archives

Survivors of the

September

by Devin Miller

September 13, 2058

      This is Doctor Miacha. Today, the September was attacked and sunk by a rogue submarine from the Humanity Conservation Alliance. No one saw the torpedo coming until it was too late to do anything but sit and watch and fathom what was happening. I was just fifty meters underwater by then, so I had the ideal view. Front row seats. Box tickets.

      The flash and the effect of the explosion were dulled, but my imagination filled in the blanks. Captain Yuri’s face as he watched the bow turn into a shower of metal splinters, just before his beard was seared off by an oncoming locomotive of two thousand degree Celsius flames. The second of perplexity displayed on the faces of the scientists in the lab below deck, as all the glassware shattered simultaneously and they had a moment to wonder what in the world before they disintegrated.

      The hydraulic tube lowering the elevator snapped at once. All three of us cried out to God, sensing but not perceiving. Around us, grey fish scattered and distant shapes loomed and the broken, mangled innards of the September rained down to the abyss, and the sea devoured it all.

      It took us four hours to sink, half the time it took the Alvin on its maiden voyage. Four hours of listening to Eddie Carroll cry out, “Jesus H. Christ. Oh Joseph and Mary and Matthew Mark Luke John we are in some deep trouble.”

      “Nice pun,” Doctor Conners remarked.

      “How can you joke, man?” Eddie was doing his best to pace around the small elevator in his pressure suit, which was constantly hissing bubbles as it adjusted to the ever-increasing water pressure. “How can you joke? They’re all dead up there. Vinny, Martin, Sara . . . all gone, man. And on top of that, we’re sinking to the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean! Do you realize that?”

      “We were going there anyway,” I pointed out.

      “Yeah. When we still had a ship to haul us back up! What are we gonna do? Christ, what are we gonna do?” His voice was breaking.

      “We’re going to stay calm,” I said, although I certainly didn’t feel like following my advice.

      “Don’t get your sweet little grad student wetsuit in such a bunch.”

      None of us saw the bottom coming, but the instant we hit each suit hissed a final time, the thin stream of bubbles immediately lost to the darkness. My knees buckled, and I grabbed the railing to steady myself. I looked at the faces of my two colleagues for this little adventure mission—pale as drowned men. But neither of them had collapsed on impact, which was lucky, because if their suits had hit the elevator floor the wrong way and been punctured, even a pinprick, it was all over for them. There was now about three thousand meters of water above us, pushing down, and pushing down hard. Our suits would keep us alive, though. Our suits would keep us alive.

      “Jesus,” Eddie said, but this time it wasn’t in the same scared voice. This time there was a note in it that I recognized. A note I had used on several occasions. It spoke of awe. I followed Eddie’s gaze over my shoulder.

      The abyssal plain is the flattest piece of land on the planet. It covers roughly forty percent of the ocean floor. It is also the least explored area on our planet. After the deep space explorations and technological advances of the last half century, this place, so close to home, is the last frontier. We were going to explore it.

      The lights on the sides of our heads penetrated the blackness for a distance of twenty feet once the initial dust from the impact settled. It was like driving across a desert in the middle of a cloudy night, with headlights ready for replacing. We stood in a triangle and saw a collective sixty square feet of nothing.

      “It’s just like I imagined,” Eddie said.

      “You have quite a bleak imagination then,” Conners said.

      Minutes went by. No one said anything. At the apex of discovery, there is only observation. Discussion comes much later, in a lab.

      “What’s the plan, Doctor?” Conners asked.

      I took a few seconds to respond. I felt so blown away that I felt nothing. I simply stared as infinitesimal dust particles whirred by in a remnant of some far-off turbidity current. I followed them until they left the light.

      Eddie answered before I did. “I say we walk around a little bit, sightsee, and then find a nice little patch of sand in which to die.”

      “I have a signal.”

      “They don’t work at these depths, you know that,” Conners said.

      I nodded. “I guess we take Eddie’s advice then. We walk.”

      Eddie snorted. “You can’t be serious.”

      “Where will we go?” Conners asked.

      “I have a compass, here.” It was attached to my belt. I was currently facing south. I turned left and pointed. “That way. Toward the ridge.”

      “Then what?” Eddie said. “Climb high enough to use the signal?” I nodded. “You’re out of your damn mind.”

      “How long do we have in these suits?” Conners asked.

      “Perhaps five days.”

      Eddie shook his head and fanned his hands parallel with the sediment, as if to say, “There, the line is drawn.”

      “No. No way. You guys go ahead if you want. I’m staying here. This is ridiculous. Some cruel higher power thought it’d be fun to give us a nice, slow, tortuous death, but I’m not having it. I’ll sit my ass down right here and when I get bored, I’ll pull my plug.”

      “Shut up, Eddie. You’re coming.” Conners turned and began to walk. I followed. After a moment’s hesitation, so did Eddie.

September 14, 2058

      The identity of our attackers was no real puzzle. The Humanity Conservation Alliance is a collection of competitive, ambitious, and hard-headed people who happen to be leaders of countries. With the Earth in its current dismal state, the HCA was formed between some of the more gung-ho (which in this case means “scared”) European countries like France, Italy, and Spain, in an effort to migrate the human population into space. The stations and colonies set up were a success, but a costly one. In constant need of maintenance, the stations are always on the brink of disaster.

      Scientific debates on the quality of the Earth and the right courses of action to take led to political differences, which in turn gave rise to national tension. It came as no surprise when several US and Japanese exploration crafts reported feeling threatened by HCA submarines. I wasn’t too surprised to learn that one such craft had been attacked and boarded in the north Pacific. The destruction of the September, however, came as quite a shock.

      The amount of nothing on the abyssal plain is astounding. We know more about the surface of the moon than this place. No craters. No hills. Flat nothingness. I expect Hell to be like this, only with fire instead of water. Walking with that much pressure—I couldn’t remember the exact number, but an educated guess put it at a little over four thousand pounds—is no easy feat. The suits, of course, make it possible. They are arguably the most advanced piece of exploration technology ever invented, but damn it is still a lot of work to walk.

      We can’t sit—too sit would be to risk a breach. We knew this going in. Today, when we took breaks, we tried to turn our backs to the currents and lean against them slightly. I’m sure this doesn’t work, but it seems to have a soothing mental effect nonetheless.

      We slept standing up last night. Thankfully, the suits are sturdy enough to not fall over; there is a little space between my wetsuit and the inside skin of the pressure suit.

      Fortunately, we had planned to be down here a long time—sixteen hours. Bags were hooked up in the appropriate places to catch our waste. Mine were both already getting full. A small box in the center of the suit contained food in liquid form, which was inserted through a thin syringe painlessly into the stomach. I wondered if it was really painless, or if there was just so much other pain to concentrate on that I didn’t feel it.

      Eddie is hopeless. Doctor Conners is mostly silent but for the few times he speaks to admonish Eddie’s despair. I can’t blame the kid though. I feel like despairing myself. But when there is nothing to look at but a blank screen of black water, you tend to look inward, at your memories. I think about my wife, Clara. My three daughters. The older two are twins. Their birthday is tomorrow. I had planned on taking them all out to sea to celebrate. The whole crew had a huge party planned as a surprise. Thank the Lord Clara held out for as long she did, because if it had been yesterday . . . .

      I choked on these thoughts and my throat longed for fresh water. Water, water everywhere. . . .

      “You okay, Miacha?” Conners asked.

      I coughed, cleared my throat. “Yeah.”

      “Your power level is reading less than ours.” I heard the concern in his voice—it was obvious, and frightening.

      “Must be the log.”

      “Shut it down, you’ve got to conserve.”

      “Naw Doc, leave it on,” Eddie said. “I want the moment I fall over dead to go down in history. If I end up in heaven and look down and realize that you turned your friggin’ log off at just the wrong moment, I’m gonna be one very pissed off angel.”

      I smiled in spite of myself. No one ever accused Eddie of not being a free spirit. But I turned the log off anyway.

September 15, 2058

      One good thing about not having much food—you don’t shit as much.

      Today was Yvette and Yvonne’s birthday. I was so sad I missed it. I thought about them all day as we walked. I thought of the day they were born, nine years ago. I had just docked when I got the call. No one had ever driven so fast. Looking back on how wild that ride was, going 120 in the pouring rain, probably scaring the shit out of every car I passed, brings a smile to my lips. It was worth it to be there to hold my two girls when they were still naked and bloody and the most beautiful creations God ever set out to make.

      I named the ship the September because all of our birthdays are this month. Mine’s the second. Clara’s is the nineteenth. Judy, our youngest daughter, barely made it in—born at eleven forty-eight on the thirtieth.

      I wept silently. Of course, I couldn’t wipe my tears away, but I wouldn’t even if I could have. Some fell onto my lips and were reabsorbed, which I suppose was lucky since I needed to conserve what little fresh water I had in me. But if I suddenly died, right here in the middle of the endless nothing, I wanted those tears to be burned into my face so that my family would know that I thought of them to the end.

      Eddie was quieter today. I wondered if he was having similar thoughts. His feet are dragging. Doctor Conners caught him from falling once, and for a brief second I thought it was all over, that in the act of saving Eddie, Doctor Conners had punctured both their suits. I didn’t let out my breath until they were both standing upright and continuing on toward the ridge.

      I stepped on a skeleton today. Broke it into dust. I only realized what it was because the fish’s left eye socket and a few teeth had not yet biodegraded. It occurred to me that we were walking on top of what could be a thousand meters of dead animals and sediment, mostly made up of red pelagic clay from oxidized iron. I did not mention this to Eddie.

      I turned off my light for most of the day to conserve my suit’s power. It’s not as if I’m worried about running into something, after all.

September 16, 2058

      Eddie’s dead. It happened so fast I thought I was going to be next from a heart attack.

      He had dropped back about five paces behind us. No one had uttered more than a harsh breath for hours when I heard him cough and moan through the radio. Conners and I both turned in time to see him slip sideways. He came down wrong on the corner of his food box, and it cracked. It was ripped from the suit and compressed into a pebble.

      I must believe that Eddie had passed out—that he was unconscious, and so felt no pain. Thousands of pounds of water assaulted him through the gap in his suit. The exterior lights went out; the glass covering them broke and dissolved instantly. Eddie himself remained suspended for a moment, but then, with a sickening snap, the suit broke and Eddie Carroll was reduced to a pack of matter the size of a baseball.

      I might as well have been in a whirlpool. If Doctor Conners hadn’t grabbed my shoulders at that moment and shouted through the radio, I’m sure I would have met the same fate as Eddie.

      “Miacha!” He shouted. “Don’t faint, damn it! Don’t puke!” I must have been pale. I certainly felt it. Take deep breaths! Come on!’

      I uttered a grunt that I meant as “It’s okay, I’m okay,” but what sounded more like “AAAAHHPPPFFFT!”

      Slowly, gradually, Conners swam back into focus. His eyes were large and lined with red pitchforks, but he seemed awake and aware. Far more so than I felt, anyway.

      We left the ball of compacted Eddie to degrade into the sediment and continued on to the ridge.

September 17, 2058

      We almost gave up today. The thirst almost got us. But then the floor began to slope upward.

      When there is nothing left but survival—when there is no busy schedule of the day planned or important fundraising dinners to attend to or list of tasks to be completed in the lab before you can go home and hug your children and kiss your wife on the cheek so you can smell her hair and remember every moment you’ve been through together—then, hope is as real as the heart in your chest, as precious as your dearest beloved, as vast and full of life as the ocean itself.

      Conners saved my life yesterday. I repaid him for it today. There was a clam on the floor, the first sign of living life we had yet seen. Conners knelt to examine it, and one of his knees popped. I just happened to be in the way of his fall. He collided with my hip and we both stumbled back a few steps before I was able to get my footing again in the soft sand. Afterwards, neither of us said anything. We were thinking of the baseball-sized ball of Eddie.

      His knee was okay. Just the stress of standing on it and walking for miles. How far exactly? I wondered. It felt like triple digits, and I hoped it was so when I get back I can boast to those pinhead, eager grad students that I walked over a hundred miles across the abyssal plain.

      We walked on. I have to keep the log entry short because I’m running out of power.

September 18, 2058

      The slope took us high enough to use the signal. It began blinking red at my belt and we both started crying with joy. We continued to climb for another half mile before stopping. We wondered who would come. The US Navy, we pictured, in their grandest submarine, with lights blaring and throwing the god-forsaken abyss into stunning clarity, illuminating the snaking path of our footprints. And we would stand on the slopes of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge and wave our arms high in welcome and greet our saviors and finally be able to properly mourn our fallen friends.

      Deep down, I suspected we would see no such lights. The signal would do little more than alert them, whoever “they” were, as to the location of our two corpses. But hope is real, and we held on to it.

      Power’s about to die. When it does, there will be nothing to keep the thousands of pounds of water out. We sit in darkness.

September 19, 2058

      Power gone any second. Clara’s birthday. Lights ahead. Coming.

Devin Miller is a student at UNC and is just starting his writing career. Though school takes up a lot of his time, he writes when he can and is proud to appear in Atomjack.

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