The dancer switches the camera on as his ship falls into orbit around the black hole; the opening image of his unmuscled chest squeezed beneath translucent polyester blasts out toward a thousand points of watching light. He’s shaved his body for the first time in his life, the nicks of the razor lingering in little scabbing cuts. He hits the music, and the camera pans out, framing the blue-sequined form of his body as his feet touch the floor with the first kiss of gravity.

The ship is a stage, and the circle of polished wood the dancer now moves across is framed by a panopticon of screens, each of the thousand cells holding one or two or many faces; they are the prisoners of his body, of his motion. He has never been desired in life, but in this moment he is their Adonis, the awkwardness of his appearance belied by the uncanny grace of his too-light movements, the practice of a long obsession now brought to perfection.

Accelerating along the arc of the black hole’s gravitational field, the ship turns inward by a degree, then two, its orbit the beginning of a corkscrew now modeled by the dancer’s tightening spirals. Gravity’s kiss has deepened, a tongue in his mouth, a hand moving up his bare thigh, grasping. The music quickens—and he with it, and, with him, the beating hearts in the observation ships millions of kilometers away.

The cells now writhe as observers begin to touch each other, touch themselves. Chests rise and fall with quick, shallow breaths as sexual euphoria sets in. Those with lovers whisper to each other—though they do not turn, do not look away from the immaculate form of the dancer moving under more and more gravity by the second—that they cannot believe they are here, that this is happening. Their long journeys are now as nothing in their mind, their lives before as nothing, their lives ahead as nothing; in this moment and this moment only they are alive, and thousands of hands rub and squeeze and reach and insert into this truth.

The music has accelerated in its outward broadcast, an antigravitational counterpoint to the ship’s fall. The dancer’s feet are still planted on the floor, but, as he pirouettes, he feels muscles stretch and joints pop. Millions of follicles pucker, and his lover’s long reach seizes his flesh, pulling upward to its waiting mouth. The ship is accelerating in its orbit, shifting inward two degrees, out one, in two, out one—edging the event horizon. And now, every watcher in every screen is nude, those alone working themselves with hands and toys and micro-gravity generators, those in pairs or groups tangled together, fucking ravenously, but no eyes close in pleasure, no lover is beheld, for as these prisoners of desire pump and stretch and twist and squeeze, every gaze is locked on the dancer, who is taller now, thinner, they’re certain, as he is pumped, stretched, twisted, squeezed by that great engine of infinite mass, infinite desire, and as he nears the event horizon, brushes up against it, he is nearing the fucking of his life, the fucking of his death, and they are living through it, here, now, not a recording, not a simulation, not an actor or a digital effect, but live and in full color, and they’re coming now, but no one stops, no one will waste a moment of this singular ecstasy.

And then the dancer crosses the threshold, and his love is consummated. The light of his broadcast falls with him now, the slow-motion display on the screens of the gravitational chasers now a past life he has forsaken with the retreating window of the vanished universe, but while they can no longer see him, he can see them, shuddering in life-changing orgasm, knowing that they can never again be the same people they were before this release, and he is still dancing, dancing now only for his lover, who is pulling him, stretching him as the color of his motion swirls in trailing streams, his world warping in the mirror of this void. Muscles rip and tendons tear, joints dislocate and bones crack, but as pain swirls into exquisite pleasure, the building momentum of his body carries him though, for he must keep dancing, he must give his lover the best of himself, for in so doing he too might become so great, so great and so real in that collision that is apotheosis and annihilation of the self altogether, and he is still dancing when he feels something burst in his head, and something bursts in his loins, and it is the ringing orgasm of mortal meeting god, of taking and being taken, of total consumption by desire, and as he is coming apart he knows his lover is near, and they are coming together, merging together, and all the world now is a smear of painted light, and he does not know if he is living or dead, but some part of his hot, stretched, pulverized body still pumps with the beat of the music and cries yes, yes—YES!