The Maze of Madison: So it begins

The cold wind whipped down and around and through us. It was that cold. That harsh. That bitter. The winds whipped down off the glacier. Katabatic they were called. They were cold enough to chill even through the modern fibers and furry coverings.

The blue bright ice. Freezing flows of water. The algae that clung to the exposed rock. It was a gorgeous image. It was a gorgeous place. It was a gorgeous fantasy.

Except...

There was something here. Something that shouldn't be here. Something that shouldn't be present. Something that shouldn't exist. We didn't know who or what had made it. But there it was. Something seemingly so natural. Yet something completely unexpected.

Stairs.

Clean, well maintained stairs leading up into the mountains. Into the ice. Into a cave.

This might not be surprising. People build stairs all the time where they live.

But this was Madison. This is a world just settled. People had only been settled here for months. This had been our first day not merely working our tails off getting our colony set up: that's why Tobias and I wandered off. We need a break.

It was a new world. It was not entirely friendly. It was colder than Earth and wetter. It had a slower rotation than Earth, 30 hours for a day. It was in a multi stellar system with three stars.

This was the sixth exclusively American settled. Only Eurynome, Escheria, Franklin, Adams and Jefferson were settled before. We'd only been here for six months. And we were the first settlers. And it was 261 light years from Earth.

There were more worlds than American ones out there: the Chinese had eight. India had seven. Europe had five. Indonesia, Nigeria, and Brazil had two each. Britain and Japan had one each. Then there were the four worlds first worlds shared by all countries of Earth: Caerus, Nuwa, Nakashatra and Othrys. The major powers though had decided they wanted their own worlds and the race began. And in the rush 30 worlds were settled by Humanity. After the great near disaster of Escheria, the the nations of Earth were a little more careful. But just a little.

Madison orbited star cooler than Earth, an orange dwarf. That star was named Abigail. The other two stars were small, faint red dwarfs far away. One was 'close' at thirty times the distance of the Earth to the Sun. The other was ten times as far.

Monteplier was the first settlement. There were five thousand of us. Other than the initial survey teams from five years ago, we were the first humans on the surface of Madison. We'd been all in and around the initial colony. Too busy to think. Too busy to do anything. This was the first break. Everyone, adults and teens, were focused on getting the colony into a safe, livable shape. No one had time to go out and pull pranks. The survey teams hadn't either. No one had time to wander off until now. And here we were.

And yet...here were stairs.

Tobias and I marveled. It was an astounding discovery. If we'd been smart. If we'd been wise. We'd have gone back to Monteplier. We'd have reported it and told the adults.

But we were teenagers.

And teenagers were not noted for their wisdom.

We climbed. We went higher and higher. The stairs went up and up and up. Further and further up into the mountains. We kept going and going. We should have stopped. We should have gone back. We should have gone home.

We didn't.

Fortunately, we'd dressed for the cold: modern fibers, smart clothing, lab grown furry coverings. Madison is a cold world. Beautiful, but cold. We climbed for what seemed like forever. And then, and then...there was a cave. Encrusted in ice and craggy. Like some portal to another world.

Oh, the amusing irony of that.

We peered in. It was pitch black. Yet the path seemed to continue.

Should we continue? Should we turn back?

We retreated a bit. It would be a little too ironic if we were suddenly eaten by something jumping out of the dark.

"If we're going to go all Indiana Jones and Armin Singh, then we ought to do it properly," Tobias smirked.

We walked back down a long ways. We were getting our exercise for today! Hooray! Or something. We found a stand of native 'trees.'

Tobias reached down and picked up a branch from the native 'trees.' They broke off easily and they burned really well. It was the oils inside them. He made sure to rub the shaft with dirt like we'd learned. Then he whittled a little away at the top. He took out his torch, a LED laser lamp that could start fires if needed or act as a flashlight. He lit the top of the branch. The oils would be pulled to the top through capillary action: even in death, Madisonian life was...strange.

I made my own torch, thank you, but didn't ignite it. I even went so far as to grab more branches, wrapping them in instantly made biopolymer and placed them in my bag.

"Now, we look the part," he said and I rolled my eyes.

We marched up to the craggy, icy maw and grinned at each other with that grin that teens getting into trouble and not caring only could.

We walked in and the darkness wrapped us, embraced us and drew us in.

For what we knew not, but it drew us in.

But we were not afraid.

And perhaps, had we not been teenagers, we would have been.

But then, we were teenagers...