You decided to do nothing but watch the ball of light and the spinning sphere of rings. It spun for perhaps half an hour longer before you heard this loud pop and both the rings stopped spinning and the light disappeared.
That was not without its dangers. As the giant ball of light exploded in a massive discharge it sent high volts of electricity throughout the room. Your spacesuit took quite a few direct hits. You don’t call much more beyond that as you collapsed onto the floor.
You woke days later. You were rather cold. That release of energy must have damaged your spacesuit. Not wanting to do that again and seeing nothing else of interest in the room you decided to head out the door.
You pushed on the door it however remained shut. The mechanics of it had become damaged in the explosion itself. The door could no longer be opened.
You spent a couple of days searching every square in that room; along with, a lot of thinking. You came to no other solution for the situation you were in. There was only one thing left to do.
While it seemed silly again to power the device you went for it. You pushed the green button but this time nothing happened. You pushed it again and again. Still nothing. You thought perhaps you should try pushing the red button before the green. Yet again nothing happened.
In the coming weeks, you attempted to inspect the device itself even disassembling it in part. While it was quite advanced from your understanding it seemed like everything should have worked. You were at least certain it was getting enough power.
However, every time you pressed the green button nothing happened. There was also no way of decoding any meaning from the different symbols on the screen. It seemed the only real interaction you had was with the two buttons. Anything else was far removed.
Once it was clear that was no longer an option you attempted to devise a way to get the door open. You even attempted ripping the power cables out of the device in the middle of the room itself and trying to use it to slice through the door by spamming the power button and sparking the wires. It was not enough to do much then melt a small dimple into the door itself.
Eventually, you ran out of food and that was that. You lived for a bit longer but no one from MBTX came to save you. You rotted away never finding any way out or learning anything else amount the device in it.
Back on earth many years later MBTX was facing quite a massive power shortage. Food sectors were dying all over the place in an attempt to keep the databases online with an ever-growing need to capture all data and consume it.
Over time Corporation C-199x found the Ice Planet and the very mountain that you did. It did not take them long to not only blast down the main doors into the mine itself but to the doors in the very room you were found dead.
They spent over a decade hauling Golden Paradox 384 back to earth with massive rumors spreading around that they had almost unlimited power generation. Governments and corporations slowly started to rally behind them.
Corporation C-199x knew at some point their supply of Golden Paradox 384 would run out and the mountain itself would go dry. They got agreements from the vast majority of corporations and governments on Earth to build a Dyson Sphere around the sun to collect energy.
The only entity who stood in their way of cementing permanent dictatorship over the earth was MBTX. MBTX however at the first sign of disagreeing with them at the global courts started to suffer massive sabotage of facilities and cyberwar against their infrastructure.
Before they could even mount a full-scale war against their enemy Corporation C-199X which they believed was behind it. The main decenter that was the backbone of it all went into a critical meltdown. The mountain it was housed in was entirely leveled.
Just days before the meltdown and the biggest loss of data of all time many of the senior employees resigned from the company and joined Corporation C-199X. This was just the start of top employees and allies backstabbing, sabotaging, and stealing anything they could on their way out.
On one rather record-cold night, the entire power grid failed. The poor in masses left their virtual reality worlds freezing in their underground cargo contain and attempted to make it to the surface. Even the backup energy power for the elevators was not working.
To save money, in the main cities, many officials looked the other way when construction companies did not build stairs or emergency escapes out of the underground abysses the cargo contains were in. Leaving most of those people trapped unable to ever escape their cargo coffins.
Years later Corporation C-199X would show up in all the dead cities of MBTX and remove all the dead bodies. They would clean the cities up and transplant their employees within the cities.
There were still quite a few rouge MBTX employees that would go around trying to sabotage, assassinate and do anything they could. They would over time get caught and executed at the very spot.
Corporation C-199X ruled with an iron fist. There no longer was a legal court system as they deemed it a waste of time. There would just be ministers of truth that could go around and if they felt you did something wrong you would be marked for death. No heart just an evacuation date to show up to.
Even the black market data centers were not safe. They were discovered over time operating out of massive caves that went down miles underground. They were blown up and all access to the internet was restricted.
After a few decades went by no mention of anything before the Dyson Sphere was constructed could be found in any records. All books, online data, papers, and anything else were deemed illegal to have and destroyed.
As far as asking anyone old enough what had happened. There were no longer any old people. The longer you lived the higher chance you had of “making” a mistake and being executed. The average lifespan plumaged down to just 30 years old.
Corporation C-199X loved to remind the population that as the decades went by they made massive breakthroughs in science. They were able to increase the lifespan of all law-abiding citizens to over 200 years old. Many thought if they just behaved they would get to live for a long time. Others realized it was not a life worth living but played along anyways.
Since all lines of communication and means to communicate were monitored and recorded at all times no one ever dared to question anything. Whatever anyone was told was now the truth and only the truth.
The world population plummeted from 20 billion to 10 billion over 25 years. Such records were no longer made available to the public and no one who lived much longer afterward dared to seek such information.
Another thing that was kept from the general population was that birthrates plummeted by 99%. People were so scared to even talk to their neighbors out of fear of being turned in to the local ministers of truth for the slightest of things.
Not even a century later there were fewer than 50 million people left on the planet. They were all relocated to a single city to maintain it. All records of their being anywhere else were long destroyed. No one could leave the dome either as the air outside was far too toxic you would be dead within minutes. That is where they sent people to die.
Despite all of this. There was a story about a planet that Corporation C-199X could never fully annihilate out of existence. People thought it was some lost planet that a few survivors managed to escape and to this day remain free from Corporation C-199X.
THE END. This was an alternative ending.
(On your next read you already have the black and Yellow ID in your backpack. Best to not question how.)
Information
Content is written by @Enjar of @Enjargames. AI artwork was created using Playgroundai.
If you wish to support this project further many of the AI-generated artworks will be up for sale on NFT Showroom in the Ice Planet gallery once they have been minted and released.