They Found Something Under the Ice of Europa in 2005, and It Wasn't Water… | Part 2
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By the time I reach the top of the pit, I'm waiting for the voice in my head to keep speaking. It doesn't, so I keep telling myself that I just had a moment of confusion. I misheard something, or I just imagined something down there when I was looking into the water. I look across the moonscape at the other team. They're whispering and chatting among themselves, on their own personal frequency. They don't want us listening in.

They don't want us to hear that they aren't the friendly strangers they've been pretending to be. No, it's obvious to me. They're here to ruin this for us. They're here to take everything. They will. Who said that? It isn't anyone on our radio channel. It doesn't sound like it's coming through the headset at all. No, it's definitely coming from inside my head. I shouldn't be here. The voice is in my thoughts.

but it sounds nothing like me. I'm not thinking about these things. I'm not saying these things either. The voice is gritty and sneering, like it's growling behind clenched teeth. This isn't how this was supposed to go. This was supposed to be your moment. This was supposed to be what you will be remembered for. No one will remember you now, especially after they ruin it. I nod my head in agreement. No, agreement with what?

with a voice in my head that isn't actually there? No one's talking to me. I just need rest. This place is getting to me. "You can't rest now!" The voice shrieks and jolts me to attention. If the voice is fake, a figment of my imagination, then how did it just rattle my skull with how loud it is? "If you rest, they will take advantage of that. They will get ahead of you. They will explore it all before you have the chance to. You will sleep through the whole thing!" I don't want that.

If you snooze, you ruse.

That's what they want. They want me to sleep so they can take everything when my eyes are closed. Yes, exactly. I can see it so clearly. They're terrible at hiding it. They're going to rob us blind when we can't do anything about it. That's what they really want. They're going to ruin you. I nod. I know. There's silence for a long moment while I stare across the frozen surface of Europa. I glance down at my feet and I see myself on the ice again.

The still gaze of my doppelganger down there peers into my soul, but it's the wide grin on my face that really sends another shiver through me. I don't understand what I'm seeing down there, and I don't understand who's talking to me now. Somehow though, I can't stop paying attention to the things that shouldn't be there. When the voice comes back, it's more forceful than before.

but it makes even more sense. "That's where you will end up if you let them win. You will be down in the cold, in the cosmic sea, where no one will ever find you. Are you going to let that happen?" "No," I whisper, though a part of me knows that there shouldn't be anyone around to hear me. But someone does hear me. "Then you know what you have to do. You have to ruin them first." "How?" I ask, trembling a little. I can feel something inside of me that's calming my nerves.

My legs stop quaking and my hands aren't shaking anymore. I'm filled with something new. A kind of courage that I've never had before. It feels like purpose. Real purpose. You know, protect your work. There is no time to rest. You have work that needs to be done. That's right. I'm here to work. I move across the ice, toward where Kreel is standing and scanning the surroundings. He shoves some rods into the ice, trying to get them to stick.

He's struggling with it. I laugh a little under my breath. Look at him, flailing about. He has no idea what he's doing. He shouldn't be here. He's only getting in the way. I look around and find no one else. His crew has gone back into their pod. Good. They shouldn't be out here. Beautiful night.

I hear the words come from the voice before I say it aloud myself. "Beautiful night." Kreel jumps a little, clearly startled. He relaxes a little once he sees me. He presses a few buttons on his wrist to match his radio to my frequency. "It's you, just me." The voice laughs a little. I can feel its glee, and it makes me happy too. He speaks a little awkwardly. "I figured you would head to bed with the rest of your crew." There it is. That's what he wants.

"You snooze, you lose." The voice coos in my brain. "He wants to ravish you in your sleep, ruin everything that you've spent every waking hour building." I say, much more loudly than I meant to. I can't help it. It's so infuriating hearing his intention so plainly. He wants me to sleep. He wants to steal from me in the dead of night. I take a breath, but it feels so much heavier than usual. "I like coming out here when my crew is resting."

"Just don't neglect your own rest, okay? We all do better when we've had a good night's sleep. I'm sure you think that." I say. And I feel my voice reverberate with something strange. Something that doesn't even sound like me. "You want me to sleep." Kreel laughs a little nervously, examining me, concerned. "I'm not here to put you to bed and tuck you in. I just think that a little bit of rest always does the body good. But here I am, not taking my own advice. What are you even doing out here?" I ask.

I'm familiarizing myself with the terrain. If I'm going to be here for a while, I'd like some good, comprehensive scans of Europa. Are initial scans not sufficient? It's not, he says with a little chuckle. No offense meant. I just like to do things on my own, to see things for myself sometimes. You don't think our work is satisfactory, do you? I growl. That's why you're here. I already told you. It wasn't my call to come here.

We're here to help. We're not here to make things harder. They are making things harder. They're ruining everything. And they know it too. Look at him. He's lying to your face. We broke through the ice today. I say without even meaning to. I'm practically whispering it to him. Without you. We did. Not you. Kreel says. That's something that you all should be extremely proud of.

I nod. Kreel shoots me a confused glance when my head bobs. There it is again. He wants me to sleep. He's almost forcing me to.

He's trying to make me think there's something wrong with me, like he knows best. He doesn't. Show him. Show him your work. Make him see with his own eyes what you've done. I nod again. I don't need sleep. I just need to show you our work, so you really understand what we've done here. I'd like that. I bet he would. He will. Show him. Show him everything. We move across the surface to the trench that me and my crew have been digging for months.

It's the evidence of our hard work. The proof that Kreel and his team shouldn't be here. It truly is remarkable what you've done. I'm glad you think so. It's just empty words. The voice snaps at me. He's placating you. He wants you to think he's done trying. Don't let him fool you. Show him more. Show him everything. Do you want to see what we found underneath the ice? I would very much like to.

Kreel says with some genuine excitement. "Is it dangerous?" "Of course," I say with a laugh. "But we're standing on one of Jupiter's moons in the middle of outer space. Everything is dangerous here. That's a fair point." The lift brings us down the hole. As we descend, I can feel Kreel grow nervous beside me. If he fears the hole that we dug, then he shouldn't even be out here.

Look at him. He's a coward. He let you dig this hole. And he's going to act like he was the one with the shovel and the ice picks and the drills. I nod my head when I hear the voice, and Creel takes notice. Is everything okay with you? Yes. I say, shaking off the voice. Sorry. It takes a few minutes to get to the... When we reach the end of our descent, we can hear the splashing and crashing of the seawater below. It's just like it was the first time I came down here.

But now I'm not alone. I'm with someone that shouldn't even be here. He won't be here much longer. I nod again without even meaning to. Kreel says, looking at the black water through the ice. So it's true that there's a whole ocean within. I remember the way the black water spurted out. I remember how cold it felt, even through my suit. I remember the feeling that washed over me.

The voice in my head pushed away those thoughts and spoke through me. "I think it's even more than that," I say, distantly. I know I probably sound strange, and I'm not even sure why I'm telling him any of this. "Not sure?" "Show him what you mean." The voice snickers. "Show him everything you've found." "There are currents and tides. That much is clear. As far as other similarities to our ocean, that's something that we'll have to run tests on. Sea life?

Not sure yet. I say honestly. But considering how much of our own seas are unexplored, it will take some time to learn all of that. He's going to take everything from you. He's going to claim this ocean for his own. He is going to take it all. Kreel stares down into the water. It's truly incredible to think that we're here. That we were on the mission when we breached the ice of Europa. See? The voice hisses. We. It's not we. I say quietly. You weren't part of that.

"You didn't do any of this." Kreel stammers, but laughs a little. "Come on, semantics. I'm here in these early days when we could begin the research, that's all. It's a group effort." I growl. I can barely hold back the anger rising in me. "Not yours. Will you relax?" Kreel says. "Put the ego aside for a second. It didn't mean any offense. You just meant to come here and take the credit for all of our hard work."

Do you really believe that? I shout more loudly than I mean to. That's what's happening! Kreel takes a breath and shakes his head. You've clearly been out here too long if you actually think that. You're out of your mind and suffering from paranoid delusions. I'm going to have to let the higher-ups know, and we'll be able to get you the help that you need. Because this? This is clearly not the environment you should be in. You're the one that shouldn't be here!

I grab hold of his shoulders and slam him against the wall of ice behind him. He's stunned for a moment and I see his eyes widen with terror. He wasn't expecting this. Neither was I. I just need him gone. I need him to be somewhere where he won't ruin everything. Where no one will ever find him. "What are you doing?" He's dazed and confused. Panic sets in. I can barely hear him over the shouts inside of me. "Yes! Get rid of him! He should never have come here!"

I slam him against the icy wall of the chasm, again and again. He's yelling out, crying for help, but no one can hear him down here. Everyone else is asleep. It's just him and me at the bottom of the deep pit. No one can help him, and no one can stop what I'm doing. Not even myself. I see the visor of his helmet crack when it slams into the wall of ice. I watch as he suffocates within his suit, as the oxygen leaves him and frost coats his face.

"It's not your fault that his suit malfunctioned." I nod. "That's right. His suit is poorly made. So he came here, poorly equipped. Just as I thought." I watch as he chokes for a few more seconds and then grows still. His frozen eyes stare at me, just like Jupiter's big red eye stares at me. I hate it. "This is what needed to happen. Get rid of the body."

I need to hide Creel's corpse. The others can't find him. They can't know what happened down here. Look down! I look into the breach, where black water is splashing around beneath us. There's an entire ocean down there. Murderers have dumped their victims into bodies of water before. It's the smart thing to do. They'll never find his corpse at the bottom of an alien ocean. We aren't in the Navy, but I bury Commander Gavin Creel at sea. No one will ever find him.

even once we break through more ice. I take the lift back up the icy chasm. I admire my team's work during the rise, running my hand along the icy wall as I keep rising. I entered the hole with another person and I'll be climbing out of it alone. As the lift keeps moving up, I see my reflection in the ice walls around me. It's just like it was before. I'm frozen within the block of ice and I'm smiling. I hardly recognize myself.

but it's easier to see the resemblance now. I reach the top of the pit and return to the hibernation pods. No one is around. No one saw anything, but I still feel like I'm being watched. I turn around. Jupiter still stares right at me with its enormous, singular red eye. It's looking right at me. It saw me. It saw everything. I sneer at it, but my anger doesn't feel like my own. "Stop staring at me!" I turn away from the gargantuan planet.

Even if it saw what I did, it's not like I can say anything or do anything. No, despite its stature, Jupiter is powerless. Only in the habitation pod do my thoughts flow back to me. I can hear my own voice, and every thought I have is full of panic and utter guilt. I tear my suit off and my body trembles underneath. I stare at my hands, barely fathoming what happened in that chasm. I killed him. I know I did.

I shouldn't have, but I couldn't help myself. He needed to stop getting in the way. He needed to stop trying to ruin our work. He needed to... Did he need to die? Yes, you were right to kill him. You know what he was doing. You know what he would have continued to do if you let him. You're not just helping yourself. You're helping all of the people that worked hard to unearth the water below. I am, I whisper. I'm doing this for us, for my crew.

I don't know if he needed to die. He did! I flinch and nearly fall over. The voice is so loud, so angry, and it doesn't belong to me. I thought maybe it just changed, but no. It's not me at all. It's someone, or something, completely different. It's not my usual train of thought. It's not even on the same track. Who are you? Why does that matter? Because... because you made me do that.

I didn't make you do anything. That was exactly what you wanted to do. What you knew needed to be done. You did that, not me. I just helped you find your courage.

The man is dead because of... Because of you! The voice laughs in between my ears. It's a venomous, hateful, gleeful little giggle. You wanted to do it, and you know it was the right thing to do. Think of how much better you feel now. You don't have to worry about him getting in the way or him stealing from you. Things are falling back into place. I shake my head.

Things are not falling into place. His crew, they're going to have questions. They're going to know that something happened. I'm going to be everyone's first suspect. Then you get rid of them too. I can't.

"Of course you can. You already did it once. What's one more? Or three more? Or ten more? They're going to keep being a nuisance. They're going to hover like vultures, waiting to steal all of your work." "I can't." "You will!" "Hey!" I turn to the room's entrance where Mansur stands, staring at me. He eyes me up and down with a great deal of concern. "Who are you talking to? I..." I can't find a good answer. The truth is, I still don't know.

I speak as honestly as I can with my friend. "I don't know. Myself, I guess." "I'm surprised you're not getting some sleep like the rest of us. Too much excitement." I say, trying not to stammer. "Everything's going to change now that we broke through." "Yeah," Mancer says with a relieved smile. "It will. It's going to be great. I'm sure those new guys are going to make us jump through hoops. But they can't take this away from us. We did it. Tried to sleep.

We'll need all of our energy for the work's next phases. The next phases? After all this digging, I'm excited to study the water in the ice. Then again, I already got a close look at it when I got splashed. My whole body trembles and a horrible thought comes to me. The black seawater seeped through my suit. I felt its icy touch. Maybe, maybe it wasn't the only thing that touched me.

Maybe there was something in the water. Microscopic lifeforms or something. Something got into my suit and then... then... it got into me. I remain silent though. Part of me wants to tell Mancer about it, but another part, maybe the same part screaming in my head, keeps me quiet. "But seriously," Mancer continues, "you don't look good. Get some beauty sleep. Will do." I say with an awkward wave as he turns around and leaves the chamber.

I'm alone again, or at least, almost. "Why is this happening to me?" I whimper under my breath. "Why? What did I do?" "What you had to," the voice says. "And there's still more that you need to do." I don't want to admit it, but the voice in my head is right. The new crew are already causing problems and it's getting worse. Something needs to be done. "Yes, and you can do it." Everything grows black,

I don't know for how long. Suddenly, Mansur is shaking me. "Hey! Get up! Get up!" I open my eyes and find my friend standing over me. He looks scared. "What's going on?" I ask, rubbing my face. "I'm not sure!" he yells, practically pulling me up to my feet. "But there's something going on at the other pod!"