Lessons Learned Too Late

The professionally dressed man smiled with teeth like Chiclets as the last breeze I’d feel as myself chilled my neck. The silence was profound. Helicopters flew overhead as men hurried around him and his cell, all in a soundless fervor. “Ready to die, Mr Depaulo?” The fake teeth matched everything else about him. His eyes were locked on me as the wall of the transparent box was sealed.

Not an encouraging question to get from the safety specialist. Worse were the faded stains of brownish red streaking the walls or the persistent yellowish brown tint on the floor, quite visible against the backdrop of the sky. The Box was a translucent, pressurized cube that the wealthy used to experience the deep sea. A tube connected to the top provided constant oxygen and filtered out building carbon dioxide.

I was not a wealthy entrepreneur exploring a new experience. I was, in fact, being paid for this descent. Had to sign a stack of legal papers deferring accountability and responsibility down the chain of financial backers and manufacturers to rest at my own feet. Unable to afford a lawyer, one had been provided. The man in the pressed suit’s smile was slick as his hair. I knew I was being taken for a ride, just as they knew I couldn’t say no. Debt is an excellent motivator.

Signing the papers hadn’t been the point of no return that made me question this choice. That came when I was given pills in the car that picked me up. I hesitated, but not much as I should have. I understood the implication of those legal documents. The pills were small but sent me reeling into unconsciousness in minutes. When I came to, they told him he’d been out eight hours. Felt a lot longer.

“Do you understand your purpose as it has been explained to you?” The professional man asked, unfazed at Nick’s lack of response to the first question. No one provided their names to me at any point.

“I do.”

As if I’d said the opposite: “Observe and report. We have cameras in every corner, but at a certain depth only the microphones keep working. There is a speaker through which we will communicate with you. As long as you hear us, answer our questions. When you do not, describe what you see and how you feel every few minutes. I hear constant talking helps. Do you understand?”

I nodded.

“We are lowering you into the Suboceanic Flume discovered-” He checked his notes and gave me a date. I’m sure it matched the public record. Was also sure they’d known about it a lot logner. There are eight tow lines that will lower and raise the box as needed.”

“Seems like one would do it,” Nick said.

The man’s smile vanished. He leaned against the thick glass layer. Though his voice echoed through The Box from the speaker, he whispered. “It wasn’t. First trip down they used a military crane barge. Something happened. The boat got ripped in half. Then they tried two. When does escalation end?.”

“Why keep trying?”

The man narrowed his eyes. “You don’t seem worried.”

“I’m terrified. But if I said no now, would I be let go?”

The smile was back. “No.”

Technicians finished sealing the box by fastening bolts along every wall. If he was going to come back out, they’d have to undo all of them. That felt like a bad idea, but what did Nick know? He wasn’t an engineer.

They finished the checks as he surveyed the interior. Bottles of water stacked in one corner. Power bars and dried food in another. Biowaste buckets with airtight lids and a snap on toilet head. No privacy. Gaurantees that strangers would be watching and listening. Assurances everything would be recorded. He didn’t know why that would need to be assured. A digital clock was displayed near the ceiling besides a depth counter. Everything carried out and set up on a wet deck. There was movement under his feet, but no visible swaying.

Nobody else talked to him for the rest of the prep. They sealed him in. Verified the oxygen pump operated correctly (Nick felt they could have done that before sealing him in). When the crane lifted The Box from the deck, he got a real glimpse of his surroundings..

It was a massive fixed platform, like an oil rig. Everything was built around an open space where a dilating hatch opened to the ocean. Water roiled and churned in the distance, but the water beneath the open hatch was still as glass. Mounted guns and cameras pointed at it. They called it a Suboceanic Flume. A tunnel of still water that ran deep, providing a turbulence free zone for exploration.

I also saw ships surrounding us. So many the first word that came to mind was fleet. The second was containment.

The initial descent was terrifying, with the consequences of my choice manifesting in ways that defied comparison. Water and emptiness closed around me as light faded above. The sense of pressure was subtler than I expected. They’d said something about top secret military blah blah having to do with it that hadn’t sounded impressive. Trying to remember details was like being asked to recall a random license plate I saw a week ago.

Each moment darkening water was more terrifying. My personal Top Worst moments being topped again and again. That initial trauma felt quaint after a while.

Lights built into the seams popped on after a half hour. It illuminated everything: my surroundings and The Cube, turning it into a glowing speck sinking into deeper and darker waters. Like bait. I remembered, with clarity, the Liability Waver. The only thing that would void it was self harm.

I saw sea creatures. Up close and by dim light, it is a humbling experience.

The depth didn’t change like I expected. They used some algorithm they said was “more appropriate” for the experience. It took a long time to tick over. The clock started to feel wrong. Like I’d experienced more time than actually passed.

The dark around me started to change. Deepening until it got softer. Dimmer. Never all the way back to light, but more like a fog dimness. It let me see further. More half-seen shapes and strange shadows. The cube didn’t make a sound but the view around the corners had started to bend. I assumed it was the pressure. I could not have my eyes open without seeing some distortion. It fucked with my head.

Then the water began to pulse. A slow heartbeat. The distortions bent back as The Cube adapted in some way and clarity returned.

I couldn’t curl in the middle of the floor, it was too close to the water. No traction on the walls, no mounts on the ceiling. I started to jump in an attempt to stay as close to the middle as I could. Keep the water equal distances every direction. It was still there but not more there. That had become important.

I could see, but there are no shapes to describe it. More a billowing motion and a vastness. Impossibly long. Endless. It sometimes surrounded me, like I was being swallowed. The tow wires were still attached, the overhead speaker still barked questions. I tried to answer. Sometimes “What do you see?” required me to find words to describe it. How do you describe something that had been alien to you until a moment ago? Feynman said “How does a person answer why something happens?” You either have the framework or you don’t, and if we share a frame of comparison, I don’t know that.

Still, I tried. Sometimes gave some garbled noises to describe features. It felt right. The strange shapes had become as terrifying as the deep jellyfish, octopi and whales had been up close the first time. It was a constant increase in intercranial pressure that The Cube couldn’t do shit about. I knew so little about these things that keeping equal distance away was the most sensible thing. An impossible task. My nerves made me so twitchy I’d have to pace in circles then jump until I couldn’t, repeating until my legs gave out.

The pulsing changed. Faster at first. I hated that. Then slower. Slower. The water felt like a heart attack.

They’d said when the depth counter reached one thousand, communications usually broke down. We were ten times that. It was harder to interpret but there were still words.

The messages had beome strange, sure. Jumbled words, random sounds. Still.

Empty plastic bottles littered the floor. They didn’t roll around, like The Cube kept perfectly level. I could see we were still descending. Feel it.

After the uncontrollable micro naps started (the voice in the speaker said it was common side effect of sleep deprivation) I started seeing a familiar shape in the distant gloom, descending with me and drifting closer. It looked human because it was. A friendly but wild eyed old man. He smiled and waved. It felt like something popped in the back of my head and began to leak.

When he talked, I could hear him clearly. The speaker went into reverent silence as The Old Man asked questions. He asked about me. Every detail, remaining polite but intense. It was nice to talk to someone without needing to scrape meaning out of static.

Between every point he made, He warned me not to look around, to focus only on him. Everything surrounding us had bloomed into other shapes. “They are all still me,” he said. “But not the parts you want to know.”

I looked, eventually. Had to. There were four of them, including the old man. Boxed me in, standing at each side, leaving above and below open.

Opposite The Old Man was a creature with the monstrously large head of a blue whale. Fins stretched like bat wings, the connective skin billowing in unfelt currents. These dystopian parts were connected at the center by a scaled body stretching into a long tail fin waving far below. Its eyes were closed, but fluttered when I looked its way. Another figure looked like a mass of writhing organs. The last was like a wall of twitching muscle and teeth. It was easier to focus on The Old Man.

You’re brave.

I disagreed.

They sent you down here instead of coming themselves. You didn’t even know about this place. They can’t see that far down, not without being here. They record and listen after. Reel up whats left.

“Why do you kill them?” I asked.

I don’t. His face looked almost sad. His eyes glowed a vibrant yellow and shimmering green, boring through me. They end themselves. Creatively.

I gestured at the other figures without looking at them. “Are any of these the real you?”

All of them.

“What are you?”

He shrugged. A way through.

Light flashed like thunderstorms in the water below me. Above was only dark. “I just want to go home.”

IS that what you want?

I laid on the floor. My skin prickled to be so close to the water. “No. I want Keeli to get the money they’re supposed to pay me. Hoped I could get through this and turn things around but I knew that was unlikely. The money would be better with her than I would. And I want her to be safe.”

The whale headed form drifted closer to the box. It’s eye stirred.

The Old Man spun in a slow circle like the Vitruvian man . I can give you these miracles for your devotion. Anything more-

“And to be with her!” I snapped.

He sighed. Anything more you’ll have to pay more.

“Anything. I dont’ want the money, she should have it. I just want to be there for her. Best mistake her ma and I ever made. I love them both but I’m poison. She deserves to grow up easier than we did.”

Your full miracle requires that this body is broken so there is no dispute on self infliction. You will have to endure it beyond what should end you. But then the real you is untethered. We will find a new home for you. The old man pressed his hand against The Cube. It slid through, the glass bowing around his arm, staying sealed. The hand was huge and scaled. Would this fulfill your miracle?

I layed my palm on the hand. It felt like frozen stone. “Yes.”

He broke my body. It should have killed me but didn’t until he was done. I endured it. The result was definitively beyond my own doing. He let me hang around long enough to see when they drew The Cube back out. A bunch of pictures and a video got out of the ruin that was left of me. All taken by soldiers and technicians, posted anonymously. Mine was the only liability claim they fulfilled. The others, even with the new evidence, were stalled until dropped.

I woke up as a drifter dying of exposure. Passed his soul on the way out. Got a jolt to get my heart goin and give me a chance. Almost didn’t make it.

Building a life as no one, with nothing was hard, but I did it, and fast. Found a way to be close to them. They had enough money to hire help and I was able to land a job as their go-to handyman. Im glad they were livin it up. After everything I’d put them through, they deserved it. I took on extra work for no extra pay. They knew I liked bein around and they liked having me.

Never wound up in a relationship with Deirdre. We got close but never crossed that line. She appreciated my help and enjoyed that my presence and experience kept Keeli grounded. We fought hard to make sure the money didn’t go to their heads. Ended up as a platonic coparent. They invite me to the big family events.. I’m lucky.

They even trusted me with their secrets, though their worst mistakes sounded like shit I used to brag about. I had been proud of it. It hurt to feel they were better people without me. But Keeli, she still talks about her father like I’d been her superhero. Breaks my heart to see her cry. She appreciates that I get sentimental over it and weep.

The company that hired me kept up their experiments. Took years before enough backlash happened that they publicly acknowledged and then abandoned the site. Dissolved only to reform as the same collective under a different name. Bought and reopened the platform. I tried to look for a way to expose them, but not very hard. Every time I saw Keeli run out of her house and squeal, that part of my old self felt so unimportant.

There are scandals that pop up. Huge revelations of offshore money, ties to terrorist orgaizations, violations of human rights and human decency. Every time I think of The Old Man and his smile. The wet pumice stone feel of his palm on mine.

One of the CTO’s went loopy. Drugged or gassed an entire floor. News reports are inconsistent. They set a fire. It spread fast. Killed a lot of people. Felt like more of The Old Man’s miracles.

I won’t pretend I wasn’t bitter about how they used me. That it didn’t hurt when I’d hear Keeli talk about how much she missed her father and wished I was still around. I wanted the people responsible to be hurt, I just didn’t want it as much as being with my daughter. I often wondered if the ones in charge knew what was down there. They said their connection cut off long before I reached The Old Man. Were the garbled static words even from the surface or my own deranged mind? What if they didn’t know what was down there? Would they know the same motivation that drove them to find the downtrodden and desparate ran parallel to the one that resulted in these explosive reactions? Were they delusional for not seeing it or was I for finding meaning where there might be none?

Didn’t matter. I had what I wanted with enough evidence to convince myself I wasn’t insane.

Though we grew very close, Deirdre and I decided not to be in a relationship. There were moments where I reminded her too much of her ex. Add to that layers of me feeling like I was only in control when I had the space to focus on myself, regardless of how much I wanted to be with her. Maybe things would change when Keeli was old enough to build her own life. Maybe not. I was content.

Excuse the laughter. Everything is so damnably funny when I think about it now. The loss and the pain return to me, vivid as ever. I must focus on my reward, the years gifted to me with Keeli. The mix causes the hysterics. A consequence. Reminder. Promise. Hard to keep it tamped down when around them. I manage. But we’re friends, right? Stories between comrades, lessons amongs friends.

Wish I’d learned mine sooner.