Alien Singularity

Chapter 8. Hot Polar Expedition

Given the similarities of these alien machines to human machines, some scientists and government officials wondered if these aliens were a secret machine settlement by some other people from Earth, hiding from the rest of humanity. They decided to send a coded message to Earth to get some confirmation, and also to alert the Earth to be aware of a potential similar alien presence somewhere in the solar system. Now they have to wait for another eight and a half years to get a response back.

At the same time, a secret program is underway to prepare for an inevitable confrontation. The entire planet had no military force up to this time, with only a civilian police unit to keep peace, since no one ever predicted an encounter with a hostile alien. Now, a military division was formed, and fighter machines started to get manufactured.

Emma was invited by the President to become the chief strategist for the military branch, as she apparently had great insight of the machine structure and behavior. Based on the available information humans gathered on alien machines, special weapons were designed to pierce their armor to deliver an EMP (electromagnetic pulse) explosion to knock them out instantly, to prevent them from any possible retaliation while wounded, followed by a conventional bomb to destroy their physical structure.

Emma alerted the military, that the alien machines could use their strength to attack human's vulnerabilities. Similar to the EMP that can knock machines out yet does no harm to humans, alien machines could use chemical weapons, even a neutron bomb, to deliver devastating blows to biological forms while keeping machines perfectly safe. Hence, department of defense started to design and manufacture protective suits for humans, which can protect individuals from harmful neutron radiation and toxic chemicals. Immense underground structures were also built to protect a large number of people from nuclear explosions.

Besides close aerial monitoring, human's furtherest outpots in the hot region were equipped with highly sensitive seismic sensors to monitor any underground activities, so if alien machines ever burrowed too close to these posts, people would be notified.

The entire program was conducted in public as a prevention and precaution measure, without notifying the general population about a real presence of alien machines on the planet. Yet over time, rumors have been circulating on the planet that aliens have been discovered underground in the hot center part of the planet. Despite government officials repeated denouncement, some hot headed adventurous young people decided to take a journey to do some investigations on their own at the hot center.

No one had ever been physically able to go to the hot center. The cold part, now being illuminated by artificial reflectors in orbit, hid no secret and was no longer a source for outdoor enthusiasts to break any records. Now, a team of extreme heat exploration enthusiasts, secretly organized an expedition to venture into the infernal region, under the radar, trying to be the first humans ever, to physically reach to that point.

They retrofitted their vehicles with hitech insulation to protect them from the heat; and they retrofitted those anti-neutron radiation suits with heat insulations as well, which will allow them to get outside their insulated vehicle and walk on the surface of the hottest areas for a short time. They carefully calculated the weather pattern and identified a route along a valley that always had a cool airflow, where cold air from the dark side of the planet ran all the way into the hot region, before being heated up and rose to the stratosphere.

Their idea was to drive those rigs carrying large amount of special coolant, as conventional air conditioning would not work in such high temperature, powered by a nuclear battery, to go to explore the heat center. If they reached there, they would announce their location to the public, and became the first human ever to be physically able to walk on the surface of the dead hot center of Proxima b.