Chapter 19 - Crystal Man
Year 3001. 21 Days until classes start. South Pole
“This is the control vehicle for the extraction site.”
I frowned, “Wasn’t I supposed to do this with Athena?”
“Ehh I tweaked a few things. Hope you don’t mind it.”
That… didn’t make sense. I thought the point of the missions was to experience the outside world to learn. How was I supposed to experience anything if my father was going to sit next to me and watch as I do literally everything? How could I even hope of figuring out anything on my own?
The door of the vehicle folded down to form a small ramp. I set aside my thoughts for now, “What is the control vehicle for?”
“For finding new extraction sites.”
“New extraction sites?”
Father nodded, “Ether sprouts up on the bedrock of the south pole which means we must dig through the arctic ice sheet to get to the ether crystals.”
“Ice sheet?”
He frowned, “So you know how antarctica is not just a big sheet of ice?”
I nodded, “Yes, it’s a big sheet of ice sitting on top of the Antarctic plate.”
He pointed to the snow, “The ice is formed through thousands of years of snow compacting down into a very dense crystal structure. We have to dig through centuries of ice to reach the ether.”
“So, how do you dig it?”
“We don’t. We use those pipes and shove em into the ground and shoot fluid to melt the ice around the crystals and then use the tube to suck up the loose crystals back up here.”
“How do you know where the caverns are?”
He smiled, “That’s what you’re here to learn. One of many applications for druids. Athen has taught you sense correct?”
Hmm. Wait. “How am I able to use sense?” I exclaimed.
His hand shook my shoulder as he stood up, “I’ll show you around. Don’t worry about it for now. Mother would let you live even if you can’t figure it out.”
Those words hit me like a bullet. Mother? Mother. Mother! Well. Fuck. I forgot to call mother. Shit.
“Hey, Kaiser? You coming?”
I looked up to see father’s head peeking over the edge of the metal ramp formed by the door. I grumbled and pulled the cloth mask over my nose, “Yeah. Give me a sec.”
“You snap a strap in there?”
“What? What’re you talking about?”
I heard a roar of laughter from outside the vehicle as I looked down to double-check the straps that secured my outfit. Still secure. I shook my head in annoyance. I’m not that big.
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“This is the main extraction site for our current extraction operation.”
“Operation?”
Father nodded, “We don’t want to pull too many crystals out of each cavern otherwise the bud of crystals on the bedrock would break apart and we would need to search for a new bud.”
“Couldn’t we just dig a slightly bigger hole and extract the whole crystal instead of taking small bits of the crystals?”
He thought about it for a few seconds, “Well, yes. We could. In fact, we have. Follow me.”
We passed through a series of thick metal doors and came into a room with countless crystals of varying sizes on the walls. Each crystal seemed to produce its own light in different colors. It was almost blinding. But the crystals on the edges of the room were nothing in comparison to the crystal in the middle of the room. A crystal in the shape… of a person?
“This is the cavern.”
“The cavern?”
He nodded, “This is where we discovered ether as a physical form. The first discussion.”
“Then… is that?”
With a slight nod he gazed sadly upon the crystalline sculpture twisted in agony. He brushed his hand against the thick cylinder of glass around the crystal, “This is the first human to directly see Earth.”
“But the crystals don’t look like people.”
“Indeed, but this crystal can show you why we don’t dig out the whole budding crystal.”
I looked at the gleaming sculpture. A thought ran through my mind. What if that was me? What if I was crystal? What if I became crystal? I knew that the man became crystal through the first experiment of discussion between Earth and the commonwealth, but I didn’t really know how exactly the person became a crystal.
“Do you see it?”
“See what?”
“Try to look at the grain of the crystal.”
I peered at the sculpture in confusion, “The grain?”
“You know how crystals form, correct?”
I furrowed my brow, “Yes?”
“So where do you see the grains pointing?”
I leaned in and put my eye up to the glass to look at it. Thin strands seemed to come out to the surface and follow the sharp edges to the various crystalline points at countless spots along the spiky glistening sculpture. My eyes widened, “It’s coming out.”
“Just out? Look inside.”
I squinted to remove the glare of the lights above the sculpture and saw mirrored formations inside the crystal, “It’s… on both sides?”
Father nodded, “The crystal is embedded in the bedrock just like how it’s rooted in his flesh. That man is still alive.”
“Alive? How. That can’t be possible! He’s crystal!”
Father gave a sad smile, “How do you think the small crystal buds are staying in the shape of a person?”
I stood up, stunned, “He’s… got the crystals embedded in himself?”
“Yes… The crystals have converted the matter around him into ether slowly turning his body into a crystal.”
“But then how does it grow? Doesn’t it need a source? Doesn’t that mean the crystals in the ground are slowly turning all of earth into a crystal?”
Father nodded and pointed to a faint orb in the man’s head, “You see that?”
I nodded, “Is that…”
“Yup. That’s the crystal that was used in the experiment. It fused with the ether organ in the brain and formed a source for Earth to send ether.”
I frowned, “Why?”
“Why what?”
“Why would Earth send us ether?”
“This ether is just a byproduct. It’s too impure for Earth. But not too impure for us.”
I squinted at the sculpture of the crystalline man. Impure for Earth but not for us? That was ridiculous. I glanced at Father. Ah. One looked at his eyes and I could tell. A half-truth. The amount of secrecy that clouded ether felt ridiculous.
I looked back at the crystalized figure, “So why can’t we dig out whole crystals?”
Father pointed to the crystal in the figure’s brain, “We tried to figure out why this man was crystalized by the ether.”
“Is it from touching the crystals?”
He shook his head, “No. There’s clearly a difference between a source and a crystal. They look the same. But sources all seem to come from ether organs.”
I furrowed my brow, “Wait.”
“So, if another organ were to touch another source would the source be spread?”
Sacrifice. The word flashed past my mind. Sacrifice. Sacrifice? Was the sacrifice referring to… human sacrifice? Was the ether we consume… from humans? The best ether organs would be the human brain and its mysterious capacity for sentience. So wouldn’t that mean that the best ether buds would be… human brains.
I glanced up at father and opened my mouth, but no words came out. No. There was no way. There’s no way the commonwealth would choose to sacrifice humanity for such meager power.
I shook my head as I looked around the room, “What do we know about ether?”
“Nothing. We know nothing.”
“Nothing?”
“We know what we should know.”
“Why not try to know more?”
A glimmer came to father’s eyes, “Soon. We will soon.”
Yo. Shorter chapter. I'm trying to return to my normal post schedule.
Satyr is a cool person I know and started launching a new book a few days ago. It's a very interesting story with a very smooth integration of cards into the smooth pacing of combat enabling deep mechanical interactions without inhibiting the overall narrative. I've been following the story and I highly recommend checking out their work.
In other news... I would love if you follow the story. It would be very amazing and epic. The next chapter skips over quite a bit of time so we're going to start wrapping up some of the big parts of the book soon. I also have a where I yap about random BS at midnight in my freezing cold dorm room. Please consider reading my midnight yapping. I often don't edit any of that crap and just post it raw like a blog should be (/s I'm just lazy).Currently working on a side project and I suspect snippets will be dropped on the website. Thanks for reading and hope you have a great week.
