Dave Freedman - Natural Selection

Inside the sub, Darryl glanced at a depth gauge as they passed five hundred feet. “Keep the lights off, Lisa?”

“Yes.”

Darryl flicked a switch. “Keep the lights off, Jason?”

“Definitely.”

None of them had actually been this deep before. They wanted to see the darkness, to feel it, to experience it, a silent, watery darkness that didn’t exist anywhere else on the planet.

They passed seven hundred feet then eight. And then, very gradually, it became totally black.

Alone on the platform, Jason’s eyes were wide open but saw nothing.

“Passing one thousand feet,” Darryl’s calm voice said inside his helmet.

Jason enjoyed the mystery of being here. Not long ago, the basic laws of marine biology had said no marine life at all existed in the zone they’d just entered. But as everyone now knew, those “laws” had never been laws at all but fundamentally flawed beliefs. Who were we kidding? We still don’t know anything about life down here. Staring into the pitch darkness, Jason thought of all the species that had only recently been discovered—the red shrimp, gelatinous squid, black fishes, and so many others. But what about those that hadn’t been discovered, that were still unknown? Were any of them close?

They passed 1,200 feet then 1,500.

Then the lights came on. Not from the sub but from fish, several thousand light-emitting jellyfish, each a few inches long and shaped like an ice-cream cone. The jellies suddenly surrounded Jason, and he just watched them, lit up in blues, reds, and whites, a platoon of slowly rising champagne corks, climbing straight up into the darkness. Whirring down and past them, he twisted his neck, marveling as their pulsing forms ascended. And then they were gone, fading into the abyss in seconds. It became pure black again.

Jason looked around. “If you guys are ready, I wouldn’t mind having my vision back.”

“And then there was light,” the voice in his helmet said calmly.

Like a spaceship, several dozen headlights illuminated from all angles, and the water became bright blue again. Jason looked around anew. The light had a range of just a few hundred feet. Beyond were vast walls of blackness in every direction.

Darryl focused on a depth gauge. “Passing eighteen hundred feet. Should be touching down soon.”

They continued descending, until, two and a half minutes later, at a depth of exactly 2,102 feet, the sub lurched up and they landed on the ocean floor.

JASON SUDDENLY jerked to the left. What was that?

Inside the sub, Lisa jolted toward the same spot. “Did you see that, Darryl?”

“No.”

She flicked a switch. “Jason, did you see that?”

“Not well enough to make it out.” But he knew where it was, hiding in the darkness just beyond the range of the lights. And then it returned, swimming out of a black wall. A rattail fish, long and snakelike. Not what they’d come for, but it was good to confirm that life was actually here.

Lisa and Darryl watched as the foot-long fish swam right up to their window. It peered in curiously, looking right at Darryl. Lisa smiled. “I think he wants a date, Darryl.”

Darryl smirked. “He’s not the only one who wants one of those, is he, Soccer Mom?”

“What are you talking about?”

Darryl smiled. “Don’t worry. I’m not gonna tell.” He flipped a switch. “So, Mr. Aldridge, want to try out your sea legs?”

Jason turned on the platform. Looking very much like Neil Armstrong indeed, he wished he had a waterproofed American flag. “This is one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.”

“Go get ‘em, Neil!” Darryl yelled happily inside his helmet.

Lisa watched him on the monitor. Be careful, she thought.

As if testing whether the sand could actually support his weight, Jason tentatively put one foot down. Then the other. He just stood for a moment, literally getting grounded. Then, for the first time in his life, Jason Aldridge walked on the seafloor. Boots clanking, the oxygen tube growing longer, he ambled to the front of the sub and peered in.

He reminded Darryl and Lisa of the rattail fish a moment ago.

Darryl flicked a switch. “Everything cool?”

“Great. Now let’s look around….” He thumped away, noticing a big brown rock the size of a pool table. As he walked closer, he spied a colony of foot-long pogonophora worms, several hundred writhing around on the rock like snakes, apparently feeding on greenish-brown algae. Many weren’t moving. He looked up and realized tiny, guppy-size fish were everywhere, floating belly-up. “GDV-4’s down here, guys.”

His eyes shifted beyond the light, to the darkness, and he wondered if anything else was hiding. Then he noticed movement near his feet. A kelp strand was just floating there. He picked it up. There were no visible bite marks, but the tips were dried out and brittle. It had been on the seafloor for some time. “We’re in the right neighborhood.”

He flipped on two tiny flashlights embedded in his hands, and a pair of miniature beams illuminated little circles on the sand. “Let’s see what’s here….” He walked toward the darkness. Then disappeared within it. All that remained was the air tube, slithering on the sand.

“YOU THINK he’s all right?”

“I’m sure he’s fine.” Through the viewing glass, Darryl eyed the air tube, taut now and sticking out of the black wall like a knife into cheese. “He’s a little stretched, but I’m sure he’s fine.”

Lisa checked a digital readout on the instrument panel. “It’s been nineteen minutes, Darryl.”

Darryl gave her a look and flipped a switch. “Jason, you all right out there?”

He waited. Two seconds ticked past, and there was no reply.

“Jason?”

Another two seconds ticked. Still nothing.

“ Jason. Do you hear me? Is everything all right?”

“Yeah, guys, fine.”

Darryl and Lisa shook their heads.

Surrounded by darkness, Jason looked down at the sand. “Nothing’s here, but what we’re looking for is close.” A massive bird-shaped imprint was at his feet.

“It’s very, very close.” He scanned the watery blackness. “What do you say we go find it.”

“ HE’S A goddamn machine.” Two and a half hours had passed, and Darryl was stunned by Jason’s endurance. Sand, sand, and more sand, that was all there was down here. What’s the point? Darryl thought. He steered the tiny yellow sub over yet another stretch when Lisa leaned into the mike.

“Jason, you think we should come back and try another time?”

“No, but thanks for the encouragement, Lisa.” Little particles flowing past his helmet, Jason shook his head as the dark sand plain continued. The deep-sea desert indeed appeared to be endless, but what they were looking for was here. He could sense it. It was close. “Veer to the right a little.”

In the sub, Darryl turned to Lisa. “So… read any good books lately?”

“Your wife’s the reader, Darryl. Hey, you hungry?”

“Always. What do you got?”

From a denim pocketbook, she produced a tiny bag of pretzels. Darryl tore them open and ate a few. “Didn’t bring any sleeping pills, did ya?”

“I wish. We could be down here for days, huh?”

“Whatever. So what else is—”

“My God.” Jason’s stunned voice interrupted them. “They’re here. They’re really here.”

THE SUB hovered to a stop above a deep-sea graveyard of sorts. A fleet of white, winged skeletons, each the size of a small plane, stretched well beyond the range of the lights.

“Jesus.” In all his years in the ocean, Darryl Hollis had never seen anything like it. “How many do you think there are?”