Forever Curious, Part 15
Chapter 5: The Berserker Forest
The Berserker Forest
Even as her probe has reported a pressure almost equal to that beneath her pressure dome, Na-Yeli inadvertently prepares for the worst. Apart from a little slap, like diving into water, nothing happens. She looks behind, still wondering what technology keeps that immense wall of water out, and sees the Moiety Alien appearing from the transitional portal. First four very small, barely visible orbitals, quickly expanding to almost double their normal size. Then the Moiety Alien pulls its remaining, highly miniaturized orbitals through the Diaphragm Gate, moves down a bit as its lobes reshift to their normal size. Good, she thinks.
Na-Yeli falls through a hyper-oxygenated sky and spreads her arms, willing the metamaterials of her exoskin to form wings. Wings are formed, but they are too small. She’s used more materials for the pressure dome than she originally calculated, and now she doesn’t have enough left to form wings large enough to provide the lift she needs. On top of that, building the pressure dome as quickly as possible has drained her batteries considerably, less than thirty percent left. She can use her ion thruster, but only very shortly as her life support systems need energy, too.
While her instruments confirm the composition of the atmosphere as reported by her probe, Na-Yeli’s cameras notice that she’s in a twilight area. Darkness on one side, light on the other side. There is enough light to show that her downward spiral is taking her to a reflective ground level. Ice? The air temperature, at 250 ºK, is also below freezing.
Her downward spiral is accelerating, she’s going down faster and faster. She hopes that a precisely timed burst from her ion thruster—which doesn’t quite have the power to lift her, even at a gravity that’s a quarter Earth-normal—will be enough to soften her landing. Worked so hard to get into this place, she thinks, only to break all my bones at landing.
Then she feels something under her wings, for circular pressure points trying to push her up. She looks below her and sees the Moiety Alien, trying to break her fall. While it can’t quite lift her, it does arrest the acceleration of her fall. She’s still going down fast, but not fatally fast.
Just before she touches down, Na-Yeli lifts her nose up and greatly increases the angle of her wings. This classic landing maneuver greatly reduces her horizontal speed—at the cost of almost all her lift—as she angles her legs down and fires up her ion thruster, hoping she times the burst just right. Her feet touch ground as her forward speed drops to below fifty kilometers an hour, this should be survivable. The ground is ice and instead of coming to an abrupt halt, Na-Yeli and the Moiety Alien—who stayed with her to the very end—glide over the ice, eventually coming to a standstill on an icy plain.
She puts up two thumbs in the direction of the Moiety Alien, knowing full well it’s probably meaningless to it. If we’re going to be friends, maybe even partners, she thinks, we must learn to communicate. No matter how rudimentary. So by repeating certain gestures after certain events, she hopes to imbue that meaning. They have to start somewhere, and a kind of gesture-cum-movement language it’ll be. Now to get on with her mission.
If the ice remains as smooth as this, Na-Yeli thinks, I could skate my way out of this polar region. That is if the whole layer isn’t one big ice shelf. But she did catch a glimpse of vegetation when she was still all the way up, closer to the temperate region. On the other hand, if the North Pole is also an ice shelf, then she may have to physically cut through it to get to the transitional portal there. She bounces a quick radar reading straight to the upper barrier above. Thirteen point seven kilometers, her instruments tell her. If this layer, like the ones before it, is also thirteen point seventy-five kilometers thick, then she’s fifty meters up. She doesn’t look forward to digging through fifty meters of ice—assuming the North Pole ice shelf is similar—but it could have been worse. The average depth at the sea of hyperwaves was ten kilometers, she remembers, imagine that as ice.
Na-Yeli looks at the Moiety Alien, hovering a few meters away from her, wondering where they should go from here. She still can’t read the alien as its orbitals fluctuate in size, albeit gently as they slowly change colors, as well. Where they are, almost at the exact South Pole, the ice is quite flat and undisturbed. It seems to remain so in the half that’s lighted by the unknown light source, far away. The ice is almost pure water, with precious few solubles, and as Na-Yeli has replenished her water reserves already at the sea of hyperwaves, she’d rather move onwards to a place in this layer where there are other elements.
Before we go, though, Na-Yeli thinks, establish a simple yes/no protocol first. She flashes her light torch at the Moiety Alien, then flashes it in the direction of the dark hemisphere, then points it at her face, very visibly shakes her head, and then walks a few paces in the opposite direction. Repeats it a few times, hoping to establish that a horizontal shake means ‘negative’ or ‘no’.
Then she points her light torch to the Moiety Alien, then to the light hemisphere, then to her head and visibly nods her head, and then walks a few paces towards the direction she’s indicated. Again repeats it a few times, hoping to establish that a vertical shake means ‘positive’ or ‘yes’.
Then she waits a few moments, hoping these attempts at communication sink in, then points her torch at the Moiety Alien, and then in the direction of the dark side of the South Pole, and waits. A second later it moves to the left and the right a few times. Then she points her torch to the Moiety Alien and then in the direction of the lighted side of the South Pole, and waits. A second later, the Moiety Alien moves up and down a few times and then moves straight toward the light. Hoping she’s established the rudiments for mutual understanding, Na-Yeli follows.
Their initial trip through the polar region is uneventful. For the first few kilometers, Na-Yeli has changed the metamaterials of her soles into skates and she’s able to move at a brisk pace. The Moiety Alien seems to have no problem keeping up. It probably could just fly to the North Pole and leave me behind, she thinks, the fact that it doesn’t has got to mean something. Something profound. Then the ice becomes rougher and covered with snow. So now Na-Yeli has turned her skates into skis, and the two of them keep going, albeit considerably slower.
The position of the far-off light source has also changed. Whatever it is, it seems to be positioned right above the equator, and it’s moving, Na-Yeli thinks as her computer implant estimates how fast, it makes a complete rotation in 24 hours and six minutes. That’s so anthropocentric, it gives Na-Yeli the chills. Then her analytical part makes a quick calculation based on the timing of the ‘shutter’, and indeed twenty-four hours and six minutes match 2165 Planck Times. Call it a cosmic coincidence.
In any case, it’s impractical to keep following the light—the shortest way between two poles remains a straight line—so they keep going North. This might imply a sleep cycle, if there’s life in this layer, Na-Yeli, at some point, has to sleep herself, I might as well synchronize to it. It also makes her wonder if the Moiety Alien sleeps, or otherwise rests.
As they approach the Antarctic Circle, the ice and snow are slowly making room for something that eerily resembles tundra. In the far-off sunset, Na-Yeli spots what looks like a small glacier. The terrain is not flat, there are hills and valleys. Even some undergrowth that might be the local equivalent of tundra vegetation, although it’s mostly red. On the one hand, she needs to resupply her depleted elements. Since they’re making such good progress, though, Na-Yeli doesn’t want to stop to take a sample. If that’s flora, she wonders, will there be fauna?
In the distance, there’s something that stands out, in a literal manner. Gleaming white spikes from a common center. A local kind of spike bush, it seems, until Na-Yeli notices that it’s moving. An albino hedgehog, Na-Yeli thinks, how cute. The animal turns its front towards Na-Yeli and the Moiety Alien as if it’s just noticed them. She hears a sharp bark, almost like a battle cry, and sees the white hedgehog sprinting towards them.
The constant white glare of the icy landscape has distorted Na-Yeli’s sense of distance. The albino hedgehog is quite a bit farther away than she thought, at first. Unfortunately, this also means it’s much bigger than she estimated. As the pig-sized hedgehog sprints towards them like crazy, it takes one final jump and curls into a ball. The white spines—that are indeed quite sharp—bounce slightly on the frozen underground and then all Na-Yeli can see is a big, globular wall of white spikes rolling towards her at full speed. She’s too astonished to step aside and is run over.
The spikes, while very sharp, aren’t quite hard enough to pierce Na-Yeli’s exoskin. She’s pushed over backward and the morning-star-hedgehog rolls over her, not imparting any undue damage. Na-Yeli gets up, suffering nothing more but a few contusions and a bruised ego. The menacing hedgehog, after it comes to a standstill, seems disappointed that none of its spikes have caught something, and turns around for another attack. Before it can start to sprint, though, four of the Moiety Aliens orbitals have appeared under its soft belly while the other four, much larger orbitals are just outside the range of its spikes. It can stretch its invisible tethers quite a bit, Na-Yeli notices. Then the four small orbitals under the hedgehog increase to their maximum size, toppling the hedgehog over before it can start to run.
It rolls back on its feet, utters a loud bark of dismay, and prepares to attack Na-Yeli again. Once more, the Moiety Alien topples it. The scene is repeated, in slightly different variations, a few times until the hedgehog gives up and moves away. Very kind, Na-Yeli thinks, and very smart. The situation is resolved while nobody got hurt. Well, she is, but only a little bit and she deserved it.
Nevertheless, Na-Yeli’s still baffled by how big it is. If that’s a consequence of the hyper-oxygenated atmosphere, not unlike the Earth’s during the Mesozoic, then what other megafauna is waiting for them, especially in the tropical zone? Dinosaurs? Tyrannosaur Rex? Even worse? She’s low on metals, hence also low on mini-torpedoes, mini-rockets, and the like.
But then she sees a rock, a round rock, albeit a rather fluffy one. For a moment, Na-Yeli’s at a loss. What’s special about a rock? Then it strikes her. They haven’t seen a single rock in this weirdly anthropocentric layer, so far. Soil, yes. But not rocks, let alone mountains, as this layer—and the other six, for that matter—are simply too small for massive geological processes like subduction and rock formation. If it’s not a rock, then what is it?
As Na-Yeli’s curiosity is constantly piqued, she can’t stop and investigate every little thing. The mission, she’s gotta keep her eyes on the mission. But even without a mission, whole Universities full of scientists across the fields could spend lifetimes studying all the weirdness in these layers, Na-Yeli thinks, alas, that’s for the deluge after me. They wish to travel onwards, ignoring the strange rock, but the strange rock won’t ignore them. It sprouts eight feet, not unlike those of a huge spider, pushes its body off the ground, and goes after them.
What’s it with this predilection for rolling, here, Na-Yeli wonders, too lazy to invent the wheel? She’s too tired to run away—she needs to replenish the materials for her vitamins, proteins, and minerals the first opportunity she gets—and just lets this oversize spider do its worst, trusting her hardened outer skin. The rock spider tries to bite her with two fangs, but these slide off Na-Yeli’s exoskin. It tries again, a few times, all unsuccessful, then takes its leave, making a few disgusted sounds.
Na-Yeli is too exhausted, and as something eerily similar to night sets in, she digs herself in, just below the permafrost. The near-perfect insulation of her exoskin should make her invisible to heat-seeking predators, but she programs five Kittis to hover around, checking for danger, for two hours each, the next one releasing the previous one. That should give her ten hours of shut-eye. She has no idea if the Moiety Alien needs sleep or its equivalent of a restoration-annex-memory sorting period. Yet it needs to get used to hers. It would be rather disappointing if it left while she slept, but there’s only one way to be sure.
She’s too deadbeat to care much. She’s dug herself a nice bed and falls asleep in seconds.
She’s at a gig with José, her first true love. The band, half human, half machine, blends brutal noise with stupendously tight, arithmetically complex rhythms and soaring soundscapes ranging from the impossibly divine to indistinguishable from white noise. If not for her, José probably would have left ... it’s always her music, her movies, her restaurants that they visit ... his patience with her verges on the compulsive ... while there are short moments of undiluted love between the nights of wild lust and the days of silent misunderstanding, they’re not enough ... this affair is not healthy, from neither side ... then why is she so bloody lovelorn after she makes the inevitable break ...
... but down, deep down, she’s not ready, emotionally, for a long-term relationship ... after all these years, she’s still not recovered from the unexpected death from her father in that faraway country ... night after night, she dreams that she can stop him from going on that particular business trip ... but she looks for him, in every corner of their house, in his office, at his friends, his favorite pub ... only to find that he’d just left, less than a minute ago ... she runs, runs, runs as fast as she can ... yet she never catches him, again and again ... the only man ... she’ll never truly know …
—or—
Author’s Note: Na-Yeli has entered the fourth—green—layer and things are about to get crazy. How crazy? Keep reading to find out, and many thanks for reading in the first place!