The Station, Part 15 cont.

Nothing. No station. She’s just gone. I’m going into a new tunnel then. Wish me luck.

I didn’t even spend much time choosing a tunnel this time. Just found the closest one, placed a beacon, and starting walking. This tunnel’s a bit larger than the last I think. More oval in shape with a higher ceiling. And this one almost immediately started sloping downward. More steep than is really comfortable. It’s going to be a bitch to try and back up here if I have to. Not that there seems to be a reason to anymore. On the plus side, the floor is rougher than the last tunnel, giving me some more needed traction. I’m happy about that. After scaring the shit out of myself back at the non-tree grove, I’ve been on guard more, paying more attention to the topography. I’ve left the outside audio pickups at maximum, and I’ve just started to pick up a hissing sound from up ahead. It comes and goes in a regular sequence as far as I can tell. Kind of like machinery. There’s even the beginning of a faint light. I still need the suit’s light for now, but maybe I’ll be able to shut that down soon.

As you’d expect, the sound is getting louder as I get closer to the source. The light level is increasing as well. To experiment, I’ve shut off my flashlight and it turns out I have enough ambient light to guide me now. And the tunnel’s width just increased by quite a bit…and there’s a lot of light coming from…yes it’s an opening. Gonna put down a beacon before I do anything else…

Incredible. You’re going to think I’ve lost it. Or the oxygen mix in my suit has gotten too high. I don’t care. You can’t answer me anyway. I’m standing on a beach. Beyond the crystalline sand is what I can only describe as an ocean. Above the ocean is a sky. I know, I don’t believe it either. But there it is. More green than what we’re accustomed to, but it has wispy clouds slowly moving toward a horizon line and beyond that, who knows? The hissing sound I heard before is the sound of small waves crashing to shore, which is surprisingly lustrous. Like gemstones. I have some of that sand in my hand now. Up so close, every grain looks like a tiny, polished stone. Like tiny versions of river rock. No hard edges at all. I’ll bet it feels incredibly smooth between bare feet. I’m almost tempted to take off the suit’s boots and try it for myself. The ocean itself is green was well. I can’t tell if that because of the sky or the water itself, but that’s the only thing here that would appear more or less normal on earth. But the light. There’s no obvious source for that. It’s not painfully bright here though. And there are no shadows that I can see. Apparently the light is coming from everywhere. Or perhaps this sky is the light source itself. Everything has a greenish hue about it. It reminds of the air before an intense thunderstorm, when the barometric pressure drops and the wind begins to pick up, that weird time right there, when everything takes on that odd greenish hue. Looks like that here, without the wind. And what is creating the wave action? That implies a current is out there. Is that being generated artificially? No way to know at the moment. Well, I have three choices right now. I can turn left, I can turn right, or I can go back the way I came. The beach seems to stretch along the wall on either side, so, not knowing the size of this new environment, it could go for miles. I can see holes here and there on the wall, which is much more visible now in the odd lighting. Didn’t think to look at it as I came out in here. The sight of the beach and ocean monopolized my attention. Now that it has my attention, I can finally see it in all of its glory. It’s jet black even under the green light. It reached up and up, fading into the sky past my visual range. Going back to eye level to can see that more holes, presumably more tunnels, are dispersed in either direction. Again, some are too high to reached but others I can easily just step up a bit and walk into. I’m going for a walk. I choose…left. Why not? I don’t seem to be getting any closer to finding Frontier. It’ll give me time to think.