300 for 30: Day 27

(This was originally written on commission for a sci-fi magazine, however, they have requested that I double it in length. So I thought I'd preserve the original 584-word micro-fiction here as today's 300-for-30.)

What We Found on Europa

The first probe to land on Europa, one of Jupiter’s moons discovered by Galileo, managed only to land upon the ice and roll around for a few hours, its multi-million dollar drill too fragile to break through the layer, which was thicker than expected, and allow it to dive into the waters below. Though the scientists involved in the mission pointed out that this proved there at least was liquid water, which had only been conjectured before, the public did not consider the mission a success. The robot was abandoned to crackle in the freezing temperatures.

It took more than a century for a private conglomeration of businesses, hoping to find rare and useful metals to compensate for the increasing scarcity of materials on Earth, to scrape together the funds for another exploration of Jupiter’s moons. They were hoping to emulate India’s recent monopoly of the rich Martian mines. One of the fleet of radio-equipped robots landed upon Europa, and did make it through the ice layer to the ocean. It measured increasing warmth as it descended, suggesting heat escaping from the core. All was darkness, though, and the sea-rover soon ran out of power, with nothing to charge its solar panel.

A hundred and sixty-eight years later, Free Luna of Earth’s Satellite, in association with New Earth Mars, sent a variety of crafts, some with humans in stasis aboard and some not, out to near space in an effort to find places where human life – and the lives of what non-humans we had managed to transplant – could expand. Europa had liquid water, we knew, and was at least in our solar system. All attempts at Venus had failed horribly, so away from the sun was our goal. Perhaps we could harness the heat of the core to groom the moon, make it Earthlike enough for us.

I am the first human ever to dive in a submersible craft into the depths of Europa’s oceans. I was supposed to share this with a partner, but she suffered a heart attack coming out of suspended animation. The technology is sadly not yet perfect.

Let those listening in from New Earth Mars, the nearest substantial settlement (not counting the temporary encampments on some of the larger asteroids in the Belt), and those on Free Luna and Mother Terra herself once the news is spread, let them know that I have come face-to-face with life.

It looks much like a small squid or large cuttlefish, only slightly larger than my hand, but has three eyes, huge and lovely eyes. It must feed on the tiny crustaceans my scanner is picking up, which in turn must live on bacteria nourished by the chemicals spouting from deep sea vents like the ones our ancestors discovered at the bottom of their sea.

I don’t know if it’s intelligent, the way we are, or even the way a dolphin or a chimp or raven is. I don’t know if it registers me as life, even. But it is blinking colors at me, the bioluminescence that is the reason for its vision, and I am blinking colors back at it as best I can, using my pen light.

It is too far for me to go home again, and I will never see another human face. Yet I do not regret this, not any longer. For in this encounter, at the bottom of this chilled soup of an alien sea, I have found God.