The Station, Part 42

As I thought it would be, it isn’t long before I enter the cave that the light all but disappears. This is foolhardy. Who would voluntarily do this without any spelunking equipment, let alone a lousy flashlight? Yet here I am, just a single layer of clothing between me and the unknown. It’s not all gone yet—the light that is. There is a barest hint of light, a bluish glow. Coming from further into the interior. As eerie as that may sound, it’s actually something of a comfort for me. Hey, it’s either this or absolute darkness. Take your pick. The walls around are rather uneven, lending to the belief that this is meant to look natural. Not aesthetically stylized either such as in the simulated habitat parks back home. Like everything else about this place, its looks like its always been here, millions of years. But we all know, this could be been formed last week for all we know. In the low light I also see veins of what could be minerals in the walls. The blue light casts it all into many shades of a single color, making it impossible to tell what these deposits could be. Besides, I’m not a geologist.

The cave slopes downward as expected but still retains a straight path further into the mountain’s interior. The walls are getting further apart, yet I can see more detail. The light is getting stronger. These new legs of mine are doing wonders for my pacing. Adding in the incline, I can cover perhaps twice as much ground as before. I wonder how tall I am now. Two-and-a-half meters maybe? What would my grandparents say? “My, how you’ve grown.” If I could only remember them.

The light is coming from not too far ahead. Positively bright now. There’s no way around it. Not that I’d go back. Going in now…
It’s a vast open space. The mystery of the glow is solved. It’s coming from some king of crystalline deposits that occupy virtually every nook and cranny. Some are a small as my finer. Other must be at least twice my height and half a thick with everything in between. Any brighter and I would be blinded. I know of no such minerals on Earth. I can surmise that this means I’ve passed over yet another threshold and entered into a literal new world once again. If I had been more diligent in my investigations, I would have looked for troglodytes. Pale, blind things that have no knowledge of light. But the glow just may have negated those adaptations anyway. As of yet I am the only living thing here. Unless these crystals are something more. I’m looking at one very closely, a small one that juts out of the cave wall like a spear that burst in from the unseen other side. The end has that typical sharp looking point. The blue light is steady and comes from within the structure itself—not a surface reflection. I’m peering closer still, and I think I can see movement inside it. Like minuscule bubbles traveling to and fro. Maybe not bubbles. There seems to be an organization to the movement. Purpose. Whatever they may be, these mite-sized things are what causes the blue phosphorescence. Without them, I suspect these crystals wouldn’t. And I would be cloaked in a perfect blackness. Thank you, tiny blue things. Keep glowing.