Story: Micronauts | Chronicles Beneath Our Feet [Episode - 2]
Episode 2: Stargate to the Forgotten Worlds
Episode 2: Stargate to the Forgotten Worlds
Elias Varn expected the gate to feel like fire, or wind, or pain.
Instead, it was silence.
A silence older than stars. He passed through a sheath of vibrating geometry—hexagonal membranes folding inward—and emerged in a tunnel of dark-red crystalline light. His body bent, then corrected. For a moment, he existed in thousands of microseconds simultaneously.
Then the light collapsed into form.
A cavern of red basalt and frozen steam opened before him.
The Mars Vault
They were inside Mars.
The air shimmered faintly. It wasn’t breathable for a human, not yet, but Elias found that he could. Myra-6 stood beside him, weaving translucent lines through the air with her antennae—constructing an oxygen shell just for him.
“Atmospheric weaving,” she explained, smiling softly. “Basic science.”
The cavern was massive. Cities hung inverted from the ceiling like coral metropolises. Ants with silver exoskeletons moved along light-bridges. Spires of unknown alloys pulsed in rhythm with what felt like a planetary heartbeat.
Subcommander Hexarion appeared on a vertical platform, emerging from a chasm. “Welcome to Vault Prime,” he said. “The First Hive on Mars. Operational for over six hundred thousand Earth years.”
Elias blinked.
“I thought... we only sent rovers.”
“You saw only what we permitted,” Hexarion replied flatly.
The True History
Inside Vault Prime, Elias was shown murals—sculpted in living crystal, etched with quantum memory. They played like holograms as he passed.
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The First Descent: when the Micronauts built their own interplanetary stargates by harvesting folded space left behind by ancient alien architects.
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The Silent Wars: battles waged against hive-consuming parasites from the asteroid belt.
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The Contact Events: when native Martians—non-humanoid, translucent beings of mineral consciousness—offered an alliance.
Elias saw them—the Martian progenitors—tall, angular beings of dust and song. Their cities were buried under Olympus Mons, still glowing with harmonic pulses. The ants had not conquered them. They had joined them.
“They are in hiding now,” Queen Veneraxis’s voice echoed inside his skull, as her projection walked beside him. “Watching. We protect them. For Earth is not yet ready.”
Moonlight Refuge
A sudden shift. Another gate opened.
Moonlight stabbed through. Pale and harsh.
They arrived in the Subselenian Keep, a vault carved beneath the Sea of Tranquility. This was different—cold, metallic, elegant.
Unlike Mars, the Moon base was not built by ants—but shared with others. Silent species walked its halls. Slender bipeds of glass-like skin, hunched silicon beasts reading folded books of light. None of them looked up. None acknowledged Elias.
“They are the Wanecloaks,” whispered Myra-6. “They’ve been here since before Earth had an ocean.”
Elias stumbled as the truth crashed into him. Earth wasn’t alone. It never was. The ants had been the veil. The ones who kept the curtain drawn. Humanity had been quarantined from the truth.
“Why?” Elias asked.
Queen Veneraxis answered without turning. “Because knowledge is infection. And your kind is still fragile.”
The Ant Accord
In the deepest hall of the Moon Vault, Elias was brought before a council.
Ten ant queens—holographic, representing hives across Earth, Venusian clouds, the tunnels of Europa. Their voices merged into one.
“We are the Collective Spiral. We have altered the course of asteroids. Diverted plagues. Rewritten solar trajectories. You owe us your survival.”
Elias could barely breathe.
“We are not your masters. We are your counterweight. Your shadow. Your firewall.”
He began to see the patterns. History’s blind spots. Moments of inexplicable salvation. Systems that never should’ve stabilized, yet did. Averted wars. Failed global dominations. Ants were there. Always. Quietly correcting the timeline.
“Humans call us pests,” Subcommander Hexarion muttered, almost amused. “Yet we built empires before your pyramids stood.”
The Truth About Time
Myra-6 took Elias to the ChronoNiche—a biomechanical structure where time flowed differently. Inside, an entire year could pass in mere minutes. Ant society had evolved not just across space, but across time gradients.
“You’ve been here for three weeks,” she said softly. “Outside? Only two hours have passed.”
Elias froze.
“You could live your entire life here,” she said. “Grow. Learn. Love. And return to the moment you left.”
A terrifying beauty gripped him. A life apart from Earth, in the infinite folds of ant civilization.
But there was more.
“We offer permanence,” she said. “But with it—silence. You cannot speak of us to your world.”
Elias nodded. He understood.
“If you tell anyone... the chip inside you will erase not just your memory, but theirs. And your connection to us... will collapse.”
She stepped forward.
“You are now part of the Pattern. You will walk among them, unseen. You are Micronaut. But human still.”
The Return
The stargate shimmered again. Elias stepped through.
He emerged in his backyard, kneeling, as if he had never left.
The sun hadn’t moved.
The grass still bent softly in the breeze.
But now—he heard it. The hum beneath the soil. The vibrations of thousands of minds. The quiet harmony of a world beneath his world.
He touched his chest. The chip pulsed once, then disappeared from sense.
And in the shadows of the garden, something watched.
A small ant. Black. Ordinary to any passerby.
But Elias knew.
It was Myra-6.
And she blinked—once, slowly—before vanishing into the blades of grass.
[End of Episode 2]
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