[Writing] Journey to the Center of the Thing

[Kimera Industries]

Journey to the Center of the Thing

Prologue

Billions of years of nothing. Straight-up nothing. A few asteroid impacts here and there, but they were lost in the heavily dimpled face of Dres. Perhaps the most interesting thing to hit it would be a car, thanks to a private space company.

Gray.

Desolate.

Rings arcing across a deep back sky, the most interesting feature to remain for millions of years.

For billions of years, Dres whirled around a distant sun, almost undisturbed, until an alien race particularly good at leaving trash on other planets made it the focus of their attention.

Chapter 1: Anomalies

“Another one?”

“Looks big. Should we take the rover?”

The orbital scans had been acting up for months. Ever since they arrived, the polar observation satellites had been reporting anomalies everywhere. Everywhere on the supposedly empty surface of the dwarf planet Dres. (Well, except for that sports car.) And mission control back on Kerbin wanted them to find out what was going on.

Because people in charge like picking on people they are in charge of, Arcturo I Commander Jebediah Kerman had been tasked with figuring everything out. Like most people in charge being picked on by higher-ups, he picked on someone lower than him to help. Specifically, Head Scientist Bob Kerman.

“Perhaps. We’ll get Mission Control to weigh in. You’ve tried debugging the sats?” Jeb asked.

“I’ve tried debugging the sats.” Bob replied.

“You’ve tried a hard reboot.”

“I’ve tried a hard reboot.”

“What we have yet to try is to go where they’re telling us to.”

“There are too many locations- we can’t ever hope to visit them all, not within the expected lifetime of Arcturo, anyway.”

“Maybe something’s interfering with the signal? Maybe they’re getting a false reading from something?”

“Like what, something at the center-” Bob cut off.

“What?” Jeb asked.

“I need to see the lab. Now.” Bob’s voice was chock-full of urgency.

“What? What did I say?” Bob didn’t respond. He had ran out of the office and down the hallway.

“You know I outrank you, right?” Jeb shouted.

Bob’s reply was distant: “Not that you care!”

“Fair point.” Jeb sighed to himself.

Bob wasn’t seen all that night. The other research scientists said he was in the lab with “one of those conspiracy theory boards” and papers scattered everywhere.

Jeb placed Bob’s dinner by the bulkhead and rapped gently on the sealed door. 

“Whatcha doing, buddy?” he called through the thick metal.

There was no reply.

“Um- come out when you feel like it, I guess. Just eat your food.” Jeb’s words hung in the air, unanswered, as he left the meal behind and headed back into the base. He could only speculate on Bob’s shenanigans, and it wasn’t the first time he’d had to do so.

<><><>

beep beep be-

*SLAM*

Jeb peered upward at the ceiling, and unfortunately, directly up Bob’s nostril.

“I know what the anomaly is.” Bob’s voice was ragged, tired, clearly showing he had been up all night. Yet full of excitement that made a kid on Christmas Day look absolutely depressed.

“Grug. Flzmp.” Jeb flumped back onto his pillow. It was too early to be early in the morning.

“Jeb, this is important- you’ve got to listen!”

“Who let you into the coffee again, Bob?” Not again, Jeb thought.

“No one. Isn’t adrenaline wonderful? But that’s besides the point, look at the map!”

Jeb was slowly coming to. As he shook off the shackles of sleep, he noticed Bob had dragged in a painter’s stand. A map projection of Dres was resting on it. The stand looked like it had been jury-rigged out of various pieces of scrap lying around, which wasn’t far from the truth.

“Whazzat?” Jeb was still one-fourth asleep. 

“Look! The patterns! And the frequency, too-”

Jeb cut him off. “As your commander, it is my duty to leave the knowing and understanding things to people lower ranking than me, or whatever.”

“But- but- look!”

“I am looking, and I almost wish I hadn’t. S’plain.” As Jeb woke more fully, he noticed various scientific instruments and papers had been brought in and his commander’s desk pushed into the hall.

“See, see- right here, they’re all the same distance apart, and here, a reduced signal, corresponding with higher elevation, and here-” Bob’s arms were waving frantically, spreading the smell of unwashed kerbal everywhere. 

“Just tell me what it is already, OK?”

“Well, isn’t it obvious? From the data here, we see-”

Jeb sighed. This was going to take a while. He decided to let Bob rant.

He was shaken out of his stupor when Bob said: “-at the center of Dres.”

<><><>

Arcturo I revolved around a central hub, shaped like a dome. Most of the time it was a cafeteria, but it could be rearranged into practically anything with its cleverly designed modular tables and chairs. (One of the more popular arrangements was an arena, where dart-gun battles were held every Saturday. It was every kerbonaut’s goal to make sure no one back home found out, and also to someday be champion of the dart battle.) Currently, it was something like an auditorium, with Arcturo’s crew spread out in rows of chairs in front of a cluster of tables grouped into a stage. Bob was setting up his makeshift stand up there, with several sheets of scientific diagrams and a laser pointer. Jeb was up there as well, delving into the mysteries of the microphone and sound system.

The crew’s seating choices had placed them as far away from each other as possible. Most sat clutching a warm drink or other morning food with a space blanket wrapped around themselves. After a few minute’s tinkering, the sound system sputtered to life.

“Testing test- ahh!” The volume was intensely loud. Some might have said it rivaled a Saturn V launch. A quick adjustment decreased the volume to more of a Saturn 1B .

Jeb realized the hub was small enough a microphone wasn’t really needed, and switched it off.

“Ahem. Uh. Well. We are gathered here for an emergency meeting, I guess. Sorry about waking you up so early, but Bob’s got something important to say.”

As Jeb sat back down, he walked by Bob and whispered into his ear.

“Remember, you’ve already interpreted the data. Just tell them what it means. But don’t-”

Bob didn’t hear the rest of the whispered sentence as he stood up and grabbed the laser pointer, overly enthusiastic to begin.

“So you guys know the anomalies we’ve been seeing, right?” A brief chorus of agreement from the audience. “So uh, I had an idea today-”

“Yesterday.” Jeb muttered as he sat down.

“Right, yesterday, so I went to the lab and took measurements of all of the anomaly’s locations, signal strength, etc. and I got this chart here.”

The laser pointer rested its sights on the map of Dres. Higher elevations were marked in red, and lower areas in blue. Thumbtacks had been placed in various locations and connected with string.

“Um, one of the things I noticed was that they’re all an equal distance apart from their neighbors. And that the signals were weaker in higher elevations and stronger in low elevations.”

Jeb noticed that the thumbtacks had been color coded to show signal strength. Anomalies didn’t really emit signals, they just bounced back interesting variations from the background that scientists took a look at and said, “Hey, that’s weird.” But these anomalies were signals themselves.

“It’s not much variation, but it’s enough to suspect that something underground is causing this.”

The crew began to mutter amongst themselves. 

“Something deep underground, and, since they are all around the planet, probably at the center of Dres.”

“I don’t buy it. I still think the Mun landing was fake!” Dasmir, head of the fuel refinery, was a person who would make statements like that even if he had been the first kerbal on the Mun himself.

“Dude, you’re literally standing on Dres.” That was Dasmir’s assistant.

“Wait, guys, I’ve got an explanation for this. It’s-” Bob was cut off by more shouts and louder conversations from the crew.

“All I’m saying is, the Mun landing’s photos-”

“Come on, let’s not start that again, Dasmir-”

“I think Kerbin is flat!”

That quieted things a little.

“Wait, really?”

“Well, no-”

The noise picked up again. “I just want to say it’s-” Bob struggled to be heard.

Uh oh, thought Jeb. At least don’t let him say the A-word…

“I know, I know, it seems unlikely, but it might be-” The shouting was growing louder, and the chaos escalated rapidly. A bottle of water soared over the audience to end up splashing on someone’s hot chocolate.

Don’t say it, not now, they’re not ready, don’t say it!

Bob’s devotion to science was too much. Yelling to be heard over the mess, he said, “Considering the data, it’s likely to suspect it’s-”

I believe you, Bob, but this needs to be broken to them slowly-

“Alien in origin.”

He said it.

 

Complete silence dominated the hub. Normally, there would have been an errant cough to break a silence like this, but even those were restrained.

Jeb took advantage of the moment to regain control over the crowd. 

“Yes, alien. We don’t know anything about it except that it’s at the center of Dres, so I don’t want a million questions about it, alright?”

One of the crew members hesitantly raised his hand. Jeb nodded, and the kerbal said “What do we do?”

Jeb thought for a moment. 

“I think our first priority is to report it to Mission Control. Secretly, of course. Any other questions?”

“If it’s at the center of Dres, how are we gonna get to it?”

“I never said we were going to go to it-” Jeb suddenly was interrupted by Bob.

“Well, Dres’ core cooled down about a billion years ago, so sufficient equipment could reach it.” 

Silence reigned once again, until someone fed up with its rulership said:

“Isn’t there that drilling device en route to Jool?”

Edited September 25 by Kimera Industries
Finally added an actual story.