What an incredible experience. I've seen pictures before but it must be almost overwhelming to see it in person. So many cables! Such complexity!
When you said your friends disappeared I thought maybe they had traveled into an alternate dimension, or collapsed into one of those wormholes the conspiracy folks were warning us that CERN would open up. Maybe that's what happens if you touch the geodesic point.
Maybe they did, we didn't consider it. Maybe we're being infiltrated by now!
Or maybe, just maybe, we all went to the alternate dimension, and they were just late catching up!