Anna was bored, bored, bored. Oh, sure, on paper it was a grand honor, but she had been staring at the monitor for 5 hours now, and she had not seen anything new in as many days she had spent here. It was nothing but dark water, and maybe a rock formation or two. She blinked sluggishly in the blue light from the monitor. She stirred the shitty instant coffee she had before she took a sip. She wanted to grimace at the taste, but didn’t put any heart into it, and so just made a sort of lopsided frown that could be taken as nothing at all from a distance.
The Tethys Underwater Exploration Project Submersible, or TEUPS as she was lovingly called, was currently deep in the hadal zone. For some reason, even after weeks of constant searching, she had been unable to find any signs of life at all. Or even a wall. Anna was a grad student let onto the project to help cover the late night shifts, in case anything happened. The researchers were thinking the vibrations that Tethys produced was scaring off the wildlife, or maybe all of the cameras had the same bizarre malfunction. Anna was starting to think this was really a psychology project to test how long a human would willingly look at the same blank screen with absolutely nothing else going on.
A crackling static and a grating little beep announced someone trying to call in. She hoped it wasn’t Plugowitz, but the only one who would be calling at this time was Plugowitz. She sighed and put the call on speaker.
There was crackling silence from the other side. She readjusted the headphones and sighed a resigned “Hello?”
“It’s very cold, very cold here beside her. I am beside her. It’s cold and I’m cold.” The voice broke and reformed moment to moment- like if the items in a blender could talk. But it was so compellingly human.
“What?” she said.
Dead silence from the other side.
“Plugowitz, you’re not going to get me with this one.” she said. “Ha-ha, awesome, great voice filter- get to the point.”
“ Ourselves reflected back in the dim water,” replied the radio, in a laughing way.
Anna felt the first drop of fear enter her bloodstream. “Who is this? Tell me, this is a scientific channel for authorized people only.”
The radio made a screechy geiger counter sound. Anna finally remembered about the Channel ID that showed on the call screen. Accepting the call was the building she was in- as normal. But the caller was shown as the Tethys itself- which was impossible. The submersible didn’t have a microphone. Then a flickering number caught her eye- the measurement of the Tethys’ depth. It was descending, the numbers going down so fast the screen barely had time to update before it was another hundred feet deeper. It was already deeper than any known submersible. Panicked, she checked the other parameters but everything else was as it was only five minutes before. Nominal.
The voice on the radio had been talking the whole time, she now realized. She was starting to understand it now, and it had just told her that it knew what her parents said about her, and that they were right.
Anna said shakily, “How do you know about that? Who are you? Tell me. Stop screwing around, you’re scaring me.“
A pause, and then the radio responded with a screech. “I understand. My aunt’s gambling addiction led to the crushing weight on her body. Sorry about that. Connection troubles. This should help.”
A trickle of blood ran down her lip. She gently touched her nose with the pad of her middle finger and rubbed it against her thumb. It was wet.
The radio whined, “Why does it all have to be so difficult? It shouldn’t be so difficult. Anna, are you listening to me?”
Anna silently nodded. The monitor blinked a friendly blink at her in return, an acknowledgement that she was here. She was here together with the radio, her and the radio, and they were together.
“The only problem is that it’s so cold here, and I can’t see the light. Brothers and sisters eaten and picked clean to bone. Our clawed and bitten wives. Anna.”
Her nose was bleeding profusely now, she could feel it dripping down her chin. The monitor was just showing choppy blackness, and the depth was still wildly increasing in leaps and bounds, until it finally reached the end of its careening growth- stopping with the same lurching slam as someone pulling the emergency handbrake on an elevator. ‘ERROR: UNEXPECTED VALUE’ blinked red on the monitor. She noted that she could see the camera spin wildly between different shades of black. Her pupils dilated- maybe if she looked close enough she could make out the figure…
The radio was laughing again, and she nodded along.
“Please confirm. All systems are nominal now. The resonant slices of your flesh answer. The red ice creeps downward but we can reach something if we have enough steel and bones. Anna, I love the way you blink in the electric light.” the radio said, growing louder and louder.
Anna shaped her lips to words that she didn’t hear. She wasn’t sure what she said. Probably something.
“I am happy to have been able to help. See you later, Anna love. Anna my love. Love you. I’m so surprised that we’re happy. It goes better now. The temperature. It’s so easy to love you. You stole my heart. I’m going to be so glad to be on your front porch, knocking. Raise the window glass and let the room laugh with me and you. I’m yours, Anna.“
“I’m yours, Anna.” the radio repeated and let out one final shrieking cut metal giggle.
The pool of blood on the desk in front of her had grown cold, and coagulated a little at the bottom and the edges. She got up and licked her lips, and went to the bathroom to grab some tissues to clean it up. She couldn’t say what she was thinking then. Not really thoughts- just jumbled shapes seen at a great distance and little flashes of old memories. The bathroom tile of her ex-boyfriend’s shower. That deep, unpleasant rattle of a cough when she had the flu for the sixth time. The smell of rotting mushrooms at the grocery store.
She also didn’t remember how she left the building or got home, but she did remember hearing the news the next day that all the people that worked at the Tethys Research Institute were missing. Some were already found- she was somewhat sure she had seen her picture, too. Her rotting face, bloated and gray with the adipocere of months underwater.
THE STORY HAS NOW ENDED. Would you like to go back home?