything like the holograms in his life, and yet following certain equations through to their end seemed as natural as speaking. He brought up an image and examined it closely before bringing up the graph he somehow knew corresponded to it.
It was all very strange to him, but very exciting.
"'Atta boy!" Jacob crowed, getting the attention of the engineers around the room. Cheers and applause filled the observatory. From the corner of his eye, Space Core saw Robert turn around and grin at him.
"You can see these?" Space Core breathed, still toying with the holograms as a few engineers crowded around to watch.
"There would be no point if we couldn't," Jacob said. He slapped Space Core on the back, and the holograms fled; Space Core desperately pulled them back towards himself. "You're a processor, kid. You analyze, we watch."
'My job is to look at space?" Space Core asked.
"You bet! Not just look, though. Bring back those images from before, will you?"
Space Core did as he was told, and lined them up. Jacob leaned over his shoulder, examining the holograms closely. He pointed to two of the images.
"There's a dot of light here that's not present here," he said. "Can you find it?"
Well, that was easy: he had to just take out whatever was the same between the two pictures. Space Core darkened them, and sure enough, a lone beam of light remained on the second image.
"You're a supernova machine!" Jacob said with a booming laugh. Space Core smiled feebly and moved the images away. "That's what you do. You help us find supernovas by messing with pictures. You can do mass analysis and timelines of the life of the universe, too. Sound good?"
As if he had a choice.
But Space Core grinned and felt happiness welling up from within his stomach. These engineers needed him. "I like this job."
"You're going to love it."
Robert came down from the telescope platform and walked to Space Core. Space Core put the holograms away and looked up at him, the smile from before still on his freckled face.
"Well, Space Core?" he said, leaning over the robot and ruffling his hair again. "Your first supernova analysis, and you did it thousands of times faster than any of us could have done."
Robert straightened up and smiled down at him.
"Are you proud?"