by Cixin Liu
Huabei had regained some of the strength in his legs and could now walk. Surrounded by his kidnappers, he began to hobble toward a massive structure in the distance. It was a perfect cylinder, several hundred feet tall. The structure's surface seemed to be completely smooth without any visible doors, windows or other openings. As they approached, a heavy metal door slid open with a groaning rumble, revealing an entrance. They entered and as soon as they had, the door closed tightly behind them.
In the dim light, Huabei could make out that they were in a room that roughly resembled an airtight cabin. Looking around, he saw a row of heavy suits hanging from the smooth, white walls. They looked almost like spacesuits and were clearly fully sealed. His kidnappers each took one from the wall and began suiting up. Two of them helped Huabei into one of these suits. As all this was going on, he continued to study his surroundings. He could see another tightly sealed door in front of them. A red light was burning above it. Next to the light he could see a glowing number. Huabei quickly realized that it was showing an atmospheric pressure reading.
After his heavy helmet had been screwed on and tightened, he saw a transparent liquid crystal display flash into life in the upper right corner of his visor. On it a rapid successions of numbers and graphs rolled past his eyes. He could only make out that it was the suit's internal self-test system. Then, he heard the deep drone of machinery start. He soon noticed the air pressure indicator above the door begin to decrease rapidly. In a mere three minutes it hit zero. When it did, the red light next to it turned green and the door below slid open. Behind it laid the pitch black of the inside of this strange, sealed structure. It confirmed Huabei's conjecture: They were standing in an airlock into a vacuum; or, in other words, that this huge cylinder contained a vacuum.
One by one they entered the cylinder's body and this door also closed behind them. They were now in almost complete darkness, the only light emanating from the lamps on their helmets, and their beams did not reach far. A sense of déjà vu began to creep up on Huabei, sending shivers down his spine as his heart was gripped by nameless dread.
“Go on,” Huabei heard Mr. Deng's voice echo from his helmet's headphone. Their lamps' glow soon illuminated a small bridge. It was no wider than three feet and stretched into the unknown dark beyond. Huabei could not have guessed how far it reached. Below the bridge there was only inky black.
With trembling steps, Huabei made his way on to the small bridge. Each step of his suit's heavy boots drew a hollow ring from the bridge's thin metal surface. After he had walked a few feet, he looked behind him, but he could not see any of his kidnappers follow. Moments later, all helmet lamps were turned off, engulfing them in total darkness. This black only lasted for a few seconds before a blue glow suddenly began to shine from below the bridge. Looking back again, he saw that he remained alone on the bridge. The others were crowded on the near side, one and all looking straight at him. In the blue light they looked like a gathering of spirits. Supporting himself on the bridge's railing, he looked down. His blood felt chilled solid; the terror all but strangled him.
He was standing directly above a very deep well.
This well was about 30 feet in diameter and on its walls he could see rings of lights, installed in regular intervals. It was these lights that had lifted the well and its depths from the surrounding darkness. On the bridge, Huabei was standing right over the center of the well's mouth. Seen from where he stood, the well seemed bottomless, the countless circles of light growing ever smaller in the depths until they appeared to merge into a single point of blue light. Huabei felt as if he were looking down on a giant, glowing blue target.
“Now we will initiate your execution. You will repay all that your son owes us!” Mr. Deng's voice rang powerfully in his helmet. He could see Mr. Deng begin to turn a wheel installed at the bridge's head. As the wheel spun, Huabei could hear him mumble, “For my stolen youth and for wasting my talents...”
The bridge began to tilt. Huabei quickly clung to the bridge's railing in an attempt to steady himself.
Mr. Deng stepped aside, giving the Core Breach Orphan a turn at the wheel. The man turned with all his might. “For my mother and father, seared to death...”
The bridge was tilted another few degrees.
He, too, stepped away, giving the Lost Bolt Orphan her chance. As she turned the wheel, she stared at Huabei. “For my vaporized father, my vaporized mother...”
The one who had lost his fortune and attempted suicide grabbed the wheel from the woman. “For my money, my Rolls Royce and my Lincoln, for my beach house and swimming pool, for my ruined life and for my wife and children, waiting in lines on cold streets just to get their welfare handouts...”
The bridge was now turned on its side, leaving Huabei hanging on to the top railing as he desperately crouched on the railing now below him.
The one who had lost all his wealth and now suffered from schizophrenia joined in, lending his strength to the turn of the wheel. If he was being treated, it obviously was not successful; his illness remained all too apparent. He said nothing, only cackling down into the depths of the well.
The small bridge was now completely inverted and Huabei was barely holding on, dangling from the railing above the well's maw.
Almost all fear had left Huabei; not even that bottomless pit below, the very image of the gates of hell, could scare him now. Huabei's life, sure to end soon, flashed before his eyes…
…Gray childhood and youth – Huabei could remember little cheer and happiness in that part of his life. Making his way into the world. Achieving academic success by inventing the sugarcoating technology. But life had still not welcomed him. Struggling in all his relationship, even as they entangled him ever more tightly. Never really feeling love; marrying because he had to. He had made up his mind never to have children and then he brought a child into the world…Living in a world of his thoughts and dreams, an outcast most people disliked; always sticking out in company like a sore thumb. An entire life made of moments of loneliness, forever sailing against the current, he had hoped for a better future.
But this was the future: His wife was dead, his son a public enemy, a polluted city filled with people full of twisted hate…
All of this left only hopelessness for this future and his life. When he had first been kidnapped, Huabei had been determined to learn the truth of his situation before he died. Now, it seemed to have lost all meaning. All he was was tired. His only remaining desire was for the liberation of death. He felt himself fall.
Cheers rose from the well's edge as Huabei's grip finally failed. He fell, straight down into the fateful blue glow of those concentric rings.
Huabei closed his eyes as the weightlessness of the fall embraced him. It felt as if his body had dissolved entirely, as if all the unbearable weight of life had already left him. In the last seconds of his existence in this world, he suddenly recalled a song. It was a song his father had taught him, an ancient piece of music from Soviet times. It was music lost to time; even in the days before he entered cryo-sleep, no one had remembered it. Huabei had been on exchange in Moscow once. There, he had hoped to find someone who knew the tune, but even in Russia the song had been lost forever. So it became his song. He would only be able to hum the first few notes in his head before he hit the bottom, but he was certain that when his soul finally left his body, the song would continue with him into the next world…
Without really being aware of it, he had already hummed half of the song's slow melody. With a jolt he realized how much time must have passed. Snapping his eyes open, he saw one circle of blue lights rush past after next. He was still plummeting down the well.
“Ha, ha, ha, ha ...” Mr. Deng's maniacal laughter rang from his headphone. “You are about to die. It feels good, does it not?”
Looking down, Huabei saw countless concentric blue light circles streaking toward him. As each circle grew and passed him by, another small circle emerged from the heart of the well and quic
kly began to expand. Looking up, he saw more concentric circles, except these shrunk in an exact mirror image of the growth of the circles below.
“How deep is this well?” he asked aloud.
“Rest assured, in a flash you will reach the bottom and that bottom is hard steel. You will be flat as a pancake soon enough! Ha, ha, ha, ha ...” Mr. Deng continued chuckling.
With the laughter still ringing in Huabei's ears, he noticed that the small display on the top corner of his visor had flickered back to life. It displayed lines of glowing red text:
You have reached a depth of 60 miles
Your speed is 0.9 miles / sec
You have passed through the Mohorovicic Discontinuity
Having passed the crust, you are now entering the Earth's mantle
Huabei again closed his eyes. This time the song did not return to his mind; instead he let his brain whir away, dispassionately analyzing the new data like a soulless machine. It took him less than 30 seconds. Opening his eyes, he understood it all: This was the Antarctic Doorstep Project; there was no bottom of hard of steel. This well was indeed bottomless.
This was a tunnel straight through the Earth.
CHAPTER
5
The Greatest Tunnel
“Does it take a tangential path or does it pass through the Earth's core?” Huabei asked. He was contemplating the point when he uttered the words without really intending to.
“You really are clever; you figured it out quickly!” there was a hint of genuine admiration in Mr. Deng's voice.
“Just like his son,” someone chimed in, judging from the voice probably the Core Breach Orphan.
“It goes through the Earth's core from the northernmost city of China, straight down to the eastern most part of the Antarctic Peninsula,” Mr. Deng answered Huabei.
“The city we were just in was Mohe?” Huabei exclaimed in disbelief at how much ‘China's Arctic Village’ had certainly changed. In his day, he had known it only for its geographic prominence and as a small tourist town.
“Indeed, being the Earth Tunnel's starting point allowed it to grow and flourish,” Mr. Deng confirmed.
“As far as I know, if I am going straight through the Earth, I should arrive in the southern portion of Argentina from there,” Huabei mused.
“Not bad, but this tunnel is slightly curved,” Mr. Deng replied.
“But if it is curved, won't I hit the walls?” Huabei inquired, more curious than afraid.
“If the tunnel went straight through the Earth to Argentina you would certainly hit them; the only place such a perfectly straight tunnel would work is between the poles. A tunnel going through the Earth's axis at an angle, on the other hand, must take the Earth's rotation into account. The tunnel's curvature is what allows you to fall straight through the Earth,” Mr. Deng said, providing the pertinent details.
“Ah, that's some fantastic engineering!” Huabei was genuinely impressed.
You have reached a depth of 185 miles
Your speed is 1.5 miles / sec
You have entered the viscous region of the Earth's mantle
Huabei had noticed that the frequency with which he passed through the rings of light was rapidly accelerating. As they did, the density of the concentric circles above and below increased.
Again he heard Mr. Deng's voice through the headphone. “The construction of a tunnel through the Earth is not a new idea. In the eighteenth century, two scholars already came up with the plan; one was a mathematician by the name of Pierre Louis Mauperturis, the other the world famous Voltaire. Later, the French astronomer Camille Flammarion again brought up the idea. He was also the first to consider the Earth's rotation...”
“Then why ever would you claim that I came up with the idea?” Huabei interrupted, perplexed and annoyed.
“Because for them, it was nothing but a thought experiment. Your idea, however, actually influenced someone; and that person later used his own demonic talents to make your fantasy a reality.” Even now Mr. Deng seemed to enjoy speaking in riddles.
“But,” Huabei paused, dredging his memory, “I don't remember ever bringing it up with Shen Yuan.”
“Are you suffering from amnesia?” Mr. Deng chided. “Your idea changed the course of human history, and you cannot even remember it?”
“I really can't recall,” Huabei said haltingly, desperately trying to remember.
“Then can you recall Mr. Benitez, the Argentine, and the gift he gave your son for his birthday?”
You have reached a depth of 930 miles
Your speed is 3.2 miles / sec
You have entered the rigid region of the Earth's mantle
Huabei finally remembered. It had been Yuan's sixth birthday and he had invited the Argentine physicist, Professor Benitez. At the time, the two great South American nations had already risen to power and Argentina had claimed vast swathes of Antarctica as its territory. In the wake of these developments, a large number of Argentines had migrated to Antarctica and Professor Benitez had come to stay in Beijing. Argentina had then been on the verge of going nuclear, shocking the entire world community. In the nuclear disarmament process that followed, Argentina had naturally joined the nuclear powers as a member of the UN Eradication group. Benitez and Huabei had both been experts in the technical unit of that group's standing committee.
On that day, Prof. Benitez had given Shen Yuan a globe as a gift. The globe was made from the newest glass materials. The material had been a symbol of Argentina's rapidly developing technological prowess and was no more refractive than air, making it essentially invisible. This gave the continents on the globe’s surface the appearance of floating in space between its poles. Shen Yuan had been very happy with his birthday present.
As they chatted after dinner that day, Prof. Benitez had produced a prominent local newspaper. He’d shown Huabei the paper's political cartoon: It was an Argentine soccer star, kicking the globe.
“I don't really like this kind of thing,” Prof. Benitez had said. “The Chinese people seem to know nothing about my country, except for soccer. And that general ignorance seems to extend to international politics: I have the feeling that you see Argentina as nothing more than aggressive and boisterous.”
“But you should consider,” Zhao Wenjia had replied with a smile, “that no country is farther from ours than Argentina; you are our exact planetary opposite.” She took Shen Yuan's transparent globe to demonstrate how Argentina and China overlapped on that transparent Earth.
“In fact, there is a way by which we could link our nations more closely,” Huabei had said, taking the globe. “One would just have to dig a tunnel from China, right through the Earth's core.”
Prof. Benitez had at first been skeptical. “That tunnel would be almost eight thousand miles long; that is not much shorter than the flight distance.”
“But travel would be much quicker,” Huabei had said, now somewhat excited by the possibility. “Just think, one would just have to grab one's bags and jump into the tunnel...” His original intent that day had just been to steer the conversation away from politics; in that regard he had scored a brilliant success.
“Shen, you really have an extraordinary way of thinking,” the now clearly interested Prof. Benitez had continued. “Let me see… After I jump in, I begin to accelerate. My acceleration would increase with the depth of my fall, right up until I reach the center of the Earth. As I passed through the center of the Earth, my speed would be truly enormous, but my acceleration would reach a precise zero; then I would begin to decelerate as I rose upward. The speed of this deceleration would continuously increase the higher I got, right up until I reach the surface on the other side of the world on Argentinean soil. There my speed would reach a perfect standstill. If I wanted to return to China, all I would have to do is jump back down from there. I could also just let myself fall right back down, entering into harmonic swing between Southern and Northern Hemispheres, perpetually falling up and down without exert
ing any force at all. Wow, what a fun idea, and as for the travel time...”
“Let's quickly calculate it.” Huabei had turned his computer on.
They soon had the results: Given the Earth's average density, one could jump into the tunnel in China and fall the roughly 7,900 miles to Argentina in a mere 42 minutes and 12 seconds.
“Now that is fast travel!” Prof Benitez was obviously in high spirits.
You have reached a depth of 1,700 miles
Your speed is 4.0 miles / sec
You have passed through the Gutenberg Discontinuity
You are now entering the Earth's core
Still falling, Huabei heard Mr. Deng say, “That evening, you certainly had no inkling that your son had stared at you the entire time, his ogling eyes brimming with brilliance, and that he had been enraptured by every word you said. You also had no idea that he stared at that transparent globe at his bedside all night. Of course, there were countless times that you had that same effect on your son. You sowed the seeds of many fantasies in his mind, but this was the one that blossomed into a catastrophic flower.”
Huabei stared at the walls surrounding him. They were 10, maybe 20 feet away, and rushing past at incredible speed. The rings of light shooting by on the surface of the walls seemed to blur together into one.
“Is this the new solid state material?” he asked.
“What else should it be?” Mr. Deng immediately understood to what Huabei was referring. “What other material would be strong enough to build a tunnel like this?”
“How was this massive amount of new solid state material produced? How was this material – heavy enough to sink right into the Earth – transported and processed?” Countless questions raced through Huabei's mind.
“You have time for only a very abbreviated explanation,” Mr. Deng answered. “The new solid state materials are produced via a continuous small-scale nuclear explosion. The key piece of technology is of course your sugarcoating. The production lines are as massive and complex as you would expect. Furthermore, the new solid state material can be produced in many grades of density. Relatively low density materials do not sink into the ground and are formed into foundation surfaces that can hold higher density materials. This disperses the pressure exerted by these higher density materials and allows them to be suspended over the ground. Using methods such as these, the material can also be transported. As for the processing, that technology is far more complex and probably completely incomprehensible to you, given your lack of expertise in the area. In short, new solid state materials are a massive industry, exceeding steel production in economic significance. It is used for much more than just the Antarctic Doorstep Project.”
