Sea Station Umbra

Chapter 18. Dali Actualized

“There’s our call, Marker. Let’s go. SeaPod 1 okay with you?”

“Oh, but of course Chief. I’m driving though. You attend to the siren and PA.”

We flew up the ladder through Quad 2 then the core room and into Quad 1 in seconds. Shortly we were in SeaPod 1 waiting for the bay to flood.

Watching the pod bay door open into blackness, I wondered what we would find out there. Another crashed whale-ship? A sperm whale knocked unconscious by impact? Or something else. That something else worried me the most.

Slowly I brought the SeaPod out of the bay and steered to starboard toward bay number 2 while maintaining a safe distance from the floor to avoid the monopole lying twenty meters ahead of us.

“See anything yet, Chief?” I asked

“Just midnight as usual. And maybe a few anglerfish off in the distance fishing for a meal. Wish I could be fishing for a meal right now on Big Bear Lake.”

“What? And miss all this fun?”

“Yes. I’d do it in a second. And since our mission here seems almost complete I’m already smelling the mountain pines and tasting the cold beer flowing down my throat.”

“Oh stop it, Chief. You’re making me smell steaks grilling over a roaring wood fire. And that’s impossible in this sealed plastic bubble. Now pull yourself back to reality and find out what’s causing those sounds. Check the tractor frame and see if there’s anything rubbing against it. It has to be huge to create those grinding vibrations we heard and felt.”

Briscoe went silent for moments peering out and down through the bubble. Then he jerked in his seat and pointed downward to the location where I expected the monopole to be.

“Down there,” he said, “Where the ROV once was—”

“What do you mean ‘where it once was?’” I interrupted.

“There is something by the monopole but it’s not the ROV. Looks like a wax model of it that’s been in the heat too long. That quarter-ton pound ROV is melting flowing across the ocean’s floor in a brilliant glowing two-meter-long river of blue magma like lava seeping from a volcano. The water around the lava flow is boiling and bubbling up like crazy.”

He repositioned himself in his seat and shielded his eyes from the control panel’s glare.

“Can you turn the floods toward it Marker? I need more light down there.”

“Roger that, Chief.”

Carefully while watching the instrument panel for changes I pivoted the SeaPod downward facing into the monopole. With the floods pointing down, we gasped when we witnessed a vision we were not prepared to see. As in Salvador Dali’s Persistence of Memory painting, objects around the monopole were acting strangely like the melting clocks on his surrealistic landscape. And, as my mind’s eye imagined that imagery the surreal drooping watches were ticking in reverse.

“Can you see it flowing, Chief? Moving?”

“No, it’s barely creeping like molasses on a cold morning.”

“Well that’s comforting,” I said. “We still have some time left.”

“Suppose that movement could make those creepy sounds we heard, Marker?”

“Yes. They were weird, Chief, because we probably heard the sounds in reverse like a record played backward. Time is not flowing forward around it.”

“Oh good God!” he exclaimed, “Look over there at that tractor wheel near the monopole’s glow. It’s beginning to melt too but it’s barely out of round so far: it’s just warping.”

Thinking back to Franklin’s warning I uttered:

“I’m afraid we’re watching the beginning of spaghettification of Discovery One. If the station remains here for very long we’ll all be sucked into its nucleus never to exist again.”

“Or maybe tumbled through space-time into another dimension.”

“Oh don’t be ridiculous, Chief. That’s impossible.”

“You mean like the object we’re looking at right now?”

His retort shut me up when I realized that our understanding of the monopole’s existence was far beyond the reach of any rational imagination. It couldn’t exist yet it did. We were observing a theoretical curiosity actualized into real life: a monopole, a God particle, a singularity, or whatever it was called; it was a physical impossibility. Yet, were drifting toward it slowly succumbing to its power.

“Hey, Marker, wake up!” he yelled tugging my arm. “Our power is dropping and the console clock has slowed to a crawl. Better back away from its grasp or we’ll be joining that ROV in its fiery grave.”

Fortunately, he had noticed the problem. My eyes had been fixed on the visual impossibility to the point of ignoring the controls. As I slammed my attention back to our reality, I saw he was right. We were in the field of the object and being pulled closer by the second.

I jammed the joystick toward my stomach and the propulsion motors roared into reverse vibrating the SeaPod’s structure trying to escape its pull.

“Not working, Chief,” I yelled. “The motors are straining and we’re barely holding our position. If they weaken more we’ll be sucked right in. Options?”

“Hey, Marker, you’re beginning to sound like Bowman now but that’s not a bad thing; blow the damn ballasts and get us some lift. Those motors need some help against that monster’s gravity.”

I hadn’t dumped a SeaPod’s ballasts before but instead relied on its neutral buoyancy and propulsion motors to navigate. Blowing the ballasts was an extreme action equivalent to an emergency surface command ridding the pod of hundreds of pounds of dead weight all at once. It just might work. We would head straight up after they filled with compressed air and then I would have time to regain control as we drifted upward.

Bending closer to the control panel, I searched for the ballasts icon. Nestled in between several other icons I found it. A legend below it said RED=EMPTY. I touched the icon glowing green and listened for the hissing of air: a signal that they were filling. Instead, I heard two loud echoing gasps, sounds that I was not expecting but they told me the same information: the ballasts had filled with air as the icon went red.

“Hey Marker. We’re pulling away! That did it. Now figure out how to stop this thing from floating to the surface. Got your power back now?”

Looking at the panel clock for confirmation, I checked it against my watch.

“They’re both ticking forward and the battery gauge reads green, so yes. We have power.”

“Well, thank God! Let’s dock this thing before something else goes wrong.”

A mere thirty minutes after we left Pod Bay 1, we returned as changed beings. Joking about the pilot in the mental ward we wondered if we also should check in, questioning our own sanity. But we had each other as a witness and we agreed on what we had observed. We had to find Bowman and tell him of the looming danger.

“Now repeat that,” he scoffed, “you experienced spaghettifying?”

“Yes, Dr. Bowman, that’s what we’re trying to tell you. Just like Franklin explained to us. When Ivy warned of the Condition Yellow alert after those grotesque sounds echoed through the station we went out in a SeaPod to investigate. What we found was unfathomable. Down below Pod Bay 2, the ROV is melting into the monopole and a tractor wheel near it is starting to warp in a bizarre distorted way. It happened in front of us as we watched although very slowly,” Briscoe answered.

‘B-but that can’t be real — what you saw. It just can’t happen. Are you positive you didn’t experience some form of hallucinogenic mass hysteria down there?”

“We wondered the same thing, Dave,” I answered, “but when the SeaPod began to lose power and almost killed us we knew then we were in real trouble, not imaginary trouble. It’s down there absorbing everything in sight right now. Probably growing brighter too. The only thing we can’t figure is why it’s not using seawater as a fuel.”

“I’m sure the particle physicist will explain that when he gets here if what you tell me is true.”

“And when is he due here?” I asked.

“At 1030 hours unless they experience weather delays.”

“That’s two hours from now. Mind if we catch a nap, Dave?” I asked. “We’re pretty much running on empty right now with all the emergencies waking us up.”

“Sure, knock yourselves out. I’ll handle our guests when they arrive but I’d like for you to meet them and describe your findings over lunch at…,” he glanced at his watch, “1200 hours. I’m having Chef Saunders prepare his special DV meal for us. You won’t want to miss it.”

As he stood to leave Briscoe said, “We’ll be there, Dr. Bowman. I’m as starved as I am exhausted so that will be perfect.”

“Head on up, Chief,” I said, “I need to give Dave this note I found in Li’s back pocket. Almost forgot about it with all the ruckus. Meet you in the mess hall at noon.”

Nodding he smiled.

“Tell me what the note says, then. I’m too tired to care right now. Just old age I guess but I can still hear my bunk calling.” He winked and left the room.

Dave settled back in his chair and held out his hand awaiting the note.

“What do you have for me, Matt? Did you say you found it in Lt. Li’s back pocket?”

“Yes,” I said and pulled the note from my pocket. Unfolding it I placed it in his hand and sat waiting curious about its message. “I haven’t read it,” I added.

He stared at me for a few seconds then moved his attention the note. I watched his eyes quickly scan the note then move back to me.

“Well, Matt, it seems that what you have found is the missing link to his abduction mystery. Li says here that the one that calls himself Ming captured him from a dive with explosives strapped inside his suit and ordered him into the bay then commanded him to retrieve his notebook and return to the bay without being noticed or he would destroy the station with a giant explosion. He obeyed Ming but was taken captive anyway. And the most important thing in here is his comment that when retrieving it he pulled all the Z information from the notebook and left it in his desk.”

“What does that mean, Dave?”

“It means they still think Discovery One is a radiation monitoring station. He kept the Z material from their eyes. What a brave soldier.”

“I’m glad to hear that, Dave. He must have been a pleasure to work with. Renews my faith in humanity.” Growing tired and ready to bunk down I stood to leave. “So does that tie up all the loose ends of your mysteries we came down to solve? I mean can we head back home anytime soon?”

“Not so fast, Matt. You’re forgetting the new elephant that just walked into the room.”

“The monopole?”

“Exactly. Our staff is not trained in stressful diving procedures nor expected to participate in such life-threatening undertakings. That’s what you and Mr. Briscoe are best at from what I hear. I’d like you both to remain here and get us out of this new danger. And, not surprisingly this one may be the most difficult to deal with. Seems we are now fighting the laws of physics and none of us are prepared for that battle.”