Lore: Europa Mega Structure // Classified H1 (Patreon)

Personal Log // Lead Scientist Lira Finc // Europa

There's a dormant hum beneath the ice on Europa. You can't hear it with instruments, but you can feel it. It's a pressure that moves through the bone instead of the air. It's faint, almost like a pulse, and it's coming from something buried beneath the ice.

We still don't have a name for it. We refer to it as the heartbeat when we have to call it something. It's not stone, although it does feel like stone at first. Smooth to the touch, but warm, despite being deep beneath the ice. The closer you get to the central ridge, the softer the stone-like surface becomes, until your suit gloves start to leave indents, a millimetre or two deep, before it smooths out again, like a muscle tightening.

The initial scans made no sense. Structurally, it's organic, but its density is far higher than anything possible to have been formed on Europa. We've only mapped a fraction of it so far. Enormous, repeating loops, each three times the size of a TPA Battleship, threaded together like veins in a body. If the entire thing continues deeper into the crust, which the readings suggest, it could extend hundreds of kilometres.

We thought it might be a crashed vessel at first. There is evidence of an impact crater, but the structure looks grown, rooted into the rock and ice, as if it had always been there.

Some of my colleagues think it's a fossilised organism, while others make arguments that it must be a machine. I'm starting to believe it's both, a bridge between biology and engineering. Something that built itself from the materials available, but that still doesn't explain the density of the structure! It's driving me mad! And no one can agree on what the purpose could be. A seed of some sort? A grave? A geologic cancerous moon tumour?

We're not the first to find one of these heartbeats, either. After transmitting our scans, Lunar Command reached out asking that we treat our findings with the H1 protocol, not to be shared with the Concordat. Any additional data collected could only be processed or stored on air-gapped terminals. We weren't told much more, other than 'We don't want to trigger another Khatsey incident.'

There's an unease in the camp now. We all know what happened to the first explorers who dug into the ice. We all remember the Etoilla Lentaesine outbreak. The camp is filled with hushed whispers that maybe the heartbeat isn't dormant at all. Maybe it's waiting for something. A signal or a command of some sort to revive whatever it is.

I've instructed all personnel to stay in the camp. No one is allowed into the ice tunnels until we know more. If this thing triggers a second outbreak, Lunar Command won't hesitate to seal this place, with all of us still in it, under the ice.

//End of Entry