Interstellar: The Official Movie Novelization (23 page)

The lander had spent its velocity and begun to fall toward the black hole.

“Case?”
she heard Cooper say.
“Nice reckless flying.”

“Learned from the master,”
the robot replied. The Ranger’s engines sputtered and went out as it, too, exhausted its fuel.

“Ranger Two,”
Case said,
“prepare to detach.”

For an instant she thought she had misheard, but then she looked up at Cooper’s face and the faint apology written on it.

“No!” she shouted, grasping for the buckles of her harness.

“On my mark,”
Case said.

Free of the restraint, she pushed herself to the window, staring at Cooper, pleading with her eyes.

“What are you doing?” she demanded.

“Newton’s third law,”
he said.
“You have to leave something behind.”

“…two…”
Case said.

She pushed her faceplate against the window, trying to somehow bridge the vacuum separating them.

“You told me we had enough resources for both of us!” she said.

“
…one,”
Case continued.

Cooper smiled at her fondly.

“Hey,”
he told her. “
We agreed—ninety percent
.”

“
Mark
,” Case said.

She saw him reach for the button, watching through the jewels of her tears, forming perfect orbs inside her helmet, drifting, collecting in her eyelashes.

He looked at her one last time, then hit the button.

“De—”
he began, and he swallowed.
“Detach.”

And the Ranger—and Cooper—were gone.

THIRTY-THREE

Cooper watched the
Endurance
’s main drive diminish to a star-like point of light as the ship accelerated away from Gargantua, and he fell toward the massive dead blackness. His breath quickened as he wondered what it was going to feel like—if it was going to feel like anything at all, for that matter.

He peered at the horizon, at the distorted light of the last stars—the last light—he thought, that he would ever see. Glancing upward, however, he saw the universe as if through a circular window, a porthole opening onto infinity.

There is a beauty to this
, he thought, as he watched a glowing plasma jet stream across his field of view. He had never known he could hold terror in one hand and wonder in the other with such perfect balance. And indeed, as the fall sped up, terror began to overbalance a bit.

Trying to keep from hyperventilating, Cooper turned the Ranger down, gasping at the flare of the horizon.

“Tars?” he asked. “Are you there?”

His only answer was static as he watched the lander nose down into the black.

Then Cooper realized he was losing his fight with panic. He’d hoped to go out with some dignity, but now it was all he could do not to scream.

* * *

Far above, Amelia heard Cooper’s breathing. It was becoming louder and louder. Crying, she balled her fists so tight her nails cut into her palms.

And then, abruptly—as his harsh breaths rose toward a crescendo—the radio dimmed out and fell silent.

She stared out into space, the last surviving human crew of the
Endurance
. Gargantua still filled her field of vision, but every breath she took put thousands of miles between her and the black hole.

For a long time she could not look away. But at last—as she knew she must—Amelia turned from her grief, from what lay behind her, and looked ahead to the distant red orb that was now her destination.

Looking toward hope.

* * *

“It’s totally black,” Cooper said, knowing probably no one could hear him. “No light at all.” He paused. “Brand? Can you hear me?”

* * *

Murph stood in her room, the ruddy light of dusk fading beyond the window pane.

She sat on the bed and looked into the box. She took out the model of the lunar lander, remembering a little ruefully how she had punched that kid for saying the Apollo missions were faked—but even now, not really regretting it or the larger fistfight that followed.

She looked up at the books.

“Come on Murph!” she heard Getty yell from outside. “We don’t have much time.”

* * *

Cooper saw something coming out of the darkness, something glittering and white, like a handful of sand cast by a giant into a whirlwind. As the Ranger plunged into it, it streamed by like glowing diamonds, like sleet seen through high-beams. It was beautiful and terrifying, becoming more the latter as it began to beat against his hull. The entire ship shuddered as the hail became more like red-hot rivets, shredding the Ranger to pieces.

“Fuel cell overload,” his computer informed him. “Destruction imminent. Initiate ejection.”

Into that?
his inner voice squeaked. But he didn’t have a choice in the matter, and for the second time in his life he saw the controls ripped involuntarily from his hands, and he was blown out of the Ranger as it broke into a line of explosions running down the infinite rabbit hole, with him right behind. And then Cooper finally screamed, because his mind couldn’t take it, and all that was left was the part of him that couldn’t think but could only react, the part as old as the first primate, the first mammal, the first water-bound worm with a notochord.

Then, without warning, something like a great invisible hand seemed to take him, pull him to the side, away from the stream of debris. And toward—something. Something that somehow didn’t seem to belong here. A grid of some sort—an infinite series of cubbyholes, each square opening nearly identical…

No, not cubbyholes—tunnels, he realized, as without slowing in the slightest he hurtled feet first into one, banging painfully into the side. Still hollering, he began kicking at whatever the walls were made of, and felt some of it give, slowing his fall. It was as if the passage was made of unmortared bricks. It was weirdly familiar, and nothing like what he’d thought he would find in a black hole.

He kicked again, and added his arms and it gave even more. At the same time he sloughed off more of his forward momentum.

He kept at it and slowed further, coming, at last, thankfully, to a stop. For the moment, all was finally calm—no more falling, no more motion at all—just floating in a strange space that seemed more familiar each moment. He had time to wonder if he was dead, or dreaming, or just stuck at the event horizon of the black hole, frozen in time, his mind playing out weird fantasies as it would for the rest of time.

Putting aside the possibilities that he was dead or dreaming—he couldn’t do anything if either was true—he reached out to the wall of the passage. If this was actually happening, then where the hell was he? How could a transdimensional space inside of a black hole be made of bricks?

But they didn’t look like bricks.. For one thing, they were thinner than most bricks, and not as dense. Each had two thick outer edges enclosing hundreds of much thinner lines, like paper…

Like books…

If you were on the wall side of a bookshelf. And from each book streamed a ghostly line of light, as if each book had left a trail. The light created a vast matrix around him, going off in all directions.

He pushed at one of the objects, and it shifted incrementally. He pushed harder, and then harder until finally it popped through and dropped out of sight.

Peering through the gap he saw her. She was ten and her hair was wet. She had a towel around her neck, and she was just turning, startled by the book falling.

“Murph?” he called. “Murph?”

But she didn’t react. She just stood there, gazing at the shelves, at the book on the floor, which he could no longer see. Then she came cautiously toward the shelf and bent down. When she came up she was holding a broken toy.

The lunar lander.

* * *

In the twilight, Murph turned the lander model in her hand, remembering, wondering. Outside, Getty was sounding more frantic. But she felt somehow, there was something here.

* * *

Cooper watched his ten-year-old daughter examine the broken model.

“Murph!” He tried again. “Murph!”

But she still didn’t hear him. She turned and left the room, and he knew where she was going—to the breakfast table, where he would chastise her for being unscientific and not taking care of “our stuff.”

Desperately, he looked around and realized that he was in something like a cube, and each wall of the cube looked into Murph’s room from a different angle, as if the room had been turned inside out, reversed, and put back together. And it wasn’t just the one room, the one bookshelf. He saw now the matrix of light held multiple iterations of the room, maybe infinite, tunnels and passages going in every direction, framed, held together by the light streaming from the books, the walls, the objects in the room.

It was disorienting, and he wished Romilly was there to explain to him what was going on. He had to be operating in more than three dimensions, but since his mind was only built to handle three—well, he figured it was doing its best.

He was still in free-fall. By floating around and using his thrusters, he could effectively move to each iteration of Murph’s room, so he pulled himself to the next one and punched out two more books.

Through the resulting gap he saw an empty bedroom. It didn’t stay empty for long, though. The door opened and—well—
he
walked in. His younger self, looking bothered about something. A moment later, Murph entered as well.

Cooper slammed into the books, kicked another out, furiously determined to get their attention.

* * *

Murph rubbed her hand across the old desk, remembering all those years ago when she had pushed it in front of the door, how angry and sad she had been. She reached for the chair, too, and tilted it back.

* * *

Cooper watched Murph put the chair on top of the desk, completing her barricade of the door. A moment later, he saw it move a little as someone—no, not someone, but him, the earlier him—began to nudge through.

“Just go,” Murph said. “If you’re leaving—just leave now.”

* * *

Cooper spun around to another wall, and saw his earlier self on the other side of the door.

“Don’t go, you idiot!” he yelled, as the other Cooper closed the door. Going to let Murph cool off. Precisely the wrong move. “Don’t leave your kids, you goddamn fool!” he shouted.

He began punching at the walls with everything in him, but not blindly. He knew what to do.

“S,” he said. “T…”

Murph was watching now. She didn’t look scared. She looked amazed, excited, interested.

“A,” he grunted. “Y.”

He stopped to catch his breath, then watched in frustration as his earlier self reached through the cracked door and around, to lift off the chair so he could push back the desk and enter the room.

“Stay, you idiot!” he yelled. “Tell him, Murph! Stay…”

He watched numbly as it played out, just like before. He gave her the watch. She hurled it across the room.

“Murph,” he pleaded. “Tell him again! Don’t let him leave…”

He broke down and began to cry, the sheer frustration of having to watch it all, and not be able to do anything. It was way too much to handle. Once again, he wondered if he was dead. If this was Hell.

Because it damn sure felt like it.

* * *

Murph picked up her old notebook and paged through it, stopping when she reached her Morse code interpretation of the gaps in the books.

Stay
.

She looked up from the notebook back to the books, and felt something almost like a rush of wind go through her, as if some hidden place had suddenly been opened. She went to the shelves, and began pulling books out.

The smell of burning corn drifted up from downstairs, where the door stood open for her.

* * *

“Murph,” Cooper sobbed. “Don’t let me leave.”

But his earlier self turned, heading for the door.

“Stay!” he screamed, slamming the books with all of his might. One dropped, and the earlier Cooper turned. Looked at it…

And left.

Cooper put his head against the books, weeping.

* * *

Murph stared at the gaps she had made in the books, and then back at her notebook. Her throat tightened.

“Dad,” she said. “It was you. You were my ghost…”

Tears started, not from pain or anger or sadness, but from the greatest joy she had felt in many, many years. He hadn’t abandoned her. He had tried. He had been her ghost all along.

* * *

Cooper was still crying when he heard his name. He turned, but there was no one there, and he realized the voice had come from his radio. He also recognized the voice.

Tars.

“You survived,” Cooper said.

“Somewhere,”
Tars agreed.
“In their fifth dimension. They saved us.”

“Who’s ‘they’?” he asked. “And why would they help us?”

“I don’t know,”
Tars admitted,
“but they constructed this three-dimensional space inside their five-dimensional reality, to allow you to understand it.”

“It isn’t working!” Cooper exploded.

“Yes, it is,”
Tars said.
“You’ve seen that time here is represented as a physical dimension. You even worked out that you can exert a force across space-time.”

Cooper frowned, trying to understand. And then, suddenly, he did. The streams of light from the books were paths. Through time. Showing where each thing in Murph’s room had come from and where it was going. And the force he was exerting…

“Gravity,” he said. “To send a message…”

He looked around the infinite tunnels, the infinite Murphs, the lines from the books, the shelves, everything in the room going off as far as he could see in any and every direction.

“Gravity crosses the dimensions, including time,” he said.

When he pressed an icon on a control panel, it wasn’t the icon that made the ship move. It was just something that translated his intention to the mechanisms that could actually start the ship. Similarly, although it felt as if he was punching the books out with his fists and feet, in fact that was not possible. His physical body,
this
physical body was not—could not be—in the past.