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“If it is ghosting, as you suggested, a surge of electricity should disrupt it, erasing this pattern. But if this is truly a coma pattern, I’m wondering if neurostimulation might reset a normal rhythm.”
Junjie met the nurse in the airlock and returned with the handheld pulse generator. Loose wires hung from it. Heng accepted the tool and attached the unit’s leads to electrodes across the brain.
Once done, Heng returned to the EEG. Its screen continued to run with whispery waves and small jagged lines. He clutched the battery-powered neurostimulator and twisted the dial. “I’m going to start at the lowest setting.”
Min watched the monitor.
“Here we go.” Heng pressed the button and a light blinked green for two seconds, then turned red as the pulse ended. He turned to Min. “Anything?”
She pointed to a spiky scrabble of lines that marked the jolt of electricity. “Give it a moment.”
The lines quickly faded back to quieter rhythms and waves. It all looked the same. The surge had failed to erase the pattern or reset a normal pattern. The only difference was perhaps a slightly increased amplitude to the rise and fall of the tracings.
Heng turned the dial to its midpoint. “Trying again with a bit more vigor.”
He pushed the button, waited for the green light to turn red, then faced Min. Again, the results were the same. No significant change, only some greater swings in the heights and valleys of the waves on the screen, as if those seas were growing more agitated.
“I’m going for a full pulse,” he warned and twisted the dial until it stopped. “Here goes.”
He pressed the button—and all hell broke loose.
3:02P.M.
Daiyu gaped in disbelief at Aigua. “You truly believe that huge pieces of an ancient planetoid can be found beneath the earth?”
“Bear with me,” the astrophysicist urged her. He rummaged through the briefcase on his lap and removed an e-tablet. He unlocked it with his thumbprint. He spoke while swiping and tapping at its screen. “Since the 1970s, we’ve known of the existence of two massive blob-like structures within the earth’s viscous layer of its mantle. They were identified using seismic tomography, which revealed that earthquake waves would slow when they tried to cross through those regions. Because of that, scientists called themlarge low-shear velocity provinces, or LLSVPs. Eventually due to their shape, most simply call themblobs.”
Aigua leaned forward and placed his e-tablet on her desk. “These blobs are the size of continents and a hundred times as tall as Mount Everest. One lies under Africa.”
He brought up an image on his screen that showed an amorphous shape lurking under Africa.
“And another LLSVP lies on the other side of the world,” Aigua explained. “Under the Pacific, with its edge extending into this region.”
He swiped his e-tablet’s screen and rotated the world until Australia and Southeast Asia appeared. A second continent-size shadow appeared, spreading under the Pacific.
Daiyu straightened after studying the screen. “You think these two blobs are the remains of the planetoid Theia?”
“Not just me. It’s the growing consensus of the scientific community. The latest geodynamic research further confirms this supposition.”
Daiyu leaned back in her chair, trying to imagine shattered bits of an alien planet buried under the crust of Earth. “You mentioned these blobs posed some threat. That it could destroy us all. How?”
“Whether or not these LLSVPs are truly from Theia, what is known is that they’re the cause of tectonic instability, especially at their edges. The African blob has been the source of violent volcanic activity throughout Africa’s history. It’s also the reason the continent has slowly been rising, pushed up from below by the mass beneath it.”
Aigua pointed to the schematic still on his tablet. “The Pacific LLSVP has been equally problematic. It’s one of the main engines that drive the volcanic Ring of Fire around the Pacific Ocean. Throughout Earth’s history, these blobs have driven up millions of cubic kilometers of lava, oozing upward in huge plumes. It’s believed one such plume triggered the Great Dying at the end of the Permian Period, an extinction event that wiped out most life on the planet. And even today, those blobs remain geological time bombs. Especially if they’re disturbed.”
“How do you disturb a continent-size chunk of an ancient planet?”
“That’s why I’m here. Because we did just that.”
“What? How?”
“That’s what I’m trying to find out. If we can discover the answer, it could lead to a weapon that would make the world’s nuclear arsenal obsolete. To cement China’s dominance for centuries.”
Daiyu cast him a doubtful look.
Aigua continued, “When Chang’e-5 was drilling into the lunar plain, we momentarily lost satellite contact with the lander. When it was re-established, the drill had stopped and appeared inoperable. We told the world that we had hit a layer of shale that restricted us from digging deeper, but that was not the reason. When we examined the lander’s drill after it returned, its electronics had been melted.”
“What happened?”
