October 15, 2021 - Steffen Blake
Sinking
The sickly stink of musty leather and rusting steel assaulted my senses as I trudged my way down the main deck. My salt crusted damp diving suit gripped my figure tightly and weighed down my pace. Each step echoed with a resonating ‘clank’ as the krampons strapped to my belted boots met the iron walkway suspended along that tin can of a home we called The Neptune. It was eighteen-hundred and the team was countless leagues down in the inky depths of the ocean’s bossom. I kept a steady grip on the rail as I approached the end of the walkway to fight against the deep current’s roil as it rocked The Neptune to and fro.
A familiar yet unplaced voice crackled over my earpiece, “Are you sure about this?”, the voice was concerned. I lifted my aged and scratched helm and clipped it firmly down onto my diving suit. This voice was the reassuring presence of my primary engineer and The Neptune’s lifeline, Officer Amy Keaton. She was for all intents and purposes the only force keeping that bucket of bolts together in one piece. Well, aside from the countless kilos of grease-putty, of course.
“Yeah, let’s just get this done and over with,” I responded before resuming my stride down the walkway. The air was hot and damp in the suit, so I reached back and with a few turns of nozzles at the rear of my vac-kit, soon enough the steam was quickly coalesced in the compression coils. I breathed a sigh of relief as the humidity gave way for clean and reasonable air. Much better.
At the end of the walkway I approached the massive airlock. The gateway sat four feet thick and twice that tall. I placed my gauntlet clad hands tightly on the bulkhead’s wheel and prepared to dog it out as I clenched my teeth. Rust gave way and seized iron cried out in harmony with my groaning back as I twisted the hatch open hand over hand. Finally I cracked open the door and heaved it the rest of the way before slumping down in exhaustion to catch my breath.
“Is it just me or is this thing getting heavier?” I gasped out as I leaned back against the walkway rail, taking a second to reach back and tick up my dehumidifier unit another smidge. Officer Keaton’s dry chuckle was the only response on the radio. I sat for another moment and stared into the hyperbaric chamber entrance. I pulled myself up and begrudgingly proceeded in before slamming the bulkhead closed behind me and sealing myself in the airlock.
“Alright, let ‘er rip,” I called out over the mic. The signal light flipped and I could feel the air pressure rising slowly. Taking this time to go over my final flight check I went over each of my suits sensors. At this point everything was muscle memory, a practiced motion. I could no longer tell you how many times I had walked through that muzzle door and clipped on my life line, fumbling with the worn down carabiners. This was supposed to be the last run, hopefully. I was getting too damn old for this.
The indicator lamp flipped and that great grinding crack of the hatch unsealing echoed in the room. The sound never failed to set me on edge. I popped the hatch and readied my body for the icy grip of the water as I latched the gas line to my headlamps and air tube to my suit’s vac-pack. I lowered myself down the ladder into the dark, only pausing for a moment to flip my lamps on to illuminate the shadows around me.
Soon enough my leather clad form was enveloped in the frozen grip of the deep. That initial shock of the cold was always the worst part, it dug in deep and set my teeth on edge. The shiver was next, creeping up my spine and chattering its way into my jaw as my breathing hastened. Each rung took me another bit deeper. Darker. Heavier. As I came down past The Neptune’s lower hull the tide was soon to take over.
After enough times the thing you learn about doing The Walk is the ocean, she has a rhythm. Like a dance you learn it over time, you have to. I tightened my grasp of the ladder as I felt the building pressure. Here it would come.
The force of the wave slammed my body against the ladder as I wrapped one knee around the bars to brace myself. The ladder creaked in protest but held strong. I felt that great swaying as the metal brackets rocked back and forth in the ocean’s movements. But as it does, it stilled. For just a moment I could loosen my death grip and lower myself down a single rung, then plaster my body back up against the iron and re-enforce my hold again. Once again the ocean’s dance slammed against the ladder and I, but I knew this well.
A fool, or a younger me (what difference was there?) would have attempted to take two rungs between the gaps of currents. And though a much more spry and younger man could perhaps take the steps two at a time, and more often than not would succeed. But now agility had been replaced with wisdom and I knew that though I could certainly have easily gone the extra step. But sometimes, right when you are getting cocky, she pulls in short and catches you off guard.
No, there was no reason to rush things. I had plenty of air and plenty of time. I counted each step off in my head as I lowered myself down, down, down, pausing at each moment and bracing against the onslaught of torrential rocking. Twenty-nine. Twenty-eight. There were forty rungs in total, and I had memorized each one like the back of my hand. Fifteen was old faithful, the sturdiest and strongest of the bunch. Unlike every other the braces it had refused, even after all these years, to give in even a millimetre. Not a single squeak or creak from it as I placed my foot down on the solid steel.
And then, just like that, Old Faithful snapped. Clean and right down the middle it gave way under my trusting foot. I let out a gasp as I dropped hard and came down on the next step. It buckled and I felt my step slip further. For a split second I felt myself losing my grasp on the bars, but then my krampons bit in and I managed to steady myself just barely.
The ocean, of course, spared me no moment to catch my breath. It slammed into me without restraint and I could all but cling on for my life. My life line, the long cable extending all the way back to The Neptune, was pulled taut and stretched to its limit as it strained under my weight. The seconds felt like they took hours. But finally the force subsided and I could relax my grip. I didn’t bother taking a step down yet. Instead, I simply released the breath I had just now realized had been held this entire time and painstakingly allowed the cable of my lifeline to slack back to normal.
“What the hell was that?” Amy’s voice rang over the radio, bringing me back down to earth.
I steadied myself and took another breath, “Just a little bit of… technical difficulties,” I called back as I braced through the next current and resumed lowering down into the deep. So much for ‘Old Faithful’.
The remaining steps down were largely uneventful and I was finally able to cautiously lower myself down onto the last stretch. Twenty metres it spanned out into the murky depth.
The Walk.
On the other end was our sensor equipment and the entire purpose for spending the last seven odd years of our lives off and on again down here. Every several months I had to make this trek out, swap the drive, and bring the data back. The last walk I did was supposed to be the last. That was until our technician and local numbers master, Dr. Adrian Combe, processed the latest batch of data.
It took me approximately eight minutes to cross the gap. Eight painstaking minutes of clinging for my life and proceeding at an absolute snail’s pace. I didn’t have to cast my gaze over the edge of the rail to know what lay, or more specifically did not lay, below. Nothing. Absolutely nothing at all. The pit of pitch black inky darkness ocean hung below that single suspended rail like a monolithic incomprehensible anti-sky. A great super maw that swallowed all light and inspired naught but madness.
As I inched my way across that swaying metal bridge I called out over the radio, “Dr. Combe this better be worth it, Susan ain’t holding like she used to”, Susan of course being the very walkway I was currently entrusting with my life.
His voice crackled back in my helmet, “I know, but with what we saw on that last batch, you should know just as well that this may very well be the most important Walk you’ve done since we started this mission.”
Amy’s voice followed up, “I’ll let Hospitality know to have a fresh hot bath drawn and ready for you the moment you get back, just how you like it.”
I grimaced at the biting cold as it dug through my suit and deep into my skin, “I’ll hold you to that!” I called back as I continued my slow crawl across that depth. Each sway of the walkway forced me to halt and hold my breath as I waited patiently for the motion to slow.
Near the end I could see it, the goal. Lights flickered as its pipes and nozzles hummed. I didn’t pretend to understand how Dr. Combe’s inventions worked, but I did understand the single job I was tasked with. One lever-pull and the diskette was released from its prison and sealed in casing. I popped it in the dedicated pocket of my dive suit and double, then triple, checked its security.
“I’ve got the payload” I called over the radio and began my careful return trip. But then paused. No response came back to me.
“Dr. Combe? Officer Keaton?” I called out again as I put a hand to my helmet to check my sensors. Only static came back, completely unintelligible.
It was then that I realized something was very, very wrong. I stood up at full height on the walkway and looked around. The ocean’s current had completely disappeared. Never in all my years had this happened, and my mind took a moment to grapple with what was even occurring. Perhaps some form of rogue current? My pulse quickened as I instantly dropped down to grip the metal rails with all my might as I braced for some immense expected torrent.
None came. I must have sat there for an entire minute, waiting tensely. And yet not even a hint of an eddy, the water had become completely still. Cautiously I crept further out along the walkway as I pushed myself inch by inch across, constantly keeping prepped for the current to return at any moment.
I finally began to relax a bit as I approached the halfway point of the walkway, then caught my breath and stood up again to look around at that great inky dark. That’s when I saw it. I couldn’t quite wrap my head around the sight at first but, sure enough I came to understand the reality presented before me.
Snow. It was snowing. The white glittering fragments glistened and twisted about in the water around me, twinkling and shining. I lifted my gauntlet and watched as one of the drops of light drifted down and lazily passed right through my hand.
“You guys are not going to believe this,” I called into the radio. No response again as I continued my slow pace across the walkway, turning to marvel at the site off the side of the rail. Thousands of countless glittering droplets descending and spinning. Slowly I lifted my gaze, then paused.
Something was out there. I squinted and tilted my head and took another step. The understanding of what was out there took its time to creep into my conscience but, once it set in I felt every inch of my body lock in place and freeze.
I cannot describe what it looked like, it’s impossible. I can only describe it in the sense of what it wasn’t. It wasn’t of anything of this earthly domain, and it certainly wasn’t anything at all. It was nothingness. Like the blind spot at the back of your eye it hung there, stretching on forever in every direction. A complete blind spot. It felt like trying to grasp what your vision looks like with your eyes closed. Like trying to explain colors to a colorblind. It was everything and yet nothing. It towered over me and it’s great presence filled my mind.
“Oh my god…” was all I could whisper as the walkway began to creak, heave, and give way. This was a calamity. It was white noise incarnate. Chaos and background radiation and forces coming and crashing together into a single unified moment of understanding. Understanding that I knew nothing.
The moment was over, the tide had returned, and just as the walkway began to give in and collapse I could hear Amy’s voice screaming into my radio, calling my name.
“I can see it now. I understand what is out here,” was all I whispered, and then I began to fall. The darkness swallowed me completely and I could do nothing but stare up as the pieces of the walkway slipped and broke away. They crashed and flipped, churning the water and spinning through the tide above me.
“What the hell are you talking about?!” her voice called back, but fainter now, as I slowly fell down into the deep. The lights above dimmed and faded, then I slammed into the end of my lifeline as it instantly tightened up against my entire bodies weight. As I watched the remnants of my oxygen cable and gas tubes tear off in a cloud of bubbles I realized now it was the only thing keeping me connected to The Neptune.
“You should leave, I’m… I’m sorry I couldn’t get back in time” I whispered into the radio as the signal flickered out and died. Officer Keaton’s final cries of my name fizzled and were lost as I lifted one hand upwards, outstretched, as if to grasp those tiny lights far above. One of the massive remnants of the walkway spun through the water and snapped my lifeline, instantly severing it. I plummeted hard and fast down into the depths.
The freezing was all encompassing now. It penetrated deep into my soul and had completely and utterly taken hold of me. I was so cold, that is what I remember the most. I couldn’t move now, my limbs were totally locked and unable to shift. I could barely breathe and my chest had a deep pressure on it, as if something had tightened itself around my lungs and constricted them.
Death was not swift to come, however. I kept falling, drifting, sinking. Every moment I thought “This is where it ends” and yet the journey continued. Every inch colder and somehow even darker. All was black now and my eyes strained to make out any details, but none came.
It was here that I was stricken with a total sense of loneliness. I was adrift and lost. There were no souls down here, just The Cold. My god that cold was beyond any feeling I have ever experienced before. It was isolating and unending and to bit down my very core. That total and utter Unawareness, that mawing, gaping, grasping void of inverted sky reached its claws from below to grip my drifting body. My life was plucked from the eddies of the world above just like that, without a single sound. Just. Cold.
Only when I had finally given up did I realize it was time to awaken. I gave in and closed my eyes as I let myself drift off.
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