Dave Freedman - Natural Selection

“You’ll be fine,” Sid said. “The suit connects directly to the sub’s oxygen supply, and you’ll have enough for four full hours.” He smacked Jason on the back. “So chill out. Darryl, I need to show you a few particulars with the sub. Phil, you wanna come?”

The three men walked off, and Lisa leaned into Jason and whispered, “You will be fine.”

He nodded, trying to look cool. “I know.”

“You want me to go down in the sub?”

He’d just figured Phil would go. “You’d do that?”

“Actually, I think it could be fun.”

Oh. Now he wasn’t sure why she wanted to go.

“Hey, Jason!”

They turned to Ross Drummond, waving at them from the outdoor flying bridge. “Come over here and talk to me, brother!”

They walked over. “What’s going on, Ross?”

“Ah, not a thing. How about you? Seeing anybody these days?”

“Well… you know I have serious intimacy issues, right, Ross?”

They all chuckled as Ross noticed that Lisa’s wedding finger was ringless. Was something going on with these two?

“Who else is going down in the sub, Jason?” Sid had just returned with Darryl and Phil.

“Lisa.”

“What?” Phil looked wounded by this. “But I wanted to go.”

Sid shrugged unapologetically. “Then lose the belly, pal.”

Jason leaned in and whispered, “Lisa’s more appropriate here, Phil.” He paused. “They’ll be safe, Sid?”

“Safe as a church. Ross and I have personally used this thing thirty times without a problem.”

Jason nodded and Lisa glanced at him sweetly. Was he concerned for her safety? Then the boat stopped, and Ross quickly walked toward them. “Enough conversation. We’re here.”

“ YEAH, PHIL. That could actually be helpful.”

Phil smiled. He’d just explained his idea of recording everyone’s findings in the laptop to Darryl, and to his delight, his crewmate liked it.

“Great. You think Craig and Monique will feel the same way?”

“Definitely. You’re helping them out, brother. You’re helping us all out.”

“Why don’t you take this down in the sub, then?” He handed Darryl a mini–tape recorder. “So we’ll have a record if you see anything worthwhile.”

“How do I look?”

They turned. It was Jason, wearing the atmospheric suit except for the helmet.

Darryl looked him up and down. “Like Neil Armstrong.”

Phil snickered. “Or maybe the Pillsbury Doughboy.”

The suit indeed looked like something an astronaut would wear. White, with big bubble-shaped body parts. But instead of puffy fibers, it was constructed of a hard magnesium alloy that made it nearly impossible to walk in.

His junky flip-flops slapping the deck, Ross approached Jason from behind. “Before we get going, I’m just gonna check there aren’t any holes or cracks in this thing.” This wasn’t a joke. At one third of a mile, roughly two thousand feet, a hole the size of a pinprick in the suit would mean certain death. Ross quickly inspected every bulge and seam. “Everything looks fine. Oh, but…” He checked the casing around the heels. “Yep, fine.” Then he saw Jason’s face. The guy looked terrified. “Loosen up. Your friends will be with you every step of the way, and Darryl knows what he’s doing. There won’t be any problems, I promise.”

“Can anything go wrong with the tube?” Lisa asked.

Ross turned to her. The tube was the size of a vacuum cleaner’s and screwed into the back of the suit’s neck. “No. The tube’s reinforced with magnesium alloy and steel. It’s been crush-tested to thirty thousand feet. It can’t get tangled; it can’t implode; it can’t explode, either. A shark could bite down on it without making a dent.” He got in Jason’s face. “You’ll be fine. Try to relax and have a good trip down.”

Jason nodded tightly. “Let’s do this before I chicken out.”

Seconds later, he stood on the red platform holding a helmet as Ross screwed a tube into his back.

“How you two doing in here?”

Crammed into a sub the size of a phone booth, Darryl and Lisa looked up as Sid Klepper dropped in two men’s ski jackets. “There’s no heat in this thing and it can get down to thirty-five degrees on the ocean floor. Sorry they’re so big, Lisa, but Ross and I love fried food and hate exercise. I’d put them on now.”

They did, and Lisa was indeed swimming in hers.

“Both of you OK?”

They nodded.

“All right, have a good trip.” Sid closed the containment door, sealing them in like sardines.

“Jason, I’m gonna lift the sub now.” Ross walked over to the crane’s controls. “So grab ahold of the railing.”

Jason clutched the red terrace’s guardrail as best as he could with his clunky hands.

“Got a good grip?”

Jason nodded.

“OK, here we go….” Ross flipped a switch and the crane’s electric motor raised the sub straight up into the air, carried it twenty feet away from the boat, then slowly lowered it into the ocean.

Inside, Lisa smiled as sloshing blue seas appeared in front of a viewing pane the size of a big TV. Darryl ignored the view. At the controls, he began fiddling with switches and knobs.

Then a voice sounded from the ceiling. “Darryl, everything OK?”

He flicked a switch. “Fine, Ross. All systems go.”

“Lisa, you too?”

“Fine, Ross, thanks.” She eyed a monochrome monitor of Jason in the back of the sub, fully submerged now in the sun-dappled seas.

“Jason, everything OK?” Ross asked.

From the back platform he looked up at a watery sun. “Yeah, Ross, fine.”

“OK, all of you, listen up. A cable will take you all the way to the bottom then disengage. Once you get down there, you’ll have a fully active sub. And Jason, you’ll be able to walk around as much as you want. That’s it. Any questions or problems?”

No one said anything. Inside the sub and out, they were ready to go.

“All right, I’m gonna cut out. Have a safe trip, guys.”

The sub lurched slightly as a big steel cable began turning. Then Darryl Hollis, Jason Aldridge, and Lisa Barton descended toward the darkness.

BUBBLES STREAMING past his helmet, Jason eyed the departing boat’s underside. His gaze leveled, and he took in the sun-dappled world surrounding them. The water was bright blue, almost turquoise. He didn’t feel nervous anymore. He felt fine, even relaxed. The only sound was from his own machine-assisted breathing. The sea was like a great vacuum, quiet, peaceful, and immense. He stared into its blueness as they descended thirty feet, then fifty, then seventy. Jason had spent a large part of his life in the water, but the ocean still awed him. Inside his helmet, he thought of how foolish the three of them had to look, invading the gargantuan silent world with the aid of their tiny man-made contraptions. As a scientist, Jason had tremendous respect for man’s inventions, but there was something about the vastness of the sea that made them seem puny. He often wondered if astronauts felt similarly in space. He’d never be an astronaut, of course, never look down at the earth from a distant, cold, faraway place, but he’d read the accounts of those who had and imagined himself being there. It was strange, but at the moment, he felt like he actually was. The sunlight was disappearing. The water was darkening.

At the three-hundred-foot mark, he descended toward a few thousand cod, their silver bodies swimming effortlessly. He whirred down and past them. Looking beyond his hard white boots, he saw that what had been blue only moments ago was now a chasm of darkness. His gaze leveled. The water in the immediate vicinity was now a grayish shade, similar to early evening on land. He turned back up to the cod, but they were already gone, silently dissolving. He noticed the cable, their lifeline, and remembered the boat at the surface. It, too, was only a memory now.