The Trench of Oblivion
 

It was 5:46 p.m, December 28th, 2021. We were ten thousand, nine hundred ninety-four meters below the water’s surface on our mission, when it happened…
December 21st, 2021, Donald Winslow Gregory, 32 years old, a man of sturdy appearance, enters the headquarters of the NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration), in Maryland, US. The successful oceanography engineer had been called by the organization, to embark on a special journey, eleven kilometers into the Mariana Trench. This man, of course was me, but he was quite different to me, for this man was not aware of what was going to happen, and I have lived and suffered through it. Anyways, in the main building, I met my fellow scientist, Dr. Kazuo Tachibana, 38 years old, a cheerful Japanese marine engineer, who always wears a suit and a tie, looking sharp.  There, I encountered my colleague Dr. Gerhardt Schütze, a German marine biologist, very silent and has a closed personality, but passionate about marine life. After waiting in the lobby a little while, the administrator of the organization, Kathryn D. Sullivan, entered the scene. Her hair as gray a stormy day’s sky, and her face pale, with wrinkles around her mouth and under her eyes. Those eyes which had experience with the wonders of the unknown before, in her glory days in space. She was frowning, walking in a fast pace, this meant trouble. She then called for our attention. “We have an issue,” she said.
“What kind of issue?” I asked.
“We have received some news,” she responded with a sigh. “ A Japanese ship, coming from the new port in Ogasawara, has detected some strange objects in its radar,” she continued. “We do not know what it is, and we do not have a clue; we only know it is not an animal.”
“Near Ogasawara? Couldn’t it be one of those commercial underwater cruises?” I asked.
“No, it wouldn’t be possible, those never go that far into the Mariana,” responded Tachibana shaking his head.
“This is why you have been called, you need to go out there to figure out what this object is,” ordered the Administrator .
That was how it all started. For a week, we trained and prepared for our adventure, finally descending in San Francisco bay at 3:20 am, on December 27th, inside the Nautilus II (in honor of the ship in Jules Verne’s book Two Thousand Leagues Under the Sea).

We arrived the next day, at 2:14 pm, to where the deepest point of the trench was supposed to be. From there, we started our three hour and a half descent. “It sure is dark in here, we are barely 2 km below the surface and there is no light,” announced Tachibana. It really was dark, the ocean was oil black, and there was no sound except the noise of our own breathing and the buzzing of the engine.
“I wonder if we'll get to discover new species of fish, that can resist all the pressure of the water down here,” mumbled Schütze.
“Whoa, look at all of those little lights, It looks like we are in the middle of space right now,” I exclaimed pointing at the lights. I wished “she” was here, to see it.
“Those are lights actually being emitted by different animals, in a process called bioluminescence,” clarified Schütze. I wasn’t paying attention to him, even though it was scary being here in the darkness, I started to wonder, what else lived here?
“Don’t get mad at him for not paying attention to you Gerhardt, remember, ADHD,” said Tachibana, annoyed.
I saw ghostly figures floating in the oblivion, telescope octopuses, that was what Gerhardt told me. I saw a red jellyfish that looked like a hat, a benthocodon. I watched dumbo octopuses float around. They looked almost cartoon-like, defenseless, but they weren’t. I saw one of them swallow a fish whole. Not that innocent after all. Suddenly, I saw a  monstrous face appear in the front of me, it had small eyes, and big teeth, and a little lightbulb-looking object on its forehead. I almost jumped out of my skin. “That’s an angler fish, even I know that,” chuckled Tachibana.
We continued going, deeper and deeper, and by kilometer six, there were no more stars in the sky. I started feeling nervous, and I realized Tachibana was scared too.
“We haven’t found anything and we are too deep, I have a bad feeling about this,” he announced.
“Me too, I think we should be going back,” I agreed.

“Stop, worrying to much,” grumbled Schütze. “You get scared about anything, even about a tiny anglerfish of about 10cm of length.”
We heard a strange sound. A loud sound. We were lucky, that our ship had sound repellant equipment, because, the frequency of the sound could have destroyed our internal organs. Even though some of it had been blocked, I could still feel the vibrations all over the ship. “What was that?” I screamed on the top of my lungs, covering my ears.
“I don’t know, let's check the data from the microphones” replied Tachibana also shouting over the sound.
We checked the data. My heart started racing. It can’t be. No. No. It can’t be. It was the same frequency as the “Bloop”, the sound that was detected by the NOAA in 1997 near Antarctica. The NOAA had told the public that this sound came from the cracking of icebergs in Antarctica, but we knew better. We had kept it a secret in the NOAA, it was no iceberg, it was a new animal…
There was a big thump. The ship started shaking. Then there was another thump.
“There’s a leakage!” exclaimed Tachibana.
“Put on the aqua suits before we drown!” barked Schütze.
“Everyone online?” I asked through the radio in the helmet.
“Lookout Don…” that was the last thing I heard before passing out…
I slowly opened my eyes, not knowing where I was. Everything was so bright. I could smell the stench of iron. Blood. Am I dead? My vision started clearing, and I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. My torso had been opened, I could see all of my organs. But I did not feel anything. I looked closely, and there were strange figures hanging around me. I was shocked, they didn’t look anything like normal doctors, they had a fish like face, with fins  for hair. Their faces were a dirty turquoise color, and their eyes were catlike, yellow with a vertical opening in the middle, where you could see right through their soul. They started to make strange sounds with their mouths, but then I heard one of them say, “Audio translator placed!”
“Specimen 001, A+ blood…” I couldn’t hear the rest. Everything went black.

I woke up in the submarine’s bed, everything had been a dream. I unstrapped myself from the bed and I saw Tachibana and Shütze sitting on the dining table, when I noticed something was wrong. I looked around me and I saw that we were still underwater, but we weren’t in the submarine anymore, we were in a transparent cupola or dome. I saw underwater volcanoes in the distance. No wonder it was warm, and it stank like rotten eggs because of the sulfur. I touched the cupola with curiousness, and it was pretty soft and bendy, like a bubble. “Don’t touch it or you will perish” said a strange voice, almost woman-like, but it sounded strange, as if someone was gargling milk while trying to talk. I looked towards the direction of the voice. And I saw one of those strange creatures of my dream, outside the cupola, looking at us with a spearlike object in her hand. She looked like a woman, she had a more refined face than the others, and a slimmer body. She reminded me of Lucille, my girlfriend.
“Who are you?” I asked, “Where am I?”
“I am Nuvi, daughter of Axtairx, Emperor of the Marehomn,” she responded in a calm voice, “You are in the empire of Fluminisia, which my father, son of the last king of Atlantis, created to unite all of the kingdoms of the Marehomn.” I was astonished, what was she saying? Did she actually mean that the kingdom of all of those myths, Atlantis, was real?
“She is joking right, and I am dreaming.”
“No you are not, and she isn’t joking,” exclaimed Schütze, “It appears that the ‘Bloop’ sound was made by one of them, and the thing that attacked our ship was them…”
“Why did you attack us?” I interrupted.
“You were on our territory, and no one who enters it shall see the light again,” proclaimed the fish woman, “You shall be taken to the Emperor, for he will decide your fate.”
We get taken in an awfully strange transportation device, through the city. The city was enormous, full of lights, which Nuvi had told us that they were produced by harnessing the bioluminescent cells of the animals that lived there, to generate some kind of energy that is kind of similar to electricity. The city was glorious, it kind of reminded me of Tokyo, which I had visited on spring with Lucille. In the middle of the city, we found an enormous palace, and I guessed that we were heading there, I was right. We entered the palace, which was filled with “Marehomn” armed with weapons, and a soldier outfit, I presumed.
“Welcome to Fluminisia people of the Earth,” I heard a truly majestic voice say. “I am Emperor Axtairx of the Marehomn. You may be wondering why you are here, well, you were in our territory, and you shall never come back to the surface, for no one should know where we reside, nor anyone should know of our plan.”
“What!? Stay here? A plan?” I blurted.
“Yes, yes a plan. I believe, that because you are most likely going to die in our experiments, you deserve to at least know about our plan.”
“Die!?” Tachibana choked.
“Silence! You must remain silent in order to hear our story,” gnarled the Emperor, his face was purple, “It all began with you! You and your stupid machines, that you use to dig up petrochemicals from the ocean ground! All of the mess you made, spilling it into our territory, killing all of our food! It didn’t stop there! You, dirty humans, who dump all of your disgusting waste into our oceans, never cleaning up after yourselves! Throughout the years, you have messed up our ecosystem, and I repeat, killing our food! That shouldn’t be tolerated!” he paused “You, who killed my son, the one who would inherit the throne, with your sonars!” he screamed, tears starting to drop from his eyes. After he had calmed down, he continued, “So we came up with an idea,” he said, and in his face, you couldn’t distinguish between sadness, anger or happiness, “You will pay your debt. We have devised a machine, to raise the water levels to cover your land, we have been using it over the years and covered some of your terrain but it wasn’t very effective.”
“Are you saying that the rising of the sea level, was not because of global warming but because of you!?” I yelled.
“Yes indeed, it was us,” the Emperor continued, “But as I said before, it wasn’t very effective. Yet we found the last part we needed in your ship, ‘The Core’! Servants, bring it.” Four Marehomn entered through the door with a very strange machine. “This, will help us conquer the surface. However, we have something more. A virus which we have devised, that thrives and multiplies in A+ blood, will be spread all over the Earth, leaving all humans under our control, becoming our new food.”
“What?”
“Take them away to their habitat, and continue further experiments on them!”
We stayed in the habitat for over a week, thinking about the surface. What could be happening up there, what are people thinking about our disappearance? “We have to get out of here, we cannot die here,” I finally told the team one day.
“We need to come up with a plan as soon as we can, because these experiments are draining me,” said Schütze.
“How? I don’t think we are going to make it anyways, we are going to die soon,” said Tachibana quietly. He looked miserable. His shiny new suit, the one he had wore on the day we left the surface. The day he waved cheerfully back to his family, promising them he will come back safely. His shiny suit,  had been torn and stained with blood.
“We can’t die here!” I repeated, “We can’t let our loved ones down, Tachibana, remember your family, your wife, your kids.”
“Yes, I know,” he responded, with deep sorrow in his voice
“Maybe I could help,” we heard a voice say. It was Nuvi. She had been very kind with us through our days here, but we still couldn’t believe that a member of “them” was going to help us.
“What’s the trick?” questioned Schütze.
“There is none, I just feel extremely bad for you, even though you are humans. I remember when my brother, before he died, saved one of your kind from a shipwreck, because he thought it was the right thing to do. Even though he was later killed by some your people.”
“I don’t know,” I said, pondering on what she had just said,“I do not know if we can trust you.”
“Well if you don’t trust me, then you will have to say goodbye to this map of the city and its escape routes.” she was holding a screen in her hand, made up of bioluminescent particles, with a map of the city on it.
“No! We want to leave this place, we trust you,”  Tachibana rushed to say.
“Don’t be too quick to answer,” I said, “It might be a trap.”
“Even if it is a trap, we will die here anyways,” remarked Schütze. I meditated my response for a minute. I really wanted to see Lucille again. I didn’t want her to worry.
“Yeah you are right, I guess we will take it," I finally uttered.
The next week, we started devising our plan, Nuvi brought us instructions for piloting the Marehomn ships. Also, she brought materials, in order for Tachibana to build weapons and suits to help us escape. Our plan basically consisted of: breaking out of the bubble, surviving the water and the pressure, avoiding the soldiers, and  getting to the ships without getting caught. We decided that we were going to take a secret passage behind one of the city’s main buildings, into the sub-ship hangar. After that, we would use the ships in the hangar to escape the city. However, throughout the course of the week, we started noticing that something was wrong, terribly wrong. Everyday, Shütze came to the habitat with baggy eyes from the experiments, he could not sleep, he had trouble breathing, and he wouldn’t eat. Something was not right. January 8th, Gerhardt Schütze passed away in the habitat. Our friend, who loved fish, who was very serious, but managed to smile, was gone. He, who taught me the things in college that I didn’t understand. He didn’t care about my ADHD, he explained things to me over and over if needed until I got him. He was a nice man, he always had great ideas in his mind, which he hesitated to share because he was shy. We didn’t get the chance to hear him! It was their fault! Those creatures of evil, who killed my friend for their own interests! Once we get away of this place, I will avenge him.  We will find a way to eradicate their foul species!
It was January 13th, the day had come. We waited the whole day until there were no guards on duty, Tachibana and I put on our new suits and break the bubble of the habitat with our weapons. We were free, but the alarm runs. We swam rapidly, slipping through the shadows, finding our way to our destination. The city was a total chaos, there were soldiers everywhere looking for us. We then found Nuvi, hiding, she helped us find our way to the hangar. The alarms were deafening, and they were everywhere. We were in great trouble. Tachibana and I each found a ship to board. Like normal fighter jets, these were for individual pilots, they were maneuverable and and had great weapons. These would help us get away from this place and attack if necessary. We quickly waved to Nuvi and we took off from the underwater hangar, when suddenly, there was an explosion, I looked back, and Tachibana’s ship was not there.
“It was sabotaged! Curse those ugly creatures!” I shouted inside my vehicle, wiping tears off my eyes. I was alone now. The only survivor.
I started hearing blasters behind me, this was the first time I had rode one of this things, but I managed to control it. I dodged all of their attacks, while ascending to the surface. Just nine more kilometers to go. It was then, when I realized that there wasn’t anyone after me anymore. Had they let me escape? Am I safe? I didn’t turn back, for my goal was up there. I needed to get back to Lucille, tell her that I am well, so she doesn’t worry. I needed to hug her tight, and tell her... tell her it will all be alright.
January 16th, I arrived to La Jolla Shores, San Diego. Three days had passed since my escape. Three days with barely any water. Three days without food. I was a little astounded at the time, the lack of food and water had driven my senses crazy. I couldn’t see clearly. When my ship arrived to shore, it got lots of attention. People were running, screaming, saying that the aliens had come to earth, which was not that far from reality. And before soon, people in black clothes, with helmets, guns and vests arrived. The FBI. They took me away and put me to sleep.
“Lucille!” I exhaled.
I woke up, and I noticed that I was in a normal chair, a black chair. There was a big table, and there are lots of chairs like mine, surrounding it. “You are in the situation room,” I hear a familiar deep voice say, “I know everything.” I then notice that there was a man, with a suit, sitting at the other end of the table. And I recognized him at once.
“Mr. President, sir, there is something I need to tell you about, the NOAA sent us in a mission down the Mariana Trench and…”
“Hush,” he interrupted me, “I already know.”
“Well we need to do something! We cannot stay sitting here, our world may end if…”
I couldn’t believe what my eyes see, the President, took of his face, peeling it off like when you pull away dead skin. Then, what I saw behind the facade, was a face I had seen before. It was a fish like face, with fins for hair. His face was a dirty turquoise color, and his eyes were catlike, yellow, with a vertical opening in the middle, where you could see right through his soul.

“Thanks for delivering ‘The Core’, and bringing the virus,” he paused, “Your mission is complete. The invasion has begun.”