Zero Two found herself in a dark room bare of any furnishing apart from a desk with a laptop open on its surface.
"Hey, this is like my existential crisis dream," commented Hiro, suddenly beside her.
She started at the sudden voice, before tightly grabbing his hand.
"Nothing to do but investigate," she said sternly.
"Ooh, look, equations. What's this? The luminosity of a black hole?"
"Why is that equation on this laptop?"
"I don't know, but there are a lot like it on here. It seems that whoever's using this is very busy."
"That being said, they're already twenty-two thousand words into this story they're writing."
"Yeah, but it might take them a while to finish. It doesn't help that they wrote the first chapter to a different story rather than work on this one."
"Yeah, I don't know why they did that."
The two investigated the computer in silence for a little while longer.
"Hey, doesn't this published story seem eerily similar to what happened with Elias the other day?" Asked Hiro.
"Yeah, it does…" mumbled Zero Two, "hey, maybe if we read the draft for the next chapter, we can tell the future!"
"Let's do it!"
They silently read through the beginning scenes of the chapter.
"Oh," muttered Hiro, "so that's who they were writing about at the end of the last chapter."
"Well, yeah. Come on, darling, it was pretty obvious who it was going to be."
"Doesn't that mean that the next chapter will be exactly like the first one though?"
"Not really. Different struggles and all. Also, this one seems to be more slice-of-life and less Kokoro-with-a-sniper-rifle."
"Well, they already posted some minor spoilers with that stupid 'preview' crap."
They continued to read for a few more moments.
"Ooh!" Started Hiro, "they're about to say the character's name in the story!"
As they desperately scrolled down, the computer flashed a warning.
WARNING: ANY FURTHER AND THE AUTHOR'S NOTE AND PREVIEW WILL BE DELETED!
"Oh…" muttered Hiro, "what do you think, Zero Two?"
Zero Two cupped her chin as she thought.
"You know what?" She said, "screw that, I want to see the name!"
The document closed itself before either of them could see, going back to the sheets of equations.
The husband and wife let out a unified sigh of disappointment.
"Nothing else to do but to look at this 'till I wake up," she said, "the next chapter will probably be out before December ends anyway."
"Hey, shouldn't the luminosity of a black hole be zero?"
"Well, darling, technically the luminosity doesn't have to be visible light. A black hole emits a form of luminosity different than that you'd expect from the sun, something called blackbody radiation. Black holes are actually very hot, and the process of losing mass through Hawking Radiation can make them even hotter as they decay. This means that by multiplying the temperature by itself four times, then that by the Boltzmann constant, that the luminosity can be found."
The two of them sat in dead silence for a while.
"Zero Two, I love you, but whatthehellwasthat?"
Zero Two began to sweat.
"I…I don't know what the hell I just said."
"I think it's time you wake up."
"I think so too."
Zero Two started as she awoke on their couch.
Hiro walked over and started stroking her hair.
"Are you ok, Zero Two?"
"…Yeah. I just had a really weird dream."
She reached up and felt Hiro's face to make sure she wasn't dreaming.
"Sh-sheero too?" Asked Hiro through squished cheeks.
"I felt like I caught a glimpse of something strange."
Hiro raised an eyebrow.
"…I think I learned something about black holes too."