#time dilation

Stan, pushing 80. Ford, still the same.

They aren't considered twins anymore, are they? Stan is older, more susceptible to injury.

Later...

“How long have you been awake?”

“I had a half hour nap this morning,” Lena sighed.

She’d been in the office for three days, but she didn’t admit that.

“Leeeenaaaaaaa,” Kara said, drawing her name out into a gentle rebuke. “You promised me you’d stop doing that to yourself. I’m taking you home.”

Lena’s heart skipped and Kara abruptly jerked upright, briefly glancing at her. Lena hated when that happened, when her body betrayed her. Kara meant escort her home; Lena’s thoroughly tired mind had supplied another scenario, one where Kara carried her onto the bed, relieved her of her clothes and dove between her legs, but that was never going to happen. Lena let out a long sigh of resignation, trying to be satisfied with best-friendship.

She hoped Kara hadn’t suddenly developed telepathy.

If you took me home I’d never leave. I could make love to you for a hundred years.

Kara smiled back at Lena’s wistful look. “I mean it.”

“Okay. I can come back to it tomorrow. Besides, I’m too full of grease and cheese to stay awake. Should we…”

Lena never finished her sentence. There was a crackle in the air, a sudden wet smell of ozone, and the thunderous boom that made her ears ring.

Kara flashed in front of her at super-speed, yanking off her glasses and tossing them on the couch in a smooth motion.

Hovering in the middle of her office was some ramshackle contraption resembling a mechanical eye about the size of a basketball that scanned Kara with a faint purple energy ray.

“Kara Danvers. Supergirl. I am Zeglos, Regent of the Alotian Republic. I am calling to you from the home of my people, located in what is to you a subatomic realm we call Universe Q. We need your help, you are our only hope. The invaders are slaughtering us and razing our home. There is no time.”

Kara glanced back at Lena. “I’ll help if I can. Let me-“

“There is no time. You must come with me now.”

“Wait, hold on a second-“

The machine flashed, thrumming as it powered up, and blasted here with a wave of light that surrounded them both, and then in a crackling boom they both vanished, leaving behind the ozone smell and a faint impression of Kara’s boot heels in the carpet.

Lena stared into the empty space for a moment, then shot to her feet, snatching the phone off her desk, where it had lain ignored since Kara walked into the room.

She called Alex, shocked at the blubbering panic in her own voice. Within a few minutes, everyone was there, piling into the room. Lena warded them off from the spot where Kara had stood. Alex was cold and calm, her voice clinical, and she immediately began issuing orders. J’onn took Lena aside and gently asked her probing questions in the manner of an old detective, coaxing every meager detail of the event out of her.

Within half an hour, Brainy and Lena had set up all sorts of equipment around the room, scanning, hoping to find some energy signature or other clue that could enable them to bring Kara back from wherever she’d been taken.

It proved fruitless. They tried everything.

Minutes stretched into hours. Lena was exhausted, heavy with fatigue.

“Go home, get some sleep,” said Alex. “We can’t help her if we pass out on the floor.”

“I’ll sleep here.”

She did, throwing a thin blanket over herself on the couch. It was Alex, not Lena, who cleaned up the Big Belly Burger mess. Lena slept fitfully, showered in the en-suite attached to her office, and changed into an old hoodie that she kept there and wore when no one was looking.

It wasn’t hers. Threadbare, a maroon color faded to a soft red, the back still emblazoned with a cracked and fading Midvale Mathletes Club logo, it was Kara’s. Lena had snatched it from Kara’s sofa and put it on one night when she was feeling bold and then, as now, felt surrounded by it, the oversized garment swaddling her.

And it smelled like Kara, just enough. Kara had stared at her intently for a moment when she took it that night but said nothing, a wistful sad look on her face before the moment was broken by Wynn’s bad joke at the table. Wynn was gone now, but the hoodie remained, just as it had remained when they were fighting, when she thought she’d never see Kara again. She’d worn it then and cried herself to sleep in it.

Just like now.

A day became two. Then three. Five. Lena tried everything, pursued every theory. They called in every favor, human and alien. Brainy tried to send messages to the future. Nia dreamed fruitless dreams. Alex paced like a caged animal and Kelly kept the peace, keeping them all fed, making sure everyone slept, talking things out whenever tempers flared.

Nothing worked.

Lena even tried praying, something she hadn’t done since the last time she was in a small church in Ireland. It didn’t work this time, either.

Lena was seated next to Brainy on the couch, going over a design for a new device to try to follow what was by now a thoroughly cold trail. Alex stood at the balcony door, staring out into a slashing summer rain squall that buffeted the glass with distant thunder and gusts of wind.

The ozone smell tickled Lena’s nose and she looked up, just as Kara took a stumbling step out of nowhere, appearing in her office with an utterly bewildered look on her face.

“Kara?”

Alex snapped round, adding her voice to the chorus. “Kara?”

Kara stared at her sister, open-mouthed, tears welling in her eyes.

“Alex?” she said. “Alex, you’re alive? How is that possible?”

“Alive? Why wouldn’t I be?”

“Kara!” Lena cried, her voice ragged in her throat.

At the sound of her voice, Kara snapped around, eyes wide. Her knees buckled and she sagged, almost falling. She stumbled forward as Lena stood and they fell into each other, Lena hurling herself, reckless, into an embrace that revealed too much. She almost climbed Kara, all but throwing her legs around her as well as her arms as she buried her face in the Kryptonian’s neck.

“Oh God. Oh Rao. I thought you would all be gone. I begged them to let me leave but they wouldn’t let me go, I had to…”

“Kara?” Alex asked, cautiously. “Why would we be gone?”

Kara barely seemed to hear her as she gently twined her fingers in Lena’s hair and wrapped her powerful arm around Lena’s waist, encircling and shielding her.

“How long has it been?”

“About a week,” Lena choked out. “I was so scared.”

“A week?” Kara blurted. “It’s only been a week here?”

Alex put a reassuring hand on Kara’s back, standing next to them. “Yeah, you were taken on Tuesday, kiddo. It’s Wednesday, the 17th.”

Kara stared past Lena, resting her chin on the shorter woman’s head, and began to sob with relief.

“Kara?” said Alex.

“Time dilation,” said Brainy.

“They told me time would pass slower up here but I didn’t believe them. I’ve been gone for… for…”

“It’s okay, Kara,” Lena whispered. “You’re okay, you’re back.”

“Eighty seven years, four months, and eighteen days,” Kara sobbed. “It’s been so long, I thought you were all dead.”

Alex stiffened. “Kara. Oh my God.”

Kara buried her face in Lena’s hair and breathed her in, shuddering. “I’d given up. All that kept me going was hoping I could see you again. This is a gift. A gift. I love you all so much.”

Kara still held her, rocking slightly, her big shoulders shaking with powerful sobs.

“Kara,” Lena whispered. “Kara, it’s okay.”

“I love you,” Kara blurted. “I love you. It’s okay if you don’t love me back, I just need to tell you, I have to tell you. All I could think about down there is how stupid I was and how stupid I’ve been and how none of the reasons I never told you made any sense,” she sucked in a breath as if she’d briefly forgotten how, “I love you, I love you, I love you.”

There could be no mistaking her intent. She seethed with it, it radiated from her very bones. Lena hugged her hard, crushing her with all her might as if to crawl inside her.

“God, Kara, I’ve dreamed of hearing you say that. I love you too. Let’s… mmmph!”

Kara was kissing her. Lena’s brain briefly froze, then she realized the full magnitude of what was happening. Kara was kissing her. Kara was kissing her. Then Lena was kissing her back. There was so much in it, need and lust and adoration and an unbelievable desperation, but above all love. Lena felt her heart open as if hadn’t in a long time, like a flower unfolding to receive the nurturing warmth of morning sun.

“I’ve been waiting for this for so long,” Kara whispered when they finally broke and Lena again could breathe.

---

The sunlight was heavy and gold, pooling across the duvet like warm honey. Whumpee shifted, sighing into the softest pillow they’d ever known. Beside them, caretaker stirred, a low chuckle vibrating against Whumpee’s shoulder.

"Five more minutes?" Partner murmured, pressing a lazy, lingering kiss to Whumpee’s temple.

"The garden needs weeding," Whumpee teased, though they tightened their grip on Partner’s waist.

"The garden can wait for the sun to get higher. I’m going to make that French toast you like." Partner squeezed their hand, a solid, grounding weight, and slid out of bed. "Stay. Be lazy. You’ve earned it."

Whumpee watched them walk out, the floorboards creaking with a comforting, familiar rhythm. They felt full. For the first time in months, the phantom aches in their joints were gone. The nightmares had stopped. They were safe.

After a few minutes of listening to the distant, muffled clatter of plates, Whumpee stretched and followed the scent of imaginary cinnamon.

The kitchen was empty.

The stove was cold. A single plate sat on the counter, but it was bone-dry. The clock on the wall was stuck at 3:30, still it ticked rhythmically on time.

"Love?" Whumpee called out, a tiny, cold needle of anxiety pricking at the back of their neck. "Did you go outside?"

They headed for the French doors leading to the patio. The morning light coming through the glass was blinding, too bright, almost white. Whumpee pushed the doors open, expecting the smell of jasmine and the sound of birds.

There was nothing.

The patio stones extended for three feet and then simply stopped. Beyond the edge of the porch, there was no garden. There was no sky. There was only a vast, oily blackness that seemed to swallow the very light hitting it.

Whumpee spun around. The kitchen was already beginning to blur, the edges of the table softening like melting wax.

"No," Whumpee whispered, clutching the doorframe. Their fingers didn't feel the wood; they felt cold metal. "No, please. I was just—we were just talking."

"You always did have a vivid imagination," a voice echoed, vibrating not from the room, but from inside Whumpee's own skull. "But the processor is overheating. We need to cycle you out."

The transition wasn't a fade; it was a snap.

The smell of cinnamon was replaced by the stench of ozone and antiseptic. The warmth of the sun vanished, replaced by the biting chill of a damp cellar. Whumpee gasped, their lungs burning as they tried to draw in air that wasn't filtered through a machine.

They weren't in a bed. They were suspended in a harness, wires snaking from the base of their skull into a humming console.

Assistant leaned over them, wiping a smudge of grease off a glass monitor. "How was the French toast?" she smiled, her voice soft.

Whumpee’s hands shook, they tugged weakly at their restraints, trying to reach out for a partner who was now just a collection of data points. "Put me back," they croaked, the salt of real tears stinging eyes that hadn't blinked in hours. "Please. Just... let me go back to the garden with them."

Whumper just smiled, clicking a button on the console. "Maybe tomorrow. If you're good. For now, let’s talk about reality."

Whumper and the assistant chatted amongst themselves, rattling off numbers and terms Whumpee didn't understand.

"How long was that?" Whumpee interrupted, their voice cracking.

"Notice any abnormalities? Any glitches?" the assistant countered. She was already scribbling on a notepad, the fuzzy pink pompom atop her pen bobbing frantically—the only pop of color in the gray steel lab.

"How long?" Whumpee pressed, louder this time.

Did you know it's only been 1.7 hours on Miller's planet since Interstellar's release almost 12 years ago?

This stark difference is because of time dilation.

There are two types of time dilation—relative velocity time dilation and gravitational time dilation. What occurred on Miller's planet was gravitational time dilation.

Einstein said gravity is not just a “force pulling things.” Instead massive objects like planets and black holes bend space and time. This combined structure is called spacetime.

Think of spacetime as a flat, infinitely huge trampoline, and planets/black holes are like big balls causing a dent or dip in spacetime. That dip represents gravity.

Because of this idea, we know that time is not just a concept we use to measure change but a part of space and its structure, and gravity affects the rate of all physical processes, even the speed of atoms and clocks.

We know Miller’s planet is close to the supermassive black hole Gargantua. Because Gargantua has such enormous mass, it causes a very strong curvature in spacetime. This curvature means time runs more slowly compared to planets further away.