Taz hung in the water surveying the deep water oyster beds all around him. This particular bed covered approximately two acres on the ocean floor and was bordered by a clam bed on one side and kelp forests on the other two. Taz worked worked at this facility and lived in a nearby hive. The hive was one of several in this territory and was inhabited by aqua-farmers, scientists, geologists, engineers, support staff, and theirs families. Some of these inhabitants were second generation and had been born here. The system of farms and hives existed throughout the world’s oceans and were officially territories owned and governed by above ground nations. By the mid-twenty first century nations struggling to deal with the ramifications of global warming and climate change, turned to the world’s oceans in search of answers to the problems plaguing mankind. Serious work began to try to explore the oceans, establish sea borne farms and habitats and to search for new sources of pollution free energy. Work progress over the decades and experimental facilities were constructed, discoveries made, and lives lost. Then came the huge breakthrough that would enable true advancement underwater.
As with a lot of scientific breakthroughs, the discovery of the malleable field generator or MFG was an accident. Astrophysicists working on new propulsion systems for space exploration accidentally created a device that would allow them to generate self perpetuating gravitational magnetic fields and control them. It wasn’t long before the technology had been adapted to be used in the pursuit of submarine exploration to mitigate the problems associated with living and working under great pressure at great depths. At first the generators were massive machines that were used to relieve pressures over swatch of ocean floor. That was a century ago. Now the field generators were miniaturized and exponentially more powerful than their predecessors. They were embedded into the raw materials used to construct the hives making them capable of withstanding, or technically avoiding the pressures present at the ocean’s bottom. Inhabitants of the hives also had them embedded subdermally at birth, along with their personal control systems (PCS’) which provided a plethora of technological services including communications, multi spectrum optics, personal damage assessment and mitigation, and the like. As efforts progressed it became obvious that even with the evolving technologies, those working underwater building the hives, working the farms, and working to harness the vast goethermal energies available, were severely hamstrung by the design of their terran anatomies. Work was too slow and too many deaths occurred. The initial solution was body augmentation. Methods developed to genetically alter the human body with fin-like protrusions instead of feet and gills in addition to the lungs, to allow for underwater breathing. These, along with the benefits of the field generators, made it possible for humans to venture into deep water with no specialized equipment and work safely and efficiently. In the present day it was common for people to be born in one of the hives and never leave the ocean or see dry land.
The hives operated smoothly and efficiently and had developed their own localized sense of culture. Although the general laws and operating procedures were dictated by the controlling terran government, the hives were governed locally by elected committees who interpreted and enforced those laws. The hives provided sea grown products and underwater maintenance and engineering services to the terrans in exchange for terran goods and materials. It was a mutually beneficial system.
Taz switched his PCS to high optical magnification and searched the water in front of him. Soon he spotted the midwater buoy he was looking for and cycled up the squirt heading in that direction. The squirts came in handy when you working the fields. Taz had been born in the Marianas II hive and could swim all day effortlessly, but the squirts helped to speed things up. Arriving at the buoy, Taz keyed the PCS to log him into the buoys OS. Once in, he proceeded with the work that he had come to do. Firstly he performed a system wide verification, a maintenance chore that he performed once a week, then he adjusted the level of the invader repulsion system (IRS) which used sonor to drive fish, octopus, and other species away from the oyster and clam beds below. After finished, he performed his experior inspection of the unit to make sure everything was okay, then headed back to the hive. It was the end of his shift.
Halfway back to the hive, Taz started ‘hearing’ the voices again. They weren’t really voices, more like thoughts. They were calling him. He stopped the squirt and hung midwater listening and adjusting his attention in different directions in an attempt to discern where the ‘voice’ were coming from. It was the same every time the ‘voices’ or thoughts seemed to be coming from or pointing him toward the trench on the other side of the hive. He eventually shook it off and headed back to the hive for some rest and his evening meal and wondered what the ‘voices’ were and why he was hearing them more often with every passing week.
A week later, after a long day out in the fields, Taz was returning to the hive and a curious thing happened. He looked above him in the water and there, pacing him menacingly, was a great white shark. Normally in this situation he would activate the IRS in his PCS and the shark would more than likely be deterred from attacking. As he was about to execute the tooth click sequence that would activate his PCS, the ‘voice’ came to him. He had an overwhelming urge to stop and face down the great white. “This is crazy” he thought and began to click the sequence when again the sensation overwhelmed him and he stopped swimming and hovered, turning to face the shark which had descended to his level and was heading straight toward him. Every fiber in his body said SWIM!, but the urge told him to hang where he was. As the beast drove toward him into view it suddenly slowed and and began slowly swimming in circles around him, nudging him in the shoulder now and then like a playful dolphin. Taz was flabbergasted. This behavior belied all that knew and had observed in these animals. After a while Taz realized that the shark was not going to attack, but was trying to play with him! On the next circuit he reached up and grabbed the shark’s dorsal fin and began to ride the animal. The shark went up and down, left and right and Taz had held on for dear life. After a while the shark slowed and Taz let go. The great white came around once more and eyed him then swam off to the distance. He wasn’t at all sure what to make of the incident and contemplated the whole episode as returned to the hive.
He hadn’t told anybody about the ‘voice’ or about the incident with the shark. His friends noticed that he did not seem to be himself, but seemed satisfied with his answers to their queries about his health and well being. He was experiencing the ‘voice’ more often now and even having dreams about it. In his dreams he saw himself swimming in darkened depths and encountering strange creatures glowing with bioluminescence.
One side of the hive ran perpendicular to the trench, though it was about one quarter mile away from it. The Marianas Trench is the deepest point known to man on earth and was considered by the authorities to be too dangerous to be entered except by exploratory or military personnel. There was a MFG field that ran the length of the trench. Taz found himself swimming out to the trench a few times a week. He did not know why exactly, he just felt an urge to do so. He would look out at the trench wondering what might be down inside of it. He did some research on the net and found that military subs and geothermal companies had been going into the trench occasionally for decades and had never reported anything unusual. There seemed to be nothing remarkable about it except that it was deep. Taz could not understand why he was so interested in the place. One day, while sitting at the edge of the field, he got an strong urge to go into the trench. It was the same feeling that had caused him to not swim away from the shark earlier. He trusted this feeling, given the outcome of the episode with the shark, which had been repeated a number of times with other animals. He wanted to see the trench. Everytime he returned to the edge of the trench the feeling got stronger and stronger until one day he made up his mind to explore the trench. However, there was the matter of the MFG to consider.
The field shielding the trench was massive. It extended the length of the trench and from sea bottom to surface. The field was produced and maintained by one massive generator so big that it occupied one corner of a maintenance pod. Taz did as much research as he could to find a hack to shutdown part of the field to no avail. This was a military grade field not a farm buoy. The only thing he could try would be to knock out the generator itself for a short period of time. His plan was to disconnect the power coupling just inside the pod and get to the trench before the backup systems activated. From what information he could find, it looked like he would have about ten minutes. His plan was to leave a smaller MGS in place where the field normally existed that would create a small hole in the base of the field when it was reactivated. This should allow him to ‘sneak under’ and reenter the normal sea after his exploration of the trench. When the day came, he executed his plan and to his surprise, it worked.
He swam over the edge of the trench and looked down. Blackness. This thing was deep. He could feel colder water below him and keyed his PCS to raise his body temp a bit. Then, fighting the apprehension that froze his body, he turned downward and swam. He moved down the side of the trench and noted how unremarkable it was. There were rock formations, the occasional geothermal geyser and whatnot, but nothing of any real note. After a while, he started seeing small flecks of light in the distance. He keyed up magnification optics and confirmed that there were bioluminescent creatures swimming below him. When he got to their level he saw many small sea creatures that he had never seen before. Most of them were flat from living in the great pressure at that level, and emitted various colored light, a by product of evolving in the lightless depths he now found himself in.
He had stopped swimming and was thinking about what to do next. He had been in the trench for well over two hours and was really getting a bit bored. There did not seem to be any great reason to continue crawling through the inky water. He was about to turn and head back up to the top of the trench when he was startled by the sudden appearance of a remarkable creature immediately in front of him. It was an almost humanoid being with large wings, like that of a butterfly. The wings had a pattern on them and they emitted bright hues of pink, blue, and violet. The humanoid part was light pinkish color with large black eyes. It hovered there for a moment and he heard the ‘voice’ in his head “Follow me, please.”
The creature turned downward and swam away and Taz followed, struggling to keep pace with it. Presently he began to perceive a large light in the distance. The light was a bright mix of pink, blue, and coral. As they approached the light Taz saw that it was a large space in the side of the trench. Like an alcove that someone had carved, smoothed, then painted in bright colors. Taz knew that the creature wanted him to ‘land’ in the alcove, which he did. The light was overwhelming and it seemed to undulate over time. There were small creature swimming about and the water seemed to have gotten noticeably warmer. After a few moments another being entered the alcove, swimming up from below. It was shaped like a human and about six feet tall. It had smooth skin the color of a lobster. Its head was hairless, but there were small protrusions on the top almost like coral or sea anemone. It had an expressive face with large black eyes, similar to a grasshopper. It moved in front of Taz and looked at him without blinking. After a minute the ‘voice’ came into Taz’ head “You got my message, good.”
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