This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/IamHereNowAtLeast on 2024-11-01 17:48:54+00:00.

I guess your career path can take a sudden turn…

I used to spend hours slicing through chlorinated water, racing my own shadow down those perfectly spaced, blue-tiled lanes. I was supposed to be at the Olympics, once. I was that close. I’m not even joking. But torn rotator cuffs and a few failed surgeries later, my dreams sank like a stone.

A job in the water with bad rotator cuffs isn’t easy to find either. Most companies don’t want to take a chance on someone who might struggle lifting even 20lbs above their head.

So I’ve been desperate.

I’ve been taking gig work mostly. For a while, I was teaching basic scuba classes to tourists, getting them ready for certification, but lately, I’ve been getting hired by a company called Fjord Explorations.

They’ve developed some new submersibles and are testing them in the Norwegian trench. And one of my old coaches is involved with the company. His wife is one of the investors.

It’s a tiny metal sphere covered with cameras.

Claustrophobic if you let it get to you, part of a new line of business that Fjord Explorations is venturing into. Deep-sea exploration for the everyday consumer.

Designed to drop way, way deeper than any regular Joe is ever really meant to go, pushing the boundaries of what we know about visiting sea floors.

Honestly, as the test has been getting closer, I’ve been psyched. I’m going down 700 meters and giving feedback on their first human-passenger test.

I’m also low-key terrified, but it’s not like I was gonna say no.

****

Inside the submersible was freezing. Way colder than I expected.

The pod was tiny.

Imagine you’re in a spherical MRI machine, standing up right, fully strapped in.

The entire front panel of the pod is a special glass, a viewing porthole.

They’re sending me down, pulling me up. Easy.

“Ready, Maria?” crackled through the speakers, snapping me back to the here and now.

I stared out the porthole at the water.

It was this endless, gorgeous blue that was just begging me to come get lost in it.

“Shit, I guess so,” I replied, adding a grin.

With a lurch, the pod began its descent.

50 METERS

I watched as the world outside shifted from bright turquoise to this dark, almost navy blue. Sunlight still pierced through, casting streaks across the water like an underwater cathedral. The kelp swayed gently, and I could see schools of fish darting around.

100 METERS

It was getting murkier.

The sunlight faded, replaced by a deep blue that was almost hypnotic.

“Visuals are still good,” Control said over the speakers.

200 METERS

I could feel the weight of the ocean pressing in, squeezing the pod. The light outside was nearly gone, and all I saw were shadows.

Strange shapes drifted by. Maybe fish, maybe something else. But it was hard to tell.

The deeper I went, the less anything looked familiar.

300 METERS

The pod’s lights clicked on, casting a faint glow into the darkness. It was eerie, the way the beam just vanished into the black, like the ocean was swallowing it whole.

The pressure built with every meter down, squeezing in, like the ocean’s giving the pod a hug that just kept getting tighter. I tried to keep my breathing steady, my eyes flicking over the gauges.

Depth, pressure, oxygen. So far, so good.

“Camera feed seems to be struggling,” Control said.

“Shit, really?” I asked.

“Let’s hope the connection resolves itself. Radar’s still clear,” they said.

The descent continued.

500 METERS

It was completely dark.

I mean, it was dark in a way you don’t really get until you’re down there. I’d always liked my alone time, but this was next-level isolation. Even my thoughts sounded louder than they should.

700 METERS

It felt like the ocean was closing in, squeezing tighter and tighter.

The pod’s lights barely cut through the darkness, and suddenly, there they were…

Hulking shadows looming just beyond the beam.

The outlines of massive ships, covered in barnacles, rusted and broken, their skeletons frozen in time. World War II vessels, I realized, swallowed by the sea decades ago.

Huge, shadowy figures moved among the wreckage, their serpentine bodies coiling around rusted beams. Massive eyes glowed faintly, reflecting the pod’s light.

They looked like something out of a nightmare, long, serpentine bodies with rippling fins, massive eyes that glowed faintly, watching me. And then, in the distance, I saw her.

A mermaid, her eyes locked on mine.

She was beautiful in a haunting way, her long hair floating like it had a life of its own. Her eyes were empty, cold, like they’d seen a thousand shipwrecks and dragged a thousand souls to the depths.

It almost looked like she was conjuring all of this, like these monsters and ghost ships were her creation, her puppets in the dark water.

Re… venge… for… thou… sand… ships…

Re… venge… for… chem… icals… you… drowned… us… with…

The words were broken, disjointed, but I knew they were coming from her.

They sent a shiver down my spine.

“Control, I… I think I’m hallucinating” I whispered.

It was the only thing that made sense.

Giant sea monsters and ghost ships aren’t real, right? This had to be some kind of pressure-induced, oxygen-starved trip. Suddenly, there was a loud, crunching noise, and the pod shuddered violently.

Yet it was so real. I knew deep down I wasn’t hallucinating.

Then -

One of the ships crashed into the pod, the sound echoing through the small cabin. I could almost hear the groaning of metal, like a deep, ancient sigh, as if the ocean itself resented my intrusion.

“Maria, stay calm,” Control said, voices overlapping, urgent now. “Your readings are… Hold on, we’re seeing a drop in—”

The radio crackled, then cut off entirely, leaving me in total silence. Then there was a loud hiss, and the air inside the pod thinned out.

The following happened in an instant. I will try to describe best I can remember it.

It felt as though the pod was struck from behind by something else. Maybe another ship. I could sense the pod was about to split apart from the pressure.

My heart rate was cruising up and up.

I was staring at the pod’s ceiling, wondering if it might give out.

Then the banging on the front porthole started.

THUMP. THUMP. THUMP.

It was her, slamming her fists against the glass.

She stopped, then slowly reached through the glass, as if it wasn’t there, wrapping her amphibious fingers around my right wrist, squeezing it with more pressure than I could have ever imagined.

She was going to break it, I knew it.

Re… venge… for… chem… icals… you…

My vision blurred, and I tried to focus, tried to breathe, but my head felt light, and everything started fading. The last thing I heard was the pod’s systems winding down, like some eerie lullaby.

Then. Total blackness. Nothing.

****

When I came to, it was the harsh, buzzing lights of the Fjord Explorations office that greeted me. My head was pounding, and I was wrapped in this scratchy-ass blanket that smelled like it had been in storage for a while. Across from me were two HR types, looking at me like I was some science experiment gone wrong.

“Maria, can you hear us?” one of them asked, leaning forward like he was talking to a kid.

I blinked, trying to piece together what was real.

“Uh, yeah,” I croaked. “What… happened?”

The guy glanced at his tablet, scrolling through something.

“We’re still figuring that out. The pod’s systems registered a depressurization event, but when we pulled you up, everything was… fine.”

“Fine?” I repeated, my brain still foggy. “I saw things down there. It wasn’t fine.”

The woman beside him cleared her throat, frowning.

“We reviewed the footage. And I’m sorry to say we lost signal about 300 meters down.”

I stared at her, my mouth dry.

“You’re kidding me,” I finally said.

“We’re going to have you checked out by medical,” the guy said, his voice that fake calm people use when they think you’re about to lose it. “Just to make sure everything’s okay.”

“Yeah,” I mumbled, barely listening.

My eyes were drifting down to my right wrist, where I could see that it was swollen and bruised. It was already a mixture of deep purple. Blood was pulling under my skin.

“We think you may have freaked out and had a panic attack,” he said.

“Fix your fucking cameras,” I snapped back to him.

After being cleared by medical, I was sent home on leave.

To take a couple weeks off and recover.

My wrist healed pretty quickly.

I’ve spent the last week thinking about what happened down there. You could say what happened has become my Moby Dick. I have to get back and figure out what’s happening down there.

Online, I’ve been searching like crazy. But the Norwegian trench is quite young by trench standards, only a million years old or so.

But I did find something…

Apparently, during WWII, the Norwegian trench is famous for having 36 ships sunk that were carrying Chemical Weapons. The attack was approved by the Norwegian government. Never recovered.

So I wonder if this has to do with what I heard down there.

Revenge for chemicals they drowned in. But the thousand ships part doesn’t make any sense.

I think this mermaid figure knows the full story.

My apartment isn’t far from it where we dropped the pod. I’ll catch myself glancing out the window at the fjord. The water looks so calm, so normal, but I know better now.

I’ve seen what’s down there, even if no one else believes me.