Estimated reading time — 31 minutes

Peri had been doodling to pass the time, it took hours for the elevator to descend into the facility. A bat, some circles, some lines, numbers, squiggles. She made “rollercoasters”, as she called them, which looked like loop de loops and random lines every which way. A single straight line eventually creating a spaghetti which covered the page. “Why do the neat rocks gotta be at the bottom of the earth? This is…” She trailed off. She’d be cramped with others in an enclosed living condition soon enough. Excitedly, at intervals between drawing, she read the last few pages of her book. “On Archaeolithoadenylate Shale Inclusions.” Archaea because it was old. Litho because it was a rock. Adenylate because it was a type of enzyme. Shale inclusions because it was solidified liquids in a bunch of rocks. Hour long ride. Elevator went slower due to its depth in the earth, and the delicacy of the rigorous cooling system. Astronauts felt the same way, she bet! Would you turn down an opportunity to go to the moon? She wouldn’t, and she wouldn’t be turning down an opportunity to visit the center of the earth either. As close as you can get. Eight miles down into the earth. Deeper down than the former record holder, the superdeep borehole in Russia, seven miles. Reinvigorated interest, along side other advancements, made expedition down appear profitable. Archaeolithic Adenylate caused a slight stir of attention. At the time, the belief among the few scientists investigating trace residue covered rock samples was that it was just a new type of fuel. A weird chemical substance that seemed to accumulate in rock formations deep underground. They put electrodes, metal rods to capture the electric energy, into a vat of a water, phosphates, and droplets of archaeolith. The few droplets squeezed from their limited supply were able to generate power exceptionally well, to a shocking degree. So, a facility was needed to figure out and dig up whatever this stuff was. In the same way Peri wouldn’t want to get in a rocket just to visit the space station, she wasn’t coming down here just to visit the center of the earth. She was coming down to look at rocks. The same way astronauts went to space to look at a big rock, the moon. “These ARE just small rocks though… Important rocks though… fancy rocks.” She resumed doodling.

Archaeolith. New coal. New oil. New type of battery. That’s all it appeared to be. Got one or two passes through the news cycles. The bigger spectacle, which brought more attention from the general public, was the deepest mine facility of all time. Thirteen kilometers deep! And this wasn’t just a borehole, they had set up a whole lab down there, a vault of sorts. How lucky the prior geologist had chickened out. Needing an emergency replacement, Peri was given her big chance. The archaeolith itself is what piqued her interest. An old rock filled with oil that can power batteries? And the stuff has enzymes in it? What? Now, this deserved her full attention. This opportunity was her lottery moment. Getting to see exactly whatever this junk could be up close.

“Jackpot bay-beee…” She said to herself, nearing the end of her elevator ride. Sat in the corner, legs straight out. The clunking and groaning of the elevator started to pick up, then ceased. It had come to a stop. Jangling motions of a metal fence gate sliding rattled. Ding! A green LED light above the door lit up, the two layered elevator door slid open. An ensemble of people, four in lab coats, one in brown mechanic overalls, stood in a bright white hallway, in front of the elevator entrance.

“Heeeey!” The crowd clapped and cheered, “Greetings!” “Welcome in!” “Hi.” A multicolored set of letters reading “Welcome!” was hung up across wall to wall, near the ceiling.
Peri stood, putting her notebook under her arm and picking up her attache case. She had an awkward but sincere smile as she entered into the sounds of clapping.
“Welcome to the team.” A tall spectacles wearing man reassured her. But a different man in a black lab coat (all the others were white) hugged Peri with one arm around her shoulders, much to her surprise and disdain. Before she could even protest, and she would have, he pulled away and she saw the big white nametag that said “MANAGER” in sharpie. Like a game show spokesman he announced “Allow me to be the first to say… welcome! You are officially on the team researching the most cutting edge, out of this world, mind bending phenomena you ever laid your eyes upon! I would love to introduce you to all the crew, show you around the facility, show you your room…”

“Let’s just calm down first…” A woman with rolled up folded sleeves, the only one wearing latex gloves, attempted simmering down the boss, lightly guiding him back away from Peri.
Peri held out her attache like a shield against the onslaught of the welcoming. “Uh, yes yes…” She stammered out. “Thank you, thank you…”

“Wowee!” The manager grabbed and shook her hand, “Geology is a fascinating topic. I myself make sure all the lab systems are working, Maria over here is our local biologist, or what is it again? Biochemist, that’s it!”
“Alright, that’s enough Camron.” The woman again pulled the boss man away from Peri, who was now looking not merely overwhelmed, but almost offended. “I’m Maria, thank you.” She nodded and led the manager down the hall. “Give them some space, let them get acquainted, jeez. What’s gotten into you?”

The main hall itself like a hospital hallway, and well lit with white overhead bulbs. Down the hall, a door led into an open rock deposit, mining drill visible from the entrance hall. Dust and pebbles trailed out from the doorway. Footprints of dirt led out from it. Doors connecting the rooms were a white painted wood. Professor King led Peri to her room. She was pleasantly surprised by its spaciousness, soft carpet, and full sized bed and desk. A bit down the hall from her room was the medical bay. which held two exam tables separated with curtains, monitors on white plastic stands, surgical tubing, and glove dispensers. The mess hall was in the middle of the facility. Wide open space with a plastic bench and table. There sat one young woman, nametag reading “Rin.”. Semi hunched and small. She waved to Peri as the newcomer was given her initial tour. The mining area itself was the size of a large broom closet. The big drill took up most of it, this big metal cylinder on wheels. There was no wallpaper, only pure stone, in that particular section. Metal buckets for storing and transporting rocks sat next to a big machine that looked like a wood chipper. The saw teeth equivalent, the motorized grinder, were thick, square almost. This was for crushing rock, not wood. There was lastly Professor King’s office, near the mess hall, which was larger than even the managers office, and double purposed as a staff meeting room.

“Please do make yourself at home.” Professor King abruptly ended the tour. Looking now over files at his desk, leaving Peri standing directionless in his office. Eventually, she shook her head, stammered a bit, and asked “Is that it sir? Well I uh, thank you! Thanks… Um. I had a few questions actually, about the…” She couldn’t recollect the words for a moment, “The Piezoarechaeolithic Adenylates?” King turned around like a stone statue on a slow swivel to look straight ahead at her. Peri assumed she had somehow misspoke and made herself look foolish. She made the classic mistake when attempting to amend potential presumed ignorance, continuing to speak. “The deep down, really old, rocks with the…chemical stuff in them, the…”

“The archaeolith, yes.”
“Yes! I was wondering if there was anything particular about the rocks themselves.”
“I wondered that myself but surprisingly, actually, it’s present in quite a few distinct types. Greenschist, blueschist, metamorphic rocks formed at high pressures. Often quartz. Peridotite. Loath to break such a beautiful gem, though…”
“Oh of course!” Peri’s excitement briefly cut through.
Inspired by this, King’s small excitement got through his stoic demeanor for a moment as well. “But obviously the big thing is the energy source stuff, that’s what everyone wants to know about, but honestly, I’ve only been down here a few days and… Well needless to say, it just keeps getting weirder.”
“How’s that?”
“Well…the day I get here, the big question suddenly becomes, well, just how in the world is there this darn much of the stuff?” King took out a folder from his desk drawer. Pictures, and some personally hand written notes. “There is way more of this stuff than anticipated. It’s just really deep down in the earth. But it’s soaked in the rocks everywhere at this depth, all over the soil.”
“Where does it come from?”
“That’s what I’ve been trying to figure out! But just more and more questions keep popping up. Every time I pull at one thread of this mystery, I get tangled in three more…” He stared at the papers scattered across his desk. “So, anyways, here’s where it gets interesting. I took a sample of the archaeolith, put a drop under a microscope, right?”
“Uh huh?” Peri stepped in closer, “And? Well?”
“Left it out over night, no container, didn’t degrade. Still didn’t.” He pointed to a microscope with a tray set under it. “And the actual compound in the stuff, the commonality between this “goo” I guess you can call it…”
Peri chuckled at that. “Is it like ATP? Is it a nucleotide?” She did not know what ATP or nucleotides were but read about them and knew that was the common explanation for whatever was in this material.
King shook his head, “Way simpler than that actually. It’s just something called an autoinducer enzyme. A very small, very simple chemical compound, smaller than an RNA strand. And these things mix and concentrate in damp soil, or pockets of water, and eventually seep into the metamorphic rock, and it’s collected as this!” King took out something like a misshapen lump of dark brown wax with streaks and dots of dim dark blue and green, also grabbing from his desk drawer. Holding it in the light proved it to be faintly translucent. Archaeolith in solidified form.

“Well… Well that can’t come from natural rock formations… Rocks can’t secrete chemical compounds…”
“That’s what I was thinking! Why is it everywhere? Where does it come from? Well, uh…Well good question!” King laughed, “Anyways, you are right, uh… Rocks can’t make compounds! But… But… Bacteria can. It’s the only thing that makes any sense. I’m seeing more and more evidence, ever since I’ve come down here, that this archaeolith is secreted and produced by bacteria. Hence the auto inducers. Bacteria all around the earth, at a certain depth at least, secrete these auto inducers. They accumulate over time, basically seeping deeper into the ground, forming in, well…” He held up the lump.

“So… So it’s bacteria byproduct? Like… like…”
“Like other enzymes, but it accumulates in these lumps in the bottom of the earth.”

With that, Professor King unexpectedly left off the conversation, now distracted again by his next task. He picked up a bright yellow orange card on a strap and exited. Seeing him walk towards the only entrance, and therefore only exit, the woman seated in the mess hall, Rin, stood and ran out to him. “Uh, sir? Th-there was something I wanted to talk to you about again real quick…”

“The door, yes. Yes.” King turned to her, stopping at the elevator and button panels. He slid shut this metal grate on a rolling sliding frame in front of the doors that acted as a gate. “Now, listen, I’ve been considering what you said… At any time you want throughout the day, I can unlock the door for you. You can ride all the way up back to the surface and stay there as much as you need. But the door has to be locked to prevent, well, you know “espionage”… YOU aren’t trying to steal any of our scientific discoveries, are you, Rin?” He laughed at himself, Rin found it almost comforting.

“Al- alright. If I need to go back up for a bit, I’ll let you know, but I should be good here. I think after a full day, I’m adjusting…”

King again told her to ask him at any time if she needed to get outside. But in truth, nobody really wanted to ride the duration of the climb back upwards. It wasn’t just that it was a lengthy ascent and decent back. But also, it was, despite being top of the line modern technology, still rapidly implemented and built. It groaned and sometimes stopped unexpectedly or whirred for too long or made sounds it shouldn’t when it went. Who knew if it would, heavens forbid, get stuck halfway along the route. A quick repair and rescue would take at least a full day, ruin the entire mission, and likely get them fired and sued for some reason or another. “They rode the elevator wrong, this was sabotage!”

Rin didn’t look very pleased, despite the reassurance, as King locked up the gate. Peri noticed the smaller woman looking at the door, twiddling her fingers. A minute or so after King left, “Hey…” Peri startled her, causing Rin to jump a bit. “Oh, sorry. Hey, I’m the new geologist.” And Peri and Rin went into the common greetings, introductions. The two walked back and sat in the mess hall and Rin told her the names of the rest, what they’ve been doing so far, how the utilities work, like the sinks and showers. and how it’s been the first days here.

“What do you do here?”
“I just uh… I do the cleaning. I’m the janitor. And I admit actually Maria has been helping me a lot. And also showing me how to do all the stuff. I’m mostly used to working at hospitals, I never had to do like… HVAC stuff. I never cleaned a vent before, or a… mining drill.”
“Were you a nurse?”
“…Food service worker. And laundry aid. Stuff like that.”
“Oh well that’s a fine position, that’s not bad. I mean… I guess you climbed the corporate ladder pretty quickly, actually, in a way!”
“I admit, I have no idea how I got hired for this. I just sent out a bunch of applications and…and this was really really high paying and it just…” Rin bit her hand and her face shriveled up like a prune, “I’m in the bottom of the earth!” She broke out in a slight laugh, “It’s just…so weird!”

Later that day, Maria came out from the medical lab and, after passing by the open rock deposit, did a double take looking in at Jack, who was operating the big drill. Shaking her head, she stormed across to the managers office. She slapped the door. “Cameron! I need to talk to you about something! Cameron! Jack isn’t wearing his safety gear again.”
“Jack! Wear your safety gear!” Cameron shouted down.
“I do!” Responded from the open rock deposit room.
Cameron gave the O.K symbol to Maria, who shook her head once more and went back to the med bay.

Later on in the day, Peri took to completing a personal task. Checking the vent system in her room. It didn’t function very well according to her inspection. The connected air shaft ran all the way across the hall, so there was this big empty, not at all air tight open space from her room out through the entire corridor. The air supply was getting in but dispersed across the entire lab, diffused. She was concerned because, as she understood it, much of the mining equipment let off fumes. Also the panel connecting the vent system to her room, was loose, which was aside the point.

“Ugh!” Came from the med bay, muffled by the door. Maria stormed out, clutching papers, marched over to Professor King’s office, and shouted in something about heightened quotas, needing more samples, needing more datapoints from him, and something about needing to redo another batch of tests. “I can’t keep up!” Maria cried as she slammed the door again to her quarters. Muffled through the door now, “Peri! I need to take your vital signs! I’ll swear it’ll be quick.”

Peri reported to med bay. Seated on an exam table. Maria drew her blood and collected it in multi color capped tubes, assorted into a box of plastic holes that acted as stands for the tube. Maria brought the box and placed it on a table by a computer. She pulled off her gloves and typed out a series of numbers into the console. She was mumbling to herself about the next steps of her work, correcting the order each time she reiterated the list. “Huh? Oh! Sorry, sorry… You can go now.” Maria waved her off.

“Oh, no, no it’s fine. I was wondering actually, uh, I know you’re busy and all but, you’re the biochemist right? What uh… what did you discover about this stuff so far? If anything.”
“What? Me?” Maria turned from the monitor, “Oh I don’t make any discoveries, hon. I just collect the numbers.” Maria began to sort a table of supplies left out during the exam, “I don’t think anything ever gets discovered completely! I mean, we discover more and more about stuff, but… Well I at least, I don’t even try to say anything for certain. All I know…” She paused to look back over some pages, “Is that this stuff is crazy weird!”
“The archaeolith?”
“Well yeah. Look at this.” She turned the monitor to be visible for Peri. Pictures with arrows pointing to them, mostly of petri dishes, and a bar graph, and a bunch of blocks of text too small to read from far away.
“What am I looking at?”
“Oh…” Realizing this only made sense to herself, Maria felt a loss for words. “Well, long story short… Not only is this stuff like a weird battery, but it even screws up how microbiomes behave.”
“…What?”
“Alright, look.” Maria held up a dish. “I had a set of bacteria, and I placed in some drops of the archaeolith and… Well, I already expected the bacteria to be more active, it’s like an energy source for them. But then a few days later, look!” She pointed to the screen, “Now the bacteria still produces the same auto inducers as the original archaeolith.”
“Wow! Cool! Does that mean that… it’s like self replicating?”
“No, no… It just, well, screws up other systems of bacteria, to keep it simple. At least, i guess that’s how it works. That’s what we’re here to figure out!” With that Maria turned away and was distracted once more, enveloped in her work. She became focused on inputting the results of today’s vital scans.

Peri left. The day resumed without incident. Near the end of the shift, Maria knocked on the door of Professor King. Peri overheard and listened from the mess hall, finding it fascinating. She didn’t hear much though. Maria asked about his work progress, the results of some test or scan, scoffed at some joke of his, asked if the stuff, the Archaeolith, was flammable, told him something about storage procedures, jokingly asked if the stuff is ingestible, to which Peri overheard him loudly respond “Yes, actually!” and he went into a lecture about the risks of that and how it would work. He says it would likely work as some sort of super strong caffeine. With the days work done, Peri returned to her room. She was laying in bed unable to sleep, due to the bizarre new environment. Eventually she did though, and she dreamt about riding a rollercoaster. First thing next day, Peri had a small argument with the manager, stirred on by a rough morning which went into full bloom after the coffee machine malfunctioned. “You’re supposed to be in charge of these sorts of things, aren’t you?” It really was because of how he acted in their first encounter that predisposed her against him early on, and more so his apparent dismissiveness of the others. It did not help he was naturally slightly too loud whenever he spoke.

Maria shared Peri’s anger, “I’ve been up all night running these numbers. Would be nice if stuff in general worked as it’s supposed to around here.” Despite this, Maria didn’t seem all that worn down. She managed to keep busy with work. Meanwhile, Rin ran out of her room into the mess hall still buttoning her shirt, lamenting “Sorry I’m late, I’m up! I’m getting right into it, I swear!” Though nobody was paying much attention to her.

“Morning announcement! Bah bah bo bah bah bah bo.” An intercom system running through the entire facility. From his office Cameron spoke through a microphone hooked up to a computer linked to loudspeakers. For a while he just muttered odd sounds, amusing himself. “Skebledebledebledee. Uh. Where was I? Yes, yes, temperatures stable, weather upstairs is good, systems running smooth. Maria! Excellent work lately, truly. Jack! Mulch the next batch of the stuff today.”

After the morning announcement, Professor King went around with a clipboard asking all the others about their job progress. An hour or so later, Jack and Peri were in the mining room. Jack seemed approachable comparatively to some of the others. Peri invited herself to watch his work process. Drill out the rock, collect handfuls of soil, and dump it into a funnel connected to a big blue machine. The funnel ran the soil down into a motorized blocky grinder. It gets collected in a compartment at the bottom, which comes out in a carrying tray. This would then be taken to Maria, where she would use something resembling an oven to separate the materials. The resultant sheet of the processed batch was then taken to Professor King’s office. There it was placed in a metal cylinder held by two metal legs. It rolled the material around. The final result, when cleaned off of dust and bits of soil, was that solidified wax, solidified Archaeolith.

“I hate this thing!” Jack kicked the funnel and grinder machine. “It has that huge motor, it eats up gas like crazy. Why does it jam up?”
“Are you putting too much into it or…” Peri leaned over his shoulder.
“No! No, I’m setting it up right. This thing always does this.” Jack begrudgingly opened a middle panel, exposing the interior of the grinder and felt around with his hand.
“Shouldn’t you unplug it first before doing that?”
“I’m not putting my hand IN the grinder. Just really really close to it.”
Jack poked bits of rock out of the grinder with a screwdriver . “So… You’re a geologist? Rock expert?”
Peri glazed over with an apathetic stare at the use of the term rock expert. “More of a rock enthusiast. I saw you using the drill before. You seem to have fun with it.”
“Oh yeah, you see it? Giant. And that thing works. And it’s powerful, I can’t believe it, it’s like cutting through butter. And doesn’t it just look cool?”
Jack slammed shut the panel and flipped on the grinder motor. Starting now, “It worked!” Jack raised his arms up. He leaned over to watch as it started to ground up the batch of soil. One particular misshapen, hole filled, metamorphic rock cracked open as the machine started up. A hazel colored oil fired out from the rock upwards as it broke apart. Pure unfiltered liquid Archaeolith. It splashed with enough force to hit the ceiling. Of course, most of it hit Jack.
“AH!” Jack screamed and pulled away. Pressed his arm into his head, specifically his eyes. Stumbled and crashed into the cave wall, falling almost, sitting on the ground. “The soil grinder actively resents being poked with screwdrivers!” Some odd attempt at humor, he then chucked a wrench across the room in frustration.

“Oh my god.” Peri’s hands raised as if by their own accord to cover her face. She turned and ran out to the main corridor. Peri stammered out some attempted description of the situation to Professor King, who had already heard the commotion. “Get a towel.” he shouted down the corridor. Maria came next from the med bay. She, in between repeatedly asking if he wore his safety equipment, wiped him off. Lastly, Cameron came out of his office to investigate. “Looks like we need a clean up on isle you!” He laughed at his own joke.

Maria and King escorted Jack to the med bay. “I know this isn’t the best time to ask…” King had him lay down. “But are you experiencing any side effects?”
“Shut up! … My eyes burn, that’s about the main side effect right now.”
“Fascinating.”

Peri, out in the hall, felt awful, as if for some reason she was to blame, though she hadn’t anything to do with it the accident.

Jack reported fuzzy vision and initially no other side effects. But soon enough his body temperature started rising, which was noted with curiosity by the two scientists. King left Maria to tend to the mechanic, who had started pacing repeatedly back and forth in the medical room. He flapped his hands, he started to shiver as if he was cold, but soon enough was drenched in sweat.
“Do you feel sick?”
“No, I feel… Yeah, I feel sick. No. I don’t know. I’m not sick.”
The shivering increased, blood pressure went up. Jack started pacing faster, and his stimming like response became more intense. Maria had to watch over him as designated nurse. Soon though his behavior started to rile her up as well, all the pacing, muttering, intense movement. Now she herself was getting intense. “Jack! I told you to wear your safety gear! None of this would have happened if you j-“
“Shut up!”
And it was a full on screaming match from there. Maria yelled at him for shirking the rules, putting them all at risk. He yelled at her for telling others how to do their jobs, and that she was picking on him when he’s already hurt. Maria threw Jack out of the med bay and slammed the door. “I have to write up ANOTHER days reports, so let me do MY WORK unlike YOU!”
“I do my job!” Jack slammed the door to his personal room.

This of course put a sour on the day. The entire crew had taken to doing their work in solitude. The situation had caused the workers to feel perhaps “sometime later” would be better for attempting any social interaction. But eventually Professor King had to knock on the med bay door. “Maria, I’m really sorry, I know this isn’t the right time, but some of the reports…” She peaked out from the doorway. King held a stack of files. “There is a bunch of scribblings on them… I hate to say this, but I can’t even read most.”
“Oh! Yeah, yeah, I’ll… redo them, sorry.”
“Well actually, I’m really more concerned about you, not the reports. Cameron said you were up all night. Have you slept since you arrived down here?”
“It’s hard for me to sleep in a new place. I’m sure I’ll pass out eventually. I’m just trying to get ahead on work before I do, because I know when I do…”
King held out his palm as a way of saying he understood and returned to his office.

Peri checked up on Jack that evening. He was still pacing around, sweating, flapping his hands. His demeanor had calmed down enough. His vision and eyes seemed to be fine now. She could see his room was a mess. It appeared he had taken to entertaining himself anyway he could. All the spare books and magazines were sprawled out. Cards lay scattered across the table. Dice. A notebook. Dominos partially set up. The TV was on, though muted. On his table lay a scattering of nuts, bolts, screws, a small engine, a bunch of notes written on line graph paper, and a set of power tools. “I’m fine, I’m fine. Sorry about that. I get injured, then she starts riding my back about it? What did she expect?” Peri discussed briefly with him, ensuring he was alright. Leaving him be then, closing his door and returning down the main corridor.

Peri then saw Maria in the mess hall. The nurse had gotten out a ladder and toolbox and had taken to fixing a light in a ceiling panel.
“R-really Maria, you don’t have to…” Rin stood near the ladder with her own, smaller toolbox, and a set of paper written instructions telling her it was her job to maintain the light fixtures.
“It’s no hassle. And it got to get done, so…” Maria went to work on the light, tugging and tearing at a bolt she needed to get loose. Something about Maria’s jagged and uncoordinated motions made Peri uneasy. Not because she suspected her to fall, but because she moved so skittishly and twitchy. Initially Peri attempted to report this unusual behavior to Professor King, but his office was empty at the time. Then Peri begrudgingly went to knock for the manager. But before she could, it was swung open outwards. King and Cameron came storming out, calling for Maria. They both spoke stern, with their hands clutching their lab coats, enroute to give some big presentation.

“What? What?” Maria hurried down from the ladder, signaled to do so by Cameron’s finger.
“We were watching the security cameras…” Cameron spoke dark and stared through his brow. Maria went pale, wide eyed, and froze up.
“Espionage!” Peri thought to herself.
“We saw you injecting liquid archaeolith in the med bay.”
“…That’s even weirder…” Peri was disappointed almost, as she hoped to be involved in uncovering some intricate spy scheme.
“But the medical room isn’t supposed to have cameras!”
“That’s not the explanation I was hoping for.” King solemnly had his hands clasped.
“You said it’s safe to ingest!” Maria started stumbling over her words, trying to muster some kind of answer. “Let’s all calm down here… I’m just… Yeah I admit I was testing it out! But…but…”
“It’s just that it’s very expensive material…” Cameron explained.
Maria buried her hands in her face and gripped the latter, as if trying to hide under it. King explained they’re not firing her, that it’s just “Really dangerous.” and not to do it again, and so on. The conversation went on for a good bit, with the trio sitting in the mess hall. Peri decided to leave them be. No longer did her curiosity outweigh her desire to respect privacy. Returning to her room, Peri invested herself in her book to gain distance from this workplace interpersonal drama, this turgid passion play.

Near dusk that night (though the lights remained on at all times and they only knew the time from their watches) Rin knocked lightly on Peri’s door. It was almost inaudible. and the small woman started to walk away, assuming the geologist was asleep.
“Yes? Hello?” Peri asked out into the hall.
“Oh, I’m sorry to wake you.” Her squeak of a voice, “I…I just…”
“Hey, it’s been a stressful day. You don’t have to say anything.” The pair walked down to the mess hall, at that moment vacant. The two sat together. Quickly discovering they both had an interest in art, they took to drawing in their notepads side by side. Showing each other their artwork to pass the time. Rin kept starting off a sentence, and stopping herself. Gathering the courage, she pointed into the empty office of Professor King. “Do you see that… that whiteboard in there?”
“Oh, do you want to go draw on that?”
“No, no… Just look in there. Do you see the stuff he drew? The stuff that looks like waves? All those numbers? The shapes?”
“Oh, the scribblings? The doodles?”
Rin curled up in on herself. “I usually talk to my specialist about this, but my cellphone isn’t connecting to anything. Cameron is supposed to have the phones working, it’s his job. But…This is stupid. I’m sorry, never mind.”
Peri edged her on and encouraged her to continue. Rin whimpered a bit, and she took from her pocket a folded up yellow paper. “Maria gave me this. It was supposed to be my exam results.” Laid flat on the table, the yellow page was an unfilled exam chart, with odd doodles and symbols drawn all over the margins. “And look.” Rin pointed to the whiteboard again. Peri looked back and forth, eventually commenting “They’re the exact same symbols.” Rin pulled out her notebook and went to the second page. Pointing to the bottom half, the same symbols were there. “I got this notebook last month. This is from before I ever came down here…”

Peri went silent. She looked back and forth between the three, the notebook, the yellow page, and the whiteboard. “Yeah no that’s really weird actually.” Peri commented. “Is this a prank?”
“I don’t know.” Rin welled up, just almost, with tears, and her voice cracked. “I don’t know if this is just my own personal issues fooling with me again, seeing patterns where there are none. I don’t know. Honestly… I want to leave, but I need the money, and Professor King is sleeping right now anyways I’d bet and, and…”
Peri hugged Rin lightly as the smaller woman curled up completely into a ball. Many encouragements came from Peri, both generic and sincere. She advised her to get some rest in her quarters, told her to knock again if she needed anything, and walked her back to her room. Rin thanked her. As the door shut, Peri leaned against the wall, “Man… I didn’t sign up for social services.”

Then, rushing down the corridor, came Professor King. Holding a clipboard, pencil, speed walking into his office. Peri casually walked after him, curious about the odd glyphs he had made. Perhaps Maria herself had drawn them on the board. Two people overlapping with strange calligraphy tendencies was far more likely then three. “Hey Professor, I was just wondering…”
“No time! No time! Oh, uh, hi Peri. Hey look, I just made another discovery. Here, come here, look at this.” He laid out a batch of papers across his desk. All handwritten notes, but it was chicken scratch, too small to read. He pointed to it none the less to emphasize his point, “It’s a quorum system! The stuff is part of a quorum system!”
Peri, already scatter brained and semi disassociated from the happenings of the day, had no response other than a confused tired gaze.
“It’s…It’s…” Realizing how high intensity he’d been, King lowered his volume and toned it back a bit, “It’s a quorum. Bacteria, talking over a distance… through the air. Through the water. The chemical information travels everywhere. Secretions pool up over, god, centuries I guess, and it gets in everything, I tell you! It’s unfathomably stable! You see? It all makes sense! It all…”
Peri didn’t think it did make much sense actually. Intense concern poured through into her expression. It didn’t help she couldn’t tell if he was making these words up.
“It’s not a disease or contagion or anything like that, don’t worry! It’s little compounds bacteria secrete, and causes other bacteria to act a certain way! That’s all you need to know, you. You’re just our geologist, yes, yes. And it’s just…it’s just…well I’ve never seen such stable information transfer between microbiomes like this before! Why it…Why it…It’s so fascinating! It’s basically a slow moving internet down here! It’s downloading information into every microbiome it gets into!”
“Can you relax?”
“It’s like a hive mind of bacteria, scattered across pools of chemicals near the center of the earth! Talking as if by telegram to one another through compounds!”
Peri didn’t respond and still wasn’t interested in preforming social services as a side task anymore today. “Right. Right. Alright. Carry on. You take care of that then.”

Slinking down the corridor to Jack’s room, not recalling to knock, checking instinctually on her friend. But a rudimentary check saw the lights on, and the room far messier and disheveled then prior. Clothes strewn about, desk moved into the corner, drawers taken out. Jack paced back and forth around an odd flat engine on a wooden board. Shirtless now, frantically flapping his arms and hands, red and drenched in sweat, pacing back and forth. The light fixture was torn out the ceiling and used to light up sections of the machine. The light dangled by a red wire, it acted as a flashlight now. Jack has been disassembling every machine available. Mining equipment, rotary fans, the toaster, his TV. Fine gear assemblies salvaged from timing mechanisms in the drilling equipment. Pressure housings, valve assemblies, fluid routing parts, repurposed for some odd flat engine with four holes, next to a hand crank with a chain wrapped around. All of this on a wooden board in the middle of the room. That’s a gear assembly, that’s a valve housing, that’s a sensor array. The floor around him covered in components. organized in a way that looked chaotic until she looked longer and realized there’s a radial structure to the organization. Parts arranged by function, a diagram of the machine exploded outward around its builder. “I just made one myself! And this one’s better! This one’s better…”

Peri, flabbergasted, stunned, simply shut the door and returned to her own bed. At one point, perhaps an hour after laying, she gave up. and paced from the bed to the desk and back, over and over. She wasn’t ruminating, it was walking meditation. And meditation of the type were one truly has nothing going on up there. Leaning on the chair, she noticed something on the wall. “Is that… Golden lettering? On the wallpaper?” She raised her hand to feel it. No, just a hallucination. They faded in and out of sight as she pulled her hand away. The writing resembled cursive, but was completely illegible. It was no language Peri had ever encountered. Except one. It almost looked identical to the writings on the whiteboard, and the notebook, and the yellow page. “Impossible.” She slapped down her open palm flat on the wallpaper, She set straight her vision as she violently shook her head and rubbed her eyes. She decided the others behavior was driving her insane. She went to bed.

Peri perceived an instantaneous awakening after a short dreamless sleep. It was morning, however not much looked different. She was awoken by the obnoxious voice over the intercom system. She attempted waking with haste to listen to the morning announcements. This was supposed to be an update on important weather patterns on the surface, progress updates, work assignments. Peri didn’t believe she was hearing it correctly as Cameron went off on a strange tangent.

“Bah bah bo, bah bah bah bo. Couldn’t help but get the vibe that you guys just ain’t enjoying your time here. That’s not a big surprise, but I got a cure a mind if you can help me give it a try, because it’s time! Time to free that big old mind of ours! If you want adventure you’re in luck, I present a world were everyone’s fucked! But we’ll pull through, because of people like you, who help us realize in due time the barebones fact that we’re alive! Oh no, this sucks, life is nothing but a bunch of acid baths, torture sessions, imprisonments and governments. Trapped inside until the day that we die, and then we’re free. But until then our job is to make this a happy place. So, I’m glad you’re having fun, but our wacked out adventure only begun. IT’S NEVER DONE! Don’t make a scene of things like asking why are you here, how are you here, or what is here anyhow! Bah bah bo, bah bah bah bo! Sckreeeet bong burbagon.”

Surely she didn’t hear that correctly. That has to be some kind of inside joke with Cameron and the other crew members. Or something like that. Peri sorted through shirts trying to hide her nervousness, unease. What shirt to wear today? Yes that’s a much more pleasant question to wrangle with. But another situation cropped up and grabbed her attention. No longer could she hide in the pocket of meandering simple activity.

“I want out now! Now! Let me go!” Rin was screaming in the mess hall, surrounded by the others. They were all trying to calm her, and kept a distant circle.
“Well we CAN’T let you out if you’re acting irrational like this, with you freaking out in the elevator, you’d… break the panel or something at this rate. It talks about this directly in the company handbook, it’s WHY we have the key system in the first place. We MUST at least check your vitals before you go, to make sure you don’t faint on the ride back up. Just take a seat, let’s get you down to the medical bay and…”
“NO!” Rin chucked an empty plastic food tray at King. Cameron used the moment to sneak behind her and bear hugged around. “Got her!”
Maria swooped in next. Already she was going in with an injection needle, a sedation. She ripped off the cap with her mouth and tried to wrestle the small woman to hold her still. The two restraining the janitor led her down the corridor towards the medical room. Rin, all the while, kicked and screamed and struggled against the pair.
“Woah woah are you sure that’s necessary?” Peri shouted to the crowd, the unfolding scene.
“Peri! Come help us hold her still!” King responded.

Frozen, overcome with disbelief, Peri wordlessly, with a big eyed stare, walked backward into her room and shut her door. Sat on the bed, listening to the sounds of Rin’s thrashing and screaming and struggle, muffled by the walls of the med bay and her room, across the distance of the corridor. She couldn’t see the sedation but she winced at its occurrence, and she somehow knew when it had been done. With this, Peri had decided it was time to file her resignation. After the commotion had died down, and then some extra time passed so as to reconstitute herself, Peri made her way to Professor King’s office. “I want to-“

“Peri! Look! I’ve made an amazing discovery!”
“No, no, I don’t have time for th-“
“Syntax glyphs! That’s what I call them!” King used his marker to point to the whiteboard. “Sigils! They…they…they…” He pointed out his tiny handwritten drawings, many of them, squeezed together completely covering the whiteboard. It was now covered in the language of the golden letters. “The bacteria speak through the unconscious acts of the host! They transmit secret messages to OTHER effected microbiome hosts! And the host doesn’t even realize it!”
“I want to leave!” Peri interrupted.
No use. King continued on his rant. And at this point the technobabble and rate of his speech made Peri lose track of what he was saying. Something about neural receptors, nervous systems, brain chemistry. An endless tangent of big words Peri was familiar with but not quick enough to connect to each other, not with how fast King spoke them. She backed away and left as King continued to lecture and draw more squiggles across the whiteboard.

Peri knocked on the manager’s door next. “Hello? Sir? I…” Cameron’s office was a mess as well. Drawers of office supplies poured out in heaps, the empty drawers stacked and balanced with pens. A painting was crooked, a corner smashed with its paper clawed and ripped at the nib. A deck of cards lay thrown out all across the floor. Cups of pencils and rulers knocked on their sides. A calculator broken into pieces. The carpet torn up in one spot. Cameron prowled around the room, stepping onto his office chair with one leg, head jumping around as he stared from place to place. “A fly! Peri, you know a fly can’t be good for our delicate machinery!” He raised a metal rod and swung it. WACK! “Did I get it?” The top of the rod went right through the drywall. Swung again. Hit the painting. CRASH. Glass sprayed everywhere. Peri got a splash of glass shards that bounced harmlessly against her cheek. “Peri? Peri could you please turn that damn music player off?” Cameron pointed to an old fashioned record spinner by the door. It was not currently playing. It was unplugged. Peri backed away from Cameron’s room. WACK! WACK! WACK! SMASH!

Peri, as if from nowhere, developed a fully formed theory. The vent system was incorrectly installed and this entire crew was going mad due to its effects. Some form of mania, hysteria, and delusions had overtaken these people. Cameron was unreasonable at this stage and she had no expectation of civil discourse.

Peri ran down the corridor just about, as fast as one could run without appearing in dire straights. She had to hold herself back from banging full force on Jack’s door. He didn’t seem at all sane last time she had seen him but he was the only one who didn’t help restrain Rin. Oh please, somehow, for some reason, just magically, be in good senses. If she could convince him to protest with her, and demand exit together, they would be less likely refused, or worse, sedated and restrained, for whatever delusional reason either of the other three might drum up. Entering in, Peri again froze. Jack and Professor King stood around the flat engine. Jack used a sawtooth rasp work knife and dug across his own arm. He appeared to react only partially to the pain, admitting it hurt and moaning and grunting and wincing as he did it. Holding his arm to his wallpaper to paint across it with accidental accuracy. He was drawing more of those symbols and casually talked backed and forth with King as he did, who was observing the machine.

“I swear I was trying to built a mulch grinder. What the fuck did I end up building?”
“It’s a chemical signal diffuser, Jack.”
“Oh. Well how about that. I bet I saw a design for one somewhere and some wires got crossed. So what’s it do?”
“Well, bacteria release molecules that spread through their environment. The signal usually degrades pretty quick. This machine amplifies and rebroadcasts it further than it naturally travels. Put in the archaeolith, grind it up, it diffuses the compound. It’s actually incredible. You’ve built a signal repeater for bacterial communication networks.”
“Oh, neat. Wanna test it out?”

Of course, Peri didn’t hear any of this. She had ran. Ran to Professor King’s lab. She violently pulled out the desk drawer, which by good fortune was left unlocked. She grabbed the orange card with the little key. Rushing back out to the hall, she stopped her pace and resumed a casual walk, not wanting to draw attention. Making it now to the elevator door, she unlocked the big metal gate. Jangled the key into the lock, turned it the wrong way, then the other way, unlocking the tiny circular keyhole. Sliding ajar the gate, Peri stopped as she caught sight of the med bay door. Rin was still in there. Just perhaps she had woken up. Perhaps not. Perhaps she was light enough to carry. Perhaps not. “Well she’s not heavy enough that I can’t drag her.”

Peri opened the medical room. Curtains hung from the wall between the exam tables. What sounded like a light whimper came from behind one. “Rin? Come on. We’re getting out of here. I’m not leaving you behind. I know you’re scared but just be brave for a moment.” Pulling it back, there lay Rin under a plastic tarp. In multiple pieces. Her hand was tied with a plastic tube and dangled from the medical monitor stand. Whatever kind of botched amateur surgery had been done to her was fortuitously hidden from Peri’s view, covered by the partially transparent tarp. Incorrectly applied IV drip needles stuck out from random parts of Rin’s torso. A bone saw was left halfway through her. There also stood Maria, gnawing on the severed forearm of the former janitor. Alerted to her presence, “Oh, hi Peri. What’s is it? She really does taste like venison. Can’t believe I guessed right.” She leaned over to note something on blood splattered pages.

Peri screamed at the top of her lungs a shriek of pure terror and stumbled backwards, toppling over a carrying tray of medical supplies. And she screamed and screamed as Maria eyed her with a bewildered stare.
“Someone stole the key! Someone stole my key!” Professor King ran into the med bay.
Peri pointed to the mess of limbs formerly her coworker that had been dissected on the table. “She…She…She…” Stammering was all she could do.
“You! You stole the key!” King pointed to the orange card in Peri’s hand.
“And she just knocked over a whole tray and now she’s screaming like a maniac…” Maria wiped blood off her forehead, which merely smeared it. “She’s acting like how Jack was yesterday.”

Peri realized that her stammering and pointing out murder scenes would do little good in this situation. She ran out into the hall, past Professor King, back to her room, where she slammed the door shut. Locked it. Barred the door with a chair leg. Pushed a table in front of it. “STAY THE FUCK AWAY FROM ME!” and a slew of curses, calls for help, mixed with cries and interlaced screams. Maria knocked, standing out in the hall, her footprints leaving a dim red trail from the medical bay carpet to the tile in front of the geologists room. “Peri? I know we just met and all but…” She took a bite out of Rin’s severed hand. “I’m very concerned about your mental health.”

“MURDERER!”
“Now Peri… Rin was the weakest one of our team, and she had all sorts of medical problems… She can be useful in different ways now.”
“We’re gonna get you set up in the medical bay and we’re gonna help you calm down.” King reassured in a gentle voice.
Cameron came rushing down next, “What is it? What’s the commotion?”
“Peri barricaded herself in her room. She’s acting crazy, she’s…She’s in hysterics. She’s gonna hurt herself in there…”
Cameron straightened his lab coat. “Worry not my little rock lover! You’re going to be right as rain. Just calm down and don’t do anything stupid in there. Jack! We need to get this door down! Get the drill!”
Peri heard that. She was seated in the middle of her floor, typing out nine one one on her cellphone. Of course, when she heard the talk of the drill, she realized that even if she had a connection, police would not be arriving to the center of the earth in due time.
“What?” Jack called from the open rock deposit room.
“It’s Peri! She’s having an episode. We need to get her out of there before she hurts herself.”
“Peri’s in trouble? She needs help?”
“Yeah, get the drill.”
“You got it.”

And the sound of the drill, usually kept muffled in the mining room, instantly filled the corridor with the sound of its intense motor. Peri heard that too. Scrambling in a crawl towards it, she tore and clawed at the vent panel. She twisted off a loose screw by hand. After one had been pulled loose, she grabbed the corner of the metal frame and tugged and tore at it, ripping another screw out of the wall. Her hands bled from thin lines on both palms from the force of her own grip. She kicked the metal she managed to bend, the side of the frame, and tried to wedge it farther outwards away from the wall. The rusty screws groaned as they resisted Peri’s force.

“Don’t worry Peri, I got ya.” Jack used the drill as a battering ram. A yelp of terror jolted out from Peri, induced by the BANG and CRASH. Tearing, clawing, scraping, and chipping apart the wood of the door. Bits of wood flaked out and scattered everywhere in the corridor. No match for the industrial force. Jack swung again into to door. It went through, punching a giant hole in its middle, the wood splintering and breaking off all around it. The others, Maria, King, and Cameron pulled apart the remainder of the door, ripping it off its hinges with their collective strength. The three threw the now useless door to the side. All four pooled into the room, climbing over the improvised barrier of tables and chairs. They all were eager to assist their friend in her moment of need.

But Peri had been crawling in the vents, and by now she had reached the main corridor. Punching the panel out from the inside proved to be easier then ripping it off. Peri crawled out into the hallway right as the rest stormed her quarters. They tore it apart, sifted through her closets, and cut open her bed to look for her in the stuffing. The elevator gate was still unlocked. Peri swung it open and got inside, spamming the call button on the interior panel. Jack saw her, looking out into the corridor. He alerted the others and they ran out after her. The elevator doors shut just a bit too slowly. But not slowly enough. They shut just as Jack reached her, followed close by the rest. Jack slammed his hand on the metal of the elevator barrier. “You’re gonna look back at this moment and realize just how silly you acted!” His voice faded out as the lift started to rise. A few minutes passed before Peri realized how completely quiet it had become. She fell down in a corner, tears ran down her face, though she wasn’t crying. Around thirty minutes, half way along the ascent, she shook herself out of her daze. She had regressed to complete disassociation. “Rin..,” Was the first and only word she spoke on the elevator. Next to where she had just about collapsed remained a couple pages of doodling. Peri had dropped them on arrival, she supposed. Must have fell right out of her notebook.

Boredom took over, forty minutes into her ascension and she mindlessly went to review her own drawings. A bat, some circles, some lines, numbers, squiggles, and a whole bunch of syntax glyphs.

Credit: Tad “Tomato Can” Ulicny

YouTube