“Drives empty and ready to receive.”

“High speed local network connections tested and correct.”

And, at last, the easiest, “Diver present.”

All of the experimental setup was ready, and the checklist for today’s measurements was being ticked down.

Director of Research Nika Yssarj turned toward Kolm Urssul, exchanging a glance with that last man to speak his line.

The designated Diver stepped into the carefully marked location, putting his leather-booted feet into the reference outlines. Red spots sprung all over him as measuring lasers started making microscale readings. Urssul tried to remain as steady as he could, but even the smallest breath was probably making wild fluctuations in all the readings since the laser measurements were at microscale precision.

The Diving Globe was on a small pedestal just in front of him to minimize perturbations. He carefully stretched his middle arms, placing his hands on both sides of the sphere.

That was his third Dive, and he still marveled at the Globe at rest. A nearly perfect mirror, as attested by measurements that did not spot a single absorption line in the entire spectra, down to the deep reds of heat or the high blues of radio. It would be a perfect mirror if it did not smudge inbound spectral lines, making the reflected distribution of photons slightly larger than the original.

Of course, no one had any idea why or how.

“Diver ready,” he finally announced as the pedestal was hastily dragged out.

“Checklist complete. At will, Kolm.”

“Three. Two. One…”

As usual for Yssarj, the events seemed way too fast, even if he could follow them. Urssul exerted a careful squeeze on the Diving Globe. Unlike when mechanical devices attempted to press, push, or otherwise deform the microscale-perfect sphere, it reacted immediately, expanding fast. He kept his middle hands on it, letting it inflate.

Something briefly sparked in the surface of the globe, and then there was nothing in the center of the lab room.

“Dive started.”

“Let’s clean the area for when Kolm Resurfaces. And I know all analysis will be done in its own time, but I want the camera files up in my office’s computer… by the time I’m upstairs.”

He spotted two techs exchanging glances and restrained his own expression of amusement.

As if the computer could hold the entire video files. But people need a challenge to excel.

“So, Yssarj, he’s gone?” Mumg asked as the two men walked out of the building of the Academic Oversight of Speculative Science. The fit between the Diving Globes and the state institution dedicated to fundamental research with no clear application was obvious, and they’d made the Diving Lab there a half-year ago.

“He’ll stay for a nineday and go up immediately.”

Tokay Mumg, who was heading the astrophysics sciences, which had been the poster child for speculative science until the first Diving Globe was found, threw his upper hands in the air in mock exasperation.

“And no one knows why that return limit matches the duration of the work week?”

“That’s why this is doubly speculative science. No one knows what’s coming out of this, and no one knows anything about it either,” Yssarj laughed at him, mouth clicking. “Besides, it’s not an exact match. There is one-thirtieth day more than the week. Coincidence?”

“How does it look on high-speed?”

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“Weird.”

“No kidding.”

“I mean, even with a microtime camera, there are only seventeen frames that are meaningful. His hands constantly remain in contact with the expanding globe as they’re being forced apart, and you see the mirror surface start getting replaced by the remote view on… call if frame 1. It’s an entire view of his Dive target by frame 3, with no reflection of local photons at all, I am betting. The expansion was already slowing by then, and it stops at frame 8. Then… the weird starts.”

“Meaning?” Mumg pressed.

“His hands start getting covered by the reflection. In frame 14, it looks like a person-shaped view of the Dive location is connected to a sphere. And then they both merge, and there is a blob vaguely shaped like a sphere by frame 16, two-thirds of a person's size. And a small sphere – that still reflects the destination of the Dive – in frame 17. And then nothing. Even on microtime snaps, the whole thing lasts that little. The sphere contracts at an estimated half a percent of the speed of light at the end.”

Mumg’s tongue swirled in his mouth.

“And we have six… no, five of these Diving Globes.”

“All but one in use at the moment. We’ll repeat the recording to see if there is a difference tomorrow with Onagg as the Diver and that last Globe.”

“I doubt there will be one. It would have helped if we had the original,” Mumg suggested.

“Alas. We know it was different from the others. None of the three Divers who used it first experienced the sickness that plagues the others on their first Dive. Speculation is that it was more attuned to Haven since that’s where it was, while all the others have been found in the Depths.”

“Thankfully, we found some before… Leris never came back from his Dive.”

“I know Maark still grumbles that we lost ‘his’ Globe, the one he found in that antiquarian dig.”

“He can use any. It doesn’t look like it matters; all the Divers get back their last Dive, no matter which Globe they use.”

“It’s the principle,” Nika said as he stopped beside his vehicle.

The other director saluted.

“Good return. See you tomorrow.”

“See you, Mumg.”

The Research Director for Depths Diving pulled up the car’s door and slid himself onto his seat, bringing it back closed with his upper hand while the middle grabbed the steering stick, letting biometric read it and start the engine.

Kolm Urssul, volunteer for the Depths Dive Program, twisted his glasses lenses to focus. Electronics and electric-powered devices drained fast and failed quickly once in the Depths, but the purely mechanical binoculars did work perfectly fine, and those were good ones. The volcanic massif he’d seen dominating the area when he first Dived looked ominous above, and fissures and still glowing streaks of lava marked the terrain.

“I bet there was an eruption during my two ninedays of stay back in Haven,” he muttered to himself.

If the area were that dangerous, he’d have to relocate quickly. Thankfully, he didn’t have many things to carry. But it wouldn’t do to Dive and find himself in the middle of lava with no way to Resurface. If you Dived normally, you’d see that and could abort. But that last Dive Protocol didn’t allow enough time to do that.

“Wait, what’s that?”

To the side, upslope, there was a geometric shape, which immediately screamed to his mind “artificial”. Outside of the weirdly built ruins he’d found on his first Dive, that was the only structure he’d seen. He knew Maark, the original Diver, had found troglodyte structures, but they were not in the same Depths. Each Diver had its own different place.

He surveyed the area where the pyramid-looking structure was located. Approaching it would be tricky, even with Sure Foot, Sure Hands. There were old lava flows still smoking and fissures everywhere. He clacked his mouth.

At least a challenge that does not involve weird predators.

As he neared his target, he revised his estimates. The ground was still smoking, but it felt older. Whatever had poured out of the volcanic calderas that dominated the area had been a different event before the recent eruption, probably months ago.

Who builds stuff next to an active volcano, he thought.

The structure was – or rather, had been – a stepped pyramid made of stone. There was what looked to be a staircase to one side, which might have been helpful if an enormous crevasse had not cracked the pyramid in two across that side.

He stopped at the edge of the fissure, where the pyramid was now open, and looked down.

The nine-malm crevasse opened to the depths of the earth. There was nothing down there save a rolling, bubbling cloud illuminated by sunlight from above. Whiffs of sulfur told him that, while it might not have magma down there, the volcanic matter was still active.

The cracked wall showed the inside of the pyramid, which was even weirder. There were stone structures on large pillars, but some of those had crumbled when the fissure had split the ruins in twain.

He realized those cubic structures were rooms. It was like he was looking at a mold of the actual structure. Most of the bottom rooms had cracked, and he spotted a torn-up room with half of a globe that looked like it was made of stone sitting on a broken support. The top half was nowhere in sight, possibly fallen into the smoke-filled depths.

Now, that is a proper setting, he mused.

He knew an adventurous company had already contacted the Institute, trying to get a partnership to make a game based on the Depths. Adventure games were always popular, and making one based on “real” things could be the basis of a blockbuster. The structures they’d found so far, the weird creatures.

It would be a massive success. Exotic, traps, danger… this one would be a perfect boss fight.