Wanted: Must Love Dogs and Black Holes (Short Story)

A lot of people think the driving force behind science and innovation is curiosity, but I think it’s love. You don’t spend decades of your life studying, designing, and experimenting because you have some idle curiosity or to just go have a look-see around the next corner. You do it because you’re obsessed. Because there’s something deep inside of you that needs something and can’t live without it.

Sounds an awful lot like love, doesn’t it?

It took me longer than it should have to realize this, a fact that I attribute to being a loner for the first half of my life. During that period, Love was a big four letter word that couldn’t be separated from romance. I had no use for romance. I was a scientist, doing important stuff. I couldn’t have been more wrong.

George proved that.

It was just shy of my forty-fifth birthday, and I was living alone on a research station orbiting a black hole. That was what my research centered on. It was dangerous work that no one else wanted to do, but I didn’t mind. I liked the solitude. There was a message on my personal channel waiting for me when I finished work that fateful day, bringing bad news.

My parents had died.

I’d always had a good relationship with my parents, even though we didn’t talk much. I had my research, and they enjoyed their retirement, which they spent hopping around the galaxy and seeing whatever fancied them in a given moment. We hardly saw each other, but to know that we’d never see each other again was devastating. And there was more bad news.

As the only inheritor, I was getting everything, including their dog George.

I didn’t have pets growing up. I was too busy studying to take care of something else, and my parents were too busy working. When they started getting on in years, they impulsively bought a dog to fill the paternalistic void that a grandchild normally would. Living alone around a black hole, I don’t meet many women. And so they got George, a big, goofy golden retriever.

I’d never met George, and I certainly didn’t know anything about taking care of a dog. But he was my responsibility now. I was confident that as a scientist, I could figure anything out, even how to take care of a dog. It was just a matter of research. And so, in the weeks before George’s arrival, I studied what I could about dogs. I set aside a part of my garden where he could do his business with real grass and dirt under his paws. I hoped he would be satisfied with his new life aboard a space station, but mostly I hoped that he wouldn’t interfere with my work.

The day that George was dropped off at the station, I was certain that I was ready. The courier ship would dock and drop everything from my parents off. I’d show George to his dog bed and where he was supposed to do his business, and then I’d get back to work while George explored his new home and played with his toys. We’d be roommates, respecting each other from a distance. I’d do my thing, he’d do his.

When the proximity sensors chimed, alerting me that a ship was docking, I got up from my desk, stretched my legs, and ambled over to the airlock. I could see another ship at the end of the flexible tube attached to my station, and the display next to the hatch on my side showed that the station was almost done pumping air into it. When an atmosphere had been established, a light above the hatch switched from red to green, with a pleasant little ding-ding-ding that sang out.

The door to the courier ship opened, and a man in a blue jumpsuit emerged, carrying a big rectangular box. I opened the hatch to let him into the station, and he asked me where I wanted everything. I told him to go down the hall and take the second right into the living area and just stack things wherever they would fit. He grunted, shifted the weight of the box in his arms, and followed the corridor. I poked my head into the tube, expecting a big ball of golden fur to come bounding out of the courier ship.

I was met with a stillness punctuated with the low hum of the fans that maintained air pressure in the docking arm. The delivery man made several trips. Still no George.

I asked him if he wanted help, and he said he would do it himself. He mumbled something about liability. Eventually, he brought out the last box, and then disappeared back into the ship. When he returned to the docking arm, he had a dog lead in one hand, and was practically dragging George out of the ship.

The dog’s head was down, and his whine echoed down the docking tube. When he finally looked up and met my eyes, I saw fear and uncertainty in his. At that precise moment, my heart melted.

However I felt about the changes that were happening, they seemed to be more acute for George. I’d lost my only family, but so had he. He’d spent however many days aboard a strange ship with a strange delivery man, and now he was being dragged into another strange place. I’d probably be upset too.

When the delivery man and George reached the hatch, I dropped to my knees and looked George in the eyes, putting a big smile of my face. “Welcome to your new home, boy!” I said with as much enthusiasm as I could pack into the words. I wanted to give a happy energy. Dogs can sense that stuff.

George perked up a little bit with the lilt in my voice, and he leaned forward and gave me a sniff. This produced a slow wag of his tail. I’m cautiously optimistic, it said. Maybe I smelled enough like my parents to put him at ease a little.

“Sign here,” the delivery man said, producing a tablet. I scribbled some lines on it, not taking my eyes off George. The delivery man stuck out his hand, I took the leash, and he disappeared back into his ship and left. It was just me and George.

“Let me give you the grand tour,” I told George. I walked him around the station, going at his pace. He sniffed everything, leaving wet nose prints on whatever his snout graced. When he got to the garden, he came to life, tugging on the leash and jumping around.

“You need to do your business, boy?” I asked. It had been a long ride with the courier for him, and I had no idea when the last time he’d gone to the bathroom was. I removed the leash from his collar and he bounded into the grassy patch I’d created for him and lifted a leg. He panted through a smile as he drained his bladder.

And with that, the place was his.

I set up his dog bed out in the living space, and tried to go back to my work, but he was glued to my side. First day jitters, I thought. Well, I couldn’t blame him for that. After we both ate dinner, I decided we should turn in. It had been a big day for both of us. I tucked George into his bed, patted him on his head, and crawled into my own bed. I was on the edge of sleep, when I felt something hit the edge of my mattress.

Sitting up, I turned on the bedside lamp and saw George pressed against my bed. “Oh, alright, you can sleep in here,” I told him. “But only for tonight because it’s your first day.” As you may have already guessed, he never slept in the living room.

……

There wasn’t a singular moment I can point to when Georgie boy (which is what I began calling him a week into his new life with me) became my family. Rather, the center of my universe shifted gradually. The tapping of his nails on the deck plating as he roamed the corridors. His chin on my knee, begging me to put aside my work and throw a ball for him. His big, dopey smile. The way he could work his eyebrows when he wanted something. The melodramatic way he sighed when settling on the couch. When he let me talk to him about a problem with my research until an answer came to me.

With every act, he worked his way a little deeper into my heart, until one day there wasn’t room for anything else.

There came a point where I couldn’t imagine my life without the big ball of fur. We were both happy, and even though my work had taken a backseat to Georgie boy, there was no trace of resentment or annoyance to be found in my heart. There was only a dog-shaped spot, just big enough for Georgie. This hairy, floppy creature made the days brighter.

So, the first day I noticed the grey creeping into the fur around his muzzle, it was like someone knocked me over with a hammer. I spent that whole day thinking about how time was passing, and I would have to face the day that I outlived my faithful companion. I couldn’t handle it.

And I also resolved to fix the problem. I now had the perfect motivation to throw my research into overdrive. Preserving Georgie’s life. And I had the perfect idea.

Time gets funny around black holes. Space and time are one thing, as Einstein showed, so when space is warped by a massive body, so is time. As a result, time passes slower near a black hole, like the one I orbited, compared to farther away. This was the key.

I spent the next several months designing and building Georgie’s pod. When it was done, he gave it a few sidelong glances and one or two unimpressed sniffs. Using some treats, I gradually trained him to get into the pod, and then to let me seal it up. I put a few of his toys and a blanket in there so it felt and smelled like home. And then, one night, it was time to test everything out.

You might think I was crazy, launching my dog toward a black hole. But love makes you do crazy things. That’s my only defense. I didn’t want to lose my best friend. I didn’t want to watch him get older and weaker. Maybe that’s selfish. Probably. But I don’t think I’m alone in wanting to avoid the suffering of loved ones. I’m not a physician, someone who could develop some miracle anti-aging drug. I’m a physicist, so I used the tools at my disposal to make sure my best friend and I could stay pals for as long as possible.

The first night I put Georgie in the pod and launched it toward the black hole, I couldn’t sleep. I kept looking out the viewports, at the tiny speck of light where Georgie was (hopefully) sleeping. Did I do the right thing? If he woke up and was afraid, I’d have no way to comfort him. I imagined him in the dark, confused and alone. I almost aborted the mission. But the thought of his grey muzzle pulled harder on my heartstrings.

Georgie’s first night in the pod was a success. He was happy to be back in the station the next day, and he seemed no worse for the experience. The chronometer in the pod let me know that the experiment worked. Thanks to the gravitational dilation, hardly any time had passed for Georgie while he was sleeping in the pod through the night.

And so the years passed. Georgie and I would hang out during the day, goofing off and being affable hams together, and when it was bedtime, he’d go into his pod and sleep around a black hole that slowed time for him down to a crawl. Holidays and birthdays passed and kept on passing. Ten years. Twenty years. Thirty years. Georgie still looked more or less the same as the first time he’d gone into his sleeping pod.

I couldn’t say the same about me, though. Arthritis made it harder to chase Georgie through the corridors. I slept more instead of spending the day with him. The lines and dark spots on my face seemed to increase in number every morning when I stepped out of the shower and in front of the mirror to shave. And soon it hit me.

Georgie would outlive me.

No one is ever truly beyond the reach of the grim reaper. Even Georgie, despite the gravitational dilation, still experienced time. For more than half of his life, it was passing much slower compared to me, but it was still passing. I couldn’t bear the thought of watching Georgie get older and then losing him, but now our roles were reversed. I don’t know how much animals understand about aging and death. There’s some instinct there, but their understanding is a mystery.

I’m sure that Georgie knows I’m older. If dogs can smell cancer, then they can smell the changes in body chemistry due to aging. What he thinks about that is anyone’s guess. I’d like to believe that he’ll grieve me as much as I would him, that intelligence and emotions aren’t either/or things, but rather a spectrum on which all life exists. But maybe that’s just more love-induced foolishness.

The important thing is that if you’ve made it through this old man’s ramblings, you know that Georgie boy is special. Not just to me (although that’s certainly true). He’s his own man, a unique life that has never existed before and will never exist again. In that sense, he’s precious. It’s cruel fate that someone as good and pure as Georgie was cursed with such a short lifespan.

In physics, you can spend your energy moving through space or time. The faster you move through space, the slower you move through time. But when it comes to life and love, I think the relationship is different. The more you love, the faster you move through life, and no one loves more than a dog.

I’m rambling again.

If you’re reading this, I want you to consider replacing me. I have fully funded the station, and there is still plenty of work to be done in terms of my research. But really, if you just want to spend forever with the best dog in the galaxy, have I got a deal for you.

Call me, and we’ll sort something out.