Chapter 276: Chapter 275.

Chapter 275. The Planetarium, Operation Hook Up: The Show. (3/5)

We accelerated faster and faster as we sped across the solar system to our next destination. The stars became streaks of light as they zoomed by our sides.

Before we knew it another planet came into view. It started out small but gradually grew larger from the small speck it started out as. This planet was Jupiter, the last gassy giant and oldest planet of the eight that had formed a million years after our solar system.

When we closed in on Jupiter, its massive size became truly apparent. Earth was projected beside it for a frame of reference and the narrator revealed that three hundred eighteen Earth’s could fit inside Jupiter. If Earth was the size of a nickel, Jupiter was a basketball.

Of the planets in our solar system, Jupiter spun the fastest and only took a mere ten hours to complete a full rotation. Because of how fast it spun, it actually bulged out at the equator and flattened out at the poles. Saturn took a similar amount of time to complete a full rotation, but because it was less dense, it bulged out more than Jupiter.

The stars suddenly moved in the background as we rotated around Jupiter and a large red spot on the planet’s surface came into view. The identity of this great red spot was an anticyclonic storm.

We approached closer to Jupiter and three faint rings of debris became more pronounced around it. They were slowly being sucked into the planet while they were simultaneously replenished through collisions that took place between space debris and the planet’s many moons. It was quite chaotic and hectic. Saturn would experience a similar fate and would one day lose its beautiful rings, but that was a process estimated to take one hundred million years. 

We entered through the great red spot on Jupiter and our vision became blinded by the red musky winds. The screen grew staticky as if disrupted by something. The narrator explained the magnetic field was the strongest in the solar system, twenty thousand times that of Earth and it was causing the spacecraft’s cameras to malfunction. 

Why go in it then! I wanted to retort, but I knew it was for the show to keep us immersed and interested along our journey through space.

After the shaky turbulence from the wind and the staticky image projected on the dome subsided, we eventually made it through Jupiter. The footage completely blacked out for a moment and the room descended into pitch-black as the narrator said, “Hold on a minute. Our spacecraft's systems are rebooting, we should be back online in a second.” 

As the narrator promised us, a few seconds later, the starry sky illuminated the dome once more. With it came a new planet, one that wasn’t very familiar. It was colored splotches of red, blue, and white.

“Oh, it seems while our systems were shut down we may have fallen into a rift in space and traveled back in time. You might not believe it, but the rocky barren red wasteland we found ourselves on at the beginning of our space voyage is this vibrant planet.”

It was Mars, one of the first planets we’d started on. We’d been at ground level where the red Martian wasteland was projected around the lower portion of the dome with above it containing the stars one would see from Mars. Now we were looking at it from a distance.

“Four billion years ago, this was how beautiful this planet once appeared. It was covered in lakes with bountiful water and tall red mountains. There was once an atmosphere where clouds hung high in the sky and reflected off the tranquil bodies of water down below. But unfortunately, over the course of millions of years, it was all stripped away.”

“A planet which once held the potential for life, just the same as Earth, met its untimely demise. We shouldn’t idle too long here. We need to return to our time.”

We suddenly entered a rift in space that had abruptly opened up in front of us. We were treated to quite the light show when the sun in the distance sent out an explosion of light in waves toward the ancient planet in front of us.

As we traversed forward through time, the planet was bombarded unrelentingly. Multicolored particles lit up the poles as matter was stripped away from Mars’s atmosphere with each successive wave of solar wind.

“What led to the death of this planet? Well, it is believed the molten core within it shut down leading to the loss of its magnetic field that protects the planet against solar winds. The sun was likely much more active back then and solar winds from it continued to ruthlessly strip away the planet's atmosphere through the process of sputtering. With the atmosphere gone, the planet lost its ability to retain water on the surface.”

When we returned to our time, the planet returned to its barren red state devoid of any chance for life to flourish. It was a sad and pitiful death.

“Now, only vestiges of water remain within the soil and rocks.”

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I felt a warm liquid through my clothing and I looked down. Alicia started to cry.

I whispered while hugging her, “You don’t need to cry over a planet, it’s just a rock floating in space.”

“But it’s so sad…”

The narrator suddenly sighed before he spoke again to lighten the mood, “Haaaaah. Though the state of the planet looks quite bleak, there are some who hypothesize that thirty to ninety-nine percent of the water may still be there. They believe it may have simply retreated into the martian rocks and clay rather than escaping into space.”

“It’s a long shot, but if it is still there, though it may be very difficult to achieve, terraforming Mars and reviving it to its previous state may one day be achievable if we can somehow reactivate its core. If technology advances far enough, who knows what will be possible in the future.”

“We may not live to see the day, but there may be brighter days for this planet in the future. To us now, it may seem like a far-off out-of-reach dream, but to those thousands of years in the future, it could very well be something they are capable of.”

As a change of pace, the narrator brought us back to Earth. A beautiful planet filled with vibrant lively colors all over. It fountained splotches of green, brown, yellow, and white. A large portion of it was a rich nostalgic blue we were all familiar with.

The Earth expanded before our eyes until it filled the entire screen. As we plummeted to earth the sound of wind blew as we entered the atmosphere. Hot air blew up from the vents to simulate the experience. We touched down in the ocean and dove beneath the surface. Cold air suddenly blasted out from the vents over our bodies and cooled us down. It made us feel as if we were truly underwater. The splash as we submerged ourselves beneath the water echoed out. The glugging sound of air as it escaped and rose to the surface. 

We were enveloped in a cacophony of nature’s sounds. The chattering of dolphins as we passed by them. The jellyfish, floating and traversing the water. A shark with open jaws as we just narrowly spun to the side to avoid being eaten. The whales as they swam together surrounded by colonies of multicolored fish.

Shrimp, oysters, clams, crabs, lobsters, all sorts of different shellfish. 

Lovely colorful coral reefs filled with green seaweed and a plethora of different exotic plants. 

We sank deeper into the ocean. The light dimmed the further away we grew further away from the surface. We entered a region where some of the scariest-looking deep-sea creatures existed.

Brown Humpback Anglerfish with a terrifying row of needle teeth and an antenna emitting bioluminescent blue light sticking out from between its beady little eyes on the sides. 

Black Dragonfish, a creature with sharp needle teeth, a long body like an eel, but with creepy bone spikes and spines protruding from its tail. Its light-emitting organs arranged all along its belly fooled predators by changing its silhouette.

Red in color Vampire Squids with cloak-like webbing that connected its eight arms.

When we reached the bottom we saw Spiky Sea Urchins of a variety of different colors ranging from black, brown, purple, red, and olive green. 

Bright orange Deadly Sea Cucumbers crawling along the floors.

A Scary Stargazer who’d burrowed its flat body into the sand and hid, camouflaged, as it awaited its prey. When we passed by it, it jumped up and flashed across the dome.

The next thing that followed that surprise jump scare was an intense volcanic eruption flashing brightly for an instant and illuminating the surroundings. With its abrupt appearance, the air blowing out from the vents beneath us heated up as the temperature of the water around us rose.

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