It was the year 2036 when the scientists perfected the technology to shield gravity. The applications seemed limitless, but it was just happenstance that the very same year, an unmanned survey probe following a comet orbit outside of the solar system ran into the black hole. The black hole was tiny - its event horizon was hardly more than 100 meters in radius - and the survey ship would never have noticed it if it had not been carrying on board sensitive gravity measurement instruments for detecting changes in the comet's own gravity well. Even then it was only because the survey ship just about ran right into the black hole that it was able to detect it.

The next 10 years were spent building a space craft that could capture the black hole in a containment field made from the gravity shielding technology and bring it back to earth. It was a momentous day on May 7th, 2048 when the transport ship triumphantly returned with the black hole in tow. A momentous day, but also one filled with much apprehension, because the destructive military applications of a captured black hole were all too obvious. But the nation's governments showed uncustomarily good form, and they agreed to construct a scientific facility to study the black hole that would be entirely off limits to any kind of military agenda. Furthermore, went the international decree, all information about the study and application of the black hole was to be made completely open and public.

Harvey Higgins was junior science officer, so he had to wait several days before it was his turn to conduct an experiment with the black hole. After all that waiting, he couldn't resist the temptation to try throwing something into the black hole to see what would happen. When he took an old desk out of storage, he was so filled with excitement, that he barely noticed the odd inscription scratched on the top of the desk (perhaps by a disgruntled employee). He took the desk to the experimental chamber and tossed the whole thing at the black hole. Well, not exactly "tossed" per se. All of the basic scientific protocols and safety measures had to be observed, and all of the monitoring equipment was focused on detecting any response of the black hole to the addition of mass. There was none. The desk vanished into the singularity point that marked the location of the black hole in three dimensional space without a flash, a noise, or anything. All light, sound, heat, radiation had been absorbed by the black hole together with the desk, and Harvey's instruments could not observe any change at all in the measurable characteristics of the black hole.

Then Harvey had a sudden insight. For decades, the wastes generated by humanity had been accumulating on the surface of the earth, and many expensive facilities had had to be constructed to contain the more toxic of those substances. Those facilities that were not only expensive to build but terribly expensive to maintain (and protect from damage, both of natural origin and human origin - terrorists were still a problem well into the 21st century). He contacted the waste management department of the facility, and sure enough, paperwork was just being started for the expensive transport, treatment and containment of a batch of highly radioactive compounds from a previous experiment with the black hole.

After just a few quick phone calls, the waste material was delivered to Harvey, and he dumped the entire batch into the black hole. The lethal material simply vanished, literally without any trace. The waste management department head was overjoyed, and after word of the success went to the administration of the facility, Harvey was hailed a genius (and given as a research budget a hefty portion of the savings from not having to dispose of the waste using conventional methods).

Soon, word of Harvey's discovery reached the president of nations, and after consultation with the nation's leaders, she placed Harvey in charge of the entire facility containing the black hole. In an unprecedented show of global good will, all of the nation's leaders agreed to dispose of all bioweapons into the black hole, and that agreement was followed soon after by the historical decision to rid the world of nuclear weapons and all other weapons of mass destruction. The world had become a utopia - any even marginally toxic material was simply dumped into the black hole, so it seemed that the future generations would know nothing of the ailments from industrial pollution caused diseases.

One old scientist was not so impressed with Harvey's discovery. Jared Jenkins had spent his entire life trying to discover an actual black hole, and so he was a bit miffed that Harvey's team had just found one by accident. Jared's extensive study of the subject of black holes had led him over and over to the curious paradox - if the tremendous gravitational force of a black hole did in fact collapse it into a singularity from which nothing, matter or energy, could escape, where did all of the matter and energy go? Surely the laws of physics and common sense would not permit all that matter and energy to occupy a single point. Over and over, Jared, and others like him, came to the same conclusion: a black hole must somehow create a rip in the space time continuum. Imagine, for instance, an infinitely long needle being pushed into a big squishy blob of some jelly-like substance. The blob would stretch and stretch as the needle pushed through it. But no matter how elastic the blob is, an infinitely long needle would have to eventually break through to the other side of the blob. In the case of a black hole, the infinite density of matter would create an infinitely deep gravity well, and infinitely deep, well, it means that something has to give. And what gives, according to the theory, is a wormhole between different places in space and time (think of them as different spots on that blob that we were pushing the needle through), places occurring as points on the space time continuum surface torn by the black hole. If that was indeed the case, then all of the dangerous substances Harvey was dumping into the black hole, must be spewing out of a "white hole" somewhere else in space and time.

Jared tried many times to contact the now celebrity-like Harvey to warn him, but Harvey would have none of it. "You are just jealous that a younger man like myself has gotten all of the attention and glory for the black hole" he boasted. And Jared slumped back into his small office, wondering if Harvey was right. Even if the black hole did lead somewhere, in all likelihood it was some void in space, which would be as good a place for all of the hellish materials Harvey was throwing into it as any.

Many years later, after Jared had died alone and forgotten, Harvey, now a grandfather, some said to a whole new generation of children living without fear of debilitating man-made substances, stood out in the open fields that surrounded the pristine cities free the toxic wastes that had threatened civilization just decades before. He looked around himself in satisfaction at the new world he had created.

Suddenly, he heard a loud thud behind him. An old desk had fallen to the ground, seemingly from out of the clear blue sky. He went to examine the worn piece of office furniture, and he saw, scrawled on the desk top, the words "what goes around, comes around".

His mind filled with dread, and when he looked up again, the once blue sky was a black cloud raining down horror upon the terrified men, women and children of his city.