Forever Curious, Part 14
Chapter 4: A Sea of Hyperwaves
Na-Yeli is at a loss. She can’t communicate with the Moiety Alien, who had just prevented a Stealth Shark from attacking her. After the incident, the Moiety Alien went back to her previous following position, just far enough behind her that Na-Yeli can vaguely distinguish it on her infrared sensors. One thing at a time, she thinks, first I’ll finish strip-mining the dead body. After that, we’ll just see.
In the next two hours, no other predators attack her. Her bots have transported all useful materials from the dead Stealth Shark to her—Na-Yeli’s exoskin is now heavily bloated—and Na-Yeli drops the remainder some six kilometers away from the Diaphragm Gate at the South Pole, hoping that the inevitable spaghettification lures predators and scavengers alike away from where she—and assumedly the Moiety Alien—will be.
In the meantime, the slow CEO has figured out a strategy. It’s why I’m the CEO, Na-Yeli thinks, I might be slow, according to KillBitch, I might be egotistical according to LateralSys, but I have the overview, I plan ahead. Now that she’s survived two attacks—albeit one with help—Na-Yeli is happy that the Stealth Sharks are big. The first one—in combination with the Screw-Worms she already caught—has delivered her enough material to set up a makeshift pressure dome with the same structure and elements her own exoskin is using now. A syntactic foam blend of tiny glass spheres and epoxy resin sandwiched between two thin layers of carbon nano-weaves. A little bot factory, carefully bubbled out of her enclosing exoskin, is already preparing the separate segments, a bit like the ice blocks from an igloo. Once she has all the parts, together with a high-pressure pump with a series of non-return valves in its pressure line that leads outside the pressure dome, then she will finally head for the opening and try to build it up there as fast as she can, hoping to be finished and gone before attracting any undue attention. If she comes back, she’ll probably have to build a reverse pressure dome at the other side, but she’ll cross that bridge when—if—she gets to it. She’s also figured out a way to, very temporarily, support her pressure dome.
Her horrific death struggle with the Stealth Shark also gave her some priceless data. As she was pushed against the deadly barrier, her instruments measured the rate of spaghettification (scientific research doesn’t stop for urbane matters like life or death). So she’s calculated that a concentric row of six thin yet immensely strong walls of carbon nanotubes could just do the job. Strong enough to withstand the forces resulting from the huge pressure difference, high enough to be consumed by spaghettification in about an hour, as the high-pressure pump needs time to pump out the surplus pressure. Her calculations also estimate that the pressure leaking in through the five concentric chambers—a labyrinth seal, in principle—is considerably lower than the pump will push out, meaning the pressure will be maintained as long as the pump keeps running. Slow CEO, pah, Na-Yeli thinks, high-tech CEO FTW.
Then there’s the Moiety Alien, constantly following her, letting her know it’s there. Since it’s alive, it can probably withstand a gradual change of pressure. Na-Yeli doesn’t think it has just popped in here, exploding into existence like a Boltzmann Brain, nor that it quantum tunneled its way in. If it can quantum tunnel in here, she thinks, why not quantum tunnel straight into the very core, and extract whatever price is, or is not, hiding in there? She figures it made approximately the same journey as her, finding its way through the layers. Now it is here, and most probably knows the immense pressure it’s experiencing. Can it survive an explosive decompression? Most likely not, otherwise it would have left this place already. Remembering how it cracked the other Stealth Shark’s jaws, Na-Yeli wonders of the Moiety Alien simply couldn’t shrink four of its orbitals to minimum size, put them to the other side of the opening, then grow them to maximum size and pull the other four orbitals through? Maybe it can only perform that trick if the pressure in all of its eight orbitals is equal, or if something else is stopping it.
So it’s stuck, and it doesn’t want to go back. She tries to imagine herself in its place. Would she go back? No, not until she’s explored each and every option, until exhaustion. She finds herself sympathizing with the inscrutable alien. Caught between the devil and the deep black sea, Na-Yeli thinks, indeed. And it did protect her from the second Stealth Shark. Na-Yeli performs a quick check. Yes, we both fit in the dome. As the size of the Moiety Aliens is well know, she probably, subconsciously made amends for it as she designed the pressure dome. Let’s build the dome first, she thinks, and see how we go from there.
She builds the pressure dome, piece by piece, feeling a bit like an Inuit lost in an underwater world. She keeps it afloat above the opening, planning to get inside it once it’s finished. While she’s busy, the Moiety Alien is circling the perimeter, as if scanning for incoming attacks. After a frantic fifteen minutes, the building blocks of her pressure dome are micro-welded together and outfitted with their sacrificial support rings, ready to be put down. If she’s fast, Na-Yeli could probably get under the dome and lower it before the Moiety Alien could get it. Perish the thought, she thinks, I won’t be able to live with myself for the rest of the trip. How does she make contact with it? Nobody’s ever done that before. Well, Moiety Aliens also never interfered anywhere before, so it’s not the first precedent to be broken today.
Her infrared sensors easily pick up where the Moiety Alien is, and she flashes a beam of visible light at it. The Moiety Alien stops circling, and four of its orbitals point her way. How do I communicate this, Na-Yeli thinks, and then it strikes her. She flashes its visible light laser at the alien again, and then flashes it at the center of the opening, straight under the floating pressure dome. Repeats the sequence, a second and a third time until the Moiety Alien approaches, slowly. Carefully, it flows towards Na-Yeli, then past her until it is under the dome. Excellent, Na-Yeli thinks and quickly swims to the top of the dome. Aiming carefully, she pushes it down as her whale tail makes a few fast, powerful strokes, and then joins the Moiety Alien under the dome before the narrowing gap is too small.
Together they wait until the floating pressure dome touches down on the barrier, triboluminescent flickers of spaghettification burning up the sacrificial support rings announcing the very moment. Na-Yeli starts the pump and watches the pressure. One-hundred-and-twenty bar, one-hundred-and-ten, one-hundred, ninety, eighty bar. Initially, the pressure goes down quickly. Eventually, progress slows as the pressure difference the pump has to overcome increases. Minutes creep by as the pressure drops, below thirty bar, below twenty bar, below ten bar as the structure begins to groan, but remains in one piece.
If I calculated this wrong, Na-Yeli thinks, the incoming pressure wave will kill us before we can get through. The tense wait continues as the pressure drops, ever so slowly, below three bar. The Moiety Alien makes a very small move towards the opening and back. Repeats the movement several times.
Go in already? Na-Yeli translates, then shakes her head. No, not yet. She moves a bit up, and then down. Not yet. But it is time to do something else. Like she did before entering the sea of hyperwaves, she launches five of Kittis through the opening, hoping she won’t lose most of them this time.
They wait for five of the tensest minutes of her life for the probes to return, as the pressure slowly drops to one-point-five bar and the sacrificial support rings burn up, becoming shorter and shorter. If they don’t come back, she thinks, we’ll just have to take our chances. But after four minutes and forty seconds, one probe pops back in. Its results arrive at Na-Yeli’s computer implant. 1.1 bar atmospheric pressure, 69% N2, 30.5% O2, and several traces of noble gasses. Then the rest return with similar readings. Jackpot, she thinks, let’s get out of here before the lot collapses.
She moves to and from the opening twice, hoping the Moiety Alien understands. Then she dives through.
—or—
Author’s note: and so Na-Yeli, using all of her inventiveness, makes it to the next layer, with an utterly alien companion. Will they get along? Maybe they need to as they’re confronted with the weirdness of “The Berserker Forest”. Stay tuned!