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Aug 21 2018

EM Field Continues to Heal Monolith at Reduced Rate

It has now been two weeks since the Monolith became active again, and since our original report a great deal has transpired. If you’ve not been able to keep up with the twitter feed, here is a recap:

The same day we released the first report, just as everyone in both Kravass and Umbarg were getting settled back in and enjoying having full power once more, everything went dark again. Well – almost. A small portion of both cavern systems stayed lit, which told the utility crews almost exactly where to look in order to find the additional crystal growths. Once again everyone had to wait for a full power shutdown, conduit replacement, and restart. The power returned and remained stable for two more days before new crystal veins had attached themselves elsewhere to suck up energy again. Because the power authorities charge flat rates, installing monitoring equipment was never a high priority and discovering a vein hooking into the system before it begins to pull massive amounts of power just isn’t possible. Tired of dealing with the constant shut downs, a new plan was formulated.

Excavations had already been performed underground, drifting along one of the main crystal veins growing from the base of the Monolith. This was along the one leading towards Sheltered Rock and Ockr to determine why it didn’t reach the caverns there (turns out it might, but a fault line broke the connection before it branched). However the two leading off towards Umbarg and Kravass have now been exposed from the surface near the caverns after days of digging to allow explosives to be lowered down and detonated. The energy-absorbing nature of the crystals took in the majority of the blast, leaving them with only minor damage and forcing work crews to manually dismantle the rest.

With repeated attempts to draw power denied and the connection eventually completely severed, over the past couple of days the EM field surrounding the Monolith has shrunken considerably from its original 10km and now is currently holding stable at just 2.5km. This is still wide enough to encompass all the buildings in KSC, unfortunately. Even more unfortunate is that a potential reason for the EM field’s strong existence was because the Monolith was quickly growing new crystal to plug up the drill hole bored by the research team. With the field size largely reduced, the same effect has been observed for the crystal growth. While it was originally discovered to be closing at a rate that could see it healed in about 2 weeks, its now healing at a rate that could take up to 3 months if the field remains constant. The connection between the field size and healing rate is what leads scientists to strongly believe the field is a result of the growth rather than a purely defensive mechanism.

The theory that the field was a direct attack at our drilling attempts had always bothered scientists, since we don’t need electrical systems to drill. We could rig up a mechanical setup that would have to be cranked by hand, but if it was designed for several kerbs to operate together, a decent amount of drilling could be done. With its original healing rate, its doubtful any progress could have been made manually. The reduced rate of healing shows promise but we have to consider the fact that the crystal has shown the ability to absorb energy, as evidenced by the attempt to blow some of it up. Drilling produces heat, and that could be enough to give the Monolith the energy needed to still heal faster than we could drill. Having nothing better to do, researchers say they are going to try.

We will continue to monitor the field while the power authorities maintain vigilance on the crystal veins to ensure they do not reconnect. There was some debate as to whether an auxiliary conduit could be built so a limited amount of power could be directed towards the Monolith and speed up the healing process. However we are told it was decided that there would be no way to guarantee the Monolith would connect to that conduit and only that conduit if the crystals were allowed to grow again.

The thought of being in operational limbo for as much as three months is not very exciting to contemplate, but at this point all we can do is hope the field collapses further so KSC is no longer affected. We have no doubt the Monolith can create a weaker field and heal even more slowly, although why it would have any reason to want to do that we couldn’t say, so we don’t expect it will unless it has to. We’ll continue to work on ways to continue pushing forward where we can and keep an eye on the status of the field from KSA headquarters here in Umbarg.