The Journey to the centre of the Earth problem

I was woken early one autumn morning by a hammering on my back door. I quickly dressed and rushed downstairs to find Alun, dressed in full explorer’s outfit, with a bulging backpack.

 

“What is it?” I asked. “Why are you dressed like that?”

 

“We need an adventure, Jed,” he said. “To shake off the drab dullness of autumn.”

 

“An adventure? You’re not planning to visit Museum Island again are you? That has to be the dullest place I’ve ever been to.”

 

“Of course not, Jed. I said an adventure, not a museum trip. We should go exploring.”

“Exploring, but where?”

 

“The volcano at the centre of our island*, Jed.”

 

“That’s not a bad idea,” I said. “In fact, when you come to think of it, it’s amazing we haven’t been there before.”

“I’ve asked the boatman to feed your geep and watch over the island while we’re gone.”

 

“Really? You’re expecting to be gone that long?”

 

“Yes Jed. I’ve been reading through the historic records and look what I found.”

 

Alun has spent the last ten years searching through all the paperwork from our ancestors: diaries, notes, badly-written first-drafts of novels, shopping lists, declarations of war, crude attempts at legislation and translations of all the great mainland literary work into gibberish**. In all of those years, after reading thousands upon thousands of papers, he had yet to find anything of any interest***.

 

Until now.

 

He handed me an old diary and I read the page in front of me.

 

‘Tuesday 22nd: Walked up to the volcano in the centre of the island and explored it in detail. I found a passageway that led down to the centre of the earth.’

 

“Down to the centre of the earth’! What nonsense. Why, the heat from the earth’s core would make it impossible to travel more than a few thousand feet down. Our ancestors really were prone to exaggeration.”

 

“That’s where you’re wrong, Jed. That’s where science is wrong. I believe that if we travel far enough down into the Earth’s centre we will find circumstances perfect for life.”

 

“But there’s no sunlight, there wouldn’t be any plants.”

 

“There’s heat though Jed, I believe there’s an entirely undiscovered underworld flora, living off heat from the Earth’s core, rather than from the sun.”

 

“But what about water?”

 

“There’ll be plenty of water, Jed. Water falls through the soil and rocks, there are bound to be underground rivers and lakes if we look hard enough.”

 

“And air?”

“Well if we can get there Jed, so can air. Besides, if there are plants creating oxygen and animal life creating carbon dioxide, the air should be perfect to breathe anyway.”

 

In spite of my doubts I was glad of an adventure, even an extremely silly adventure that was destined to end in disappointment. I quickly packed my rucksack and changed from my pyjamas into my exploring gear, packing a torch, provisions for a long voyage and a change of underpants.

 

Having thus prepared for every possible eventuality we set off. It took us just a few minutes to reach the summit of Elephant Mountain, one of the smallest ‘mountains’ in the world. We explored the inside of the volcanic crater in some detail, and as predicted by the diary, we found a hole, just wide enough for an explorer or two to fit through.

 

The passage led on, down and down, further into the mountain, then below the mountain. Thus began the adventure I would remember for a long, long time.

 

We walked for days, down and down, miles and miles under the Earth, sleeping on the rock with not so much as a travel pillow for comfort. In spite of Alun’s optimism there was no sign of life and though there was air enough there was no sign of water, and our supplies dwindled slowly. Soon it would be time to turn back or risk death by dehydration, and I didn’t look forward to having that argument, as Alun could be as obstinate as a writer that insists on continuing with a sentence for a long, long time, much longer in fact than any sane man would, when, clearly, a full stop is long overdue, ‘think of the reader’ you cry ‘think of the reader, show mercy’ yet he persists and listens not, and what are all those commas doing, is this some sort of sponsored comma-athon?

 

“It’s getting warmer Jed,” Alun said to me the next morning, brandishing his thermometer, “just as I predicted. And can you feel the damp in the air?”

 

I had to confess that Alun was right, it was both warmer and moist.

 

“We’ll find life soon”, Alun predicted. “The conditions are ripe for it.”

 

What nonsense, I thought, but Alun proved strangely prescient, for less than an hour’s walk later we started to see lichen and mosses on the rocks.

 

“Life Jed. Floral life, here, thousands of feet below sea level.”

 

“It’s only moss.”

 

And yet it wasn’t just moss. As we walked on the walls and floor of the cavern became greener and greener. Alun had been right, the water had slowly soaked down over the centuries, through the rocks and was now feeding an array of plant-life. However, what Alun refused to acknowledge was that this meant that any water there was down here was being gobbled-up by greedy greenery. There would be no stray oceans for us to swim in. With our water supplies rapidly depleting it would soon be time to turn back.

 

Except … 

 

For days we had been crawling through a narrow cavern, with never enough room for us to stand erect. But suddenly as we turned a corner we came into a great open plain. Here, with space to grow, the flora had flourished, with plants as tall as trees it was a veritable forest. And this much greenery needed a heavy supply of water.

 

Sure enough, as we walked on, we came across a stream. The water was warm. I tested the temperature with my elbow – perfect bath-water temperature.

 

“Huzzah****,” Alun cried as he stripped off and jumped into the stream. I too took the opportunity to bathe, as here, miles below ground under an extinct volcano on an island that nobody ever visits, we were relatively assured of privacy.

 

“I wonder what animals we’ll find down here Jed.”

 

“Animals? Now that is absurd,” I said. “Okay, you’ve been proved right about the plants and the water, but we’ve witnessed neither sight nor sound of animal life.”

 

“Yet there must be fauna here, otherwise there wouldn’t be carbon dioxide for the plants to breathe.”

 

“Yes, but surely that’s just insects.”

 

“Why just insects? There’s food enough for all sorts of animals, Jed. Think what we might find, new forms of life, species that even David Attenborough has never made a documentary about.”

 

Yet such speculation got us nowhere. We replenished out water bottles, dressed and readied for continuing our journey.

 

“We can go on for weeks, now Jed, now we know that there’s water here.”

 

“But we don’t have enough food,” I protested, “we’ll have to turn around in a couple of days or we’ll run out.”

 

“We can find food here, Jed. Look, those fruits hanging from that tree. They look like apples.”

 

“Careful,” I said, “they could be poisonous. They may look like apples but they could be anything.”

 

Disregarding my concerns, Alun took a big bite out of an apple.

 

I watched him apprehensively.

 

“Well?” I asked.

 

“Weird,” he said. “It tastes just like beef. It’s nice though.”

 

Nervously, I took a bite. Though the fruit had the look and consistency of an apple, it tasted exactly like beef – slightly undercooked beef, I prefer mine well done.

 

“And this lettuce tastes of ham,” he said, holding up a lettuce-like plant he had found.

 

“It’s like an entire forest designed by Heston Blumenthal,” I said.

 

With the food and water problems solved, we walked on, exploring the vast plain without a care. Every so often we would hear the scurry of small creatures, though whatever they were they were too cunning for us to see them.

 

“Just think Jed, this could be a completely new lifeform, a creature never before seen by man.”

 

“Yes. I wonder what it will taste like.”

 

“Honestly Jed, we’re on the brink of discovering new life and all you can think of is how it’ll taste. It’ll be like that time they sent Jeremy Clarkson to the moon and he ate all the little green men.”

 

“Nonsense,” I said, “Jeremey Clarkson has never been to the moon. Besides, he never eats his greens.”

 

As we were talking there was a rustling up ahead.

 

“Hush Jed,” Alun shouted. “An animal approaches.”

 

It was indeed an animal. A huge, ferocious creature, like a giant stoat, staring at us as if we were the main course for luncheon.

 

“Run Jed. It looks hungry.”

 

We ran. The stoaty animal was fast but we just about kept ahead of him, as he was constantly getting distracted by fluttering leaves and passing whims. Eventually he got tired or bored and ceased the chase, but by this time it was too late. We had run miles from our path. We were hopelessly lost.

 

“We’re hopelessly lost,” I said. “We’ll never get home. We’ll spend the rest of our lives eating meaty fruit and running away from stoats.”

 

“Nonsense Jed, we’ll just go up a different way.”

 

“But what way?”

 

“This way Jed.” Sure enough, there in the rocks towards which we had run, was a hole just about big enough for a man to crawl through, with a slope leading upwards.

 

“It’s bound to be a dead end. There can’t be many passages that lead all the way up to earth’s surface.”

 

But though I complained I wasn’t going to turn away, this could be our only chance of escape.

 

It was a long climb, but in spite of my fears the passage did not disappear. We climbed and climbed. Eventually the greenery of the lower levels disappeared and we were back to bare rock. Still we climbed, for days and days, until eventually we returned to the surface.

 

A different surface.  A land I had never seen before. Our adventure wasn’t over yet.

 

“We could be anywhere,” I said, “thousands of miles from home.”

 

“Don’t you recognise it Jed?” Alun said.

 

I looked around. It did seem familiar. Then I remembered.  “Of course, it’s Jules Verne Island,” (the island in our archipelago where Jules Verne wrote most of his tales).

“Exactly Jed. Did you not wonder how he managed to write such an accurate description of the journey to the centre of our globe.”

 

“You mean he’s been down that very passage?”

“He was probably attacked by the very same giant stoat.”

 

“It makes you think, doesn’t it? Being attacked by the same stoat as one of the forebears of European literature. If the stoat had caught him there would be no Paris in the Twentyfirst Century.”

 

“France will never enter the twentyfirst century Jed, don’t be fooled by the speculative fictions of a long-dead writer.”

 

We ceased talking for a while, to breathe in real, fresh air and to enjoy freedom from the eternal tunnel.

 

Eventually Alun spoke.

 

“We’re not far from home at all Jed. Just the other end of the archipelago.”

 

“That’s still miles away. And no boat ever comes here, even the boatman doesn’t visit this far out.”

“Simple Jed. We can go back by balloon.”

 

I followed his gaze. There in the centre of the island was a Jules-Verne style balloon.

 

“Good idea,” I agreed.

 

“Or by submarine.” He pointed to an antiquated metallic machine, that looked like a spaceship made entirely from thrown-out washing machines.

 

“Well I’ve never trusted balloons, one stray wind and you could end up miles off course.”

 

We walked up to the submarine, which was unlocked, and prepared to make our exit.

 

The machine was of very simple design, with a steering wheel and a big red button which said ‘start’ in three different languages.

 

“This must be the start button,” Jed, Alun said, master as he is of stating the obvious in three different languages.

 

Alun pressed and we waited for the submarine to start. But instead of taking us down under the waves, the submarine started to rise at great speed, up and up, soaring into the sky like a rocket.

 

“Oh no, Jed,” Alun said, “We’ve taken the wrong machine. We’re going to the moon again Jed.”

 

 

 

 

 

* Elephant Mountain, at the centre of Happy Island, is in fact a long-extinct volcano.

 

** “Yip, yip, yip, neidle, niddle, ping,” as Shakespeare once wrote.    

 

*** unless of course you believe that Jesus’ inside leg measurements and John the Baptist’s phone number were genuine.   

 

**** Happy Island speak for ‘hurrah’