An Interview with the Heroine of the Marianas

The first thing Lana Sánchez did after getting off the orbital transport from the taikoport was find a bathroom, pull back her hair, and vomit.

“If it’s always like this, I don’t think I’m going to repeat the experience,” she told her reflection, after diligently brushing her teeth and rinsing her mouth several times.

Earlier that day, Lana had decided to forego makeup, but she was a mess now. She took a kit out of her backpack, selected a well-used pencil, and carefully traced the edges of her eyelids. After a second’s pause, she added a little blush to her cheeks, then smiled with satisfaction at the young woman gazing back at her from the mirror.

It was Lana’s first time going up into primary orbit. Those twelve minutes of vertiginous ascent and then the hour-and-a-half approach had made her so nauseous that she’d stayed in the cushy seat, eyes closed as the ceiling diffuser blasted her face with a torrent of lightly citrus-scented air.

She found the exit icon in SimeStim—the augmented reality overlay—followed it out of the bathroom before taking a brisk 90-degree turn, merging into a small crowd. Surrounded by faces from every race on the planet, she followed their slow pace until they reached a curved viewport of colossal proportions.

Lana had read a lot about this window. Most places on the enormous orbital station Universal didn’t allow one to look directly at the space outside.

“A space station that doesn’t let you see space?” she’d asked her father, surprised, when he told her about it. He was one of the hundreds of engineers who participated in the station’s design—which, at that point, had been humanity’s most ambitious undertaking for decades. “How does that even make sense?”

“Transparent materials able to withstand the conditions of outer space are very, very expensive, hija. Only homes on the third ring will have true windows.”

“Homes of the filthy rich,” she’d responded with a grimace that made her father smile.

“Yes, it’s the most expensive housing,” he’d replied, then shrugged. “Some will go on the market at prices higher than the GDP of many countries, but that’s how we can fund the project.”

“Taxing those disgusting bastards now would have the same effect.”

Her father had laughed. She always suspected he chose his words intentionally to provoke her—and to have the excuse to release one of his deep, belly laughs.

“But look!” he’d exclaimed, pointing at the plans for the huge viewing room. “Next to the passenger terminal we’ll do this! Everyone can see our planet as soon as they arrive!”

Here I am, Papá. Lana rested her hands on the transparent polymer. If only we could have seen it together.

Resisting the crowd around her, all pushing for a view, Lana looked up.

The Universal’s design was typical, with several rings rotating around a central spindle. She was in the first one, the one closest to Earth. The second one, some three hundred meters above their heads, shared the same diameter—about two kilometers—but the third ring was a little smaller.

As she looked, the drifting station reached the planet’s night-blanketed hemisphere. The Sun, which rose rapidly over the horizon, glinted off the third ring, creating a myriad of shimmering sparkles that the viewport’s material—despite being polarized—could barely filter.

Fucking windows of the rich and famous, Lana thought. Disgusted, she finally looked down.

The luminous curve of the planet’s horizon extended below her feet, both so beautiful and so strange that she felt as though she were inside an expensive simulation. The Universal followed a low polar orbit, so they were currently drifting over the Arctic.

It grieved Lana to see the total absence of ice. The ocean—which was a lovely Persian blue—invited her to jump into its waters, as if the orbital station were a deity’s diving board.

“For a long time, the largest carnivores on the planet lived there,” a sharp voice at her hip said. “They went extinct when humans left them without anywhere to hunt.”

The voice belonged to a boy, perhaps ten or eleven years old. He was white, with grey eyes, and he spoke a language Lana didn’t recognize. Her auditory implant had auto-activated upon detecting his words and translated them smoothly into her inner ears.

She nodded before responding. “The polar bears—I used to talk about them with my father when I was your age.”

“My name’s Daniel. My dad said soon we’ll be able to repopulate the Earth with genetic material we saved from different species,” he announced. “He’s an Hijo Luminoso.”

The boy raised his brows at her, as though the expression were enough to explain the mysteries of the universe. Any Hijo Luminoso could read minds of other people just by being near them. The most skilled of them could do it effortlessly from dozens of meters away.

Lana tensed.

“Relax,” he said. “I came out here with my mom. We're from the Escama de Metal tribe,” As if to demonstrate, he held out his palm and revealed a plastic figurine.

Lana recognized it as one of the toys the orbital transport’s crew had given to young passengers to keep them entertained during the flight. The boy squinted at the little toy, and in a heartbeat, it lifted into the air as if gravity no longer existed.

“I’m still only able to move small things,” Daniel said, retrieving the figurine. “My mom says that I’ll make real progress once I hit puberty. What tribe are you from?”

Before she could respond, a woman called the boy—his mother, Lana presumed. Daniel ran off without waiting for a response.

Lana was grateful for the interruption. She’d never found it easy to admit that she was part of the one percent of the population who didn’t belong to any of the Five Tribes into which humanity had divided. I’m just a pariah who didn’t develop powers when humans started dreaming about the dragon at the center of the Earth.

__________________________________

The ascent to the third ring’s luxury residential zone was faster than Lana anticipated.

After processing through customs, her pass led her to one of the central spindle’s eight large elevators. The third ring was like a citadel within a city, a citadel where the officials took their jobs very seriously—and as much time as they wanted to complete their checks.

Once again, the pass saved her. After all, Lana was a reporter for The Daily Orbital, which was one of many publications owned by the Universal Group. The orbital station’s namesake exploited their rights to it accordingly.

Lana was disappointed to see that the third ring’s apartment buildings all looked the same from the outside. She’d always imagined that the third ring would feature villas, like the ones owned by multimillionaires on the History Channel on that show where mansions and McMansions competed to win the prize for “Most Eccentric”. Clearly, for the station designers, functionality had come first—even in the station’s most exclusive areas.

Lana’s interest in the station’s architecture returned, however, the moment she stepped inside her destination: Villa Challenger. The home of Aimee Weston, legendary Heroine of the Marianas—the woman Lana had come to interview—didn’t let her down.

She was led through a vestibule where all the surfaces—floor, walls, and ceiling—were covered with a dark, gleaming wood that Lana didn’t recognize, though her escort told her it was nogal. The rich wood’s contrast with the metals and plastic materials used throughout the rest of the station made Lana feel a little queasy.

An elderly Mrs. Weston waited for her in a lounge that was both office and tea room, decorated in the same vintage style as the rest of the home, and featuring spectacular views of the planet below.

“I descended many times into the Arctic, but people still prefer to remember me for the Marianas,” Lana’s hostess said without preamble.

“That’s normal, those were your first,” Lana replied. “That’s where everything began.”

“And in three days, we’ll celebrate the one-hundred-and-fiftieth anniversary of my first expedition! Isn’t that incredible?”

It was. Everything about this woman was incredible, Lana thought, beginning with how she was still the only living person almost two hundred years old on—or above—Earth. The Heroine of the Marianas didn’t look more than sixty or seventy.

“If you don’t mind me asking, just how old are you?” Lana asked.

“Yes, dear, I know. I’m the oldest person from Earth, and yet I still take such great care of this magnificent skin,” Mrs. Weston replied with a smile. “I won’t deny that it’s one of the privileges of being the First Dreamer—although, if I’m being honest, it’s been a long time since I stopped thinking about that. Now, I focus on… enjoying it.

“I don’t have SimeStim. I don’t like when my eyes see something that doesn’t actually exist. Touch whatever you want. You’ll find that everything here is real.”

Despite having seen her hostess countless times on Retivision, Lana schooled her expression carefully. She’d been granted ninety minutes for the interview, and that should be more than enough time to conduct a good interview. Even though practically everyone already knew the famous explorer’s backstory, there was no harm in hearing her retell it in her own words. After all, it’s her anniversary.

“Let’s start at the beginning. Tell me how it happened.”

Mrs. Weston poured herself a cup of tea from a delicate porcelain pot and took a quick sip of the steaming liquid. “Without a doubt, it was one of the most serendipitous coincidences in history. Only the convergence of so many different factors could have allowed us to discover the Celestial Dragon.”

“You’re referring to your father’s work, right?”

“Yes, yes, of course.” The old woman nodded. “That, and everything else. My father was responsible for ensuring that the first AI truly able to inhabit a quantum computer participated in the SETI project, which started searching for signs of extraterrestrial intelligence back in the 1970s.”

“I’ve read a lot about her—about Dilong. She was the beginning of quantum intelligence as we know it, and her machine only took up a few hundred qubits. I understand that there were many opposed to his decision.”

“Not among the general public, but among my father’s colleagues, indeed there were. Most of his opponents believed using Dilong for the SETI project would be a waste, that there were dozens of more productive ways to use the CNSA’s most powerful AI. And they were right.”

Lana gasped. “What do you mean?”

“Well, dear, think about it. Have we ever encountered extraterrestrial intelligence?”

“No, but…”

“Extraterrestrial. Despite his name, one could say that the Celestial Dragon is the most terrestrial creature alive. As I’m sure you know, scientists suspect the Dragon is older than the Earth itself, and has inhabited the Core ever since our planet formed.”

Lana nodded, feeling like she was back in a classroom.

“Furthermore, there’s the earthquake,” Mrs. Weston went on. “What are the odds that, just as we connected the only antennas capable of hearing the Celestial Dragon’s voice to the only terrestrial intelligence capable of deciphering their language, the crust began to shake until the antennas just happened to end up pointing at the center of the Earth? And what’s the probability that, despite all the damage those antennas must have suffered, the damned things would keep transmitting and receiving information?”

“One in a billion?” ventured Lana. Her eyes were wide and her cheeks felt flushed. The old explorer’s words were completely distracting Lana from her mission—though nothing mattered to her right now except the First Dreamer’s voice.

“One in one trillion six hundred eighteen thousand billion. By which I mean, it was a fucking miracle!”

Lana laughed. “Do you think they caused the earthquake?”

“No one knows, and we never will. That scheming bastard doesn’t want us to know whether their timing was genius or mere goddamn luck.”

Lana shivered at such heresy.

This time, it was Mrs. Weston who laughed. “Calm down, my girl. There’s nothing to be scared of. We’re too far away for them to be able to hear us. Why do you think I chose to live up here?”

“You mean that… ever since you came to the Universal, you stopped dreaming?”

Mrs. Weston smiled again, nodding slowly.

Lana whistled.

“Everyone in the upper ring has. It’s not just the distance—although that’s the primary factor. Those who live in the lower rings dream as few as three times less than those planetside, but let’s assume the third ring was designed to give us some… extra isolation.” Mrs. Weston took another sip of her tea. “I promised you an exclusive scoop, didn’t I?”

Lana wondered whether her father had thought of this. “You’ve definitely done that! But, then...”

“I keep in touch with dozens of dreamers. Believe me, it’s very much like being connected to the Dragon themself, minus waking up one night drenched in sweat and spending the next night recuperating.”

“Let’s go back to the beginning,” Lana said. “Once Dilong, CNSA’s AI, revealed itself to humanity, what happened? How did we get from your father’s efforts to find extraterrestrial life with gigantic antennas and quantum computers to you becoming the Heroine of the Marianas, exploring the ocean depths?”

“I suppose that was by my own merit, the only real credit I deserve in this story. You see, dear, we soon discovered the continental crust was too thick for us to properly establish the link. The messages that reached us were fragmented—distorted, even. It was my idea to venture to the deep sea and initiate contact from there, where the crust is much thinner.”

A service droid entered the room silently to retrieve Mrs. Weston’s tea.

Lana exhaled, annoyed at the interruption.

“Nevertheless,” the reporter said, “Wouldn’t it have been enough to—”

“To drop a long cable with an antenna on it to the seafloor?” interrupted the old explorer. “Yes, dear, but back then I was very young and very ambitious. Do you think I'd look so happy in that picture if we'd done that instead of making the descent myself?” She gestured at the wall, where an old printed image hung.

The photograph captured Lana’s attention: alongside a ship, a small submarine hung from a davit, barely touching the surface of the ocean. It wasn’t clear whether it was about to submerge or had just emerged from the water. A woman, about thirty years old, was standing atop the vessel and clinging to a metal cable as she smiled at the camera.

Lana recognized her features, though the image was one hundred and fifty years old.

“I was about your age,” Mrs. Weston said. “If I hadn’t done it, someone else would have. That was how the first dream happened—I was part of his plan.”

Lana knew the story. After descending more than eleven thousand meters below the surface, very close to the seabed, the Heroine of the Marianas had become the First Dreamer—the only person on Earth who possessed all of the Dragon’s gifts. Soon, more human beings began dreaming, one after another, and humanity had been divided into the Five Tribes according to the gifts they received.

Except for pariahs like me.

As if she’d read Lana’s thoughts—which she probably had—Mrs. Weston kept speaking.

“Did you know they ordered me to make those dives in the Arctic during one of the first dreams? Even though the Arctic Ocean is much shallower than the Marianas Trench, the crust is much thinner there, and that’s why their contact was so effective.

“Since the beginning of time, humans have been bound in some way to the ocean. We’re attracted to it, to its majesty and mysteries. Although we didn’t know the Celestial Dragon was hiding in our planet’s heart, once we discovered them, we instinctively believed there must be a place where we could find the answers to our new questions. A place, like the deep abyss, where we might reconcile with this new discovery that Earth’s terrestrial nucleus wasn’t an inert mix of iridium, iron, and nickel, but rather a living being, a colossal creature that remained dormant for eons and—through a marine miracle—finally woke.

“I’m convinced that I was the key, Lana. I was the tool the Dragon used to understand how our minds work, which in turn allowed them to seep into our mortal dreams—well, into most people’s dreams, anyway.”

The Heroine of the Marianas looked at Lana with a serious expression.

“You know that I'm tribeless.”

Mrs. Weston nodded.

“Is that why you agreed to this interview?”

The old woman nodded again, but remained silent, as if she wanted Lana to draw her own conclusions.

The service droid entered again, this time to ask if the pair wanted anything else. Mrs. Weston sent it away with an impatient shake of her head, but Lana was grateful for the interruption this time. It allowed her to reflect on what she’d just heard.

“You yourself admitted that you live here because the Dragon can’t reach you. And you chose me, one of the few people in the world with whom they can’t communicate, to receive your revelation.”

The old woman smiled. “Your facts are correct, Lana Sánchez. That head of yours is well-organized.”

Being addressed like this bothered Lana. “What is it that you really want to tell me?”

“Tianlong—the Celestial Dragon, the all-powerful creature who gave us the gifts with which we now live—is not a dragon. Nor did the dragon come from the sky.”

Lana felt her pulse accelerate. “Then what are they, and where did they come from?”

Mrs. Weston inhaled sharply. “I want you to know that I’ve spent many years thinking about this moment. What I’m about to do is totally unprecedented, Lana. You must believe me. It may be difficult.

“You must do that which not even one such as myself can accomplish—not even from up here. I’ve looked for others like you, others without a tribe. There’s a reason why things have been more difficult for you, Lana. A reason why society feels such irrational scorn and hatred toward those tribeless people like you.

“The Dragon fears you, Lana. Your mere existence terrifies them. They're the one who filled the hearts of the Five Tribes with contempt for your kind. They are the one behind those times a pariah turns up dead on some dark corner from another beating by the so-called Garra Dorada. They're the reason why, for so many years, you and the other tribeless have suffered countless hate crimes.”

“Because we’re the only ones the Dragon can’t control?”

“Exactly. You aren’t able to influence thoughts like the Hijos Luminosos, and you will never have the superhuman eloquence of the Aliento de Fuego tribe, but you have something that none of us has—not even I, the First Dreamer and poorly-named Heroine of the Marianas.”

Lana looked at the old woman, already knowing what she was about to hear. She’d known it forever. She’d felt it within herself each time she’d been punished for being who and how she was, for not being like the others.

“You’re free, Lana. You have free will. It is liberty that makes you deaf to the dreams. You and the others without a tribe are the only beings on Earth who are truly free.”

Lana felt as if a small bird that had been nesting inside her heart since she was a little girl had just taken flight. She breathed deeply for a few moments.

On another wall, over a giant sideboard covered with holographs and old photos, hung a depiction of the Celestial Dragon. It was a classic portrayal—practically canon at this point—of Tianlong, in the style of Eastern dragons.

“Mrs. Weston, you—”

“Call me Aimee, please,” the old woman interrupted her. “After what I’ve told you, and what I still have to explain to you, a little more familiarity is the least I can offer.”

“Aimee, you’ve just told me that the Dragon isn’t really a dragon.”

“That’s right. And, logically, it follows that neither are they remotely connected to our human concept of a Heaven.”

Lana reached out, taking the hands of the Heroine of the Marianas. “In that case, what are you telling us? What is the creature living at the center of the Earth?”

__________________________________

I barely remember anything about my return home that day. I vaguely recall being taken from Villa Challenger in a near-total state of shock, and being put on the first transporter back to the surface, but I can’t remember a single detail about the ship’s interior or arriving at the taikoport.

I needed several days to get the nightmares under control. It’s not that I ever stopped dreaming about what I had seen on the Universal—the dreams continue night after night, always including that terrifying interview as if it were ingrained in my subconscious for all eternity. At least now, they don’t wake me up screaming in the wee hours of the morning with my heart pounding in my ears. At least they don’t leave me hollow, a being without free will, a broken toy unable to cook anything besides a microwave meal.

The next step was to get back to work. I remember the first call with my boss.

“Hi.”

“Sánchez! Are you back yet? How did the interview of the century go?”
 “Good. I’m sending the transcript for the anniversary special to you right now.”

“Fantastic! Will I see you tomorrow?”

“That’s why I’m calling. I think I’m coming down with something, some strain of supercold.”

“Do you need anything?”

“No, thank you,” I stuttered, feigning a weak voice. “I’ll be better in a few days.”

When at last I felt strong enough to speak about Mrs. Weston’s revelation without trembling uncontrollably or breaking out in tears, I started telling other people.

It took me a long time to pick the first. They had to swear they’d be discreet, especially the skeptics. If anyone started claiming that Lana Sánchez, the Daily Orbital reporter, was going around saying the Celestial Dragon was actually an evil creature with a diabolical plot for humanity, I’d probably be locked up.

I imagined it would be difficult, if not dangerous. That’s why I was surprised how easy it was. Often, I stuck with using the most straightforward, honest words I could muster to recount the story of what happened to me in orbit. At first, I thought Mrs. Weston—who I ended up seeing three more times—had transferred her power of eloquence to me, that maybe I was at last carrying one of the Dragon’s blessings, but soon I discovered that it was much simpler than that.

People—the ones who didn’t think I was crazy—simply saw the depths of the terror in my eyes as I spoke and felt the primitive fear permeating my skin as if it were their own.

And so, they believed me. Or, at the very least, they paid attention to me long enough to ask themselves the right questions.

I discovered that my small lecture about the Dragon’s apocalypse was, for many, the final piece they needed to complete their own puzzles.

I also learned that I wasn’t the only one who knew the truth. There were others. Many of them. The QuNet was full of them, if you knew where to look.

I contacted some and formed my network little by little. Sometimes, Mrs. Weston gave me leads from her refuge in polar orbit about other tribeless people who were initiated in secret.

I’ve dedicated my life to the work bestowed upon me by the Heroine of the Marianas. I am sure others will continue it when I’m no longer around, but if there’s anything I have a lot of now, it’s time. The Dragon needed eons to wake, and they will take many, many more years—perhaps centuries—to implement their plans.

I still have those nightmares every night.

No Hijo Luminoso can project their own thoughts into your head—at least, not as far as I know—except for Aimee Weston, the First Dreamer, she who received the blessings of the Five Tribes, she who was a woman halfway between deity and human being.

And that was exactly what Mrs. Weston must have done in response to my question that day at Villa Challenger. As a member of the Ojos Infinitos tribe, she must have invoked her perfect memories—each image from the abominable nightmare that her mind had stored for years—and somehow etched it into my brain.

At first, the transfer’s pain caused me true agony—though it only lasted for a few seconds, just long enough for my brain to understand what it was contemplating.

And then, I began to see.

The images became part of me, recorded between my temples as if they’d been carved with the tip of a scalpel. There is no difference between my memories and those she telepathically implanted in my brain—except for those First Dreams of that thing watching me, of that massive green entity comprised of thousands of metallic extremities slipping and sliding over one another in an almost-obscene way. The dragon, surrounded by a darkness emanating from the depths of their own body, a darkness that twists and extends in all directions, with appendages that sometimes take on defined silhouettes before dissolving again into a dark cloud—black as a starless night—from which the sinuous and indescribably-ancient presence watches me.

The Heroine of the Marianas didn’t stop at transferring those images of that creature to me. For years, Aimee Weston has seized every opportunity to open her dreams, get a little nearer to that being’s brain and take back, on those rare occasions when she's successful, some memory that's theirs.

That is how I learned the Dragon’s provenance and true name—though it is unpronounceable by human throats and, in my mind, sounds like a tortured medley of human screaming and whalesong.

But, first and foremost, Mrs. Weston verified the Celestial Dragon’s objective for humanity was, and which primordial role the human species plays. That was why she sought out tribeless people like me, and that was what pushed her to rebel against the being that transformed her into a goddess.

The creature adored by humanity, the all-powerful deity that a broken antenna discovered at the center of the Earth—they, too, are a pariah cast aside by their own race, banished from their own world. An exile who has dreamed for eons of returning to their planet leading an army, a host of millions of enslaved fanatics.

Of us.

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