We descended too deep. As the surface cooled, it was the warm core of Earth that offered us the only alternative to the cold vault of space. We clawed towards it with drills and plasma lances the size of skyscrapers that, between them, ate up more chemical energy in the span of a few years than had been consumed in the entirety of human history before then. That linear gnawing is what landed us here in the first place, but old habits die hard.
We expected and encountered difficulties. Alternating rock densities, tunnel collapses, poor ventilation, overheating, logistical issues. We saw layers of fossils from Earth’s biological foundation. Undercrust seas that had never seen light. Diamonds the size of houses that floated in the cooling mantle layer.
But we never suspected, never dreamed, that we’d find a city down there. Long abandoned. Carved tunnels, etched with glyphs, from the width of a torso to the size of an aircraft hanger. Chambers, towers, and corridors. Pantries filled with dust, libraries stacked with tombs too fragile to touch, homes left with little personal effects.
The recurring motif was the dragon. From what we could gather from the translated glyphs, the people that lived here feared the dragon that lived at the core of the world, warming the Earth with its mighty fire. It was from this increasingly warm core that the people eventually fled to the surface. Perhaps, as some of us guessed, to go on to found our early civilizations.
Perhaps, if our survival did not depend on it, no one would have given credit to the idea of a dragon in the core of the Earth. But every day we got closer. Every day, small doubts wormed their way into more and more people. If not a dragon, then what? What forced those ancient people from their homes?
To me, it seemed obvious. The same greed that drove us from ours.
Paddy Dobson
28th December 2022