I yelped as I landed hard on my backside. Though the impact certainly had stung, it hadn’t hurt nearly as bad as I anticipated. When I tried to stand up, however, I found that my rear end had literally broken through several thin layers of photopolymer upon hitting the floor—so perhaps the meshwork structure had cushioned a majority of the impact. It was not the most elegant landing by any means, but at least I’d survived with all my bones intact. My pride, somewhat bruised.
After unsnagging the seat of my pants from the jagged rim of the tiny crater my butt had made in the ground, I rose to my feet. I looked above me to see the rope now dangling several meters overhead. There was no way I’d be retrieving that.
I looked around the vicinity, my headlamp illuminating the gloomy darkness. As the light flashed into a narrow gap in the surrounding structural material, I let out a little gasp. It seemed my internal calculations had been correct—for just there, beyond the two pillars of undressed photopolymer, lay what appeared to be a deep, dark cave. I squeezed my way through the gap and arrived at the entrance to the cavity. The hole was about six meters across—more of a tall standing ellipse than a perfect circle—and tilted ever so slightly diagonal. When I shined my lamp inside, I could see a dead-end wall not even twenty meters deep into the odd curvilinear tunnel. I took a few steps inside, dumped my backpack on the floor, then sat for a well-earned rest.
I let out a long, exhausted sigh. It had taken much longer to get here than I ever could have imagined. The last time I’d checked the clock on my portable holofield, it was well past 6 PM—meaning I’d taken over six hours to traverse a total distance of only a hundred and some-odd meters. No surprise, then, that it was already dark outside, given the time of year. After meandering through maze-like passageways, spending over two hours digging my way through a wall with only a small hatchet, and a perilous descent climaxing in a pretty risky fall, the most strenuous workout of my entire life was at an end.
I had successfully traversed the Titan’s cranium and made my way down the side of its head to arrive at exactly the orifice I was looking for—the Titan’s massive, cavernous “ear.”
From my seated position, I looked again down the curving ear canal—the wall at the end was clearly made of a more advanced material than simple photopolymer, so I could only assume it was the eardrum. I was a little worried as to how sensitive the Titan’s hearing must be if it had such gigantic ears, so I decided to call out in a soft and tentative voice at first:
“Coeus.”
There was no response, nor any indication that he had heard me. Perhaps I needed to speak up a bit, terrified though I was of startling him and causing any sudden motions. I breathed in, then called out to him again—a little bit louder this time:
“Coeus!”
6
I set up the emergency pop-up tent from the emergency response kit on the flattest part of the ear canal. The palm-sized bundle of fabric expanded into a full-on shelter in the blink of an eye. Then, after a bit of hesitation, I decided to risk firing up the portable gas stove to make tea. I wanted at least the sense of being on a cozy little camping trip rather than a disaster survival scenario. With my steaming mug in hand, I exited the tent and took a seat on the collapsible camping chair I’d set up about ten meters away from the eardrum wall.
“Coeus,” I said in my normal speaking voice. I still had no indication that he could hear any of what I was saying regardless of how loud I spoke, so I decided to just speak casually with him as I always had. “How are you feeling?”
No response. But that was fine. You couldn’t rush these things.
Eleven hours prior, just after Coeus the Titan had risen from his cradle, I tried calling out to him from the counseling room countless times, but received not a single answer. Either the intense vibrations had broken all of the room’s microphones—or our conversation just beforehand had broken his fragile mind.
Total mental collapse wasn’t beyond the realm of possibility; his projection had literally shattered before my eyes, and that was a visual manifestation of his mental state. It was not hard to imagine what it bursting into a million pieces might represent. Though I couldn’t completely rule out the possibility that the microphones had simply stopped working either.
Hence my decision to come down here and try speaking directly into his ear. I knew ears would be present in his anatomy—Professor Beckmann had said as much when explaining why the AI required a convincing and fully functional human gestalt. They couldn’t simply exclude one of the five main senses. My perilous six-hour trek from the counseling room down to the Titan’s ear canal could have been the death of me, but at least now I didn’t have to worry about my words being futile due to something as trivial as equipment failure.
“It’s pretty nice in here, actually,” I said, as I looked around the cavernous interior. The battery-powered lantern I’d placed on the ground gently lit the texture of the walls, which clearly differed from that of photopolymer. “Relaxing, even.”