There are monsters out there in the dark.
Pressed against the transpersteel that keeps out the crushing pressure of an entire ocean's worth of water, my hand squeaks down the clear surface. I can almost feel the cold, wet darkness begging to be let inside. I am safe, but still I shiver at how close I come to doing just that.
I've turned down the habitat lights, hoping to see the monsters as they swim by. But here, seven miles below the waves, deep in the hadal zone, with water hammering every surface at more than eight tons per square inch, there is very little to see.
Even the deepest night on land looks like it is flooded by spotlights when compared to the darkness that surrounds us. The water greedily eats every last visible wavelength long before it can reach us. There is no light, except that which we bring. In the distance, our remote lamps strobe over the abnormal black smoker we came here to observe.
A broiling mass of toxic chemicals spews from the deep earth, bringing life of a kind to the fiercely adapted creatures of the dark. Caught between the cold crush and the black heart of fire that scalds to temperatures above six hundred degrees Fahrenheit, the creatures' existence is a constant struggle between extremes.
An unprotected human would not last long in such extremes. The sheer weight of the water would smash Mik-- that human to a bloody smear even before the near-freezing temperatures would suck the life from his body.
Leaning closer, I press my face against the transpersteel and my breath huffs onto its surface. Strange letters from an unknown alphabet appear in the condensate, briefly fluoresce and then fade. My teeth grind together as the knowledge escapes before I can gather it in. I pity the others, who return to the base shaking, their eyes wide and darting at every shadow. Robear, our communications technist, still sleeps with his quarters fully illuminated, six months after his first and last full descent.
Just knowing the darkness, the pressure and the cold are out there can do strange things to the minds of some people. Fortunately, I am immune.
I know that the monsters out there in the dark are as nothing compared to the monsters huddling close to the warmth, the air and the light.
"Lights on please, Trieste."
Glow patches resume their soft illumination, changing the observation area into a palace of mirrors. We named our habitat the Trieste, in honor of the first manmade vehicle to touch down here at the bottom of the Challenger Deep and return safely. We wanted the Trieste's luck to help us win our battle against the Pacific Ocean, which towers above us, waging an implacable battle to destroy our fragile bubble of life.
If I listen closely, I can almost hear the weight of the water and the organisms living over us as they prosecute their frigid war on the warm interlopers to their domain. It sounds like whirling blades slicing through tofu steaks.
Even now, knowing what only I know and having been under for so long, I find it hard to believe that creatures can exist unaided in these depths. Miles above us is the Abyssopelagic Zone, starting at the ocean floor and rising to thirteen thousand feet below sea level. The name for this oceanic zone comes from the Greek and refers to the ancients' belief that the ocean is bottomless. Not true, and Trieste is proof of that. We exist in the Hadal Zone, home of the deep-sea trenches and canyons, and we are not alone.
You can read the rest of the story by buying the first issue of The Corpse Magazine.