Sylvia Albright stood at the windows with her eyes closed, sunshine warming her face. For a moment she forgot that the world was falling apart.
Doctor Dyson sat in one of the winged back chairs at the front of her desk. “The mechanical structure of the Earth,” he said, “is composed of seven layers. We live on the crust, the outermost layer, which is comparatively thin.”
“Doctor,” said Albright, turning to face the gaunt man. “Last night, Los Angeles slipped into the fucking Pacific Ocean. Millions are injured and dead. I don’t have time for a science lesson.”
“Yes, Madam President. I’m getting to the point. But you need to understand…”
“Madam President,” Secretary Bartoldo looked up from his phone with a grim twist at his mouth, “Prime Minister Dunbar wants a meeting. His people are requesting access through V-Net.”
“Put him off if you can. What’s the status of the Net?” She’d asked that question dozens of times in the past three days.
“The system’s holding,” said Bartoldo. “Nothing’s getting in or out, and hostile nations remain silent. Mostly battling their own disasters.”
“That’s something in our favor.” They couldn’t afford for the defense system to go down—not now. Before V-Net, they’d nearly lost the cyber war. AI deep fakes, a banking collapse, riots in the streets—those hostile nations had nearly succeeded in tearing it all down. That had all changed when V-Net went live. But no cyber prophylactic could stop earthquakes and tsunamis. She turned on her guest. “Doctor, please! The world is falling apart. Just tell me why we have a new mountain range running through Kansas.”
“The Earth’s core is divided into…”
“Jesus! Doctor.”
“…an outer liquid core and a solid inner core. Several years ago, we used seismic imaging to discover…a new layer.”
President Albright glanced up with interest.
“A secret chamber,” said Dyson, “inside the solid core. We’ve been theorizing its composition, origin, and purpose.”
“What is it?”
“The recent uptick in seismic activity and newly developed equipment have allowed us to refine our imaging. The secret chamber isn’t empty. There’s something in it.”
“What kind of something?”
Dyson pulled several sheets of paper from a folder and slid one of them across the desk. “Here’s the image.”
“Jesus. Is that some kind of animal?”
“We think so. You can see a figure lying in a fetal position.”
“I see it,” said the president. She pulled her finger along the curve of the body. “This looks like a tail. And a long neck with a head. What about these hazy patches?”
“We’re not sure. Maybe wings.”
President Albright laughed, and it almost made her feel normal again. “Are you telling me there’s a dragon at the center of the Earth?”
“We don’t know what it is,” said Dyson.
“Well, it looks like a dragon to me.” She studied Dyson, waiting for confirmation that didn’t come. “How big is it?”
“The chamber is about six hundred kilometers in diameter. That makes this thing bigger than Rhode Island.” Dyson paused and then added, “There’s something else.” He slid a second page across the desk.
Albright considered the image. “It shifted. Are those eyes?”
“Yeah,” said Dyson. “It’s awake.”
World Mythology had been one of Albright’s favorite classes during undergrad. The Greeks had a story about Python, a great serpent that lived at the center of the Earth. She moved her spine to shake off the shiver. “It’s trapped down there, right?”
“It hasn’t tried to exit the chamber. But we think its movements have countered the natural spin of the inner core. Slowing, maybe even stopping, the rotation.”
“And that means…?”
“It’s the reason for the tectonic plate shifts. It’s causing the quakes and tsunamis.”
“Why now? What exactly woke this thing up?”
“The creature’s waking coincides with V-Net. We think this thing became active when the system went online.”
How could these things be connected? Albright shook her head.
Dyson stood to pace while he talked. “V-Net isn’t just blocking communications; it’s manipulating and redirecting the streams through filters for analytics. The dark energy filaments sweeping overhead affect the Earth’s geomagnetic field.”
“It’s saving our country,” said Bartoldo.
Albright wanted to avoid another V-Net debate. “So how do we get this dragon back to sleep?”
“We’re not sure we can, but we might start with shutting down V-Net.”
“Out of the question, Madam President!” Secretary Bartoldo sprang forward. “If we turn V-Net off, we’ll be exposing ourselves.”
Dyson stood to confront the secretary. “We could try a temporary interruption.”
“Given the state of the traditional power grid,” said Bartoldo, “I doubt we’d ever get V-Net back up.”
Dyson shrugged. “Hundreds of thousands have already died. We think the continued effects will be exponential. We’re talking the end of civilization.”
Albright directed her question to Dr. Dyson. “Who else has this information?”
“The global science community is likely aware of it by now.”
“Good,” said Albright. “We need to amplify it. The world needs to know what we have here.” Deterrents had long been effective. A necessary evil. If they turned off V-Net they might save the world. If they held onto their ability to turn it back on, they might save themselves. It was a shitty tradeoff, always had been, but she would not be the president to lose this country and everything it stood for.
She moved back to the window filled with sunlight. The entire Earth rotated beneath a single star. They could fight for their lives in isolation, hidden inside V-Net, or they could move back into the open and reach out to friends—make a call to their enemies’ better natures.
“Contact Net Command,” she said. “We’re shutting it down.”
They would rejoin the world. Together, they would have a stronger chance of survival. Maybe it wasn’t too late to put the dragon back to sleep and calm the Earth.
Sam W. Pisciotta is an intrepid storyteller hurtling through spacetime on the power of morning coffee and late-night tea. He writes stories for people who want to visit other planets, learn magic from birds, or camp in haunted forests. His M.A. in Literary Studies from the University of Colorado trained him to deconstruct a variety of texts; living life taught him how to put them back together. Sam is a graduate of the Odyssey writing program. He loves holidays and birthdays, pints at the bar, and falling down the research rabbit hole. He would never choose the blue pill. Connect with him at www.silo34.com and @silo34 on X and Instagram.
2 comments:
Creepy. Realistic.
Possibly thought provoking, though I'm not certain what kind of thoughts it's provoking...
"Details at 11..."
Guy Stewart
Oh Sammy, what happens to the dragon? Does he go back to sleep, or become an avenger? I loved this story! Please write another 1000 words developing this idea, and then another, so by the end, you will have a novel.❤️
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