[Writing] It Escaped

[Anomalous_Matter]

Hello, everyone! I figured that since my series of short stories got pretty good feedback, I\'d go ahead and start a bigger story. And so, without further ado, I present...

It Escaped

Chapter One: Onto the Surface

So, you\'re looking for a story. Maybe you want action, or horror. Or maybe you\'re more of a fan of adventure and romance. Whatever the case, you\'re here, seeking something to entertain you for a few minutes before you move your attention to another matter.

Well, sorry to disappoint you, but this story isn\'t like that. This is a record of true events, as experienced by myself. If you get this transmission, don\'t send anyone back to this godforsaken moon; there\'s only death left now. My name is Marcus Kerman, and I\'m still out there.

'Bzzt... Landing sequence initiated. Killing horizontal velocity. RCS thrusters activated.'

'About time...' I muttered. 'Stupid Mechjeb messed up my flight schedule. Why couldn\'t they just let me pilot the damn thing myself?' Within a few seconds, the craft had settled on the ground of the Mun base\'s landing pad. The Mechjeb\'s indicator turned from green to red, signifying that it had turned off, and I pressed the button that opened the exit hatch. A grinding noise sounded, followed by the opening of the small door.

As I climbed out of the small lander shuttle and onto the Munar surface, I was greeted by a short, relatively bulky man with a stubbly chin and glasses.

'Ah, professor Marcus Kerman,' the man said. 'I never thought I\'d see you back here!'

'Hello, James,' I replied, shaking his hand. 'Believe me, I never thought it either.' I glanced up, where I could see the slow rotation of Kerbin in the distance. It was nighttime, with my home nation of Lunus facing towards the Mun, and I could almost picture my family asleep in their home. 'I trust you brought me all the way up here for a reason?'

'Yes, of course,' James Kerman replied. He was an esteemed astrophysicist, scientist and astronomer, the brains behind the first Minmus landing and the construction of the Mun base I was now standing next to. 'Our miners have finally opened up a crack on the ground.'

This news surprised me. Several years earlier, scientists had observed that the Munar surface was made of an extremely hard stone, multiple times more so than even diamond. The earliest notice of this had occurred on the first crash-landing on the Mun, wherein the exploding shuttle hadn\'t made a single crack in the ground. Ever since, mining companies had been shipping workers and bases up constantly to try to harvest the strange material for profit. None had succeeded, even with the most cutting-edge (Excuse the pun) technology available... Until now.

'How\'d you do it?' I asked curiously. 'I thought the soil was impenetrable.'

'Up until now, yes,' James replied. 'We managed to set off enough explosives in a small enough area to break off tiny chunks of the rock, which we substituted into our drills. It worked like a charm; We\'ve got a trench three meters deep and twenty meters wide mined out already.'

'Sounds interesting,' I said. 'Have you analyzed the composition yet?'

'Well, we do know that it\'s nothing like what we have on Kerbin,' James responded. 'Just wait until you see it yourself, Marcus. It\'s amazing, and going to be worth a fortune once we get it shipped back home.'

We arrived at the entrance to the base, a giant glass dome built into one of the Mun\'s natural craters. The miracles of science had increased in leaps and bounds in the last decade or so, and it was reflected here; inside was a fully independent, self-sufficient ecosystem with air, water, and food. As I watched, a rocket took off from a launchpad located outside the dome, heading back towards Kerbin.

'Here we are,' James said as we reached the trench. Miners wandered around inside the hole, hacking away at segments of rock, while drills slowly wore away at the earth. The rocks were transported by the bucketload towards what I guessed was a processing facility.

James picked up a small chunk of stone from the edge of the trench and showed it to me. 'As you can see, it looks just like normal stone. But it\'s hundreds of times harder and more powerful,' he noted. 'Amazing by all accounts.' c

As I watched, a more hollow sound emanated from where one miner was working away. He pulled out a chunk that seemed lighter-colored than the others around it.

'I got another one!' The man said, holding it up. James walked over and took the stone.

'What is that?' I asked.

'This,' James said, smiling, 'Is why you\'re here.'

Chapter Two: Into the Rift

James and I stood in a small laboratory, looking at the glass case in which the rock from earlier now lay. As I watched, a miniature drill pierced the surface of the stone. Immediately, a dark-colored gas began to seep from the puncture, billowing out until the case was entirely full.

'What was that?' I asked, bewildered. 'Is it toxic?'

'We have no idea what it is,' James replied, looking almost as confused as I felt. 'And no, it\'s not toxic, at least as far as our tests have proven. We haven\'t made anyone inhale it or something dangerous like that. Tests so far show that it appears to be made up of absolutely no known element; just like the rock, this is something we\'ve never seen before. It looks like a gas, yes?' I nodded. 'Watch this.' James pressed a button on a handheld remote and the drill retracted from the case; once it was out of the case, it appeared to be covered in a thick, tar-like substance.

'As you can see,' James continued, 'It possesses the attributes of both a solid and a liquid.'

'So why isn\'t it filling the entire room?' I questioned.

'We believe it is the specific type of rock found on the Mun that keeps the material from spreading.' James pointed to the drill, which I now noticed was tipped with the rock that had been mined from the Mun\'s surface. 'It somehow keeps the material glued to itself and unable to spread. And yet, the specific type of other rock the material is found in does not, which is why it could escape in the first place.'

'So, what does this all mean?' I asked once more.

'It means that we\'ve discovered something new. Something unknown and unimaginable up to this point. Does that not excite you?'

'Of course it does,' I replied. 'But I\'m not a scientist. Why did you call me up here?'

'Because we\'ve found something beneath the surface,' James responded. 'It appears to be a series of tunnels, all full of this gas. We\'ve sent a robotic probe in to map out the tunnels, but the gas has another strange attribute in that it seems to stop our contact with the probe. What we want you to do is go in there, get the probe out, and bring it back so we can manually find out what it mapped.'

'And how do you know I\'m not going to die from the gas?'

'I\'m not an idiot, Marcus. We have a specially-designed suit made, as well as an oxygen tank and various other goodies. You\'ll have everything you need to go get it.'

'I\'m still not sure about this,' I said, worried.

'Come on, Marcus,' James replied. 'You\'ll be fine. It\'s not like there\'s some monster down there that\'s going to kill you. We just need you to get that probe back.'

'Fine,' I grumbled. 'I\'ll do it.'

About an hour later, I was suited up in the specially-designed apparatus that James had designed for delving into the tunnels. It looked suspiciously like a normal spacesuit, but it had several Mun rocks built into the suit to keep the gas from spreading, should the suit break and let any in. I was standing in front of the entrance to the tunnels; a large trapdoor made of the Munar stone, presumably to keep the gas from getting out into the base. A guard opened the trapdoor, and I climbed down into the darkness...

...

Far away, back in the science lab, the gas, which had seemed to be still but was actually pushing powerfully on the glass chamber, finally shattered its container and began to engulf the room in darkness. People screamed but were cut off as the gas accumulated in their lungs and began to choke them.

...

The tunnels were completely dark, save for the beam of my flashlight as it swept through the air. However, the light couldn\'t make it more than a few feet before being swallowed by the wall of gas, so I might as well have been blind. Luckily the tunnels were relatively straightforward; there were no intersections or sudden drops, just a uniform line down deeper into the Mun\'s crust. All the while, the gas became thicker and thicker, until my flashlight beam could only go an inch or two before ending. My oxygen tanks had nearly run dry, and I hadn\'t seen any sign of the probe. Heck, I didn\'t even know what the probe even looked like.

'James, what did you get me into?'

Just then, my helmet began to crack and the gas began to seep in.

[Anomalous_Matter]

Apparent lack of interest and writers\' block have culminated in a request to lock or delete this thread. Sorry.

[Ascensiam]

You\'ve only given it a day, and some people simply forget to leave a commentary, this board is still young.

Do you insist on locking this away?

[trbinsc]

I actually liked it a lot! Just because no one posted that they liked it, doesn\'t mean no one liked it. At least no one posted that they didn\'t like it.

[dogon11]

Only if someone says they didn\'t like it does someone not like it.

[Anomalous_Matter]

Do you insist on locking this away?

Yes, please. Writer\'s block has me left with no idea how to continue this story.

[VincentMcConnell]

About to read it. Judging by the title, it seems like Apollo 18 meets KSP lol.

[Luigibro606]

Dat cliffhanger. Do want moar. Brilliant job.

[mincespy]

Aww, don\'t lock it! D:

People like it D:

[Ascensiam]

[gmod]Topic locked by OP's Request.[/gmod]