The controllers at the briefing room notice seismic activity, indicating an underwater earthquake. A rock that split apart hits the ship. They also determine that they are in a crosscurrent spawned by the earthquake. Luckily, by the underwater crest splitting apart, their job at getting deeper into the Earth’s core has become a whole lot easier----if they can maintain control of their ship. The controllers at the briefing room indicate that the ship is going too fast in the crosscurrent. Brazzleton explains the ship does not have enough pressure to deploy the laser. They cannot power up the ship in time to approaching the gateway into the Earth’s crust. The ship just manages to deploy a laser to force open the gateway long enough for it to enter in order to get to the Earth’s core. They are successful, much to the briefing room controllers’ delight as they determine they are inside the Earth’s crust. The ship is about to approach the Earth’s mantle, where the mission becomes much more dangerous. Brazzleton becomes annoyed with Zimsky’s narration and they begin argue each other, while the rest of the crew is enjoying it. Iverson notices something on the ship’s frontal radar. Keyes determines that it is empty space; the ship is about to crash deep into the …show more content…
The ship is speeding up due to the of the Earth’s core, which surprises the crew as is it lighter than they estimated. Based on their estimates of their new core density, the amount of nuclear weapons needed to detonate to force a restart in the core’s rotation will be not enough. Zimsky determines that because the core material is too light, the energy waves from the explosion will not reach the core’s center. He suggests that the plan has failed, explaining as they have lost their commander and weapons control specialist. Furthermore, he adds that when the hull in the weapons control compartment was breached and broke apart, the weapons controls system was destroyed, so they will not be able to arm the nuclear codes. Zimsky decides the alternative, which the U.S. government was hoping not to initialize: DESTINI, an acronym for the Deep Earth Seismic Trigger Initiative, which we find was actually responsible for stopping the core’s rotation. It is a device that is capable of creating massive seismic activity in the Earth’s surface. Zimsky believes because DESTINI already touched the core and stopped its rotation, by reactivating it; it would restart the core’s rotation. The crew, and even the briefing room controllers, was not aware of the scope of the initiative and want clarification from Lt. General Purcell. Keyes is highly skeptical of the plan, as he believes that activating