"Hole in the Bottom of the Sea" -- July 5

Word count: 750

Hole in the Bottom of the Sea

No matter how many times Dr. Bri Sutherland made the journey, she was still nervous. She zipped up the front of her suit, listening for the chorus of chimes and clicks in her ear that indicated all was working properly. She could hum the rhythm in her sleep, synchronize her heartbeat with it.

“Ready?”

“Ready,” she said, breathing inside her face mask and watching the condensation drip and fade to detect leaks.

“All systems green on our end.”

“Roger that, all systems green.”

Bri clicked a button on her controller, and soft rock music filled the semi-rigid hood.

“Good luck out there.”

“Thanks.”

As soon as Bri stepped out of the station, the quiet whine of the inactive radio went silent. A hundred feet from the station, she would be entirely unable to communicate with it at all. The music in her ears played softly with a little static.

The station disappeared from sight behind a wall of tall, twisted cones of rock and sediment. At their tops, the air seemed to boil as chemical gases spilled out and rolled in slow clouds down the side. Bri slogged through ankle-deep mud that reached her knee in places, watching her reflection in the shimmering, rippling layer of water that covered the black mud two or three inches deep, making of the uneven ground a thin, perfectly level sheet of glass. She didn’t want to know what was squirming away beneath her thick-soled boots.

A soft chorus of beeps caught her attention. They signaled that all was well—but they should not have gone off without a request for a systems check.

She shook it off. Must have pressed it by accident. She pressed the cover of her control panel closed more tightly and pressed on.

The dig was located five miles from the station, on ground too unstable for a station to be placed any closer. Dark pools of chemical-laden water appeared randomly. Monsters—quivering masses of semi-aquatic flesh—roamed the old seafloor volcanoes that still vomited heavy, suffocating gas.

Somewhere, the old ocean floor plunged straight down to unexplored depths. Over all of it, the treacherous water spread a smooth black sheet. Anything could lurk in those depths.

Bri reached the dig after about an hour of slogging through the mud. Her tools were back where she’d left them, tucked into a crack in one of the old volcanoes that rimmed the spot, lined with crusted worm carcasses. She could feel the pressure of the billowing gases against her suit as she reached into the hole to retrieve them.

An old, rusted metal rod stuck out above the muck. Last time, she’d excavated down to the mount, but the water and mud had reclaimed it since she left. The rod was attached to the Poseidon, the last manned submersible that had descended here, when miles and miles of dark, cold water stretched above Bri’s head. Before the war, before the aftermath, before the ocean had become a minefield of toxicity and chemicals and unexploded biological and nuclear weapons.

As she bent to her task again, a series of soft beeps sounded again in her ear, more insistently. She stopped, frowning, and opened her control panel.

As diagnostics scrolled past on the tiny control screen—respiration systems, sensors, camouflage—a sound caught Bri’s attention. She looked up.

Nothing.

The control screen flashed a series of bold checkmarks beside countless names.

The sound again. Soft, wet. A splash. A soft chorus of beeps in her ear.

Bri looked up, her sensors shut down as she ran the diagnostic. She squinted through the maze of rocks and shimmering chemicals. Something moved in the distance.

Out in the open, in a reflective silver suit, Bri felt suddenly vulnerable. The diagnostic continued to run, beeping softly, a melodic chorus.

A definite splash. A tentacle shot out from behind a chimney.

Bri squeaked and slammed the cancel button. More tentacles followed the first, then a massive, gloopy body, dragging itself across the thin slick of water. Bri froze, her breath fogging her mask, praying the camouflage system rebooted in time. The beeping in her ear was insistent now, deafening.

The monster’s eyeball, the size of a beach ball, swiveled and fixed on her. She tried to breathe evenly, to keep from shaking.

It rushed. The soft body enveloped her, suckers tearing at the shiny silver suit, letting in the chemically charged air.

The diagnostic screen displayed a heavy black X beside the word camouflage.

System failure.