He heard a chuckle.
Ellis moved forward, his feet landing on a smooth glassy surface. As they walked, the pounding grew softer and the air fresher.
“The real danger down here is the gas—as you already noticed. Using portal-technology, we can create worm-tunnels to move around. Really the only way to do it. Nothing can stop the heat down here. But being in the tunnel you aren’t really here anymore. You’re in an alternate here, looking through the opening at the churning, beating heart of the world.”
Ellis opened his eyes and froze.
They were standing within a hellscape on a transom of light. All around them was lava.
“Better than coffee, huh?” Geo-12 grinned at him. “Been working down here for centuries, and this walk through the Sea of Gehenna is always an eye opener. Don’t worry. We haven’t had a tunnel failure yet. Everything down at this level runs off the Big D, and nothing’s going to interrupt her.”
“Her?” Ellis asked, surprised at hearing a gender-based pronoun.
“The big lady herself.” Geo-12 gestured around them. “The planet—Mother Earth. She’s one mammoth, naturally occurring Dynamo generating forty-four terawatts of energy. These tunnels, which are just a series of elongated portals, are permanently dedicated. Haven’t been shut off in more than a thousand years.” Geo-12 stopped to face them, giving Ellis a good look at the geomancer.
Geo-12 wasn’t like everyone else. The lines were subtle, but there was a variation. Just as Sol had appeared more feminine, Geo-12 appeared a tad more masculine. Ellis wondered if it was the result of twelve being an earlier model, or if they made different patterns for geomancers, suggesting they were bred for this. Their guide wore a long gray coat of a thick material that might have been leather or even rubber. What looked to be safety glasses rested idly on Geo-12’s head.
“This is the infrastructure of Hollow World. It’s what keeps all those people above us alive. Old Gaia, she’s a living thing, you know—not a tame lion, if you get my meaning. And she don’t much care about us at all. She does her own thing: percolating, blowing bubbles, rolling over. She’s moody—has her quiet moments and gets irritable, like anyone. We’re all the little pixies that whisper in her ear and try to calm the old lady down when she gets riled.”
“And how do you manage that?” Pol asked.
“The earth is a giant pressure cooker that needs to release her heat. We aim to predict where the pressure will build and then relieve it before it goes pop. Another way of thinking about it is, we help the old lady fart so she doesn’t have a bowel movement that erases Hollow World or at least rearranges it beyond recognition.”
“That can happen?” Ellis was shocked.
“It can—but it hasn’t. Been well over a thousand years since the last recorded mishap. I think we’re doing a pretty good job. Was worse for you, right?” Geo-12 looked at Ellis. “Back in the days of weather? All of us study ancient meteorology—lots of corollaries there. Every year you had multiple hurricanes, numerous tornadoes, thunderstorms, blizzards, fires. We have the same sort of things down here—much more manageable and preventable, but with a greater potential for catastrophic disaster. So we don’t like making mistakes.”
They continued down the self-illuminated tunnel to a central hub, like the spokes of a wagon wheel except the tunnels branched out in all directions. There they found a large room filled with wall and ceiling screens displaying images in various colors. Filling the chamber, a hundred other geomancers, dressed in similar mad-scientist garb, watched the changing colors on the screens.
“This is the brain—the center of our system,” Geo-12 explained, leading them to a balcony railing so they could look down at the activity. “From here we monitor the core, asthenosphere, and lithosphere, the convection and conduction. Most can be handled remotely, but often teams need to go out off the standard lines. That’s when it’s dangerous. Gas can build up. Any breach in a tunnel can cause instant incineration.”
“Why would they—why do you do this?” Pol asked, stunned.
Ellis could tell that Pol didn’t understand why anyone would live down there. He imagined the conditions were similar to coal mines and steel mills around 1900, but those workers didn’t have a choice. They needed the money to feed their families.
“It needs to be done,” Geo-12 said with a taciturn quality that reminded Ellis of Gary Cooper. “Really the only thing that still does.”
That was the answer. Why didn’t Superman live on a Caribbean island playing Xbox games? Why did firemen run into buildings everyone else was running out of? Why did people risk their lives by volunteering for combat duty, and why did that guy in Lost keep pressing that stupid button? In a world where little else seemed to—this mattered.
Pol paused and looked out through the transparency at the frothing world of liquid rock that swirled and spouted around them. “You stop earthquakes here?”
“And cause them,” Geo-12 replied. “Earthquakes, volcanic eruptions—there are 540 volcanoes in the world. We use most of them as vents. Small regulated spews avoid the big nasty explosions.”
“And what would happen if this facility failed?”
Geo-12’s eyes widened, then displayed a sour look. “A temporary malfunction or shutdown wouldn’t cause much—”
“What about a prolonged failure?” Pol asked.
Geo-12 shifted uneasily, as Ellis imagined the geomancer was envisioning it.
“Well, plates would snap. We’ve been regulating things so long, a sudden halt would be catastrophic. What happened to the surface of the planet during the Great Tempest would be nothing compared to the destruction in Hollow World.”
“What about on the surface?”
Geo-12 shrugged. “Be some earthquakes there, too, and a few major volcanic eruptions until the pressure bled off, but nothing too devastating—there’s nothing up there to be damaged, really. Plus there’s open sky above, unlike in Hollow World where there’s a ceiling, which would crash. And there are some areas of Hollow World where natural lava chutes have been blocked or diverted that would be free to flow again. It’d be a world-altering event. Luckily, that can’t happen. Almost everything is automated now. We have our own vox, if you will, that functions as a safety net and even double-checks our actions. If everyone disappeared tomorrow, the institute would still monitor and clear most of the issues. There might be a shock here and an unscheduled eruption there, but nothing too horrible. For the unthinkable to happen, this whole facility would have to disappear, along with all the people who run it.”
Then Ellis then gave his usual speech. By then he’d polished it to a disappointing monotone. The geomancers didn’t appear to notice and asked questions mostly about weather and the forecasters of the past. One of them actually knew the name Willard Scott, who was thought to be something of a hero. They were disappointed to discover he had not experienced the Great Tempest. Ellis was not at all disappointed at having skipped that portion of history, particularly when one geomancer asked, “Is it true that people resorted to cannibalism even before the sun disappeared?”
“Welcome back, Ellis Rogers!” Alva sounded like a schoolgirl with a crush.