Untouchable

Kita came out of the shuttle and proceeded towards the monolith. York watched him from behind and could deduce what he was planning. He quickly ran and caught up with him before stopping him.

Kita looked irked and quickly barked.

"What? Don't stop me."

"Don't you see around you? What are you doing? That thing killed everyone on the planet. Including people on the other-side of the goddamn planet!"

"I don't care how dangerous it is. It has consumed an insane amount of power killing everyone. I doubt it can do that again."

"Even if it can't pose a threat to everyone on the planet, it can still pose a threat to you. What if it kills you?" York asked.

"Heh. If it does that, So be it. I don't care anymore." Kita gave out a slight laugh after hearing York. He couldn't care less about dying right now. He was pretty sure that the monolith couldn't perform the same thing again and didn't pose a threat to other researchers in the vicinity. But it could still be of threat to kita. But he didn't care about that anymore. He had promised himself that he'd destroy the Monolith. No matter the cost. And if he died trying to do just that, he wouldn't have any regrets.

If there really was an afterlife, he could also be reunited with Helen again. So it's a win-win for him no matter what.

York was shocked after what he heard. He looked at Kita's eyes. They were clear as water. There was no fear in those eyes. They looked straight at him. It made him uneasy knowing that these eyes belonged to a friend who had just lost his wife. This wasn't the eyes of someone who was afraid of losing anything. These were the eyes of someone who had already lost everything.

Kita walked past York without saying anything further. He was headed straight for the monolith.

As he got closer and closer. He kept looking straight at the monolith. A Mix of different emotions welled up inside him. He decided to push them down for now as he needed to focus on the task at hand.

The rescue crew was almost done packing things up. So time was short. He needed to hurry up.

As he came in front of the monolith, Kita manipulated his comm and started to hover. He got closer to the monolith. From this distance he could clearly see what it exactly was. It was basically some kind of device that was made up of some kind of metal. The metal was always in it's superstate that was neither solid or liquid. But a mix of both at the same time. This was quite a fascinating piece of engineering that demonstrated the capabilities of It's creators.

But that wasn't of any concern to him. He wanted to destroy it. To that end he needed to figure out if it could even be destroyed at all! He decided to throw caution to the air and reached out to the monolith. He wanted to see if he could take a sample simply by grabbing the monolith. As it was in a superstate of matter, maybe he would succeed. He didn't have any high precision equipment with him right now. So his hands were the best thing he had.

As he reached out to the monolith. The monolith clearly reacted to his close proximity. It visibly tried to avoid it.

"Interesting." Kita thought to himself. Clearly it was self-aware enough. What would it do if he tried to catch it?

He reached his hands out even further in. He wanted to touch it no matter what.

His hands got closer and closer, Until, he could see that it was visibly in the monolith. But that wasn't all that was happening.

"Why can't I feel it?" Kita could see that he was touching the monolith, but he couldn't feel like that. It was exactly like touching air or nothing. But he could see that his right hand was currently inside the monolith and the monolith was acting around it.

'It doesn't make any sense.' The Superstate of the monolith meant that he should've felt something solid as well as liquid when he touched it. But he didn't feel any of that. He didn't feel anything.

He removed his hand from inside the monolith and looked at it. His vac-suit covered hand looked just fine.

"Well, that was pointless.", He took a step back and looked at it as a whole. He could feel the insane amount of energy running through it. How it was transported between the energy lines in the ground and the monolith was still a mystery. But he wasn't here to figure that out. He was here to figure out how to destroy it. He had thought of scanning it, but didn't think it would work. As all previous attempts had failed.

"But the energy levels in this thing is quite a bit lower that previous. Maybe the interferences should also be lower? If that's the case it should be able to scan it right?" he asked himself.

"Well, it's worth a try." He thought to himself and tried scanning it.

Surprisingly, it worked! Although the interference levels are still quite high, but if he processed the data, he should be able to figure a few things about it.

After about 20 mins, Kita returned to the shuttle. His Scanner was loaded with all the data that he had collected from the monolith. He just needed to process it into useable data. That should help him figure out if it can be destroyed. As far as Kita understood, the super-state of the monolith granted it immunity against all kinds of material damage. The kinetic energy would just pass right through it without hitting anything.

So just blasting it wouldn't probably work. But Kita wasn't about to let this stop him. He had promised himself something. And he planned on seeing it through to the end.