Turmoil Deeper: Underground-unleashed

Deep below, we had not unleashed a monster. We had unleashed a process . The Earth, we realized, was not a ball of inert rock and magma. It was a vast, slow, geological intelligence. And its thinking —the slow grind of plates, the bleed of heavy elements, the half-life of uranium—had been what we called geology. Our drills, our noise, our greedy little excavations, were not mining. They were neuronal stimulation .

The feed cut to static. The Kola Ultradeep site is now a crater filled with a perfectly smooth, obsidian-like glass. Helicopters that fly over it lose their instruments and report a feeling of profound, crushing nostalgia. The walking trees have stopped. They now form a single, giant arrow, pointing not east or west, but straight down. Turmoil Deeper Underground-Unleashed

Deep terrestrial microbes (archaea and bacteria) live on geological timescales. They metabolize hydrogen, sulfur, and radioactive decay. They divide once every thousand years. They are alien to our immune systems and to our antibiotics. Deep below, we had not unleashed a monster