PROBE.

PROBE.

Oceans are the last great frontier for mineral resources. Mankind had devoured the resources of the surface of earth to the bone and left nothing but devastation behind. Now the market demands new resources, and consumption boosted the ocean floor exploration. In a unprecedented effort the first under-water mine sites had been built in places man can’t go in person. Huge plants are operated by remote-control and autonomous robots. Still, men are kept in control, supervising all operations from floating Mid-way bases, similar to oil platforms, who float hundreds and sometimes, thousands of meters above the mining sites.

Not more than a dozen of workers stay at those bases, for periods of no less than two months each. Two medics, a cook, two geologists, one marine biologist and six technicians who do most of the jobs, controlling the extraction and prospection machinery.

The marine biologist is usually the guy who is there only to bother everyone about how we shouldn’t go around killing crabs and destroying the precious reproduction site of the marine ugly looking vermin who eat whales poop. Always there measuring salinity, temperature, contaminants and oxygen levels 24/7. Is impressive, but all of them never get tired of watching of our shoulders to make sure we obey all those thousands of eco-responsibility protocols by day and by night they keep watching our cams searching for a new endangered species, so they can close another good mining site.

I’m serious, if we had those guys on our necks during industrial revolution we would still live on the damned middle age. Look at this guy they sent this time, long hair, Hawaiian shirt and freaking sandals. He stay here, with me, in the monitor room night and day. See, my job is to watch over the robots prospecting for new mining sites, I keep my eye on them for almost 10 hours a day, sometimes more, if we got lucky to found something good. And this hippie stay by my side drawing shrimps and jellyfish who wander in front of our robots, and I’m supposed to help him. Yes, I have to divert a expensive marine robot and make it stalk a ugly jellyfish to please my hippie coworker.

  Today I got lucky, the guy decided to stick with the day turn, so he could see the birds doing something around our mid-way station that probably is unnatural and caused by our evil exploration of the ocean. Yeah, see if I give a damn about it.  I stop caring about the hippie when my babies start descending into the new trench, 00912#33. We lost a good lot of dummy probes – capsules tied to steel wires we use to get samples of the water and soil before designing a robot to explore the area –but the ones that came back had traces of gold and bauxite ore. Now I was conducting a robotic probe to look for good places to dig.

The HD cam showed me nothing but darkness. Even the powerful lights couldn’t pierce the everlasting darkness. A shiver went down my spine at the thought that it was the first time that light entered that cold part of the ocean. More excited, I felt the adrenalin rush when the light hit the bottom.

The image was full color, but it could be black and white, once the floor of the ocean was white, like snow. The propellers lifted a thin cloud of sand. Not a single sign of life, I said to myself wishing that my hippie coworker was there so I could see his disappointment. My first action was to order the probe to pierce the ground to fixate the safe line, a guiding line to the following robots.

The probe spread his spider-like metal legs, touched the ocean floor and put the pneumatic pole hammer, similar to a shotgun, against it. Once it was in perfect position, the probe automatically fired it. But something went wrong. The image disappeared in a maelstrom of sand, while the sensors of the probe went out of chart. Something had exploded, I thought when I start cursing. The probe probably hit a gas pocket and it exploded.

Well that solve the mystery of the missing dummy probes, and it probably would be discounted of my next pay check. While I was thinking in how to blame it on the hippie, my probe got on line again.

-Good!

Oh yeah, my baby was on line, it was just a scare. I checked all sensors. Oddly I found no signs of methane and the temperature was still below zero. The probe, a compressed titanium tube, reported mechanical impact of some kind, but the water pressure showed no fluctuation. The pneumatic hammer was missing, and a couple legs bent, but my camera was intact, even with zero visibility due to all the dust lifted by that odd explosion.

I was still trying to figure what the hell happened when the probe’s acoustic sensor pick a well know IFF sound blip. My goddamn safe-line anchor was still active, and could be retrieved! At first I was almost jumping of my control chair, the damages where minimal, so I could compensate them easily with part of my bonus, once I located a good mining place.

I stabilized the probe, and ordered a short range active sonar scan, yeah, we don’t need cameras to see our surroundings.

What I saw couldn’t be right.

All the place geography, a underwater plain which extended for kilometers in all directions was gone. The probe was now floating over nothing but cold, dark waters.

I checked the pressure sensors, and the umbilical cord range counter. It show that the probe was no more than fifth meters above his previous position, the oceanic floor.

I started flipping again, something was broken. The pressure sensors and the inertial navigation bearings could be off, and the cord, cut.

After two diagnostic routines, everything was still in place. The damn bottom of the ocean had vanished. It couldn’t have collapsed, the vacuum would drag the probe to the bottom, and any explosion so strong would have destroyed the probe too.

I activated a long range sonar scan, and I discovered that my robe was floating over a perfect round opening, five hundred meters wide, and so deep that the probe couldn’t measure it.

Ok, no rush. Everything have a logical explanation, right? Probably what collapsed was nothing more than a thin cap of debris and dust, put together over a lava duct by the currents after a millennia.

Even so, I was scared. Shivers keep going down his spine as i aimed the cams into the darkness of the new abyss who appeared under the probe. Maybe was time to call the day off and bring the probe back. But then, i didn’t had any reason to do so. The probe was more than ten kilometers from where i was. If wasn’t by the optical fiber in the umbilical cord, or the acoustic communication arrays that place would be so unreachable as the dark of the moon. Very few life forms where found there, and the risk, if any, was only of losing a robot.

I hit some buttons and fired a volley of chemical flares that burnt with almost blinding light as they slowly sunk in the abyss. He ordered the probe to go down into the darkness.

The acoustic IFF was below the probe, going down, slowly. Unusual. A steel pole should sink faster. Probably it was attached to some pieces of debris, which should have acted as a parachute. Still, the signal was beyond the reach of the probe’s camera.

The wall of the tunnel were also to far to be seen, but at least i could get sonar readings of them. They were incredible smooth, like polished glass, and where slowly getting closer, what could prove to be problematic. The echoes where getting reflected so well by the walls that the feedback was causing a distortion on the images.

The acoustic signal of the pole was also echoing and making hard to pinpoint his position, at least I hope was it the case, once it was moving up and down, at least 300 meters below.

I looked at the pressure control and the cable dispenser: The probe had dived more than 800 meters from its original position. Soon it would be at more than eleven kilometers under the surface of the ocean. I worried about the length of the cable. It would go for a couple more thousand meters, and then I would have to choose between returning or moving forward de-attaching the cable and using the acoustic remote control to guide it.

But I forget all that when, after a couple hundred meters more, the tunnel disappeared to give space to some type of cave so vast that it was beyond the reach of any sensor my probe had.

 I could only see the ceiling of such cave, around the tunnel entrance, also smooth like polished glass. Not even a crack or a deformation on it.

I was taken by a inexplicable fear of the absolute darkness below me, even standing thousands of meters away from there.  My heart was pounding fast and I was in the edge of my seat. I keep looking to the dark screens as if something horrible would jump and devour my artificial avatar, the probe. Computers don’t lie, and by my readings I was paralyzed by fear for almost ten minutes, but to me it looked like hours. But then, again, nothing happened.

Now the IFF was still, his signal faint, somewhere below, at least another thousand meters.

I could go straight down, firing another volley of flares, but I decided to look around the ceiling for a moment. The xenon lights aimed it, and the light was reflected back in a somehow sickening purple tone. Different from the tunnel, the ceiling was impressible reflecting, like a mirror, and have something drawn on it. Stabilizing the probe, I zoomed in and what I saw was disturbing. Thousands of images, drawings of men, women and strange monsters, engaged in some kind of horrible and nightmarish orgy. Men and women were painted with great realism, and with expressions of pure ecstasy, while they were engaged in a variety of sexual acts with each other and with huge maggot-like creatures. Every single illustration had also a brutal act of violence, beheading, mutilation, cannibalism, and men and women half monster devouring others with their genitals transformed in maggots or serpents with long sharp teeth.

Now I was sure I went too far, that couldn’t be right. Was something I could only describe as hell was painted in the walls of a cave, almost twelve kilometers under the cold sea!

My hand shacked and I was sweating. At first I decided to get out as fast as my little probe could, but then, again, something stops me. Curiosity, men’s great characteristic and sometimes, his bane. I was safe, don’t matter what. That place was ruins from another age, a lost civilization, just waiting to be discovered by a bold explorer, like…me.

Yes, for the first time occurred to me that I would become freaking rich and famous, damn, by law I could give that city my own name! the company would keep the big money, but my part of the share, like determined in my contract, would be from at least 15%, I was soon to become a millionaire.

Yeah, everything was fine, I told to myself holding my shivering hand and biting my lower lip, so I couldn’t hear the sound of my shacking teeth.

I fired another volley of chemical flares and dived again into the darkness, aiming for the IFF below.

Took me half an hour of slow, in a careful descent until my sensors picked something breathe taking.

At first I thought it was a massive stalagmite, aiming for the ceiling like a spear, but as soon as the lights of my probe reached it, I saw a great tower, covered in dust. It resembled some ancient Buddhist temple, but it had to have about eighty meters of high.

Soon, several other constructions were revealed by the sensors, and I found myself in the middle of a large city. A dead city, lost on the bottom of the ocean.

Once I got I the street levels, I was once again taken by terror. Thousands of corpses remained there, half decomposed, like underwater mummies. They floated in the cold still water, like they were frozen in the middle of something. Something disturbing.

Some were totally naked, others partially clothed, and most of them were in the middle of some kind of sexual act, or better saying, a act of violence. Like the images on the ceiling, they were apparently killing and mutilating each other, and the loners, themselves, during something that looked more like rape, if wasn’t for the look on their dead faces. They all smiled in a silent and evil satisfaction while they were abused and murdered with brutality.

I almost vomited, from the fear and the nausea caused for such disgusting sight. I tried to look at anything that wasn’t a corpse, when the probe’s propellers lifted some dust of a tall statue in the middle of the street. It was one of those maggot creatures with sharp teeth, made of gold, I was sure of that, adorned by tiny human skulls. Very tiny human skulls.

Two impulses took place in my mind, one was fear and repulsion from those skulls who should belong to children, put as a offering to that monstrous statue, who commanded me to run away immediately. The other impulse filled me with shame, even now.

Greed.

Such statue would value several millions of dollars in gold, and even more as an artifact. I could see people giving all their money just to touch it, that marvelous piece of gold.

Confuse and disgusted I decided to move on after the IFF, it would distract me from my inner conflict.

I found it a couple hundred meters from something I first thought was a massive round wall.

I found the pole stuck under it, something inexplicable. I ordered the probe to hover over it, and I saw that the “wall” was only part of a colossal statue of a maggot. Only a SMALL part of it.

The head of the body was fifty meters from the pole, but the rest of the body went for hundred meters; I didn’t dare to see how far it truly went, in the darkness.

Now I couldn’t control my fear, not anymore. The sight of such giant and realistic statue of the monster apparently worshiped by that insane dead civilization was too much to bear. Something primitive keep screaming in the depths of my mind that I went too far this time, and I should leave while I could.

With no hesitation I ordered the probe to return, and it obeyed immediately.

While I was digesting all that information, I started thinking in how those bodies weren’t crushed by the pressure. In that depth, a human body would be compressed to the size of a soccer ball. And how such city could be built inside that cave, even in a distant past?

As the probe reach the entry for the corridor and started climbing back to the outside, I felt a little relieved. Once, when I was a child, I was almost hit by a bus. Crossing the street without care, I almost didn’t see the bus coming. In a split second I jumped, by pure instinct, and saved myself.

That was the feeling I had, I was the bird who escaped the cat’s claws.

But it was too soon to celebrate. Something strange was happening again. A powerful current started pushing the probe upward. It was soon tangled in it’s on umbilical cord, and the camera registered when something went direct against it. Was like a wheel, made of polished stone on the outside, and red flesh pierced by a thousand teeth inside.

The statue was alive, and it devoured the probe!

I screamed from the bottom of my lungs, like a piece of me was torn apart by that monster.

As I fall on the floor, I could see the interior of the beast. Somehow the cable wasn’t cut.

And what I see was terrifying: Thousands of corpses, mummies like the ones in the city, but still different. Those were fully dressed, usually with hands tied, and look like old men and women, and worst, children. Inside the monster’s belly, hundreds of corpses of children waited to be found. And every single one of them had a expression of absolute horror.

I screamed once more, and tried to get out the room, like if the dead could crawl right of the screen, or worst, like I could be dragged in trough them.

My co-workers rushed to see what was going on but I couldn’t stop to explain. I yelled commanding them to get out of my way and then I hit the evacuation alarm on the wall. One of the men who was with me tried to hold me and ordered me to calm down, and then I almost did a thing I would regret.

I grabbed one fire extinguisher and swung it against his head, and almost killed him.

Luckily I hit his jaw, and not his forehead, and a torrent of blood gushed from his mouth into the wall. He was the hippie, and I really felt sorry for him. After seeing such inhuman  horrors, I immediately gained a greater respect for my fellow men.

The other man did nothing, I realized he was staring at the command screens, paralyzed.

Then, I did something unexpected to me. With a strength that man only find in the face of eminent death, I grabbed both men and pushed them till we find one of the survival boats.

Those boats, designed after the survival boat used in oil platforms, are like bright orange bullets, totally armored and sealed each with room for six men. I pushed the two men inside the boat, when the rest of the crew arrived.

I could only scream, at the top of my lungs :”ABANDON THE BASE NOW!!”.

In those situations, with alarm on, you shouldn’t ask questions, just evacuate, but one of them was too confuse and asked me what was going on.

To my luck, one of the medic interrupted him and rushed to aid the biologist I had hit and told everyone to get in the boats!

Once we closed the hatches, and air compressed system pushed us and we flew like bullets for ten meters, until be hit the water, and then the auto system kicked in, taking us away from the base.

In such boats, we have very tiny windows, and even scared I had to look trough mine.

What I saw? A giant snake like creature far taller than the base itself, rounding it like a boa constrictor about to crush it’s pray.

I wasn’t the only one to see it, but no one knew how evil that thing was. But once it crushed the base like it was made of wet paper then dragged it into the dark of the ocean, we all knew we should fear it.

A powerful storm followed and lasted three days during the time we would had surely died if the boats aren’t so resistant. I spoke nothing to no one, the man who saw the screens in control room only keep repeating that I had saved us all, but not explaining from what. The hippie was dazzled not by my attack, but by the creature he saw destroying our base – he was probably the one who didn’t was afraid of it.

After our rescue, an inquiry took place. I told everything I saw, and at first was called crazy. But in each boat existed a “black box”, a backup with all information and data of the base until the moment they were ejected in the water, and in this records were the data of the probe and our journey into hell.

I was forced to sign a secrecy clause to never spoke of any of that, what I agreed. Everyone sign one, and then a official story was made, where the bad weather caused a structural collapse, and we only survived thanks to my heroic efforts.

Yes, bullshit, but they paid us well for it.

I quit the job as soon as I got the press out of my back, and moved as far as I could from the sea. From time to time I heard news from my old friends and company, and one in particular make me stay awake at night, shivering: They built a new base, three times bigger, exactly on the same spot of the last one, and hippie, now changed into a more serious and ever darker man, is there to conduct “important biological research on exotic creatures”.