For the first time since Alex’s bombshell, Stan Goldman put in a comment. “Well, George, they must have thought the plant well isolated in the Amazon.”

Hutton snorted dubiously, and in retrospect Alex agreed. The idea was harebrained. He’d been naive to accept the generals’ assurances of a calm working environment, which proved as untrustworthy as the standard models of physics.

“In fact,” Goldman went on. “It took a leak from a secrets registration service to set that Manella character on Alex’s trail. If not for that, Alex might still be tending the singularity, safe inside its containment field. Isn’t that right, Alex?”

Good old Stan, Alex thought affectionately. Still making excuses for his favorite student, just as he used to back in Cambridge.

“No, it’s not. You see, before the riot, I was already preparing to sabotage the plant myself.”

While this seemed to surprise Goldman, George Hutton only tilted his head slightly. “You had discovered something unusual about your black hole.”

Alex nodded. “Before 2020, nobody imagined such things could be made in the laboratory at all. When it was found you could actually fold space inside a box and make a singularity… that shock should have taught us humility.

But success made us smug, instead. Soon we thought we understood the damned things. But there are… subtleties we never imagined.”

He spread his hands. “I first grew suspicious because things were going too bloody well! The power plant was extremely efficient, you see. We didn’t have to feed in much matter to keep it from dissipating. The generals were delighted of course. But I started thinking… might I have accidentally created a new type of hole in space? One that’s stable? Able to grow by devouring mere rock?”

Stan gaped. Alex, too, had been numbed by that first realization, then agonized for weeks before deciding to take matters into his own hands, to defy his employers and defang the tiny, voracious beast he’d helped create.