April 18th 2023.
As the drill reached the 40,000 feet mark, it broke through into a cavity from which, when the bit was pulled up, there came up with it the most putrid, noxious gasses.
The 9 inch borehole was the by-product of a Cold War pissing contest between the US and USSR. It proved of no practical use whatsoever, it was pure science. Almost.
Initially, an American borehole had taken the lead: the Mohole, drilled out in the Gulf of Mexico. But problems mounted and so of course did costs, ending the project in 1966.
The Soviets had started their hole on the Kola peninsula only a year before this in 1965. Grinding on down, the problem of rising temperature was overcome by pumping cold lubricant through the shaft to the drill. By 1970, instruments had been devised to measure the core content directly, avoiding the need to bring samples up to the surface. Drilling continued for 24 years and reached a depth of 12,261 meters—why they didn’t take it the extra 9 beats me (For the sake of those living in the past, we’re talking 40,000 feet or seven and a half miles).
In 1994, drilling had come to a stop because solid rock, at that depth, is only half-solid and it slowly filled the hole whenever the bit was removed for maintenance. With no solution by 2005, the hole was abandoned and sealed shut with a steel plate.
That’s the science story, but a more in-depth hole truth is what follows:
That's not all. After the the drill had been improved for a further investigation by cunningly fitting a camera and a mic, the pipe was sent back down into the cavern. The camera revealed a ruby glowing environment with ominous roiling clouds and the mic picked up the most horrific cries of anguish ever heard by any who have since had nerve enough to listen!
This is where it gets interesting, because then, terrifying the observers up top out of their wits, what appeared to be a charred human figure materialized down in the cavern and made a stupendous leap, managing to seize the drillpipe! Beneath its staring venomous eyes, the features bore the remains of a charred Charlie Chaplin moustache, somehow awfully familiar.
As if this were not enough, hardly had that apparition secured its grip on the pipe than another, somewhat heavier, but no less roasted figure was observed leaping and scrabbling across the back of the first leaper to gain for itself a more stable grip on the pipe. Beneath its beady black eyes was a much more luxurious scorched moustache curling up at its incandescent ends. The Soviet drillers, by now screaming in abject horror and defecating in their Red Army-issue pants, could see above the glowering eyes that - by some travesty of a miracle - there survived a scorched peak cap with an unmelted red tin star ... thus turning speculative identification into a grim certainty!
The poor surface watchers hugged each other for comfort, aghast and closing their minds as to who might win the competition, but not at all comforted by the prospect of either outcome.
However, the crazed tussle beneath was brought to an abrupt standstill with the cinder-crisp figures unaccountably ‘freezing’ so to speak, having barely time to utter in unison: Vlad! before - brutally hammered out through their gaping mouths - protruded pointed wooden stakes, bloodied and dripping with their internal organ parts. Vlad the Impaler, aka Draçule, (for it was he) burst onstage snarling and being his nasty self, and hacking off the dread duo’s hands sending them - stakes still rammed up their arses - spiralling back down to where they belonged.
But, then - and beggaring all belief - Draçule himself came under assault by yet another contender from the pit.
This upstart was such a minor ratnik in that underworld, it had the entire drilling team scratching their heads, trying to guess who it could possibly be. Accordingly, all were utterly gob-smacked when this miserable pipsqueak actually dislodged the Impaler himself!
As the cocky squirt triumphantly smirked into camera, the KGB Political Officer of the drilling team jumped up and down shouting out: Gosh! I know that chap! It’s little Vlad Putin who off-ed himself doing bench-presses in the Lubyanka gym when he should have been at an Oligarch board meeting! For all this denigration by his Political Officer ex-comrade, Putin heroically hoisted his blistered body all the way up 7.5 miles inside that 9 inch pipe to the surface where, rippling muscles smoldering, he raged into the control room and, metaphorically, never looked back.
Would that this baleful story concluded here. Sadly not, though. Because, back there, in the Gulf of Mexico, the American Mohole was furtively recontinued - just in case.
It, too, succeeded in boring into the subterranean cavity. But what it brought to light was no patch on the Soviet spectacular. All it could manage was a seemingly endless stream of neoliberals, Wall Street assholes and porker-greedy multi-billionaires.
Ahh, give it time, though. A glorious leader may yet complete the climb to make America Great Again.