ESL Lesson Plan: Tides of Europa (part 3) (简体)

Reading Activity (20 minutes)

Tides of Europa (Final Third)

The drones had reached the bottom of the trench. The team had come together quickly in the middle of the simulated night. The pilots were hooked up to IVs making sure they were in pristine condition for this mission. They hadn’t had the time to be properly prepped.

“Let’s get a visual of it,” Dr. Adams directed.

There had been one other seismic event right at the beginning of this mission.

“Well, we are seeing it… it’s just a little bit different.”

Raina examined the displays of all three drones.

“There’s a seam in the skin down the middle. Have the drones get a better look at it,” Raina directed.

The drone pilots listened. The skin around the seam was tightening and then loosening aligned with the pulses.

Hello Doctor Pavlov.

“What kind of biological information can we gather without taking a sample? I would rather not do that again.”

Raina looked at the new data being displayed in front of her. “The skin here is quite muscular and flexible, more so than where we initially took a sample from. And beneath the skin… It looks like an ocular organ.”

“An eye?”

“As close as this thing has to one.”

“It must have wanted a better look at who was poking it,” joked one of the pilots.

Doctor, open my eye. So, I can gaze into the cosmos once again.

“You are embedded into the crust of a moon, surrounded by hundreds of kilometers of earth and ocean. After that, it’s seventeen kilometers of ice before you can see the cosmos again,” Raina said softly to herself, only her assistant heard her. More loudly she said, “Dr. Adams, have the drones scan the tissue of the eye.”

“Does that have the potential of disturbing the creature?”

“It shouldn’t,” she said.

I will see through it all.

“How do I open your eyes?”

“Are you okay, doctor?” her assistant asked.

“I’m fine, it must be the sleeping pill. The pilots might need to share their IVs.”

“I’ll get you something to drink,” her assistant said with a smile.

I drink from the stars.

“Radiation,” she said to herself. The drones were about to scan it with low-frequency radiation.

In a moment of self-preservation, she almost told them to stop, but its voice calmed her.

No, this will just be a sip. I need more.

It was cold, the slender sample of flesh that had been taken from it. She rolled it up in her fingers and swallowed it. She was alone in her office. It had been within her privilege to request the sample.

We are ready to become one.

She left her office. She could feel it spreading within her. She could feel her world changing. The thoughts of those passing by drifted through the air like static. Waves and remote signals passing through the air become sensational. She could hear the silent communication of the colony’s infinite devices.

She was in the central computer room of the colony. Sitting down, the console sprang to life. It synced with her neural link. It was about to inform her of her permissions when the force of their mind hit the system.

They were everywhere. They were living in the communication systems that linked the colonies of Jupiter’s moons. At once, with all the eyes of the satellites belonging to colonists, they looked out into the stars.

They turned to Mars and then to Earth. They looked beyond Earth to Venus, and she felt its anger and loss.

“What happened?”

I built a perfect world.

“There are more worlds.”

The descendants of Earth… They will be consumed…

“I am a descendant of Earth.”

You are a descendant of the stars.

“What do you need?”

Sacrifice.

The colonies were all powered by nuclear generators. The way the colonies were set up. Some were home entirely to Earthlings. Others were home entirely to those born on Mars or among the stars. She would sacrifice those whose hearts were bound by Earth’s gravity.

Their anchors into the ice released. Explosions began going off along the seams between the colonies and Europa’s ice shelf as Raina found anything and everything that could detonate. She opened the colonies to the tides of Europa. Then, the moon began to shake.

“Get everything we can to those colonies!”

“There are hundreds of lives on each one! Can’t we do anything?!”

They stood in the mission room. Each person was pale and covered in sweat as they watched images of colonies critically failing, flooding, and being crushed by the pressure of Europa’s ocean. There had been cries for help. Frantic cries for aid. But, what could be done in an environment this severe? Then the nuclear engines failed. With this much pressure, the effect was not too dramatic, but the radiation spread throughout the moon.

I can see.

When it opened its eye, it looked directly at Europa 7. To Raina, being overtaken by its vision was ecstasy. To those around her, they writhed in nightmarish visions. Their skin bubbling and churning. Faces burning and scarring.

Doctor Raina Pavlov and it became one.

“Come my children,” they said. “You have seen your true god. Now, together, as one, we will have it all. We will have the stars!”