Metaphone - Prologue

Instructions

"Lower me further!" Ria shouted up to the people running the cables above. A second later, they felt the cables connected descending deeper into the caves. "Just a little bit more to the left! There's good melt there!" The cables moved to the left, and just as Ria had said there was a large, promising pool of melt right in reach of their tools. They took out a few long sticks and poked around the slime for a moment before removing another wider stick and putting it into the pool. He pressed a button on the collector and it began sucking up the yellow melt from the pool and inserting it into a large bag that hung from a cable next to Ria. There was soon no melt left in the bag, and Ria went back to moving around their cables, looking for more pools. This was their job, and the job of hundreds like them on Shucra-T2. It seemed a burden, something to be avoided, but in reality it was the basis of the planet's whole economy. Without melt-collectors like them, the planet would be worthless, both in trade and in living. That was what sustained Ria each day as they searched through the caves, and what sustained all the hundreds like them who also collected melt each day. "Is there any cave-melt down there?" Asked one of the people manning the cables. "I heard there was a deposit of some rare types around where you are." "I don't see any cave-melt," Ria replied. "Actually, hold on..." they turned their cable to look at another smaller corner of the cave. "There's a chunk of warp-melt over there." "Warp-melt? We wouldn't need- hold on. Just got a message from one of the labs on the surface. They're doing some experiment around where you are, and you need to get out soon. Just for safety. We're lowering you up now." "Ok, but keep me close," Ria said. "I don't want to lose sight of that cave. Lots of melt pools. And maybe I'll even get to see some of this experiment." "I don't think so. Nothing visible or audible was supposed to happen down here..." they stopped as a strange, loud sound began to ring from inside the cave. As Ria looked closer, it seemed to be coming from the small pool of red warp-melt, which had begun to pulse and bubble. After a second, the noise stopped, and soon, the warp-melt subsided. "I guess they were wrong," said the person manning the cables. But the scientists up above had never meant anything visible or audible to happen in the caves. They had simply been running a small experiment with signals. What Ria had heard, they called a failure. Something done wrong. But in reality, Ria was the first witness to the greatest discovery of the age. A discovery that would save Shucra-T2 and countless other planets in the years to come.