Enceladus Seas

“The hole’s secured and the pressure’s equalized sir,” an excited technician relayed as busy people ran from one readout to another.

“Have we created more plumes on the other side I wonder?” A tired engineer sneered as she looked at her monitors.

“Stay calm Tina, we have no evidence of that. Besides, they can handle exterior influences. Saturn has been squeezing and pulling this malleable moon for millions of years,” Dr. Kepler returned. “The laser will breach in two thousand metres and our probe will be the first to contact these seas since they were sealed by the cosmic forces so very long ago.”

They all sat in a comfortable control module tethered to an orbital laser the size of a small city. The laser emitted no visible light but down below on Saturn’s moon Enceladus, the surface erupted with geezers as the invisible light burned through the many layers of ice.

Irene was an aquatic photographer brought on board for her experience filming in low-light environments. She compulsively checked her probe’s readouts as the others bickered over what was ‘nominal’.

“Irene!” Kepler hollered.

“Yes sir,” Irene returned as she quickly checked her numbers again.

“How powerful are the lights on the probe?” Kepler

“They’re not, Nemo has more sensors than light equipment,” Irene said, emphasizing her probe’s name.

“Our AI is instructing us to study the interior of the ice crust before we descend. That way if we lose contact we have something.” Kepler

“But sir, if there’s any life they are blind, we could scare them,” Irene said quickly, realizing her gaff too late for the ensuing remarks. She was proficient in the study of giant squid, a creature you had to lure with light but never illuminate due to its skittish nature.

“Life? Ha, they wouldn’t have eyes if there was.” Kepler

“Perhaps,” she said, embarrassed but still professional and resolute. “We have about 90,000 lumens that we can put out for roughly five minutes before it uses its allocated batteries.”

“That will work, I wonder if there’s air before the ice.” Kepler

Irene thought back to the construction of the Nemo, their beloved probe. They had to subcontract the AI. The in-house team failed multiple times at creating what they wanted to be its curiosity.

Curiosity is as difficult to program as it is vital to a species’ survival. The probe needed curiosity due to a constant sever in communications.

Thirty kilometres of ice had a way of breaking any communication method 30th-century humans had devised. So they built a probe with a child’s wonder. That way it could explore what it felt was necessary and report back to the borehole to relay its findings.

Irene remembered something one of the AI Engineers said as they dropped the brain into the probe. “Curiosity is just fuel without an imagination to spark it. That is where your engineers failed.”

It was from that moment that she began to think of this probe as something else. As it learned to use its limbs — with help from the software engineers and tireless technicians — it developed many human impulses. It took a liking to several workers.

She remembered it reaching out for a worker’s hand before they sealed it in the space capsule. The worker, Fred, was in tears. He had worked with Nemo for years, and they had developed an endearing bond Irene seldom saw between any species on their old planet. Irene had to look into its giant blue eye before the door slammed shut, sealing the confused bot in its hold like a common appliance. Just like she had to look in Fred’s blue eyes and tell him he could not come on the 6-month journey to the Saturn system.

How unfair, she thought. Without workers like Fred, this would’ve been delayed another 3 years. Not to mention the thing seemed to trust Fred like no one else on the assembly floor.

She then heard Fred’s voice in her mind: “You may have to use its curiosity as a motive. The little guy doesn’t enjoy change, but his lust for the unknown will drag him through lava.” Fred always called him ‘little guy’ or ‘little dude’. It was a nickname a lot of workers called him due to a small phallic appendage near Nemos back it used for vector thrust.

Nemo looked like a turtle with frog legs. Each leg had a propeller on it allowing it to achieve wonderful feats of movement in any depth or pressure. These propellers could also double as foot pads for terrestrial movement. Its AI could navigate water using a culmination of ballasts, propellers and interior jets not unlike a nautilus. After a couple of preliminary tests, the name Nemo was given and the old name Challenger III was retired. One technician simply said, “Darwin would sooner have tea with this robot than ride it across an ocean.” His elegance disregarded any arguments and it was Nemo from there forth.

She thought of Nemo, alone, cold, and quite possibly scared. Waiting in the vacuum of space for his perilous plummet. A splash like no other, a dive into a realm oceanographers and astronauts have dreamed of for centuries. However, to the robot, it would just be a terrifying sea, and he would have no one to guide him.

She flicked a toggle until her holo screen displayed Nemo from the back of his right hind leg. He was motionless.

She was beyond angry they didn’t have a view of his face, or rather his eye. When she asked for cameras to be installed she was horrified to find out — only too late — that the only one had no view of Nemos front. Poor thing, she thought. When Nemo was scared or confused his eye just feverishly tried to focus. She imagined the little guy doing that now. Nemo’s power was reactivated two days ago against Irene’s wishes. So Nemo spent 49 hours in solitary confinement, like a criminal.

“Twenty seconds to breach,” an excited engineer hollered as the whole room began to count down.

Water boiled where the laser met as giant vacuums sucked it out, allowing the invisible rays to transform the underlying ice into steam and liquid.

“5, 4, 3, 2, 1, BREACH!!!” They all shouted as champagne corks were popped in the observation decks behind them. Irene watched in puzzlement as a room full of corporate investors shared in glory they barely worked for.

“Release laser tethers,” Kepler said, with a smile on his face.

“Tethers released, anchored orbit achieved,” A technician replied moments later as the massive laser fell back slightly and anchored; no longer requiring the accurate tripod housing it previously assumed.

A relatively small tube delicately floated into the cosmic tripod the laser had vacated. Irene could watch with her own eyes through the floor windows in the control room. At her feet, snow as far as the eye could see, and her friend, Nemo, cold and isolated in his chamber, awaiting his destiny.

“Probe: all systems go?” Kepler callously asked again, ignoring Irene’s teams’ name for their friend.

Irene was deep in thought watching that tube, imagining what Nemo was thinking.

“PROBE TEAM!” Kepler yelled this time.

“Yes sir,” Irene said, snapping back into reality.

“Release the probe,” Kepler said like he was loosing a lobster basket.

The whole observation deck rotated slightly as the laser cast invisible light on the probe while it dropped into the borehole. Retro rockets spun the canister, allowing the laser to rid the tube of any contaminating life it may have collected. Even tardigrades could not handle the strange melange of gamma and ultraviolets the laser blasted it with.

“Decontamination complete,” Tina said as their observation deck swung with the righting of the monolithic laser.

Irene watched as Nemo’s vessel slipped out of sight past the lip of the borehole. She then swung around to the descent monitors. They all watched as a 3D representation of the craft fell thirty kilometres into the gateway to another world.

The room counted down again as each second was a kilometre, “5, 4, 3, 2, — ”

Irene quickly looked back at Nemo’s camera. She saw him jerk as the vessel pierced the alien ocean and quickly sunk.

“Release the probe!” Kepler

Irene pushed some keys on her holo screen and immediately looked at the camera. There was water funnelling into the chamber and she could almost see Nemo’s confusion as he squirmed away from the water submerging his sensors. The moment the last of the air was extradited the panels exploded off and all they could see was black.

It was the blackest thing Irene had ever seen. The whole observation deck just stood in amazement as they viewed the newfound mirk.

“Switch to probe view,” Kepler said, caressing his chin in wonder.

The probe view was the same, black. Nothing, no visibility. Exactly what they expected.

“Radar?” Kepler impatiently asked, “Depth?”

The radar technician just sat there perplexed. “There’s some sort of interference sir.” His screen was full of strange clutter that changed with every pulse as the radar’s software tried to make sense of the returning signals.

Nemo did not waste time, the articulate fella exploded out of his cage as one of the radar readings was vastly approaching. The speed and agility was astonishing and Nemo blasted toward the surface as the signals from his cage ceased. He broke through the water’s surface and into a crack in the borehole wall. His camera now clearly watching the calm but bubbly ocean surface he just escaped.

They all watched the monitors as Nemos eye focussed on the black mirror surface beneath him.

“What the hell happened to the cage!” Irene yelled, as the room of scientists coldly viewed their instruments.

“We lost signal,” Kepler said, looking puzzled himself.

“No, our signal was severed,” Irene rebutted.

“Maybe your probe broke something on his escape?” Kepler asked, not looking at Irene still watching the black pool Nemo fixated his vision on. “What’s it doing?”

Nemos arm came into view as he reached for the water.

“He’s trying to get another radar reading,” another technician spoke for Irene as she sat there frozen, eyes glued to the monitors.

Before Nemo could dip his hand, the black surface began to glow. An ominous blue transformed the surface into a blanket of colour before it changed to red then dissipated slowly and returned to its cold black. Nemo pulled his arm away and backed deeper into the safety of his crack.

“Tell that thing to get in the water Irene, I thought you said it could dodge torpedoes,” Kepler ordered.

Irene — knowing the type of man Kepler was — formed her response carefully: “Whatever destroyed the cage moved quicker than any torpedo we ever used to train Nemo — ”

“Chromatophores!!!” One of the Biologists in the far corner of the room exploded with excitement. The biologists were all huddled around a holo screen that was replaying the surface colours Nemo had just relayed back to them.

“It could be lava,” Kepler said while turning back to Irene.

“Nope!” A biologist broke character and yelled. “To illuminate like that and change colours, that’s no magma!” He replied jubilantly as he pointed to the monitor while it changed from a deep green to a red. “That’s bioluminescence, That’s something… Alive! And huuuuge!”

Kepler was now starting to show excitement. “What have we found?” He asked himself under his breath. “Irene, can you ask ‘Nemo’ nicely to take a closer look.” He asked, emphasizing Nemo with sardonic tones.

Irene hesitated then began typing a series of commands.

Nemo seemed to receive them and focussed on the surface tension as it stretched on the icy walls. He then froze like the walls around him.

Irene froze as well. Nemo had never just ignored a command before. In fact, she had never heard of any AI refusing work.

“Is it broken?” Kepler asked, as perplexed as Irene.

“All systems nominal,” another technician chimed in.

“I think not.” Kepler

Irene, at the command of her empathy, reached for her desk microphone while typing commands into her holo console with her other hand. The whole room watched as she brought the mic to her lips.

“Nemo, can you hear me?” She asked as Nemo looked up the icy shaft he descended minutes ago.

“It’s looking for her?” An engineer asked in bewilderment.

“He’s looking for me,” Irene countered. “You have a duty my friend. We need your eyes and sensors. We have been looking for life for centuries. In our failure we created you, you must take us there Nemo. I know it’s scary. I’m scared too. But you are the only one.”

Nemo looked back at the black surface as the edges froze in on themselves.

The robot leaped into the mirk and before they could comprehend what was happening Nemo was dodging things the technicians could barely make out. Lights would fly past him like freight trains as he swam unlike anything ever devised. He had every method of propulsion at his disposal and he called on them all as strange worms and glowing tentacles angulated around him in their deadly dance.

After further descent, Nemo was now still, seemingly safe. Peering into the dark as the onlookers looked awestruck at his monitors.

“There’s something coming!” The radar tech yelled as he tracked a massive object on the monitor.

Nemo seemed to be focussed in that direction as well; understanding far before the technician there was a threat. As Nemo peered, something began to glow a kilometre to his front. As he watched it became brighter and brighter, it illuminated things above and around it. It was now barreling straight at Nemo, and the glow turned into lights that showcased massive jaws flanked by other accompanying creatures, with glows of their own, swimming right beside and about the mouth.

Nemo used his jet propulsion to descend much quicker, and the large beast followed, snaking its massive body downward. Nemo could see its tail and all its glowing scales as he tried to descend faster than the train-shaped monster could dive.

The accompanying creatures dispersed with the monster’s sudden change in direction and Nemo just barely dodged to the left as the cosmic worm glided by him. Its jaw almost sucked him in as it flew by and when he was near its glowing gills he was cast violently away in the turbulent flow emanating from the canal-sized animal. The creature then turned — what the disorientated Nemo could only assume was up — and its glow dissipated into the mirk, leaving Nemo in the oppressing dark once again.

After stabilizing, Nemo could see faint flickering above him like fireflies in the night, and a strange crimson glow beneath. He let himself sink. As he deciphered his radar readings they returned large worm-shaped objects above him and nothing below, that is until he sunk another 1000 metres.

At the oppressive depth and pressure, the temperature began to rise at frightening speeds. It went from an arctic pool to a hot tub in the blink of an eye. His radar gave him a glimpse of something so large it could only be the mantle. Something his software was well informed of — unlike the terrifying creatures he left near the breach.

The red glow intensified on the descent and he — upon seeing the lava streams and thermal vents — began to stabilize himself. After achieving a hover he zoomed into the self-illuminated floor.

At first, it looked like seaweed, strange pillars rocking back and forth at the will of thermal explosions they congregated. As he focused he could see small arachnid-type creatures wandering in and out of the wormy vats. There were also underwater pools his programming instantly analyzed as brine pools. He could see skeletons of fish and other crustaceans lining the shores of these lakes of death.

As he stabilized he opened up every sensor he had. It was beautiful, this lower world seemed so calm. After substantial data collection, he decided an earthly gesture was necessary for such an occasion.

Letting himself sink to the floor — avoiding the nearby thermal vents and lava — he reached for a small crab-like arachnid and gently grabbed its claw. He shook it up and down and released.

As Nemo watched the arachnid pick at a strange worm-like plant, he thought about his own power supply and his duty to Irene, Fred, and all the nice people he had met before they dropped him into the abyss.

I am your eyes, he said to himself as he rocketed back up toward his communication and energy tethers dangling above the breach.