Hēi Dòng (lost story)

"Hēi Dòng" was a short story presumed to have been set after the events of Galactaron's first album, wherein the band encounters a black hole. The story was accompanied by fanmade illustrations and an instrumental single. The following excerpt was salvaged from an archive of the now defunct galactaron.com.

## Excerpt

“What is it?” Asked Emily.
 “It is hēi dòng,” responded Singer through his neutral mask.
 “Hēi dòng? It’s a black hole?”
 “Si.”
 “It’s beautiful.”

 Millions of years worth of vibrantly colored debris and foggy gases were slowly being spun into the void. A harsh, continuous light shone in its center; infinite nuclear reactions, impossible to extinguish. Emily averted her eyes, the brightness slowly burning into a mild pain. Singer’s gaze remained steady, staring into the void.

 “We must go slowly when we travel near them. It is… asthira… mm… unstable.”
 “Won’t we get pulled in?”
 “The ship reforms matter. When we get too close it forms again... mm… away from hēi dòng.”
 “So when the ship gets this close to a black hole, it has to constantly rebuild itself a couple inches away so it doesn’t get pulled in? Including us?”
 “Yes.”
 “We’re being reformed by the ship right now?”
 “Yes.”
 “That makes me feel kinda sick…”

 Sitting behind them, on an overstuffed paisley patterned couch, Bass was playing with his travel-sized pinball toy. It was designed for car trips and boredom on Earth, but it was the pinnacle of happiness for the smiling little lizard.

This seemed like a very surreal moment to Emily. A month ago, she would never have expected to be on a spaceship with five aliens, a concern for how close she can reasonably get to a black hole before it obliterates her existence, and a replica of her father’s worn out sofa. Now here she was, asking questions nonchalantly to a masked being that couldn’t tell the difference between “yes” and “si”.

   Singer glided over to the control panel, hovering his fingers just above the various assortments of switches and knobs. His mask changed. It was happy.
“We can go closer.”
Emily, incredulous, asked “How close?”
“Very closer.”
“That sounds awesome! Let’s go!”

## Collaborative Aspect

#### From galactaron.com:

Our first Galactaron short story is coming soon and we want to invite you to help us out!

Every now and again we will release a short story to show the continuing adventures of Galactaron and Emily Wong through outer space. We want you to be a part of that adventure!

The steps to get involved are as follows:

 1) Send an email to email (at symbol) galactaron (little dot shape) com with the subject “Story Time”.
 2) We’ll send you a prompt from somewhere within our story.
 3) You create a piece of art depicting that prompt.
 4) You send us the artwork before January 16th, 2012.

That’s it! Once we get all the artwork from everyone we’ll post the story on our website, along with your artwork (credited to you of course) as a big comic. You’ll get to see where your piece fits into the larger story and you can show everyone you know this amazing collaborative piece you were involved in. It’ll be very fun.

You can make the artwork in any visual style you choose: drawing, painting, digital, photography, sculpture, video, etc. The choice is yours! As long as an image gets to us by the 16th of January, anything is fair game.

So email us right now and lets do this! The more people email us the better the story will look.

### References

1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 Wayback Machine (archive.org)
2. ↑ GALACTARON ILLUSTRATION - sambachman.com