Symbiote 0204: Dyson Core

With Alex and Gwen enjoying themselves to the fullest, the long wait for the elevator's descent seemed to pass by in a blur.

When they heard the distinct ding of the elevator, they reluctantly parted from each other as Alex fixed both of their clothes. They walked out of the elevator as the multiple doors whirred open to reveal a large room that didn't seem to indicate in any way that they were currently in the core of the planet.

They had a large number of measures in place to regulate the atmosphere within the room, but there was still a stuffy feeling due to the limitations of their technology. Not only was the temperature well over any comfortable level, sitting at a stable hundred degrees Fahrenheit even with the temperature regulators working at full capacity, but there was also a sense of suppression that was felt from all around them. It was as if there were invisible waves of some sort pressuring them from all directions. These suppressive waves were the reason that Alex couldn't use mystic arts portals to travel to the core at will and still had to take the elevator.

"How long till the other elevator arrives?" Alex asked Gwen who had approached a terminal and was quickly typing commands to get things moving.

"An hour or so," She said, "Even though we slowed down our descent significantly when alter me came out, the other elevator is still much slower."

"Hm," Alex nodded, "I see, let me know if you need anything, I'm going to go examine the generator." He started walking to another part of the room before reaching a door. Pressing a button to open the door that led to the next room, Alex was instantly hit by a wave of heat that made him feel as if a fire was directly assaulting his body. Not wanting to mess up the temperature within the main control room further, he quickly entered the room and closed the door with the push of another button.

Alex's surroundings could mildly be described as a raging inferno as he moved to a floating sphere in the center of the room. It was floating on top of a small pillar that was as high as Alex's chest. That pillar was the source of all the heat that was causing the generator room to be so hot.

"Everything seems stable enough," Alex mumbled as he examined the sphere and its connection to the main power supply for the shield. He couldn't input any commands to the generator since any terminals would've been destroyed in the extreme heat that was within the room, easily reaching a temperature that would easily vaporize even some metals like magnesium. Alex was only able to endure being here due to the extremely resilient nature of Symbiotes and having overcome whatever heat and sound traumas had been instilled into his being.

After a few minutes of examining the connection between the sphere and the relay that siphoned off the energy from the core while directing it to the planetary shield before siphoning back the residual energy into the pillar, Alex left the room and went back to the main control room.

"I don't see any discrepancies," Alex said, "Once the team comes down, we can probably start the process." He approached Gwen, who was focusing on a screen with her brows furrowed.

"We'll need to recalibrate a couple of the Dyson Core's energy relays first," She said, "I see D29, G24, and T67 all at lower integrities than the others. They are still above the replacement threshold, but if we want to modify the shield, we will have to push the generator by another factor."

"Show me," Alex looked at the screen that Gwen had been examining and examined the red sphere in the center that was surrounded by a set of hexagonal constructs, forming a sphere around the sphere, reminiscent of the structure that formed the shield. The center sphere had multiple breach points that were being used to anchor the sphere of hexagons to it and keep them all in place.

The projection was their main energy source and was formed by creating a large structure to cover the core of the planet so that they could accurately control the energy of the core. Gwen had named it the Dyson Core since its design was reminiscent of a Dyson Sphere, which was a theoretical construct that could envelop an entire star to collect all of its energy.

The shield generator had many different components working together, but the Dyson Core was the most integral one since none of the energy requirements for the shield would be possibly fulfilled without the heat from the core.

Examining the projection for a few seconds, Alex noticed the three damaged hexagons on the Dyson Core and said to Gwen, "I shouldn't need too long to replace them, do we have the necessary equipment down here?"

"Not really, the regular maintenance is still a month away, so no supplies here," Gwen said while shaking her head.

"Fine, I'll pull some stuff down from the lab," Alex said, "You should be happy that I have many backup bodies up on the surface."

"I'm still not able to understand why you don't just leave one of your bodies down here so that we don't have to take that long journey through the elevator …" Gwen said, "I get that the portals can be interfered with, but you're still able to use your ‹Inventory›.

"Have you felt how uncomfortably hot this place is?" Alex asked, "There's no way I'm leaving a body down here without a host to inhabit."

"Fair enough, and the ride down is always fun," She said suggestively.

"The ride up is also going to be pretty fun," Alex wrapped his arm around her waist and pulled her close.

Gwen put her hands on his shoulders and looked up into his eyes, "They'll be down any minute now …" She said while leaning her body closer to him.

"Which means we have at least a minute," He said, making Gwen burst out laughing.

"I think we'll need more than a minute," She said with a flirty smile.

"Let's test it out then," Alex said before slipping his hand directly under Gwen's lab coat and top, tracing his palm along her bare waist.

"Alex …" Gwen had a look of desire in her eyes as she looked directly into his eyes.

"Mhm …" Alex slowly started trailing his hand upward, closer to her chest.

"They're here," She whispered with a hint of lust in her voice before stepping back, "How about a rain check on that minute."

"We're doing a lot more than a minute after this," Alex said with narrowed eyes as the distinct ding of the elevator sounded out, announcing the arrival of the rest of the team.

It took a few seconds for the doors to open, but the scientists quickly entered the control room and got to work assembling the modules that needed to be added in. As for Alex, he went back to the generator room before opening a hatch that was beside the relay pillar and going through it before closing the hatch behind him. Alex took his slime form and attached himself to the pillar that was going down toward the core of the planet and moving lower by using it as a medium of transport. He passed through the lava that had reached temperatures upwards of almost five thousand degrees Fahrenheit as if it was a simple swim in the ocean.

It took him a couple of minutes to travel the fifty-something miles down through the lava before he finally found himself at one of the relays of the Dyson Core. The pillar extended further lower, stabbing itself into the core of the planet where the lava had been compressed to the point of forming back into a solid that was glowing with pure white light, giving an almost holy feel to the entire area. Examining the relay closest to himself, Alex noticed that it was the A01 relay. He recalled the map of the sphere before moving in a specific direction along the flat relays that captured most of the heat that was being expelled from the core of the Earth.

Quickly moving to his target destination, Alex pulled out the necessary materials from his inventory and got to work dismantling the D29 relay so that he could replace the necessary parts. Just as he pulled off the main blast shield that captured the heat, he was hit in the face with a wave of heat that was upwards of almost ten thousand degrees Fahrenheit. Considering that the temperature just outside the Dyson core was literally half that, Alex had practical proof that their design was extremely effective.

With their method of pulling back the utilized energy from the shield and recycling it, even though they were directly harnessing the power of the core of the earth, their system could easily work for thousands of years without any problems on the surface of the planet. As for the heat that they were capturing, causing the core of the planet to get colder, they were making sure to spread the head through the planet directly through their shields, making sure that the possible 'Ice Age' scenario wouldn't come to pass.

Not to mention that sooner or later, once Alex and Gwen found a way to gather Cosmic Energy, it would completely replace this. Both of them knew that using the planet itself to power anything was a bad idea and could cause untold damage to the foundation of the planet itself. The Dyson core was nothing more than a springboard to move on to the next big thing, at which point they would use it to stabilize the foundation of the planet further.

At the same time as Alex was working on Research Earth's Dyson core, he was also in the Control Room of Farm Earth's generator, working together with the scientists to do the exact same thing that Gwen was doing on Research Earth.

***

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