Self-Contained Underwater Breathing Apparatus

52 short stories in a year challenge #4. From prompt, 'out of the blue'

When consciousness returned to Frank Adams his eyes opened to slits and he initially assumed himself to be in some kind of watery after-life.

A fluorescent hue of deepest blue greeted his return to awareness, although this meagre illumination was set to backdrop of total pitch, as if looking through an all-encompassing fog by means of a light that emanated from somewhere about his person. He slowly blinked his heavy eyelids fully open to take in the alien surroundings and tried to recall the final moments of life that preceded this strange awakening.

 Adams knew that he had been on an investigative dive, which in his capacity as marine biologist was to explore the ecological impact of a recent oil-eruption upon coral reefs in the South Pacific Ocean. Much escaped his recollection, but he clearly remembered the anger he felt at the sheer volume of devastation caused by the deep sea mining disaster within the Great Polynesian Triangle. The exploration that day had taken place between the Samoan islands of Upolu and Savaii and he and his team were tasked with chronicling the area, from sea basin to surface. They had been here three weeks and had tirelessly toiled, but had covered only a fraction of the vast area affected by the disaster.

Memories of deceased marine life and bleached coral, most likely stripped of its vitality by pollutants and debris even before the spill, thick with slick oil permeated his thoughts as he made to move his weightless form.

His muscles tensed against the pressure that surrounded his body and he was beset by sudden panic when he realised that he no longer wore his wet-suit or, more alarmingly, his scuba equipment. Frank thrashed about in the cavernous space, but succeeded only in turning, spinning slowly as if fixed to one spot in space. He tried to breathe, but found, inexplicably, that he no longer needed to; further convincing him that he was, indeed, dead and no longer a slave to instinctive biological function.

He opened his mouth to speak, but gagged as he tasted a musty flavour accompanied by a syrup-like liquid which invaded his oral cavity.

‘Calm… stay calm,’ he thought

‘Remember… try to remember what h…’

The image of Rosanna Belmont, his long time friend and colleague on the deck of ‘The Salty B***h’ came to him. She saluted him in time with a wink and a smile and a moment later he allowed himself to fall backwards into the ocean. Frank dropped through the depths while he grew re-accustomed to breathing through the regulator then kicked with his fins to force himself deeper…

A flashback came to him.

There was an unexpected discovery below the reef.

First he saw a submerged fishing vessel, one of nine wrecked by whirlwinds; two of which were immovable wrecks and purposefully sunk over a decade before. 10,000 gallons of unused fuel oil had polluted the sea as a consequence, he knew from his qualifying studies in his homeland of New Zealand.

There was mild confusion; he had believed the vessels to be capsized further south. He swam to the iron hull and saw that the deck was covered with the lifeless forms of sea life; their fall to the depths interrupted by yet another life culling monstrosity of human design.

Then the tremors- the earth trembling, ocean stirring gyrations quickly followed by the sudden descent of the ship as the ocean bed opened below. Frank Adams had floundered haplessly; wildly thrashing about as the suction took hold of him and dragged him down with the wreck.

More confusion through panicked breathing and vision obscured within the whirling vacuum of bubbling mayhem and dislodged coral amid hectic surf. The slate dropped from his flailing, grasping hands- the calculations and notes etched upon it lost forever to the ocean. There was a presence of mind to unclip the belt that kept him weighted down, but to no avail and he fell into crushing darkness.

There was more before the end, he now recalled- although feverishly recanting the truth of his recollection. The whirlpool subsided without notice and he regained his equilibrium within a cavernous space with a ceiling of stalactites extending above; a deep abyss below down which the fishing boat plummeted out of sight. He looked at the depth gauge attached to his cylinder and gasped, as well as one could gasp in such an environment, to note that he was more than 300 feet below the surface. Oxygen becomes toxic at such depths, he knew and made futile attempts to find the chasm down which he had fallen.

Frank remembered feelings of mortal terror that were gradually offset by the amazement that he was still alive.

‘Maybe I was dead before I saw it…’

There. The pyramidal object that emerged from the murky depths returned to his mind. Its appearance changing as he gazed in wonderment; glowing purest white then becoming crystalline in appearance as it fluctuated between the limits of the spectrum.

It called to him in his mind- rather it pulled at his very essence as a mother promises comfort to a child. It grew in size as he descended to meet it. There were tears of joy at his eyes and a yearning in his heart as he reached to touch the monumental object that was revealed to be ovular shaped as more of it appeared.

Then peace as contact was made. It felt like…

‘Home…’

Then there was a flash of brightest white which came a second before the blankness of time which ended when he opened his eyes to find himself here.

‘Wherever here is…’

The mariner forced his arms upwards and outwards through the treacle like substance that he was within and then pulled them back in an arc to his sides. He smiled as he felt himself drift from his efforts, but stilled in sharp fright as he glimpsed a grey figure from his peripheral vision. It resembled an amphibious creature that pulled itself horizontally around him. Frank twisted his head left to try and catch sight of the anomaly.

‘What is it?’ he thought through his emerging fear; his every motion causing him to slowly oscillate on the spot.

He saw it again- to his right this time and closer than the first, but it moved so swiftly that he did not have time to focus before it had disappeared into the inky surroundings. No sooner had it escaped his vision than it, or another such creature appeared in front of him only to flit away and re-appear elsewhere.

Frank tried to scream at it, ‘them?’, but only a soundless floatation of foam escaped the confines of his throat. It occurred to him that a hungry school of sharks were circling him, their prey and that he would soon be consumed in this seemingly impossible environment. A surge of self-preservation overcame all rationale and he thrashed about with comical slowness; a feeble attempt to deter the predators he imagined wished to make a meal of him.

He was further dismayed to note that his movements served only to encourage the creatures to edge ever closer and they flashed in and out of view with increasing regularity, until they were mere feet away and he could make out more of their fleeting features.

Frank, though still more afraid than at any time he could remember, was moderately relieved to see that they were most probably not sharks.

They looked humanoid in fact, similar in size and appearance to any person swimming in the deep blue sea, but with significant differences. Their hairless skin looked a colourless shade of grey, their rib cages protruded downwards and their spindly limbs moved in a way reminiscent to how a frog might wade through a pond- although infinitely quicker in motion.

They began to touch him then- gliding lithely behind, around and about him; out of his line of sight and stroking his skin with cold clammy digits before evading the frightened diver’s view. The circling quickened until Frank was spinning in time with the velocity of their movement- then they came at him; encroaching upon his space with arms outstretched to take him in their hold.

Frank managed to count six of them before the face of the nearest closed into his own and obscured his view of all else. He tried to inhale in shock as large black orbs stared from gaunt, grey features- all set upon a domed head and thin face, but had not the capacity to do so, ‘how?’. Grey hands grasped at the side of Frank’s head and something like a voice spoke into his thoughts,

‘Is your work done?’

Frank could only stare at the petrified human face that was reflected back to him from the black eyes ahead. He understood neither the question nor the method of its asking. The language was beyond his comprehension, although he somehow knew the meaning that each utterance represented.

‘Are your preparations complete?’ the crackling, fragmented voice urged as if from an aging wireless radio.

Frank shook his head to show that he did not understand and then felt his mind being probed for the answers. Invasive tentacles of thought infiltrated and brought forth visions from within. Frank saw what the creature could see and convulsed as the information was proffered unbidden by himself.

A collation of chaos, atrocity and disaster played out as if on a newsreel to denote the extent of human folly and all its divisive destruction. His passion for preserving life formed the conduit by which all other recollections of his species’ least desirable activities were relayed.

What began as his disdain and rage at the scourge of the planets life support system gave way to flashes of war, famine, pestilence interspaced with riotous civil disobedience across the globe. People were shown to suffer and die needlessly in preventable catastrophe borne of purposeful atrophy; conflict and uprisings throughout history merged to a culmination of grand devastations on an atomic scale.

The lipless mouth before him opened slightly as if shocked and dismayed, although Frank understood that the creature held no emotion that could be related to. It simply wished to observe the advancements, or otherwise of the human species for reasons as yet unknown to him.

His unasked question was answered in a moment as the creature revealed its motivation.

The human’s thoughts glided across the surface of a planet that was not unlike earth. Its sky and waters were blue and its grass and trees were green- terrestrial animals, some of which were readily identifiable, (such as antelope, leopards, birds and wild boar), though most were not, grazed, gathered and hunted throughout the plains and forests. Oceans, rivers and streams flowed as one might expect, but there the similarities ended.

The vision came to rest outside of a sky high, miles wide conical dome of a citadel which was constructed of a metallic material that reflected its natural surroundings. So effective was the camouflage that it was entirely plausible that the citadel could remain undetected to the untrained eye and were it not presented so obviously Frank suspected he would not have seen it within the surrounding rain forest. He looked about the landscape and saw that such buildings were intermittently dotted as far as he could see- although he had not time to dwell and a heartbeat later saw from within the structure.

From inside he could see the surrounding exterior of the world through the translucent walls that, despite the sunlight, was as if looking through a rain streaked windshield. The creatures, such as those he now encountered were everywhere within the spiralling self-contained citadel. Frank looked to the pinnacle of the construction and saw the inward curving conclusion at its topmost point; thousands of feet above. He glanced slowly down beyond the countless levels that circled around the outer walls; the platforms of which were largely defined by the extent of the activity- which was plentiful and of a vastly different culture to that of which Frank was accustomed.

Within the centre of the dome were situated the dwellings of the alien species; each designed somewhere between a pyramid and a ziggurat and constructed of simple wood and/or stone and mortar. The grey creatures milled all over the place; engaged in interactions and activities completely foreign to human intellect. At best Frank guessed that the mechanisms and substances were of a scientifically inquiring nature, though he understood very little, if anything in truth.

His attention was soon drawn to an animal that accompanied many of the grey race as a dog might a human. They were small ape-like creatures, perhaps four feet in height and very much resembling primitive homo-sapiens.

Frank was made to understand that these pets were indeed his ancestor’s, moments before he witnessed the planet encompassing flood that prompted the citadels to sink into the earth with its selective cargo of life safely aboard.

To the future fled the apparitions and a new landscape formed from the cataclysm that had scoured the surface of the planet. An ice age ensued within which the grey creatures could not survive, but which humans could. Once given the genetic enhancements that enabled evolution to perpetuate with unprecedented rapidity.

They released the species most adept at surviving such hostile conditions and then slept until their favourites had prepared the way for their return. In more habitable times pyramids and ziggurats were built across the globe as a reminder of the time to awaken the creators.

But three thousand years had passed since an elite few refused to relinquish power to their father’s; preferring to rule in hell.

‘You have forgotten who you are. You have forgotten your creators and so your purpose… and limitations,’ the voice told Frank Adams who was rudely returned to the present.

‘It is time for our return and an end to the tyranny of your species.’

Frank knew that it had been he that inadvertently fulfilled the bidding of the ancients. He randomly recalled countless stories and prophecies that perhaps portended this event; the awakening of beauty- judgement day, the second coming, the end of time and conspiracy theories of clandestine control.

He understood that his immersion into the amniotic fluid, from which the first of the modified apes were born, was the catalyst by which the dominant species discovered it was time to return to the surface of the planet Atlantis.

The interior of the citadel lit up and the fluid began to drain away as it broke the surface, while upon the good ship ‘Salty B***h’ Rosanna staggered backwards as a barrage of violent waves rocked the vessel on which she stood.

Concerns for the well-being of Frank Adams, (then all else thereafter), left her mind as she saw an immense reflective structure, the likes of which had escaped human sight for twelve millennia, rising up from the South Pacific.

THE END

Author's Note

Another short that I will expand at a later date- assuming I live to be 325 and manage to get through them all!

Reviews

[ATG]

A very intersting and well written story. It was very engaging and was enjoyable to read. I did like how it ended with the aliens returning from within the planet to stop us from destroying each other. That was a nice touch.