Unknown Beyond

[Onaku]

"It is at a time like this that one wonders; what constitutes an explorer? What drives them to keep challenging themselves, to reach new frontiers never seen before by any other Matoran? The answer? Curiousity. Curiousity and the desire to learn. To expand one's field of knowledge. To know more, to obtain the missing pieces of a puzzle too big ever to be completed and fully comprehended. That's what drives us forward. And that very instinct, along with extrordinary ingenuity, has brought us here, right now. We are now ready to explore a new, unknown frontier. Today, our view of the world is about to be radically changed. Our perceived notions of the limits of exploration are about to be torn down to their very foundations. Because today, we are taking a step into a new direction. A new world. An unknown beyond."

 

Professor Kamura finished his speech, and a round of applause went through the crowd present. The professor went back to his seat among his team on the stage, and his friend Omuro patted him on the back. There was an elated smile present on Kamura's dark grey Rau, as was there a smile present on the masks of everyone in the team.

 

 

Today was the day. The day on which a new, rigorously tested piece of technology was to be deployed. Professor Kamura and his team had been working on it for decades, and it was only today that a team of two highly trained matoran was to use it. "It" being a rift generator.

 

They had no idea where this rift led to. They had tried to decipher the energy readings coming off from the rift when they managed to form it, but some of them made no sense. In some cases, the readings were off the charts, while in others the energy readings had a negative value; something they didn't even know these sensors had built in them. Granted, it was a salvaged artifact rather something they had designed, but this was unprecedented.

 

They had sent probes through the rift, and surprisingly, they had managed to keep limited but sustained contact with the probes as they explored what they assumed was the other side of the rift. The readings indicated that the physical properties on the other side were all within safe paramaters for a matoran to survive there, granted that they wore an enviromental suit, seeing as how they had no idea if there was even an atmosphere on the other side. The probes had not returned, how ever, and as a result, the first mission of the two matoran going through the rift was to find the probes and return with them so that the sensor readings could be analyzed.

 

***

 

Kyria, a female matoran of air wearing a bright green Komau, was putting on her EV suit. She just finished putting on the suit itself, and was about to put on her helmet when her mission partner, a male matoran of gravity wearing a black noble Arthron named Ralius, entered the dressing room. He was carrying his own suit in his arms, and had a calm yet at the same time excited look to his face. 

 

"So this is it then. First trip into the rift. Got any second thoughts?" Ralius asked her as he placed his suit on the bench opposite to the one Kyria was standing by and began to open up the suit so that he could get into it.

 

Kyria giggled lightly. "Oh please, you know me too well to be asking that seriously. I've been waiting-" "Years to go through that rift, I know, I know, you've told me a thousand times." Ralius interrupted. Kyria smiled. "It's hard to belive we're finally here. After all this time." Kyria said with a hint of awe in her voice.

 

 

The two matoran stepped onto the metallic platform, both fully suited up in their EV suits. Cameras conveyed the scene from every angle as civilians, reporters, government officials and other scientists all the same watched with anticipation. 

 

Kyria looked to Ralius, and Ralius returned the glance. With a reassuring nod from both to the other, they stepped into the repulsion field, finding themselves pushed into the air as the machines whirred to life. A beam of light appeared in front of them, seemingy cast by nothing at all. The beam expanded into an irregular line, stretching in between the two towering mechanical constructs like a crack in the very fabric of space.

 

The rift started to stretch apart, and quickly it had become big enough to allow both of them through. They activated the thrusters on their boots and elbows, and soon enough the two had disappeared into the light. A murmur of awe arose from the people watching.

 

***

 

"Kyria. Ralius. This is Ground Control. Do you copy?" The voice of Professor Kamura came through with only a minor amount of static. As Kyria surveyed her surroundings, she placed one hand up to a button on the side of her helmet and responded. "This is Kyria. I copy." A voice came through on the communication channel. "This is Ralius. I copy." An audable sigh of relief came through from the professor.

 

"Report on your status. What do you see?" 

 

As Kyria spun around, looking around herself, she found herself unable to accurately convey what she was seeing. Wherever she looked, she seemed to see something completely different. Planes of rock, suspended above her as if they were the sky itself, and the ground itself was a white void, but when she looked in another direction, the ground was rough but solid metallic crystals, with torrents of some kind of metallic liquid shooting out into the burning sky where they seemed to never falter. When she moved, her vision blurred, and what was once a small cliff drop was now the roots of a massive mountain. Another slight movement, and she found herself unable to breathe, as if she had been kicked in the stomach with unimaginable force.

 

"I... I c-can't. This isn't how I..." Kyria was now extremely afraid. This location was unimaginably eldritch to her. And she had no idea where Ralius even was. He had reported in on the channel, but to her he was no where in sight. Not that her sight was consistent anyway, and as she looked up again, an infinite void appeared before her, with her lying on her knees on top of an impossibly geometrical disc. It had no imperfections that she could note, and had a chrome sheen to it.

 

She slowly stood up again, trying to come to terms with what she was seeing. The void seemed to be consistent for the time being, but she wasn't going to bet that it would stay that way for long. Looking around, she saw noting but the pitch black void. And then, she saw it. A bright yet extremely distant flash of light. She looked around frantically, trying to see if another one would appear elsewhere. And so it did. And another. They were sparse, and far in between, and the interval at which they came was highly irregular.

 

Looking down, Kyria noticed that the disc was slowly yet steadily bulging out. She hurriedly tried to gain balance, but found that she was quite secure on it no matter how she moved. The disc had now become a perfect sphere. A sphere, apparently, with the same amount of gravitational pull her home planet. It had to be incredibly dense, but then again, it had expanded from what seemed like a disc lacking any width that also had possessed the same gravimetric properties, so she doubted there was any physical logic to it as she knew it.

 

But here she was stuck, in the middle of an infinite void, standing on a small metallic sphere that seemed to disobey the very laws of physics. She placed her hand to the button on her helmet.

 

"Ground Control. This is Kyria. Do you copy?"

 

End of Part 1

Review Topic

Edited April 13, 2015 by Toa Onaku

[Onaku]

It was an astonishing sight. Massive planetoids flying by, nearly grazing the impossibly perfect plane upon which Ralius was standing. The planetoids were simple. Crude. Devoid of detail one would expect from an actual planetary body. But that didn't detract from the awe that the scene inspired. Surrounding him was what he asummed to be an infinite void. There were flashes of light in the distance, but they were sparse and without a discernable pattern.

 

Ralius was hesitant. How was all of this possible? Was he being subjected to the powers of a Mahiki? Was this a holographic chamber, used by regular corporeal aliens on this other side? These thoughts flew through his mind, but in truth, he wasn't sure if any of them were the answer.

 

"Report on your status. What do you see?"

 

The familiar voice of Professor Kamura came through again. Ralius placed his hand up to the button on the side of his helmet. "This is Ralius. I'm not too sure what I'm seeing here, but I'm standing on what seems to be an unbelievably perfect plane in the middle of an empty black void. There are large planetoids skirting across the void, and they seem to avoid the plane, which I guess is fortunate for me. I- HOLY-" Just in that moment, a large planetoid flew at him. Managing to throw himself down onto the plane, the planetoid flew right over him, making a stage left exit into the void once more.

 

"Ralius? What happened?" The voice of Kamura spoke once more. Ralius stood up, unsurprisingly shaken by what had just occurred. "I'm alright. A planetoid almost squashed me just now." He replied. He took a deep breath, and looked into the distance, moving his gaze across the blackness. "Kyria... where are you?"

 

***

 

"I  repeat! Ground Control! This is Kyria! Do you copy?!" Kyria waited a few seconds before growling angrily and stamping down her foot. Somehow, her communications couldn't get through. 

 

Kyria knelt down and put her gloved hand upon the sphere. It was eerily smooth, almost as if it had no irregularities, even at the atomic level. She couldn't tell, of course, but that didn't stop her from speculating. While touching the surface, she suddenly noticed something. The sphere was getting bigger. Where before it had only been about two meters in diameter, it had now doubled in size. 

 

And it was still growing. 

 

***

 

Ralius had never held this hard on to something in his life, but here he was, hanging for his dear life on to the edge of a massive gaping hole that had formed in the plane. Apparently the planetoids weren't as evasive of the plane as he had previously thought, since one of them had flown straight through the plane, shattering it.

 

And now, hanging on to the chrome plane, he could see just how unusual it really was. There was no thickness to it. It was seemingly entirely two dimensional.

 

With effort, he managed to pull himself back up onto the plane, and with a sigh of relief, he looked back at the gaping hole the planetoid had left in the plane. It was indeed enormous, and through the hole, he could see more of the faint, irregular flashes in the deep darkness. 

 

He took one step back, and suddenly, the plane wasn't there. He was floating in a perfect void. The planetoids weren't there either. Only the distant flashes confirmed that he was still in the void, but whether he was falling or floating, he did not know. And if he was falling... what was he falling to?

 

Or from?

 

***

 

Kyria gazed at the line between the void and the horizon of the sphere. It was straightening out at a frighteningly fast pace.

 

The sphere had now grown enough that its horizon resembled that of her own planet. It was still smaller, but she knew that wouldn't be true for much longer. And then she began walking. She wasn't sure why she had decided to do so, but at the moment, she had no desire to stop.

 

Perhaps if she walked to the other side of the planet, she would see some kind of irregularity in the surface of the sphere? Or perhaps she could get a better signal to ground control? Either way, she didn't really have anything to lose...

 

But she couldn't shake the feeling something was watching her.

 

End of Part 2

Review Topic

Edited April 20, 2015 by Toa Onaku