| Generated by Google Flow text-to-video AI software, powered by Veo 3.1 |
August 31, 2526. Thank God for small miracles, the mining facility is fully
intact, as is the mass driver itself. They used a lot of power getting
there, and they didn’t start out at 100%, so they charge from the local
mini-grid. Fortunately, it goes quickly as the geothermal generators are
operating at peak performance these days. They spend their downtime getting
to know each other better, Breanna and Cash have sex a couple of times, and
Sorel enjoys breaks in a virtual oasis. They also prepare for departure,
making sure they understand the procedures. The mass driver can fire them
out at incredible speeds, including incredibly deadly speeds, so they
have to be extra cautious. The pod is equipped with parachutes, but in case
those fail, the rover actually has its own too, so they will be able to blow
the bolts on the pod midair if they have to.
The world is falling apart, and maybe someone is to blame for that, but
ignoring that one little apocalyptic eventuality, technology is fairly
reliable, built with redundancies, contingencies, and redundancies. They
fire themselves over the mountains and the chasm, and at the exact right
time, the chutes deploy. They gently descend to the ground, landing only a
few kilometers from the industrial vactrain depot. This is where the refined
materials are loaded, and dispatched to the various domes in the northern
polar region. Sorel looks at the map and finds their target. “This one.” He
points to another spot. “If your hang-gliding friends landed somewhere
around here, this is the dome they would have encountered first. But. It’s
in a canyon, so there’s a chance they completely missed it, and just kept
walking. If you know they don’t have a map, skipping it would be easy to
do.”
“Still,” Breanna begins, “it’s the most logical place to start. Would you
mind? They have passenger pods here too, so if you would rather go somewhere
else, we can part ways.”
He shakes his head. “If this canyon dome is populated, they will be in just
as much need of escaping. They could make for great customers. In fact,
maybe better, because they’re less safe that close to the chasm than the
more northern communities. They might be more willing to leave.”
“Okay, then we go there together,” Cash agrees.
Sorel drives the rover into the vactrain pod, and sends a message to the
network AI, stating that they are ready to go. The tube closes up, and the
pod slides away. Of course, the trip is a lot shorter than the one that
brought them there, but it’s still not instantaneous, so the girls have sex
again while Sorel occupies himself in his simulation. Once they finally
arrive, the AI announces that it will not be able to let them out exactly at
their destination. There is something wrong, and it has been sealed up.
Instead, it takes them back up to the surface, and drops them off at
the secondary depot, which leads to the outside. It’s farther away, and they
will have to make their way down into the canyon from there, but it wouldn’t
be so bad if not for the actual reason they have to do that. The main
entrance was blocked because the dome....has been destroyed. Well, it has
not necessarily been destroyed, but it’s not safe either.
“Holy shit,” Cash says as they are staring over the edge. The shape of the
dome is still there, and in fact, may remain intact underneath, but it’s
unclear how livable the environment would be inside of it. Molten lava has
breached the canyon, some of it already having hardened into rock as it
cooled. If the residents are still down there, there’s not likely a way for
them to get out. The database doesn’t say a thing about who they are, or how
self-sufficient they designed their community. They might be able to survive
for millennia, or they need to be rescued today. Whatever the answer, the
three of them are not equipped to help. Really, the only question on Breanna
and Cash’s minds right now is whether their friends were there when it
happened.
“Notus, Calypso, can you hear me?” Breanna asks into her comms. “Shimizu,
anyone. Can anyone hear me? Anyone at all.”
Sorel looks down the way. “That hab. It’s for gondola ingress and egress.
There might be survivors in there; perhaps your friends, or someone who saw
them.”
They walk down there, and it immediately doesn’t look good when they round
the corner. The entrance is wide open, exposing the habitat to the hostile
outside environment. That doesn’t mean there aren’t any answers, though.
They shut the door behind them and repressurize, then get a look around.
Cash heads right for the logs. There aren’t any recorded reports, but there
is still security footage. She feeds it into the auto-summarization
software, and grabs the highlights. They watch when the lava breaches
through the walls of the canyon, and heads for the dome. Shortly thereafter,
the interior habitat cameras show the lone operator pull his helmet on, and
bug out. It doesn’t even look like he warns the residents below what was
happening. He just abandoned them. If they were using holographic imagery
for their scenery, they might not have seen the lava, and if they didn’t
think to include the right sensors—which would, admittedly, be quite
odd—they might have sat there in ignorance for hours, or maybe even the last
couple of days. They might still not know that they’ve become
trapped. There’s no evidence that they tried anything to save
themselves.
Cash rolls it back a little. Earlier that day, seven survivors appeared from
behind a small mountain. “Oh, it’s gotta be them,” she notes. The operator
came out of the habitat, and stood just outside the entrance, using hand
gestures, likely talking to their friends. There’s no audio, so they can’t
know exactly what he was saying, but the group turned around, and he went
back inside alone. He obviously denied them entry, which was a dick move,
but it possibly saved their lives.
Breanna lets out a sigh of relief. “So, they didn’t get in. Where did they
go?”
“It looks like they went back where they came,” Cash replies, “but the
cameras don’t see very far. They could have looped around to the other side
of the canyon, or backtracked to the chasm.”
“Why would they do that?” Breanna questions. “There’s nothing for them
there.”
“There might be,” Sorel says. He has the map up again as a hologram. “From
where you lost them, they went northeast to get here. This area is
impassable. It has all sorts of sharp rocks and hidden crevices; very hard
to navigate, especially on foot. If they tried to head west, they would have
hit that stone forest, and might have ended up all the way back where they
came from before finding the trail that goes northwest, around the
other side of the forest. Now, they could have skipped all of that if
they had instead come towards this gondola station, and gone around
the canyon’s east side, but it looks like that asshole didn’t direct them
that way.”
“Sorel. We have to go look for them. Can you stay with us just a little bit
longer?” Breanna begs.
“I would be happy to. Let’s get back in the rover.”
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