Forever Thrilled, Part 18
Chapter 5: A Wave of Hypersea
Na-Yeli decides to watch things for a while. Their rotation period slowly increases to four minutes, and for each complete turn they make, they move ‘up’ some six kilometers, meaning they’ll get to the equator area in about twenty minutes. Good going, as far as she’s concerned.
She regularly checks on her unofficial partner in exploration, and the Moiety Alien fervently moves up and down—their signal for ‘thumbs up’—while easily maintaining course. It makes moving through this crazy superswirl look easy. There were only two times it was really in trouble, Na-Yeli reminisces, first when it had to go from the very high pressure here to the low pressure at the other side of the semi-permeable diaphragm, and with the Strange Hail. It seems exceptionally well adapted to a wide variety of environments and has possibly outgrown—or out-engineered?—the need for tools.
Until, in an extraordinary and varying environment (although this one is obviously artificial), a highly advanced monkey equipped with tool-making tools comes in very handy, indeed. On the other hand, the Moiety Alien has also saved her more than once. Which makes Na-Yeli wonder: could either of us have made it all the way through alone? Or is inter-species cooperation part of the test?
In the meantime, Na-Yeli has to make another decision, as the batteries are more than 50% depleted. Keep up the Faraday cage, or convert it and start charging? She decides to wait until they’ve reached the equatorial area, which she can’t determine in this Hadean darkness (thank dog that their ‘fly-by-wire’ software is awesome and keeps guessing their position correctly), so she has to trust her equipment. If nothing has happened until then, she’ll chance it.
For about fifteen minutes, all seems quiet (as far as possible in a superswirl where the rotational speed decreases to almost two-hundred-and-fifty kilometers per hour in the equatorial region). Then, out of nowhere, something vast swallows her. Na-Yeli only notices it in the last second: a giant creature coming upon them so fast that it literally swallows them before they can evade it. The sonar echoes of that final second are still vague but sharp enough to make out the outline of a gigantic, flat predator with a huge maw. A bit like the local version of a whale shark, but then one with stealth capabilities. So before they know it, Na-Yeli and the Moiety Alien have been eaten by a huge Stealth Whale Shark.
Na-Yeli’s more embarrassed than afraid. How does she tell this to her crew? And what to do with the Moiety Alien? She suspects the Moiety Alien could easily get out the other way by manipulating its orbitals. But that won’t work for Na-Yeli & Co. She could cut her way out of this Stealth Whale Shark, but the slow CEO deeply respects life. She will go out of her way to hurt—let alone kill—indigenous life. She has killed a few times inside the Enigmatic Object, but that was purely in self-defense (and often so late in the game that KillBitch had to go all-out to prevent them from getting killed).
Right now, supposedly, they’re in the stomach of this leviathan, especially since her outer sensors record a highly acidic solution. Again, she’s happy that she kept her exoskin as is. It withstood the heavy acid rain, and now it’s fine against this mega whale shark’s stomach acid. Which reminds her, now that they’re out of reach of the electric sharks, she can temporarily convert the Faraday cage into a current collector and recharge her batteries. Hell of a place to do that, the strange is gradually become the normal in this place. Will she get used to actual normality if she ever gets home? It’s a trick question, as she’s always been weird.
However, she doesn’t want to stay inside this invisible leviathan, especially as it’s going back ‘up,’ and she wants to go ‘down.’ It does make sense, Na-Yeli thinks, It goes slightly—only laterally—against the stream, out of sight, hoping to gather as much prey as possible. Dead organic matter, or dead bodies from the surface area eventually float ‘up’—pushed that way by the dynamics of the superswirl—and this giant vacuum cleaner sucks it up, converts it to fertile matter for the lightning-synthesizing plankton near the surface. Meaning its fecal matter is probably lighter than seawater if evolution did its job right (which is never a safe assumption in this Enigmatic Object).
And there’s her way out, through its digestive system, if it’s large enough. She’s been doing some extensive sonar recordings, which give an outline—however vague—of the intestinal tract. Again, she doesn’t want to hurt this, well, beautiful animal (even if she’s never actually seen it). Then again, she can’t stay here forever. So, she’ll gently try it after the next announcement.
“Hello crew,” she says, “it seems we’ve been swallowed by an invisible leviathan; that is, a kind of giant whale shark with stealth capabilities.”
—a transparent sperm whale— the communication AI signals.
“That’s quite an ... unfortunate comparison,” Na-Yeli says, “It’s not hurting us—even if it tries to digest us—and we’re going to try to get out of it the other way.”
—through its digestive tract— the communication AI signals —like a kind of reverse anal probing—
“You’ve been reading the wrong databases,” Na-Yeli says, “Check if they’re marked as either ‘urban legend’ or ‘fiction.’”
—alright— the communication AI signals —i guess it’s a shitty job—
“And we are going to do it,” Na-Yeli has to refrain from adjusting certain settings on its programming, “during which I would highly appreciate the absence of any attempts at humor.”
—that’s not fair, this way i’ll never become a perfect translator—
“Perfectionism is like maximum intoxication, utter satisfaction, and ultimate happiness,” Na-Yeli retorts, “a condition to strive for, but never, ever achieve.”
—that’s ridiculous. why not—
“Because once you’ve reached that ultimate level, everything below it will feel lacking,” she explains, “It’s better to keep striving.”
—like literally moving through shit—
“We can only go up from here.”
The communication AI wants to try a response with the words ‘up,’ ‘creek,’ and ‘paddle,’ but some weird, self-learning program loop prevents it. Na-Yeli appreciates the silence and gets to the task at hand. She makes herself and her shape-shifting exoskin as long and sleek as possible and then wriggles out of the invisible leviathan’s stomach into the rest of its digestive tract. Initially, this goes—relatively speaking—well, until constricting and relaxing bowel movements set in, which hinder more than help her.
Peristalsis, she thinks, Its body wants to get rid of me, as well. So she should go along with it. She times the constriction-and-relaxation cycle, then tries to get into the same rhythm. Breathe in, push. Breathe out, relax. Breathe in, push. Breathe out, relax. She hopes the humor-testing communication AI does not notice the unfortunate connotation. Thankfully, it remains quiet, and they move in step with the peristaltic movements. The Moiety Alien syncs the expansion/shrinkage of its orbitals almost perfectly with the Stealth Whale Shark’s peristalsis, as well, and both of them are fast-forwarded through the invisible leviathan’s digestive tract in record time. It’s not long before they both exit the now somewhat queasy Stealth Whale Shark with one gigantic BLURP amidst an amount of feces that would make a herd of elephants jealous.
Ingested but not found tasty enough, Na-Yeli thinks, which one might consider an insult. On the other hand, if the whole Enigmatic Object would do this and force me out, well, that would greatly simplify matters.
“We’re out,” Na-Yeli says, “Thanks for not discouraging me.”
—no shi//no problem— the communication AI signals —by the way, did you know there was an audio company founded in the early Twenty-first Century called SCHIIT—
“Too much information,” Na-Yeli interrupts, “I’m just happy that we’re out of this shi—ehrm—situation.”
Nevertheless, Na-Yeli moves towards the ‘up’ direction, as she doesn’t want to be swallowed whole by the invisible leviathan as it completes its turn in about four minutes. As that time passes, they’re not popped as a midnight snack again and continue past the equatorial zone.
Na-Yeli has no way of detecting another stealth whale shark apart from flashing intense lidar, which has a more limited range and consumes much more energy than sonar, and her batteries haven’t yet fully recharged. Which reminds her of her second problem: keep the current collector on, or put the Faraday cage back? She can see the electric sharks coming a few seconds in advance and probably withstand the first couple of hits, so she decides to push her luck by keeping the current collector on until her batteries are full (or nearly full).
For about fifteen minutes, her luck holds; in other words, that quarter of an hour is uneventful. Then a strange signature appears on her sonar, a long, thin, wavy pattern not unlike a sequence of sine waves, a well-handled whip, or, indeed, a snake. It moves fast, stupidly fast, even faster than the electric sharks, and it’s onto her—literally wrapped around her—before she can say ‘Sparknado.’ And she shouldn’t breathe in for that, as the whiplash-swift sea snake now tries to smother her.
A second one—just as blindingly fast—has wrapped itself around the Moiety Alien, surely a first as the Moiety Alien is her paragon of hyper-fast reflexes. But moving like lightning through this already fast-moving water is an altogether other activity than squeezing fast. The Moiety Alien changes the size of its orbitals much quicker than the sea snake can strangle and is out of its grip in no time. Na-Yeli, on the other hand, is still trapped like a capybara by a giant anaconda.
Not only is this whiplash sea snake trying to asphyxiate her, but it’s spraying something all over her, as well. Her outer sensors tell her what: calcium hydroxide. What the hell? Na-Yeli thinks, A base snake in both senses of the word? An Alkaline Anaconda? Luckily, her exoskin is just as resistant to a strong alkaline solution as it is to a strong acidic one. The strangling, though, is becoming more than a little irritating. Her shock absorbers now function as a buffer, quickly building up an inner spiral around her that frees her from the Alkaline Anaconda’s choking force.
She could cut herself free, but that would go against her directive of only hurting or killing native fauna when unavoidable. Right now, they’re in a stalemate: the Alkaline Anaconda can’t suffocate Na-Yeli, while Na-Yeli cannot escape its grip. She could keep this up for a while, but the combination of Na-Yeli & Co and the giant base snake start drifting off in the wrong direction.
How about some reverse pH action? Na-Yeli could produce a small amount of organic acid—not too acidic; she only wants to scare the base snake—and spray that near its head. She could start with a relatively high pH and—if necessary—go lower. So she prepares a small amount of citric acid, fires off a few lidar flashes to find out where the snake’s head is, and then extends a pseudopod with the citric acid towards it. In the meantime, she slowly blows up her exoskin, using her multifunctional shock absorbers.
Before Na-Yeli can release the citric acid, the snake’s head moves towards her pseudopod and swallows it, almost breaking its—what she thinks are—base-sprouting teeth on her extremely hardened exoskin. As the Alkaline Anaconda tries to rip the pseudopod from Na-Yeli, she releases the citric acid straight into its mouth. Subtlety be damned, it shouldn’t have been so aggressive.
The base snake stops its efforts to tear off Na-Yeli’s artificial extension, then opens its mouth in what seems to be a bout of vomiting. As it keeps vomiting, its grip eases—the moment Na-Yeli is waiting for. She retracts the shock absorbers to minimal size and quickly wriggles free. The Alkaline Anaconda makes a few half-hearted efforts at asphyxiation, but it’s still too busy vomiting the citric acid. The moment she’s free, Na-Yeli maneuvers away from the base snake as fast as she can. The Moiety Alien now leads them ‘up’ through the superswirl towards the water wall in the northern hemisphere, as if to say ‘what took you so long’. From her side, Na-Yeli’s happy that it has fully recovered.
“Well, crew,” Na-Yeli says, “after being attacked by a school of electric sharks and being swallowed by a leviathan Stealth Whale Shark, we’ve just been strangled by a giant sea snake that also released a strong base solution upon us.”
—for a strangled person, you sound rather alive— the communication AI signals.
“We overcome that through inner strength and feeding the base snake, the Alkaline Anaconda if you will, a reverse taste of its own medicine,” Na-Yeli says, “now it probably thinks we’re disgusting. Literally, not figuratively,” she adds, hoping to pre-empt any humorous remarks. This time, she needn’t have feared.
—two thumbs up from the hypersounders— the communication AI signals —the more your resilience is tested, the more they like it—
“This is not some ‘Jane Bond in space’ movie,” she says, “this shit is serious.”
—they know, but they can’t help themselves— the communication AI signals —you’ve gone from shiva the destroyer to the aloof superbeing to their favorite superhero. scripts for the sound series are being produced, and the competition for who is chosen to play you is intense—
“Too much information,” Na-Yeli says, “only tell me about it after we’ve gotten out of this cosmic trap in one piece.”
Without any further encounters, Na-Yeli & Co. reach the turbulent area of the other water wall. Carefully, with batteries fully recharged, the slow CEO puts the Faraday cage up again. Then she lowers their rate of ascent, as she doesn’t want to crash into any Ethecoreal Cities accidentally. After a few careful rotations, she has discerned a number of them, more or less the same amount as in the southern hemisphere. Shaking off the intense desire to study these, as well, she searches for unoccupied areas of surface seawater instead.
The challenge is to exit the superswirl, preferably at the top of one wave and climb up as fast as possible—while adapting to the mega-cyclone winds—to prevent crashing into the next wave. Thankfully, there is an Earthly precedent for this particular activity: flying fish, even if the circumstances here are rather more extreme. Na-Yeli studies everything about them and tries to emulate what might work best.
She locates the darkest spots—lack of lightning indicates places where no ethecoreal reefs are—tries to get a feel for when a large wave forms—in this, the hypersounders are very helpful, again—and times her escape. She jumps out of the water, close to the top of the wave, shape-shifts to the optimal flying form, and tries to climb.
It doesn’t go as smoothly as she’d hoped. She’s bumped around like crazy as she transforms from high-speed fish to hurricane glider, during which both the autopilot’s settings don’t work. On average, she’s going down rather than up as she sees another huge water wave rise up to meet her.
Right in time, though, she’s changed into her flying form, and the autopilot’s hyper-fast adjustments are moving her upwards. For only a split second, she’s hit by lightning, striking her down and slamming her right onto the top of the uprising monster wave.
She doesn’t submerge again as she bounces right off the wave like a skipping stone, quickly moving upwards. It takes all the total capacity of her shock absorbers—and then some—to prevent Na-Yeli from breaking any bones. Yet, judging from the pain, she’s got black-and-blue marks all over. Even as the autopilot tries to reduce the turbulence to a minimum, the resulting flight is far from bump-free and full of tormenting jabs. It’s going to be quite a painful ascent.
Painful, but not deadly if she can avoid most of the lightning. Typically, the Moiety Alien is in front of her, moving through this turbulent mega-cyclone with ease as if it’s a joyride. The cloud ceiling is some ten kilometers ‘above’ them and the superswirl—inwards in reality. They reach it without many accidents, a few lightning strikes, and many bumps, preventing Na-Yeli’s bruises from healing. Na-Yeli’s suffering too much to bother to make a report to her crew; they’ll have to wait until they’re in the eye of the storm. Unlike what they believe, she’s not Supergirl.
She crosses the eye wall without a problem, making a few sharp turns to lower their tremendous speed from six-hundred-and-sixty-six meters per second—much cooler than twenty-four hundred kilometers per hour—to a more leisurely gliding speed of fourteen meters per second. They head for the North Pole Diaphragm Gate as Na-Yeli quickly updates her crew. Then she launches a few probes through it, hoping the next layer hasn’t changed beyond recognition, as well.
The readings are close to the previous ones when she entered there: about 60% Earth-normal air pressure and the same entirely nitrogen atmosphere saturated with all sorts of silicates. The probes’ cameras record a myriad of crystalline reflections in a roughly half-globe-shaped area around the Diaphragm Gate with a radius of about ten meters and—what seem to be—three tunnels leading away from it. Maybe the crystalline materials have coalesced around the North Pole diaphragm? In any case, just enough space to go in.
Na-Yeli gestures an ‘OK’ to the Moiety Alien, and she goes in head first.
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Author’s note: this piece is part of a series of planned posts that will appear while I am at work at sea. This one is planned for Thursday November 28. I am planned to return home on Wednesday December 4, after which the rest of December is pretty much my oyster. Until then!