How the Solar System was Spared by the Black Hole

The news struck like a thunderclap throughout the world. Newspapers had used the largest type they could find.

Astronomers were in agreement. A gargantuan black hole had been discovered on a rampage in the Milky Way. The immense event horizon was approaching and estimated to envelop the Solar System in three days. Earth would, of course, be affected along with every fragment of its contents, human and animal, animate and inanimate. All would disappear into the vast gaping maw.

Billions of the world's populations were involved in an uproar of debate as to what all this meant to humanity. The answers were none-too-reassuring. Simply expressed, the news meant that everyone on Earth was doomed to a horrifying death.

People learned that the event horizon was a sort of advance line of the black hole. Once it had reached a population, that population was lost. The end would be a horrible stretching and shredding of anything that occupied space, including men, women, children, fish, birds, and animals. Mercifully, the end would come quickly but no one knew exactly what or when since no one had witnessed this sort of death before.

The panic, fear, and hysteria that was experienced throughout the world was, not only unprecedented, but also unimaginable. Most of the populations froze in their tracks. Businesses came to sudden shut-downs. Newspapers ceased publication, most radio and TV stations went off the air. Only a handful of ham radio operator keep the flimsy thread of communications amongst people barely alive.

Mysteriously, a note on heavy parchment was received. It read, "The Event Horizon will not affect the Solar System." This was signed, A Rector.

Despite a dearth of communication among nations, this ray of hope spread throughout the world at jet speed by word of mouth. But who was A Rector?

The event horizon, the so-called border of death as it had come to be known stopped at the outer reaches of the Solar System, with Neptune at one end and the sun at the other. On the third day, everyone wondered whether this day would end. It did. And so did the fourth, and fifth and every other day after that.

The sky, however, looked different. The Big Dipper was no longer seen, nor the constellation, Orion, nor the giant stars Sirius and Betelgeuse. It would take generations before astronomers could untangle the changes that had been made in the night sky. But the Solar System had remained intact. Normal life resumed slowly.

The writer of the note that had given hope to mankind was never identified. However, there were many instances where A Rector was found to be the one and only anagram for Creator.