Chapter 363: Jupiter, One Of Mother Nature’s Monster (2) (Bonus Chapter 2/4)

The comments section exploded before Liam even finished speaking."HE’S ACTUALLY DOING THIS"

"This man is insane. Clinically insane."

"Jupiter’s atmosphere will CRUSH that shuttle"

"No way that suit protects him from those pressures"

"I’m watching someone about to die live on stream"

"If he survives this, every space agency on Earth needs to just give up"

News anchors had abandoned all pretense of professional commentary. On BBC World, the host simply stared at the screen, her hand covering her mouth. CNN’s coverage showed split screens—the livestream on one side, a physicist on the other trying to explain why this was impossible.

"The pressure at depth in Jupiter’s atmosphere exceeds anything we can create in laboratories," the physicist said, his voice strained. "The temperatures rival industrial furnaces. And the turbulence—" He gestured helplessly at the screen. "That storm’s wind shear would tear apart any spacecraft we’ve ever built."

"But he’s approaching it anyway," the host said.

"Yes. He is."

Inside the shuttle, the Lucid users had gone very quiet. Their avatars clustered together near the rear of the cabin, as far from the viewport as the digital space allowed. A few had their hands pressed against the walls, seeking stability that didn’t exist in the weightless environment.

Daniel stood among them, his avatar rigid with tension. He’d seen impossible things over the past two months. He’d watched Liam teleport, stood aboard a starship, witnessed technology that shouldn’t exist. But this felt different. This felt like hubris meeting reality.

Whitlock floated nearby, his usual composure cracked. The man who controlled trillions in assets, who never showed fear in boardrooms or negotiations, was visibly trembling. His avatar’s hands clenched and unclenched rhythmically.

Liam’s friends had clustered together. Matt, usually loud and confident, hadn’t said a word since the stream began. Alex kept checking the viewport, then looking away, then checking again as if he couldn’t decide whether watching was better or worse. Harper’s avatar had one hand gripped on a support rail so tightly his digital knuckles had gone white.

The shuttle continued its approach, and Jupiter grew impossibly larger. The Great Red Spot dominated the view now, its rotation clearly visible. The storm was a living thing, breathing and churning, a planetary-scale monster that had devoured centuries without pause.

The flight system’s holographic displays around Liam’s pilot seat, was visible both to him and to the Lucid users behind him. The screens showed real-time flight data, atmospheric readings, structural integrity monitors, and trajectory projections. Every number was being broadcast live, giving viewers unprecedented access to the spacecraft’s systems.

Current altitude: 12,000 kilometers above cloud tops

Atmospheric pressure: 1.2 bars

Temperature: -145°C

Hull integrity: 100%

"We’re entering the upper atmosphere now," Liam announced, his modulated voice calm. "Notice the pressure readings. Jupiter’s atmosphere doesn’t have a defined surface—it just gets progressively denser as you descend. What we consider ’cloud tops’ is really just the altitude where the pressure reaches one bar, equivalent to sea level on Earth."

The shuttle shuddered slightly. Nothing violent, just a subtle vibration that transmitted through the hull. Several Lucid users gasped.

"That’s atmospheric interaction," Liam explained. "The first resistance we’ve encountered. Completely normal."

"Normal," someone muttered. "Nothing about this is normal."

The displays updated:

Current altitude: 8,000 kilometers

Atmospheric pressure: 2.4 bars

Temperature: -108°C

Hull integrity: 100%

The clouds rose to meet them, great towers of ammonia ice crystals reaching upward like frozen mountains. The shuttle plunged through the first layer and visibility vanished, replaced by swirling white-gray mist.

Lightning flickered in the distance—massive bolts that arced between cloud layers, each discharge releasing more energy than entire thunderstorms on Earth. The flashes illuminated the interior of the storm system, revealing structure and depth that no telescope could capture.

"Beautiful," Liam said softly.

Current altitude: 5,000 kilometers

Atmospheric pressure: 8.5 bars

Temperature: -73°C

Hull integrity: 100%

The turbulence increased. The shuttle bucked and swayed, riding invisible currents of superheated hydrogen rising from below. The flight systems compensated automatically, making constant micro-adjustments to keep them on course.

Through gaps in the clouds, deeper layers became visible—darker browns and reds, churning with violence that made the upper atmosphere look peaceful by comparison.

Liam’s hands moved across the holographic controls. A compartment opened on the shuttle’s exterior, deploying sampling probes. The small devices streamed away from the craft, diving deeper into the atmosphere, collecting data and atmospheric specimens before being recalled and stored in shielded containers.

"We’re gathering atmospheric samples at multiple depths," Liam explained. "Chemical composition, isotope ratios, particle density—data that probes can collect but only direct sampling can verify. These samples will help us understand Jupiter’s formation and evolution."

Current altitude: 2,000 kilometers

Atmospheric pressure: 15.2 bars

Temperature: -12°C

Hull integrity: 99%

The temperature was rising rapidly now as they descended into denser atmosphere. The pressure outside was fifteen times what humans experienced at sea level—enough to crush conventional submarines.

"Hull integrity dropped one percent," someone said, their voice tight with fear.

"Thermal expansion from temperature differential," Liam replied. "Still well within safety margins."

The Great Red Spot’s edge approached, a wall of churning crimson cloud that stretched endlessly in every direction. The shuttle entered it, and the world went red.

Visibility collapsed to meters. The entire viewport filled with rust-colored mist and vapor, occasionally broken by flashes of lightning so bright they left afterimages. The turbulence became violent—genuine shaking that made the Lucid users grab for support despite knowing their avatars couldn’t actually fall.

Current altitude: 1,200 kilometers

Atmospheric pressure: 24.7 bars

Temperature: 89°C

Hull integrity: 98%

"Twenty-four bars," the physicist on CNN said faintly. "That’s... that’s the pressure at 240 meters underwater. The Titanic rests at less pressure than that."

The shuttle’s structural frame groaned audibly. Not a mechanical failure—just the sound of advanced materials bearing loads they were designed for but had never experienced. The hull contracted slightly under the external pressure, every joint and seal working to maintain integrity.

Liam deployed more sampling probes. These dove even deeper, their telemetry feeding back data on wind speeds, chemical reactions, and energy discharge rates within the storm itself.

Current altitude: 800 kilometers

Atmospheric pressure: 38.4 bars

Temperature: 152°C

Hull integrity: 96%

The displays flickered. Amber warning lights appeared across multiple systems. The temperature outside was now hot enough to sterilize equipment, and the pressure exceeded anything Earth’s oceans could produce.

"We’re at the operating limit of the sampling probes," Liam said. Several of the remote devices ceased transmitting, their signals cut off as the extreme conditions overwhelmed their shielding. "Retrieving remaining units now."

The surviving probes returned to the shuttle, their data secured. They’d penetrated deeper into Jupiter’s atmosphere than any previous human-made object, and the information they carried was priceless.

Then the displays flashed red.

Hull integrity: 94%

Thermal stress: CRITICAL

Pressure differential: WARNING

Structural load: MAXIMUM THRESHOLD

The amber warnings became scarlet alerts. Multiple systems began registering strain simultaneously. The shuttle’s frame groaned louder, a deep metallic sound that resonated through the cabin.

The Lucid users panicked. Several screamed. Others covered their faces or turned away from the viewport. A few tried to move toward the rear of the cabin, their avatars stumbling in the zero gravity as their brains insisted they were about to die.

"We’ve reached maximum safe depth," Liam announced, his voice still steady but carrying new urgency. "Time to leave."

His hands moved across the controls with practiced speed. The shuttle’s orientation thrusters fired, rotating them away from the planet’s core. Then the main engines ignited at full power.

The acceleration was immediate and brutal. The Lucid users felt it despite knowing they weren’t physically present, their brains interpreting the digital signals as real g-forces. Several stumbled backward.

Current altitude: 950 kilometers

Atmospheric pressure: 32.1 bars

Temperature: 134°C

Hull integrity: 95%

They were climbing, but slowly. Jupiter’s gravity fought them every meter, trying to drag them back down into the crushing depths. The atmosphere resisted their passage, friction building heat across the shuttle’s hull faster than the cooling systems could compensate.

Current altitude: 1,500 kilometers

Atmospheric pressure: 18.3 bars

Temperature: 67°C

Hull integrity: 96%

The warning lights began shifting from red back to amber. The groaning sounds quieted. They were ascending, pulling away from the danger zone, but the climb felt agonizingly slow.

Lightning struck nearby—close enough that the electromagnetic pulse momentarily scrambled some of the display readouts. The viewport filled with brilliant white light, and for a heartbeat everyone was blind.

When vision returned, they’d broken through into a clearer layer. The clouds thinned enough to show the storm’s structure—massive towers and valleys of vapor, all rotating in that endless counter-clockwise spiral.

Current altitude: 4,000 kilometers

Atmospheric pressure: 6.2 bars

Temperature: -45°C

Hull integrity: 98%

"We’re clear of the critical zone," Liam said. "All systems returning to normal operating parameters."

The ascent continued, faster now as the atmosphere thinned and gravity’s pull weakened. The red-brown clouds fell away below them. The turbulence decreased to occasional bumps, then disappeared entirely.

And then they broke through the cloud tops completely.

Space opened above them, black and infinite and beautiful. Stars blazed with steady light, no longer filtered through kilometers of atmosphere. Jupiter curved away below, massive and terrible and somehow less threatening from this side of its atmosphere.

The shuttle climbed higher, the planet shrinking—though "shrinking" was relative when dealing with something so incomprehensibly large.

Current altitude: 15,000 kilometers

Atmospheric pressure: 0.8 bars

Temperature: -156°C

Hull integrity: 100%

All systems green. All warnings cleared. They were safe.

The Lucid users remained frozen for several seconds, their avatars motionless as their real bodies processed the fact that they’d survived. Then, slowly, the tension broke.

Someone laughed. It was a high and slightly hysterical, but genuine laugh. Someone else whooped. Several people started talking at once, their voices overlapping in relieved chaos.

"We made it," Daniel breathed. "We actually made it."

Whitlock’s avatar slowly released its death-grip on the support rail. His hands were still shaking.

Matt spun in zero gravity, arms spread wide. "THAT WAS INSANE! THAT WAS THE MOST INSANE THING I’VE EVER—"

The comments section had become incomprehensible. Millions of messages flooded in simultaneously, too fast for anyone to read individual posts. The general sentiment was clear though: shock, awe, disbelief, and above all, an overwhelming need to process what they’d just witnessed.

Liam turned his chair to face the Lucid users, their blurred faces and tense postures visible even through the digital anonymity.

"What we just did—humanity has never done that before. You not only witnessed it, but you also experienced it."

He gestured toward the viewport, where Jupiter still dominated the view, beautiful and terrible in the amber light filtering through the shuttle.

"For four hundred years, that storm has raged without anyone to witness it. Just forces and physics, playing out in the dark. But today, humans were there."

He turned back to face the camera directly, his helmet’s smooth surface reflecting Jupiter’s glow.

"The samples we collected will reveal secrets this planet has held for billions of years. Chemical compositions, atmospheric dynamics, storm mechanics that no probe could capture. Real data from real exploration."

"We at Nova Technologies remain dedicated to testing limits and removing all limitations," His modulated voice carried quiet intensity.

He paused, letting those words settle over the hundreds of millions watching.

"Saturn is next. Then Uranus, Neptune, and beyond."

His voice softened with finality.

"The second livestream is complete. Until next time—among the stars."

The feed cut to black. And 850 million people sat in stunned silence, trying to comprehend what they’d just seen.