The Exploration of the Metalscape

Sometime after an cataclysmic event, a boarder patrol team sends drones to oversee the fallout ruins of ground zero. There they find life in a strange, metallic form.

A two thousand mile wall encircled the border between an otherworldly weapon and the rest of our world. The wall towers three miles high and three miles deep. Over several decades, we equipped it with filtered ventilation and refrigeration set at a constant forty degrees below zero. And mounted at the inner walls are high-powered disintegration turrets. The amount of resources needed for this two thousand mile death fridge would seem like overkill. The world’s economy crashed twice to support its production. It was a necessary evil. The Metalscape was slow, but dangerous. We didn’t understand the exact process, but we knew enough that we had to contain the incoming metallic mass.

Until recently, border watch was our only safe means of observing the Metalscape. Besides the obvious risk of conversion, the heat and fumes radiating from the terraformed land mass had already reached lethal levels for anything carbon based, making any manned attempts of traversing the place a suicide run. All we needed to know was to keep our eye on the enclosing mass, and shoot it down with high-powered lasers every so often. Nothing got past the border without risking destruction, that is until we got one of the old drones working. It took some time for the economy to stabilize again, but we gathered enough resources to design several drones to scout over the Metalscape. We would find the source and set up a long-term plan to take back our world.

Within the first month, the first designs exploded and melted from the intense temperature shift between the Frozen border and boiling Metalscape. Three months later, We equipped the second designs with regulated coolants, but they fell at the edge of the Metalscape due to the dramatic shift of aerodynamics in the new atmosphere. Over half a year passes, and we gave the third designs specialized fans ready for the shift. These drones got a few klicks further than the last two attempts, but we lost contact with them due to electromagnetic interference. Funds were running dry at this point. We had to prioritize border maintenance due to Metalscape overgrowth, so production was cut down to a single drone per year. The future looked bleak, but we had to keep trying.

After five years of trial and error, We finally made a drone that could take on the intense heat, the destabilizing atmosphere, and the disruptive electromagnetic storms. It was able to fly across the boiling gap, over the pressurized threshold, and through the storms. We held visual contact. The next part of the mission began, and we would survey the unknown.

The drone flew thirty klicks over the mounds of petrified trees and human bodies, all laminated in thick beryllium. The Metalscape took any organic, non-metal element and converted it into the closest metal on the periodic table. It brought death here at an atomic level. Further down, Where once was a bustling metropolis defined by iconic skyline, is now a pool of bubbling iron and beryllium. As the drone flew farther, we saw a field of potassium. It was surprising for us to find live plants growing in this place. We saw metallic serpents slithering through the plants, and among those serpents was a hydra, an amalgam of these soldered serpents. The hydra amalgam climbed into the trees, obscured from the drone’s sights. Nearby were a few humanoid figures collecting fruits from the trees. They fled when another figure ran into view. However, this lone figure was a gorgon with their head enveloped with soldered serpents. The gorgon amalgam roared, hissed, and flailed their arms at the fleeing gatherers until they were out of the forest. At that point, the gorgon amalgam sauntered back to a large nest, where other gorgons were building walls of metal branches to encase hundreds of shimmering serpent eggs. Strange as this scene was, We had to move one to find the source of the Metalscape.

The drone continued its flight another seventy klicks until it came across an open graveyard cluttered with titanium bones. At the center of the graveyard was a three-headed amalgam, with a goat head soldered center of the lion’s back and a serpent at its tail. The chimera was feeding on a metal human corpse before a pack of metal dogs encircled it. Among the pack were cerberus amalgams, some had only two or three heads, some had more, and others had a mane of snakes soldered to their necks.The pack lunged at the chimera and tore away its flesh. Fountains of liquid iron sprayed over the carnage. When the fight ended, most of the pack ate away at the chimera’s metallic meat while the others looked over what remained of the human corpse. One cerberus amalgam was guarding the corpse and barked at those that tried to eat its flesh, though it wouldn’t feed on it either. Eventually, the whole pack moved to the killed chimera to feed. When they finished their feast, the guarding cerberus went back to the human corpse and dug a hole next to it. It then pushed the body into the hole and buried it under the potassium soil. These scenes were becoming more unnerving for us, and we were still a long way from the source.

Two hundred klicks away lied the remains of the first border prototype. We were only able to recognize based on the unnatural six-mile mound stretching off into the horizon. It was incomplete when the world economy first crashed, and by the time it stabilized the wall was already consumed, and fifteen million lives were lost. In its place was a circle of houses. One of the houses was much larger, suggesting that their leader lives there. And crawling through those doors, we saw them. We called them Hecatoncheires, for they were an amalgam of many heads and many hands soldered to massive body. They approached the circle center and addressed their people. The group gathered around their leader and watched Hecatoncheires reach into a pouch of metallic flesh within themselves. Carefully drawn from the pouch, the leader raised a human child covered in iron blood. At the sight of the iron coated heir, the people cheered. Hecatoncheires called upon a woman with three eyes and two faces and placed their heir in her arms. They celebrated with brass instruments and Pewter served food and drinks in honor of the new birth.

The drone flew a total of five hundred klicks until it reached where we suspected the center of the metalscape would be. Though it didn’t go too far before we saw the massive columns of gallium. They were monoliths converting into other metals at it base. We spotted another group of humans collecting the melting copper at the base. Nearby were smaller columns of tin. There, we saw a group harvesting the melted tin itself. It’s likely that the source of the Metalscape would be in this area, but something felt wrong about this scene. There were spearmen defending the resources, but nothing we’ve noticed was guarding the conversion itself. What made this upsetting is that these metal people, these humans, they were oblivious to our existence. They had no active hand in our destruction as the creators of the Metalscape did. In the grand scheme, these people are innocent.

The drone extracted a sample from a gallium column and was called back to the border. This would be the first step of progress in saving our world, yet it felt wrong. There were no guarantees that this first sample would be the single solution to removing the Metalscape, but when the drone hovered over the many villages and societies, we formed speculations, and the implications of stopping the Metalscape felt grave. If our enemy designed the Metalscape for destruction, how come life on it still exist? What would happen to the life here when we stop the conversion process? What would happen to them when temperatures return as they once was? How connected to this world are they? When the time comes, are we willing to commit genocide for our own well-being? It would be a long time before we met a true conclusion. We hoped it would not be an endgame where one life survives in domination over the other.

Author's Note

I've been working on this concept for quite some time. Ever since I read the Dogscape series, I've dedicated myself to create a more hardcore survival world simply out of spite. What do you think? Did I achieve the concept of a nightmarish sci-fi landscape without resorting to gross out? Are the creatures in this story horrifying and endearing? Are there holes in the story that I neglected? Is there more you wish to know about this world? Please let me know, I'm happy to expand on this concept and share it with others. Thank you and have a good day!