CYS

The discoveries of Munachiso Mensah were a series of novelties that made the world very curious for a few years. His first invention was the Super Prospector, a combination of a sonar with a gigantic equipment capable of emitting electromagnetic waves, which when pointed at the ground, could reflect on large metal structures and make it possible to locate metal shafts at deeper locations in the Earth’s crust.

With the Super Prospector ready, Munachiso, Magajiya Mensah – his wife and specialist in material structures – and Qeb Turay, one of Egypt’s leading mining experts, traveled to Africa with the equipment attached to a truck. As they walked, the equipment charged, and when it had enough energy, it fired its mass of energy against the ground and brought a report.

The three of them set off on their journey from Abuja, Nigeria, eastwards, firing the Super Prospector at various points along the roads they were able to transit. It was only in the vicinity of Kampala, Uganda, that the equipment beeped and accused a large metal mass in the depths of the earth.

The dimensions of the metal cluster were frightening. The vein was about one thousand three hundred kilometers long by one hundred kilometers wide, and stretched from the Kampala region to the Indian Ocean, east-side, passing through Kenya as far south as Somalia.

The news of the discovery stirred the world. The possibility of a metal shaft with such a  huge quantity, including the possibility of rare materials, kept many corporations on their toes. The events that followed put civil order in Uganda and the region at risk. However, when the depth of the vein was revealed, the cold water bath caused the event to be forgotten, including the name of Munachiso Mensah.

In the outdoor area of a cozy house in Nigeria, two men talked.

“Thirty kilometers?” shouted Qeb Turay, gaping, caressing his stubble and adjusting his turban. “Seriously! It’s not an impossible thing. Humanity has been trying to dig such a hole since the first Cold War, to show technological power. But even so, we would need a lot more money than we have to dig a hole wide enough, with an elevator, to bring things down there.”

“I think about it every day,” continued Munachiso, wiping the sweat from his bald head, which had increased over the years, and smoothing the gray beard. “There is the temperature problem still, which by my calculations, must be above a thousand degrees. Everything makes me believe that this metal mass is completely liquefied, very close to the upper mantle of the Earth. If we are going to extract it, we need a way to solidify it and only then, we could study the material in order to understand it better.”

“The temperature problem, correct me if I’m wrong here, but we have Magajiya’s doctorate on our side, right? Still, I think we would spend a lot of Cybercoins just to find out if the material is useful or not.”

Munachiso braced himself on the chair, turning it and standing only two feet, burying his feet in the sandy soil of the courtyard of his house.

“Maybe it’s time to give up, Munachiso,” said Qeb, looking firmly into the half-open eyes of Munachiso, who remained silent, in denial that his discovery should be set aside.

Both were admiring the starry sky while the heat made their skin sweat. Munachiso’s skin, dark as night and Qeb’s, a little lighter, brown as wood.

As the silence was filled with the faint wind blowing sound that day; a strong, black woman with long dark hair, standing in the shape of a Black Power, came out the door carrying a tray with bowls.

“I bring Cyberpalm from the forts,’ she said, laying the tray on the small table in the middle of the circle the boys formed as they talked. “What are you doing? What’s with the melancholy? Honey, have you told Qeb the news yet?”

Magajiya served the palm wine in the three glasses and handed it to everyone. Standing, she looked at Munachiso with the corner of her eye and twisted her mouth. She expected an answer from her husband, who was quietly following her.

“Yes, Magajiya,” said Munachiso, standing up and stroking his belly. “That’s why we look like this. We practically agree it’s best to give up. We’ll never get that metal out of that place with the money we have.”

“Ah!” replied Magajiya, with a smile on her face, fixing his hair. “Have you given up already?”

“It’s not a matter of “already”, Magajiya,” replied Munachiso, giving a sip of his cup. “How am I supposed to convince someone to lend me enough money to dig a 30-mile hole to  test the quality of the metal we found?”

Magajiya walked to the garden she grew in the back of the house and watched the stars. While sipping her wine, she fixed her clothes because she could feel the hot wind lifting her long dress the whole day. Taking her eyes out of the dark sky, she pressed a sequence of buttons on her watch, and an African song began to play indoors, loud enough to hear it from outside.

“Turn it off, Magajiya!” cried Munachiso. “Is this the time to listen to your songs?”

“Every time is the time, baby!”

Magajiya lowered the volume a little and walked to Munachiso. She began massaging his back, feeling the fat he had gathered over the years. For a moment, she remembered when she met him: strong and muscular, always with that well-drawn beard on his face that she thought to be sexy. Magajiya was extremely happy, for she and her husband remained just fine over the years, even now, in this period of sadness, she knew it would be temporary.

“I think of one thing, my dear,” said Magajiya, breaking the silence. “I believe the worst argument we have to convince someone that this project will work is how to handle the temperature above a thousand degrees. For that, we have the Terastium. A fair amount to start with.”

“Look, on the other hand,” continued Qeb, adjusting the turban on his head. “Maybe this Paxton Skylines is interested in investing in our project. They’re crazy about giant buildings. Helping us build a tunnel should be something easy for them. With the Terastium we can get a head start on a good amount of metal extraction process. And we can only hope that we can manufacture more Terastium with the material we extract.”

Munachiso remained thoughtful for some time. His brain seemed to boil up with an idea, but his closed eyes and wrinkled forehead proved that his thoughts didn’t lead to a good path.

“You see,” commented Munachiso, in a calm tone, looking at Qeb. “It seems as though the Terastium is the greatest asset we have, and not a vein in the middle of Uganda. If you’re right, we can use that in exchange; they come in with the money and materials for the hole and we get the material for mining. However, the reputation of Paxton Skylines’ president is not that good. I’m afraid of being alone with him in a room.”

“We’ll only know if we try,” meddled Magajiya. “I think that, as far as I know about structures, we need something to dig and something to keep building a structure to prevent the pit from collapsing. The rest is up to us!”

“For many years there have been machines for tunneling, such as the subway ones,” continued Qeb. “Meanwhile, they are used for horizontal drilling. They even dig a little up or down, but not much. We need a proper digger. And also, at such a great depth, our body will not resist. We need to use the Terastium to build proper equipment for our survival.”

“It’s a lot,” said Munachiso, discouraged.

“The Magyar Raiders. They use some kind of exoskeleton that surrounds the body. What do we need to turn those machines into something more appropriate? I mean, do we turn them into mechanized robots that carry a human inside, with cooling, pressurization, and oxygen? All of that, with the Terastium we have?”

“We have money for that,” said Munachiso. “If we can get a contribution to dig the hole, and get a load of the stuff out of there, we could sell and start a business. But that would imply…”

“Traveling to Skyscraper City,” said Magajiya, smiling. “I’ve always wanted to set my foot there.”

Uptown, in a Skyscraper City pub, Magajiya and Qeb ate a classic soda burger. Magajiya was delighted with the barbecue sauce taste, while admiring the city from the window. Skyscraper City looked like paradise from up there, and the new Central Park was as beautiful as the stories told. In front of the pub, floating cars moved from one side to the other and holograms gave the current news, and also presented commercials for clothes and hats. Magajiya broke out of a daydream when she noticed Munachiso coming in, limping through the door. Only then, did she realize that her husband was getting older and her back seemed to be surrendering as the years went by, but her husband’s age did not matter, given that the expectation of his arrival was for a whole other reason.

“Speak, Munachiso!” said Magajiya, with a mouthful of barbecue sauce, even before her husband could sit down. “My heart is bursting with anxiety.”

“We have an agreement,” said Munachiso, sitting next to both. “We will have enough money…”

“Spill about Carl Paxton! What does he look like?”

“It’s…” Munachiso continued, with no excitement in his face. “Strange fellow. He has an empty look. Looks a lot older than he does on the news. The presidential room of his corporation is cold and extremely uncomfortable. I’m actually afraid of what we’ve agreed on.”

“What about the agreement?” Qeb meddled, cleaning the barbecue from his chin. “Did it work? What did you guys agree on?”

“That if we are able to extract materials from below for the next five years, half of the production will be his.”

“HALF?”

“Yeah. He wanted much more, but half of it was what we were able to agree on for a stack of Cybercoins. The first round of money for the tunnel construction comes when we have proof that we can get down there. If the material is interesting, he sends the second round to make the extraction operable. I’m guessing… with what we have and with that money, it will be possible to run this project.”

“That’s exciting, my dear,” said Magajiya smiling. “Five years go by quickly and soon, we’ll be making exorbitant profit. It’ll take us ages to dry that vein. We won’t even be here to see it when this day comes.”

Munachiso smiled, removing the discouraging expression off his face. His wife always encouraged and gave him strength in the worst moments of his life.

When they returned to Africa, Qeb began to design how they would do the whole project and where they would drill. The architects of Paxton Skylines designed a set of metallic discs that would be inserted into the hole every fifty meters. Being circular, these discs would symmetrically resist the force that the soil could make against the hole.

With the help of an Armadillo Digger (a large tractor that would dig the hole vertically) the debris would be thrown back and the elevator structure would be built in real time, taking the unnecessary material out with the help of some autonomous robots. Every fifty meters, the tractor would install one of the retaining rings, which connected to each other, forming the structures of the elevator.

The operation lasted two years. The Armadillo Digger threatened to crash many times, which cou;d make the operation difficult if they needed to maintain something that was already miles deep. But in the end, within little delay, the Tractor announced the end of the operation when it reached the desired depth.

“Been afraid, Munachiso,” spoke Qeb, smiling while handing the report to his colleague. “My fear was that this thing would pierce the shaft and the material would eject from below like a volcano. But in the end, it stopped a few meters from a good location to do the first extraction test.”

“Right,” replied Munachiso, looking forward to the next stage. “Now we need to get the Deep Walker down there and start a horizontal drill to the shaft. At this moment, we only need a sample for Magajiya to do the studies of the materials. Is the elevator working well?”

“Yes. Since we finished drilling, it has gone up and down another five times with the robots doing the cleaning and maintenance of the mechanism itself. It’s time for one of us to go there.”

After much discussion, and Magajiya insisting that she should go down there, Munachiso introduced the new Deep Walker they would use for the operation, properly adapted with the Terastium.

The machine was a large mechanized robot made of chrome metal. It was a large representation of the human body, with two wide legs equipped with belt loops that would attach the robot to the ground. The arms were also large, in one of them a large drill bit was installed so that the stone could be broken and in the other arm, a pick that could be used for various situations. Inside, it was possible for a human to enter, and inside, the air would be pressurized, with gallons of oxygen and equipment to maintain temperature and living conditions.

“This is kind of ugly,”commented Qeb, when he saw the great robot, which although promising, looked more like a contraption made with the remains of other things. “Will it hold up?”

“Definitely. He’s a little ugly on the outside, but just fine on the inside. That’s what we get from what we could smuggle out of Magyar Raider outposts.”

After a few more days of preparation, Magajiya prepared her descent to the bottom of the hole, which was now called The Hollow. The descent would take about three hours to complete and they were ready for the big moment.

“When you get there Mag,” said Munachiso, giving his last recommendations. “Do not forget to connect this machine to the communications system. Otherwise, we will not be able to talk to you.”

Three hours later, a communication light went on the panel. Magajiya had reached the bottom of the hole. It was time to start the horizontal excavation.

“Magajiya!” spoke the voice of the communicator when she finished connecting the Walker’s communication system to the elevator systems. “Can you hear me?”

“Yes, my dear” she said. “The Armadillo Digger is just standing down here. Is this right?”

“Yeah, he’ll be there forever, I guess. How was your trip?”

“Scary! It’s too dark in here. The temperature is also high, but everything is alright inside this machine. We’ve got oxygen for two days.”

“Yeah, but you’re not gonna be there all this time. We need to be efficient to get you out today with a little metal. Can we get started?”

Magajiya put the Walker’s drill to work. When the rig hit the rock, stone chips started flying everywhere and the drilling started.

Stones flew through the air and autonomous robots began the cleaning process, taking all the garbage to the elevator.

After two hours of excavation, Magajiya found no metal remains, only stone. Munachiso warned that at any moment something might appear. Then she went on with her work until she found a harder rock.

“The rock is getting firmer,” said the communicator. “The drill is not drilling well.”

“Let it cool down,” replied Qeb. “We cannot risk losing that drill. We don’t have that much Terastium left to keep wasting those pieces.”

Magajiya insisted on trying to drill into the rock, but stopped when she realized that the tip of the drill was turning red. However, when pointing the flashlight at the tool, she realized that it was not the drill heating up, but remnants of metals in red tones, just like lava.

To give the drill some time, Magajiya looked for the place where only a fillet of metallic material flowed. There, she shoved the pickaxe from the Walker’s other hand, and then, she used the robot’s force to try to rip off a piece of rock.

When the robot started pulling, the rock began to surrender, and then it cracked.

The blast was loud and strong. Munachiso and Qeb were frightened on the other side of the line, but Magajiya did not have time to respond. The molten metal jet flew through the air until it hit the Walker’s right arm. Magajiya saw several signs of alarms ringing in her cabin, but out of desperation, did not understand what was happening. She tried moving some steps back, but the walker did not respond. In front of her, the jet increased more and more, until a large red wave hit her, and after that, there was only darkness.

Magajiya awoke from sleep feeling a strong pain in her back. She believed she would be immobilized in some hospital, but she was lying alone in her bed, without her husband around.

She got up from her bed and walked around the room. She felt a strong kick in the back, and imagined that there would be some injury. As she went to the mirror, to try to see her back, she realized that there were two metallic wings implanted.

At the time, the scare almost made her heart stop. Who would have done such a thing? She screamed for Munachiso, but no one answered. Then the wings spread, hitting walls and windows.

Magajiya woke up once again in her bed, with a nurse by her side. She tried to bring her hand to her, but her body wouldn’t move. The woman who entered her room was carrying a tray, and she figured it was food, but when the woman approached, she removed a bucket full of liquid metal and poured it on her chest. Her chest was burning and her body was not responding. At the peak of the pain, she woke up with a scream.

“Calm down, Mag” said Munachiso, next to her in bed. “Calm down, dear. You must be having nightmares.”

Magajiya tried to say something, but Munachiso stroked her left leg to calm her down.

“You’re fine. The worst is over.”

“And the metal, ” she said, hoarse and weak. “Were they able to bring some for analysis?”

Munachiso was shocked that after everything that happened, she still woke up thinking about it.

“No,” replied Munachiso, smoothing out the gray beard. “After everything, I could no longer think about it.

“What do you mean, Munachiso?” she asked, aggressively, with her voice tearing her sensitive throat. “We spent all of our money on it, and you just left it alone?”

“I’ve been here with you, my love. I was worried about your life.”

“Well then, get your ass out of that chair and start thinking of a way to get a sample out of there for us to analyze!”

Munachiso felt the melancholy take hold of his being once again. After stopping the whole operation, resuming it would not be an easy task.

“Magajiya, I want you to rest. You are not yet…”

“I am! – Magajiya tried to sit on the bed to talk, but the pain still dominated her being. As she moved, a small part of her body was uncovered and she realized that her right breast had been replaced by an aesthetic prosthesis of chrome metal color, similar to her old one, but a little more rigid. “How much of my body was replaced?”

“Much of its right side. The leg, the arm and the lung. The skin was replaced by this prosthesis, which may be a bit ugly, but after you’re well the doctor said that the skin can be changed to the color you prefer, as the Toys do. Besides, you were in a coma for a long time, for almost two months. Your body must be weak by now.”

Magajiya remained silent with a grim look plastered on her face.

“Right,” she continued. “So tell me, what happened that day when I hit the rock?”

“When you screamed from below, we soon understood that the metal came out pressurized from inside the rock. I believed the Terastium would handle it, but since it wasn’t very resistant to impact – only to temperature as we had known – I believe the pressure was enough to break the Walker, so we put the emergency plan into action. Qeb had prepared a series of dynamites between the Hollow and Lake Victoria. The explosion created a channel and filled the water hole. When the rescue team arrived, they needed to use a submarine to get down there and pull your body out. They said the oxygen not having escaped was out of luck. For a few minutes, the Walker’s life system kept you alive. The water solidified the metal and it locked the bottom of the pit. Now there are a few kilometers of solidified metal, blocking access to the vein.”

Magajiya stood quiet, took a deep breath and calmed down.

“So, now you go out there and get that metal, and don’t you come back here without it.”

Munachiso stood up blankly.

“And turn on the music before you leave.”

With the help of a submarine, Qeb and Munachiso descended to the bottom of the Hollow, extracted a few kilos of the metal and brought it home. When Magajiya improved, she herself began studying the material. After long months of recovery of her own body and studies, Magajiya finally brought good news.

“The material is good,” she told her husband and Qeb. “We have plenty of iron and other interesting metals; little silver and gold. We also have copper. And most interestingly, we found silicon attached to other materials. Finally, what matters the most, we have material for producing more Terastium. I don’t know how to refine all of that, but if we can, we can set up a production. Maybe it’s time to talk to Paxton.”

Munachiso stirred in the chair and Qeb began caressing the shaved beard of his face, anxiously.

“Have you not spoken to him yet?” asked Magajiya, with gazing eyes. “You disappoint me. I’ll make the call myself.”

After preparing the report and a box of material, Magajiya locked herself in the room and prepared to call Paxton Skylines. She pressed a few buttons on her watch, and awaited the answer from the other side.

“Good evening, Miss Mensah,” said Paxton, on the other side of his arm communicator. “I’ve heard the news and thought the project was hopeless.”

“We had a few bumps,” she replied nervously. “But we have good news. The material is good for exploration.”

“Well, I guess you can show, I mean, using data.”

“Yes. As soon as this call is finished, I will send my personal report and I am already sending a sample to you.”

Some time later, bluntly, Cybercoins fell into Munachiso’s account with only one message: “This is for the operation”.

Getting the Hollow back up and running required a lot of work. First, it would be necessary to drain the water from inside the pit. This time, a dam was built in the vicinity of the fissure to plug the pipe created by the dynamites and dam water from Lake Victoria. Done so, that in future emergency cases, it would not be necessary to blow up another path. This way, it would only be necessary to open a floodgate and pour water inside it. What’s more, a constant flow of water would be sent into the hole for both cooling and energy production.

While the dam was built, the water was drained and the elevator repaired. New pipelines were created so that the water could flow without interfering with the operation of the elevator. A second one, ultra-fast, two-cabin elevator was built to get people faster there.

In the depths, even before they started the process of mining Liquid Metal, a base was built, as large as a city. Downstairs there were dorms, cafeterias and everything else to keep a large team living. All areas where humans could transit outside working hours were pressurized and maintained with oxygen production machines, and surface water was strategically used to cool environments. On top of that, the water that hit the hot rock was captured in the form of steam, and with a large boiler, energy was produced to keep the place running.

A large refinery, named The Sekhmet Forge, was built so that the metal was brought to the surface already ready for sale. This refinery consisted of a large machine that received the liquid metal, and before solidification, separated each material and directed it to production lines that created large blocks of metal. And when everything was ready, workers were taken to the depths and in a short time the elevator was already going up twice a day carrying the precious metals.

Magajiya, Munachiso and Qeb watched as the first plane departed, taking the first metal blocks for sale. Counting the money that fell into the account, no longer personal, but professional, thanks to a new Corporation they had founded.

The large elevator was named The Passage of Osiris and the liquid metal shaft Eyes of Amon, due to the bright color that the metal had when it came out of the vein, ready to be processed.

“I think we need a name for our company,” wondered Qeb. “A good name for our business.”

“I thought about…” Munachiso tried to speak, but was interrupted.

“SteelForce Association,” said Magajiya. “And don’t you dare disagree!”

Munachiso smiled after so long, even with Magajiya being so cold with him in recent months. Despite all the work and the mishaps, everything seemed just right. All there was left to do was start selling the metals, and within five years, the business would be all theirs.

There was only one thing that bothered Munachiso Mensah. Magajiya had volunteered to be the president of the Corporation, a fact that left Munachiso relieved. He’d rather have her on the desk than in the operation. What made him sad was the coldness of his wife, who now, in addition to wearing Terastium prostheses, seemed to have coated her heart with metal, which made it colder by the day.

It was a shame that the bedrock of their Corporation was based on suffering and the crack that it had brought to their relationship.

But that was something for time to solve, and who knows, life would follow, they would be rich and soon their relationship could warm up again.