This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/ThePrimordialSource on 2024-10-05 04:47:27+00:00.

“Hot material piped from deep beneath the rocky underwater surface provided warmth like a mother’s womb. At these abyssal dreary depths of the ocean, the first forms of life evolved without even sunlight present; little molecules and chemicals freely floated and stitched together, becoming amino acids and proteins and cells and merging together and becoming plant and animal and - eventually - human. The ocean gave birth to life and civilization on this Earth.

It was only reasonable that our next investigation into the origins of life was the nearest ocean in our solar system.

Europa, the smallest moon of Jupiter. A frigid world, covered in a layer of ice that extends for kilometers. Beneath all that, however, is the keys for life. A deep ocean, extending over a hundred kilometers at the darkest depths. Just like on Earth, hydrothermal vents might provide warmth and material for life to form.

But when we tried to send probes, even our best antennae could not properly penetrate through the upper layers of ice. That’s where you come in. Your mission is to -“

I zoned out from the training video displayed in my cryo-pod as I watched the duo dance together outside the vacuum-sealed window. Jupiter and Europa. The creamy, dirt-scarred surface of the latter contrasted with the violent yet puffy clouds of the gas giant standing across the horizon and taking up most of the field of vision. From here, it all seemed to be relatively peaceful. Heaven knows I regret thinking that now.

The other pods began to unfreeze along with mine. I was one of the operators of the mining equipment; drilling past a massive sheet of ice with a hole big enough to fit a submarine is no easy feat!

“Hold on tight. Landing’s gonna be a little rough.”

I remembered astronaut training. The spinning machine to get you accustomed to high G-forces. Yeesh. I clung onto the ladders of my pod as I felt my bones and flesh begin to rattle and jiggle like jelly, but it stopped just as soon as it started. Our pre-designated spot was in a valley where the ice was much thinner.

“Rock, paper, scissors for who has to put the suit on and get out there,” a voice said.

“And push ice and rocks around all day in a sweaty smelly suit? Hell no.”

“I’ll do it.” Really the drill-pod wasn’t too bad, aside from the shaking. A metal chair and control center suspended in a room above the excavator to make sure the icy material was properly moving out and operate the equipment. I preferred the solitude anyway.

The feeling of the rapid tilt as the drill turned upward was a little nauseating, almost as much as the landing. The tunnel needed to be sloped to allow the submarines to fall through slowly. I got to work excavating, alone with my thoughts. That, and the endless feeling of space. The sky looked more white than black with all the stars pock-marked across it. Could it really be that for so long we searched out there when the best candidate might’ve been literally our next door neighbor?

My thoughts were interrupted as a static sound came through my suit, then a comm. I gritted my teeth. “Status report?”

I opened my camera feed. Little droplets of water began to spit out from the newly formed cave below, tracing along the surface of the drill and being shaken off. I was told I should head back in; the sub’s coming out.

For the next few hours as we waited for it to slide down I was given busywork through the whole outpost. I wandered room to room setting up hydroponics equipment, scientific instruments and taking readings.

Naturally, my boredom shifted to a sense of anxiety. We were getting close to our goal now. It must’ve shown on my face, because the captain on my team turned to me and asked what I think we’ll find down there.

I frankly didn’t know how to answer him. Could the journey have been for naught, with nothing of meaning down there? Could we be diving off the deep end, releasing something uncontrollable? That hole out there - one of my making - might be the difference between our lives and deaths.

I jumped as another comm came through. “Sub crew, 100 meters down.“ We all walked down the long corridors to the view feed room. The monitors showed mostly black with little rays of sunlight poking through the ice, dimming as they went deeper and deeper.

“200.”

“300.”

“400.”

They continued to rattle off numbers as the screen went from greenish-blue to grey to black. I shivered in my seat a little; the only discernible pattern my human mind could grasp was the subtle static through the screen.

The sensory deprivation ceased with some sort of vocalization. A clicking and pulsing sound, guttural like a thick mucus-coated tongue lapping against the palate of the mouth. A distant set of lights emerged again, lighting up in specks not unlike the stars just above the ice.

We normally would’ve celebrated, but an air of fear settled over the room. A sense that we shouldn’t be down here. Our eyes were glued to the screen yet as the creature approached.

“Echolocation. That’s the clicking. There isn’t any light down here. How else could it find its way around? I-“

He stuttered as a long tentacle reached out, forked over and over like a snake’s tongue or the branches of a tree, with flat disks across the sides. The viewfinder got cut off as one of them smacked across the front, but the interior lights of the vessel let us peek in: a set of many glowing tongues licked across the surface.

Crack. Creaaaak. Crack.

Water pumped in as this enormous hellspawn compressed and bit.

This had to be a bad dream. It had to be. I pinched myself over and over trying to zone out the yelling and gasps around me, even raising my arm to my mouth and sinking my teeth into my flesh a little.

The camera turned up as the creature let go, with its loud clicks again. Rising toward the huge hole we left in the surface. Echolocation.

“We have to choke it out! Someone turn on the drill!”

This time, snowball’s chance in hell I was going to volunteer. “No WAY am I going out there.”

“Rock paper scissors?”

“Fine.”

—— I swore at everything through my suit as I got pushed to the other side of the airlock, out in the vacuum and with that thing out there.

“You can do this. Deep breaths.”

Pushing the lever down it shook again for a few moments before it stopped and slowed.

Red. That was all I saw. Mangled bloody arms spread across the spiraling surface of the excavator and tunnel. Any relief was short lived, though, as the flesh started to pulse and throb again, sliding up toward me.

I screamed as it approached and I sped up the ladders from the excavation room back to the airlock.

By the time I unsuited, all the windows of the outpost were covered in crawling flesh. For all we knew, our universe was replaced with one where only meat, blood and fat existed.

Tap. Tap. Tap.

Our fate looked to be the same as the one of our waterlogged brethren below.

Tap. Tap. Tap.

Some were silently sobbing to themselves.

CRACK.

All our air began to leak out and that was their cue. A nasty dripping sound came every time more flesh poured in.

It wrapped around our legs and spiraled up our bodies.

Lapping at my own exposed bite-mark.

Tearing into my skin.

In my last moments I could’ve sworn I heard something from the comm room.

This is Mission Control, the next wave of colonists will be landing shortly at your location.