***** Vol.1 Chap.40 The deep unknown *****

As Kristin leveled off the sub after diving to a depth of about 1500 feet, she switched on the outside cameras. Nothing showed up on the monitors. She tried to control remotely the cameras, again nothing except a lot of snow and static on the monitors. Frantically, she tried to patch each outside camera to each inside monitor, hoping that one of those combinations would work, but to no avail. She suddenly remembered that she had not switched on the searchlights. She shook her head and wagged her fingers at herself.

Unfortunately, after switching on all the outside searchlights, there was nothing showing up on the monitors. Again methodically, she connected each camera to each monitor, nothing. Well, the fall must have jarred loose the camera casings. Whatever the case, she was now as blind as a bat except for two portholes at the front of the sub.

Knowing Jonas, he would send in deep-sea divers to recover the sub. With the new sonar array on board, it would take very little time to locate the sub, but she was not about to make it easy for them. Switching all outside lights off and easing the sub towards the ridges, she used the portholes to help her steer.

Surprisingly, even to herself, she was not afraid. But on the contrary, she was at peace that she was in the right place and at the right time. She amused herself that perhaps a giant fish would gobble up the sub and carry her and the sub away to some exotic place, like Jonah in the bible. Perhaps the ocean floor would open up and she would fall inside to the center of the earth. Maybe someone from the lost civilization of Atlantis would come and lead her to a secret underwater dwelling. Maybe she would meet real mermaids after all and they will come and lead her to their underwater haven.

A thump on the sub awoken her day dreaming. She jumped up and listened, considering the possibility that she had been found by Jonas’ divers. She listened and listened. Nothing. After a while, her fears abated, she consoled herself that the thump was caused by a passing fish.

This time, there were two thumps on the sub. She jumped up again. She peered through the portholes, but saw nothing at all. If the thumps were from the divers, they would carry portable searchlights and knocking loudly. Surely, she would have seen the searchlights from her portholes. But when she peered out the portholes, she saw nothing but a few curious fish milling around the window.

Not for a minute did she imagine Jonas cared anything about her life. The idea came that Jonas would simply wait till she ran out of oxygen in two hours and then retrieve the sub at his convenience without interference from her. Problem solved. He could just instruct his divers not to “discover” the sub until she was suffocated. Then, at their own time, he would retrieve the sub and claim that a suicidal attempt by a mad scientist caused a minor inconvenience. In the end, she would have been out of the way without him lifting a finger.

She was quite unsettled and bothered by that perception.

Maybe the divers had already found her and had marked the location, or even had connected a salvage line. Now they were just buying time until she ran out of air. She jumped up and checked her gauges. There was only an hour of oxygen left!

Panic set in.

She sat motionless because she was depressed. All this trouble only to end up helping Jonas solve a nasty problem. That was not fair. She had not helped herself; rather, she had helped her biggest nemesis.

“Jonas, listen to me. You are not getting the sub.” She said loudly, declaring her determination.

She was tempted to turn on the communication link and air out her anger on Jonas. In her mind, she had images of Jonas in the control room barking out orders. But she had no great desire to talk to Jonas and much less wanted him to know that she was blind in the water. She did not want to give Jonas a chance to gloat over her as she was taking her last breath. No, she did not want to talk to Jonas.

She was itching to go outside, but eventually decided against it. Jonas’ divers might be waiting for her to come out. She would not give up that easily.

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

Dive…

Yes, diving as deep as the sub would take her.

Dive…

She remembered there were several ravines around the ridges. If she took the sub and dived into one of those deep ravines on the ocean floor, Jonas would never recover the sub. She was not about to hand over the sub to Jonas on a silver platter.

That idea delighted her.

With gusto, she switched on the front searchlights, powered up the sub, and swung the sub around slowly. No divers around. Turning on the active sonar, she marked the bearing where the ravine was. She didn’t care if Jonas could see her anymore. In fact, she kind of hoped that Jonas would track her for a moment driving the sub down into the ravine. She would definitely enjoy seeing his sour face.

Nudging the sub forward and finding a reasonably large ravine nearby, she maneuvered the sub in that direction. On an impulse before the dive, she switched on the audio portion of the communication link and spoke into the microphone.

“Goodbye, Jonas. Despite all your lies and treacherous maneuvers, Jennifer is still my sub and my creation!”

Before he had the chance to reply, she quickly disconnected the link after her goodbye.

Slowly, she drove the sub into the ravine and set the sub to dive slowly in a circular pattern into its depths. She wanted to have one last feast for her eyes in her watery resting place. She kept the front searchlights on so that she could look out of the porthole.

The deep ravine turned out to be just a narrow opening. Below the opening laid an enormous cavern filled with all kinds of living creatures. Most of these creatures she had never seen before. While some creatures had some rudimentary eyes, most of the creatures had no eyes at all. Yet their bodies were decorated with beautiful colors. Perhaps this was the first time their splendor was seen and appreciated by real eyes with the help of the searchlights as the artificial sun.

Some creatures looked like a basketball and were as round as she could tell. They had no mouths or other distinctive appendages. She thought they must absorb the nutrients from the water through their skins. There were many species of seaweeds with different leaf patterns. One particular species of seaweed seemed to be a mobile kind. Even when she was staring at it, the appendages at the base would wriggle, and the whole plant would move in search of a better environment. The progress was slow, but they could move! She was amazed.

The sub came to a gentle stop at the bottom of the cavern. At the end of the cavern, a narrow passageway opened up to another smaller cavern.

A maze! A gigantic one too.

As long as she had power, she followed the passageway deeper and deeper into the underground labyrinth. She was dumbfounded to see that there were completely new ecosystems in every cavern she visited. She wished she had time to record her discoveries. For now, what she saw fulfilled her lifelong goal.

While there was still plenty of power left in the battery, the oxygen in the sub was now totally exhausted. The air was getting stale. Turning on all the searchlights, and suited up in the lightweight atmospheric diving suit, she took the two cylinders of oxygen with her. She hoped to use the last bit of oxygen to frolic in the cavern just like the creatures, to be one with them in the cavern. It was not enough just to watch from the sub. She must be outside the sub, touching and touched by the creatures, and be a part of the wonderful world around her.

After suiting up, she flooded the airlock and opened the hatch to this new world outside. She saw that while all the cameras were secured, the connecting signal lines had all been snapped off. But that did not matter anymore. There were no divers around. She was finally alone. No divers could survive that long and that deep.

Instead of regret, she was happy knowing that Jonas could never find the sub again. No matter how advanced the technology was, he would never find her here. She was finally free, free to play and enjoy what would be her eternity resting place.

One precious hour left!

She set out to explore the cavern, starting from one end. She caught a spherical creature and turned them round and round. They seemed to be happy, bobbing up and down from any angle. A passing jellyfish waved at her. She reached out to touch the jellyfish; the body was soft and graceful. She examined the mobile seaweed, but no matter how much she studied the seaweed, she did not understand how they could be mobile.

The hour disappeared swiftly. One cylinder of oxygen was used and discarded. With the last cylinder of oxygen running out, she was now having trouble breathing. She approached the other end of the cavern and sat down. She was not sad and certainly had no remorse about what she had done.

The gauge on the cylinder read empty. Only a few breaths left.

She recalled her ants in the ant farm, the fish in her aquarium, her puppy. Finally, she remembered George wishing him a long and happy life.

A little stir on the floor. A few bubbles rose from the cavern floor. A few tiny eddy currents twirled all around her. The little eddy currents became a strong current moving around. She closed her eyes and let out her last breath. She felt herself spinning faster and faster. Her consciousness left her.

But right before her last breath, she seemed to notice a giant bubble coming towards her, engulfing her, carrying her…

Darkness.