NOVEMBER 2118

LUGE BLINDNESS

雪

橇

暗

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Luging just south of the Molokai Fracture Zone is risky. In the ocean tunnel anteroom just before departure, the Launchers have outfitted me with a decompression helmet resembling a Jules Verne diving hood, one equipped with a digital squawk box to send and receive alerts. The transformers attached to my digits direct the luge along the tunnel switching tracks. I see nothing but dark marine blue without much sea life except for the occasional red waypoint tunnel lights illuminating schools of

sardines and Pacific jack mackerel.

Luge blindness (I’m subject to this) is like instrument training in hypersonic flight; the body can’t rely on external visual cues for navigation at these speeds. Only pressure readings, depth altimeter, and turn coordination apply. What’s more, a traveler must enter a state of near-torpor to produce enough muscle flaccidity to withstand pressures at a half mile below the ocean surface. Sensors monitoring vital functions report to a Molokai Fracture Waypoint, but only when the craft switches to a higher track in emergencies.

To a degree, experienced travelers can control speed by wishing it slower or faster. Our wired digits help, but strength training is needed to maintain complete speed control. Steering to alternate tunnels is done by flexing the sled’s runners with the calf of each leg and exerting opposite shoulder pressure to the seat’s back runners. This is much like the luge sport from Norway. Using G-force rebalancing, we endure steep descents and ascents on our tracks to avoid the mid-Pacific volcanoes and the more dangerous tectonic activity along the Pacific Ring of Fire. The northern luge route takes a traveler from the San Andreas fault to the Aleutian trenches, skirting Kuril-Kamchatka to the Sea of Japan and landing in the free port of Shanghai.

The mid-Pacific route (my route, risky but faster) goes directly through the Molokai Fracture Zone and Necker Ridge past Hawaii en route to Magellan Seamounts, the southwest spur of the Mariana Trench. I’m glad I can avoid the spongy dark cyclones roiling over Hawaii and the Philippines. Tunnel traffic has eliminated that; we lie on our backs strapped into our luges, and the network propels us forward at unimaginable speeds.

Even in these luge states I can hear instructions. The Exchanges, I’m told, will feature hundreds of Information Sentinels (the “Ones”) from around the world and a few other worlds, too. The exact content of the programming hasn’t been announced as yet. Unfortunately, Jens Remker won’t be there. Under water I find myself wishing Jens were with me. I love his kind voice, and all his facial angles, triangular lines and Cheshire-cat smile flashing in my mind.

Just now I’ve received a holo-mail from Jens, a relay of 3D videoclips, documentary style, and, for my amusement, a spongy hologram of the space surgeon himself bouncing around the moon’s Aitken basin. The little spaceman cartoon fits inside the palm of my hand. I know he wants to entertain me because he speaks directly in Volk-Sprache, the dialect I’m learning for a possible reassignment to the South Pole lunar mines.

“Hallos Naomi, ich bin wiederlagen Biophysikersafen!

“Naomi, I’m biophysicist again! Researching far-side lunar plasma and its effects on cellular metabolism.” I see his handsomeness in my heads-up display. “How are you, Ms. Gold as Day, Blue as Night?” He’s so exuberant, even when his deep baritone wavers during undersea transmission to my headset.

“The moon was supposed to be sterile plate, yaah!” Jens voices, doing a little holo-trick so that the full moon bounces like a yoyo in his avatar’s hands. “But instead we’ve got a swarm of photons from solar wind and distant galactic objects all over the atmosphere. Especially in the South Pole’s deep craters ice forms and never melts, so ideal for the miners extracting the titanium and rare earths we need for Jupiter and Titan missions.”

He cuts in and out again as my luge tilts 75 degrees toward the Mariana Trench sidewall. Going deeper and darker, his voice strikes me like thunderheads breaking into rainbows. With Jens, I feel a twinge, submerged and half-aware, as I dream of bodily contact. He mentions the discomfort of his space suit in the extreme Aitken cold that dips to -35°C and lower in the caves. Yet all I can think of is

bouncing alongside him in my spacesuit, the moon’s scant gravity letting me leap 10 kilometers high in a single bound as he grips my hand.

“Miss your amphibious blueness,” he messages me.

“I miss your one dimple and square jaw,” I reply. “You having fun up there?”

“Better if you come up here.”

At Aitken, his team discovered strange spheres of magnetic force, possibly remnants of a comet that slammed into the moon billions of years ago. Perhaps these magnetic forces intensify desire and inclination, a need to merge with others. But this is just speculation on my part.

Jens transmits a video of himself bouncing around Shackelford Crater in a white spacesuit. Though I’m half-dazed with the speed and depth of the water swirling around me, I assume it’s really Jens, but maybe not, just an avatar jumping across crevasses on a pogo stick, then plunging into the icy lunar ravines below.

The sight of Jens disappearing disturbs me.

“Naomi, have you tried to fly distances yet?”

“A little. A few leaps and bounces above hoodoos, soccer fields and low-lying buildings.”

“Do you think you could ever make it here, to Aitken basin?”

He’s so direct. “I hope so Jens, but not right away. The Mariana abyss is approaching, I’m assigned to the Exchanges and I’ve got to get off.”

His breathing interrupts; I hear a catch.

Steeling myself for the absolute darkness—a looming crustal ridge 11,000 meters undersea at its deepest point—I sense the liquefaction of magma, an undersea upwelling of basalts and coarse-grained gabbros, the latter slow-cooled and blackest black. No beginning or end, it seems. The Mariana Trench takes the shape of a crescent scar stretching 2500 kilometers in the western Pacific without traces of life. The luge is flipping me on my side, following a cliff track that stretches 100 kilometers or more. I’m silent, focused on the NAVs, the waypoint lights, the feel of my left shoulder pushing against the backrunner of the luge and my right leg steering opposite hard right. I want to go faster, but feel uneasy with tilting the luge nearly upside down.

Twenty-five kilometers more. Twenty-two…18… I’ll message him back on a secure channel, my voice unsteady, when I’m righted again.

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