MILA CHADAYAMMURI

THE MERGER

They had so much in common, it felt inevitable. In their sleepy little neighborhood, they stood out, young and bright, bursting with energy. Both full of dance, twirling about themselves and slowly, gingerly, around each other. Each with a clique of her own, smaller satellites who surrounded them like Snow White’s dwarves, some plump and quiet, some tiny firecrackers, each living their own lives, but anchored to their headliners, stable in their shadows.

Viola was a moniker; there was something sticky, archaic about her given name of Via Lacteia. Viola captured her essence so much better – the harmony of the many stars orbiting inside her, most clustered like arpeggios, all strung together in a grand design of spirals. Looking deeper in, you would find each had a family of its own, planets moving around their host stars in time periods that were simple ratios of each other, their trajectories called resonant, like harmonic intervals on a string. A Viola string.

Like any interesting symphony, she wasn’t all harmonic. Every now and then, a star would go rogue, catapulted out of its home by a serendipitous three-body interaction, three celestial orbs unable to find a stable way to coexist, until finally one said fine, fuck it, and burst free and far away. It would move across Viola like a spasm running from one muscle to another, surprisingly distant, one.

Even at her very core, she harbored a paradox. A supermassive black hole, larger than a million stars, so frightening in principle but so calm in practice. Her cousin Virgo, just fifteen thousand Galactic lengths away, was so much more dramatic. Give her a nibble, Andromeda had grumbled once, she’ll spew out a riot. Our hearts just work differently, Viola had offered more sympathetically. Her own was calm, stars whizzing rapidly around it, a barely audible cardiac flutter, never quite settling into a stable path, yet never triggering an outburst like in Virgo. Why complain about a grand symphony you’re part of, just because some of the movements are chaotic?

She’d had relationships before, though not for a little while. Usually someone from her clique, so that she was the one in control. It was always the same – a shy advance that gradually sped way up, the satellite plunging right into her. They would both go up in flames, her partner rarely making it out whole or alive. She would grow a thicker skin and dance on, always the star of her own show. From the corner of her eye, she could see Andromeda living almost, almost the same life.

That was part of the fear. Andromeda’s posse was quite a bit bigger, as was everything about her, really. For a while Viola thought she hated her, then she realized she wanted to be like her, and now maybe she just wanted to be closer to her. To be with her. To be her, perhaps. But what was it to be with someone just as wild and fiery and loud as yourself?

Their curiosity got the better of them. In the early days she felt herself expanding, stretching thin, reaching out with the limbs closer to Andromeda, eager for that first touch. There was nothing as exciting as when Andromeda reciprocated.

Their first encounter was a whirlwind, tearing each of them apart, spiral arms wringing wildly in confusion, grasping for each other but also reaching away for fresh air. They were so thoroughly spent, they retreated back into their corners pretty quickly.

I don’t know, man, Viola whispered. That was a lot.

We do spin in opposite ways, Andromeda acknowledged. I hadn’t noticed that before. It’s like we’re stirring each other mad.

Or whipping each other into silence, Viola sighed. Perhaps I just need more space to recover, but I honestly think I’m quieter now, for good.

Andromeda could only agree. I’m not sure that’s a bad thing, though.

And so they waited. Waited a good long while to remember what it was like to be themselves, to feel if that was better, if maybe they had danced alone enough, if maybe it was simply time for a different dance, more conversational, a pas de deux instead of a solo, a more equal partnership than either of them had known before. Eons passed, and they found a little spring had come back into their steps, they were still alive and thriving after all, and they still missed each other.

The second time was way calmer. Oh, there was still conflict. Small, intermittent rifts, as in any relationship. Their arms still tore at each other about as often as they wrapped around each other, there were bursts of star formation but also lots of deaths – as in any organism, their stellar cells grew older, dimmer, more tired. Slowly they started to run out of fire, the stars in each of them dying one by one, turning into tiny black holes or neutron stars or white dwarves, deep and energetic in their own way but nowhere near as loud. Their hearts, whose calmness they used to be so proud of, were now regularly overwhelmed, flaring up every so often with a force that always surprised them both. With a musical periodicity, they would spar, move apart, but always within reach, limbs caressing, checking in. Each time they would reconcile a little faster, grow a little stronger.

They barely noticed their central engines, those charmingly tame black holes, drawing closer and closer together until one day, they locked into orbit around each other. Do you feel that hum? Andromeda asked. Viola did. It took them a while to tune in and realize it was coming from within them, the black holes ringing the fabric of spacetime around them, adding another line to the soundtrack of their relationship. What started as a barely audible, deep, bass slowly rose in pitch and volume as the black holes spiraled closer and closer to each other until one day –

Ah! They gasped in unison, a giant shiver traveling from their core to their very extremities and beyond.

And then silence.

Gingerly, they peered inwards.

Where’s mine gone?

I thought that’s yours. Where’s mine?

And then two quiet smiles as they realized the two hearts had finally merged.

As they each quieted down inside, they grew more comfortable with each other. Their spirals slowly dissipated, rounding out, until you could no longer tell one arm from the other, until the two really became one. Quieter, older, calmer.

They sat in that embrace for a long, long time, watching the neighborhood they had grown up in. Most of the satellites were gone by now, burned out just by watching their relationship. Even Virgo wasn’t so loud anymore. Their distant neighbors drifted out of sight, one by one, or maybe it was just their vision fading. The sky grew darker and darker.

Is it just me, Andromeda wondered, or did the world get a little bit colder?

No wiser, just a little bit older, Viola hummed. Does it bother you?

Andromeda pondered this a while. I guess not, she conceded eventually. It was all well paced. If it were this glib when we were younger, eh? Viola smiled at her. That would have hurt. But it’s as if everyone kept lock step with us. I’m ready to rest, and I guess so are they.

And so they drifted to sleep. A sleep so deep and eternal, they didn’t notice when they started decomposing. First the stars started splitting away from each other, spreading out thinner and thinner, like a cosmic mist. Eventually each star starting evaporating too, every white dwarf and neutron star and black hole, every planet, every asteroid, every comet, until at some point all that was left was a memory-thin foam of the tiniest particles that had ever been anything.

Was it worth it? The Andromeda particles asked the Viola particles.

Every moment of it.

BIOGRAPHY

Mila Chadayammuri is an astrophysicist who grew up between Moscow, Russia and Cochin, India. Between a linguist father and mathematician mother, each of whom had to choose a career outside their academic passion, she learned that science, art and living are life-long, connected disciplines. She graduated from Brown University in 2013 and is wrapping up her PhD in Astronomy at Yale University.