Last Journey of the Abyss Delver

By Sabrina Keene

“I should not have smoked that joint before going on a deep sea mission,” I mused as I gazed upon what looked like an eel with a broken chainsaw for a head.

“You did what?”

“Calm down, professor. You’re gonna be fine. The bathyscaphe practically drives itself—as it’s been doing for the past hour. I’m only here in case something goes wrong.”

“Is that supposed to reassure me?”

“Look, this baby has done over a hundred dives like this, and nothing has ever happened. Even if we have an emergency, there isn’t much we can do besides dropping the metal ballast and starting the ascent immediately,” I said as I pointed at a big red button. “And maybe praying. If you want, I can assign you prayer duty. If it keeps you from panicking, it will have achieved something.”

He muttered something under his bushy gray beard but went right back to staring out the layered acrylic glass window.

I almost told him that he ought to show some gratitude. This whole thing about “a terminally ill marine biologist wanting to ride in the Abyss Delver before we decommission it” came completely out of the blue. Dave, our pilot, had already found a new job. I only stepped up because I get sentimental when I’m high.

“How deep are we right now?” the professor asked me.

“Four thousand six hundred seventy-two meters.”

“How much is that in feet?”

I snorted. “No idea. We’re less than halfway down, but already deeper than any submarine could go. If that helps.”

“Is that why you insist on calling this contraption a bathescape?”

“Bathyscaphe. As you might have noticed, we are cramped into one tiny, thirteen-centimeter-thick steel sphere. It might look submarine-ish from the outside, but the big cylindrical hull is mostly just gasoline and air tanks. Excuse me, but what kind of marine biologist doesn’t know this?”

“One that specializes in coastal ecosystems.”

“Then why are you here?”

“If you must know, I leave behind me a career of fifty years. Fifty years of documenting how human carelessness devastates the precious, fragile treasure troves of life that are coral reefs. I wanted to see the deep before I die. The last place to be tainted by us.”

“All right, all right. Sorry I asked.”

Then—as if on cue—it entered the lamplight.

“What is that?” I asked.

The professor’s face became a mask of awe as he gazed through the window. “The most magnificent creature I’ve ever laid eyes upon.”

I could see why he would say that. The mass of its elongated membranes trailed behind it like a many-colored veil. The professor reached out and dimmed the floodlights, causing the bioluminescence to grow ten times more vivid, filling the darkness around the shroud with all the hues of the rainbow. The kernels of lights along the appendages flowed and flickered, forming patterns that I almost recognized before they melted away into something new. It was nauseating.

The professor, however, was only dazzled—not discomforted. He never tore his eyes away from the colors long enough to look at the rest of the creature.

I’m no biologist, but I could tell even in this unorthodox lighting that the veil was attached to a squid-like animal. A huge one. It must have been at least ten meters from its head to the tip of its membranes. Its eye was as big as a basketball.

“Could you make us stop?” the professor asked. “I don’t want to sink past it.”

“I—”

“Thank you. Ah, look how the lights ripple!”

I hadn’t done anything to stop our descent. That’s what I’d started to say. Instead, the creature had started following us, its shroud gently undulating behind it. I could feel the hairs pricking up on the back of my neck. It wasn’t looking at the bathyscaphe, but at us.  I remembered once hearing that squids, octopuses, and such might be the smartest animals aside from vertebrates. Also, they are not vegetarian.

“Professor, maybe you should get away from the window. Maybe we should hide for a few minutes. It has to lose interest in us then.”

“Why would I want that, my boy?”

“Because you remind me of a moth drawn to the light!”

As I spoke, the creature started to swivel around, its head disappearing behind a luminous cloak.

“We are surrounded by thick steel walls; why shouldn’t I enjoy—”

As the curtain of dancing colors parted, a massive, parrot-like beak crashed against the window. It felt like every atom in my body reverberated as the bathyscaphe shook.

But it passed. The hull hadn’t been breached. Still, a tiny crack appeared on the outermost layer of the acrylic glass.

“Are you all right?” I asked the professor as I scrambled back to my seat.

Before he could answer, the beak crashed against the window a second time. An even more powerful tremor rocked the bathyscaphe. The glass still held, but a delicate spiderweb crawled across its surface.

I decided not to wait and see what would happen if that pane of glass shattered. I reached out to smash the red button and drop the ballast.

“No!” The professor jumped between me and the button. “Let it kill us!”

“Are you crazy, old man?! You might be dying, but I’m not!”

He wouldn’t relent. There was a scuffle.  I… I panicked… and didn’t hold back, despite his fragility. I knew he would not have long before breathing his last.

“Please don’t tell anyone about her,” he rasped. “They’d come down here in droves and be the end of her.”

“You still can’t see it! It would end us!”

But he could not hear me any longer.

“She” did not follow the bathyscaphe toward the surface.

I curled up on my seat and watched the number on the depth gauge decrease. I was utterly alone in the dark with only the choice to make about “her.”

Years later, I’m still not sure I made the right one.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Sabrina Keene first started writing for rather pragmatic reasons. When playing a table-top roleplaying game, writing journals from the viewpoint of her character was both a way of keeping track of events and gaining some sweet extra XP. Over time, she found herself enjoying the writing as much as the game, so she started creating her own campaigns. Eventually, she was ready to tell stories that were fully her own.