Jay is a hopeful Lunarian engineer and pilot stuck in a tedious internship… but after a making the discovery of a lifetime, what will her future hold?
Characters: Jay
Warnings: N/A
Wordcount: 964
Vibe: what the HELL is going on!!!!!!!!!!!
This story was run as a choose-your-own-adventure story on Paperdemon!
Original AN:
ohhhh noooooo whatever will jay do!!!!! bear with me on this since it’s the first choice, we’ll see how it plays out!
i know i sort of worded things overly formally in the OP but. im chill i wont bite i prommy
Since before anyone could remember, the deep sea was there.
Floating inverted above, held up by the barrier cast by the divine moon palace Lunaires.
It sits as an omen of the inevitable – because those who venture in to it never come back.
…Or, that’s at least how it was.
Technology is quite a marvel, but greed is even moreso.
One of the biggest enigmas of the inverted deep sea is the mysterious parasite it houses. Possessing a potent neurotoxin and unmatched abilities of stealth, any unfortunate explorer that falls into its grasp is considered all but dead in seconds.
Logically, one would want to avoid such a terror at all costs… but as study of this neurotoxin progressed, laboratories started paying more than a pretty penny to those daring – or stupid enough – to bring back samples.
Jay wasn’t like that, though. Her fascination was different.
Having been born and raised in the Lunar Capital, a utopian metropolis located inside the massive lower atrium of Lunaires… the rippling waves were easy to see with even a child’s telescope.
Jay could care less for dirty money that came from capturing the parasites housed by the sea… she wanted to know what the inverted sea was like beyond that.
What was it’s purpose?
How did it form?
What’s at the bottom?
Though she lacked any kind of formal education, Jay’s habit of fixing up and piloting ‘scrap’ ships dumped near her rural village was able to give her the break she needed.
For the Lunar Capital had been completely separated from the world on the surface past Lunaires, until just about two decades ago. Experts on Lunarian technology were in hot demand, even after the rush of initial cultural exchange died down.
Shortly after her 18th birthday, Jay received the best gift she could’ve asked for… the esteemed aerospace program of a surface-level locale dubbed as the Craterlands had accepted her as an intern!
With this, she took her chance.
Assisting with Lunarian technology by day… and by night, firing up her own ship to breach the unknown.
It was novel at first, being such a vastly different and otherworldly environment – even if Jay was too cautious to leave her ship’s airlocked interior. Nothing but darkness, save for the faint glow of the iridescent crystal spires that faded into the inky abyss. She felt like there was so much to micro-analyze and study, but…
There really wasn’t.
It was just… nothing.
But Jay was far too stubborn to give up so easily… so, she’d keep trying over the next two years – even if it felt more like hitting her head against the wall than anything productive.
If she just kept looking…
Today, she had an unexpected day off.
A lot had been happening with Jay’s higher ups, something about… corruption and divine manipulation, or whatever. It sounded like a whole load of nonsense to Jay – as far as her culture was concerned, the divines of the world vanished ages ago.
Still, if it meant she could get a day off from the same old maintenance work, she couldn’t complain.
It’d been a while, hadn’t it?
As Jay was thinking to herself, she realized she hadn’t visited the inverted sea in some time – in part due to work being complete chaos for the past few months.
It’s not like she expected it to be anything but the same as it ever was, but Jay’s contract was up soon – and she wouldn’t have as much freedom to visit when she was back home.
Something for old time’s sake, a last visit.
The launchpad was seemingly deserted that day, likely because everyone else must’ve been off, too. With no air traffic to wait for, Jay fired up her ship’s thrusters and started the ascent.
Everything was going par for the course as the spacecraft approached the inverted sea’s surface, and Jay braced for feeling of gravity twisting in on itself – a feeling that she’d gotten so used to, it was only mildly unpleasant now.
Jay expected the light levels in her cabin to drop as she entered the inky blackness, but…
That didn’t happen.
Instead, a bright turquoise light flooded through the ship’s windows – the brightness so completely unexpected that Jay had to squeeze her eyes shut in recoil.
It took her a moment to adjust to the light levels, but when she did, her eyes practically couldn’t open wider.
It was… entirely different.
The water was a beautiful, clear shade of green-blue. While Jay would normally have to shine her ship’s searchlights to see more than a few feet in front of the cabin, an almost otherworldly light illuminated the clear waters.
The abyssal shelves were now clear as day, and instead of being completely barren, they were covered in some kind of algae the looked like lush grass on a windy day.
And while the surface-adjacent shelves didn’t have much more beyond that, the water was so clear that Jay could see more diverse vegetation below her.
Diverse vegetation and… structures.
With her heart practically pounding out of her chest, Jay wasn’t sure what she was going to do.
She hadn’t expected… this, of all things – and hadn’t completely topped up her ship’s fuel. The machine was only running on enough for the short visit she thought she was going to be making.
Surely, she could just go back and top up – or even better, she could burst through the door of her higher-up’s office and make the big reveal of her discovery.
But the adrenaline was clouding her rational thought, as her adventurous soul burned to dive deeper into this strange twist of a once-familiar place.
With a deep breath in to try and calm her excitement, Jay closed her eyes to come to a conclusion.
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