Trigesimus Gradus

A paid 18-month internship with guaranteed employment which would place Derek Giles in the top 30-or-so percent of income earners in the United States within the first five years of his career was an irresistible offer. At the time, it was unbelievable. But some engineers had made incredible breakthroughs in submarine technology, so the previously unscathed resources of the deep sea had opened up to the curious hands of humanity. Hundreds of lucky investors became instant millionaires, or even billionaires, a few years ago. And for their hard work chancing upon the right stocks, Derek won the job of his life at negative personal cost. That is to say, Derek was blessed.

He felt a bump on his shoulder and his body jerked to the side. 

“Oop! Sorry Giles, excuse me, sir.” It was Clive Scrivens, the freshest member of the crew with a cool six years of graduate schooling—fast-tracked—and at least eight years experience working in thermonuclear engineering. But soon, even Scrivens wouldn’t out-earn Derek.

“If it happens again, I’ll have you demoted to janitorial staff. It’s too tight of a fit in here for mistakes, Scrivens.”
“Yes sir!” Scrivens responded with reverence, but he’d noticed Derek’s slight grin.

They require over a decade of special skills training but no one cares that he’s never been on so much as a fishing boat, Derek joked to himself as he entered the control room.

The control room was a little more spacious than the congested, pipe-filled submarine walkways. More went on in it. Rising, falling, seeing, detecting, controlling the half-dozen arms and specialized tools of the submarine, light control, monitoring of life support systems, and communication. As many activities went on in this room, there were hundreds more switches, controls, buttons, and lights, all on neat, clean panels that look good in fancy corporate advertisements. Four other men were engrossed by them as the vessel approached its final target, a massive electronic control station tethered to the ocean floor like a depth charge. Fine repairs were required for the land lovers to continue commanding the massive mining fleet further below  without “unacceptable levels of visual and motor control interference.” Derek was here to fix a lag issue. 

“Giles! Take the lead on this one.” It was Captain Nejem. “We’re on final approach. You’ll need the fine control specialists to open up panel 16-B and 23-C. You know which one the communication relay goes to, right?” Affirmative. “And the new diagnostic computer goes to the other one. Right.”

Derek took a deep breath. His performance with this relatively routine task wouldn’t ruin his career, by any means, but Nejem was a tough judge and one bad review could delay promotion proceedings for up to a year. Just put the computer and the relay to bed.

“Remember to properly import the broken components for evaluation. And don’t leave before you run final diagnostics,” Nejem finished with his arms tucked behind his back.
“Of course. Rutgers, go ahead and open up 23-C. Kayode, be prepared to extract the old relay. Carefully….” Derek walked the operators through the process. To lead them, he had to be firm and thorough, but careful not to underestimate their independent ability. After a few minutes, the old relay was onboard with no issues. Almost twenty minutes later, the new one was installed with a slight hiccup caused by the operator, Rutgers. 

“Hang in there, Rutgers, nice and easy. We’ve got time.” It was still done at a faster-than-average pace. “Alright. Kayode, move Arm 3 over to panel 16-B. Hart, get Arm 5 ready for extraction.”

“Sir,” Kayode started, “the control station moved.” 

“It moved? Rutgers, what happened to Arms 2 and 4? I thought they were locked in. Find the control station, Kovac.” Rutgers grumbled under his breath. They truly had been locked in.

A soft whining filled Derek’s ears and the panels of the submarine flashed red, red, red. 

“Not good,” Nejem grimaced. Derek looked at the depth gauge—it was blanking out.

“Kovac, where the hell are we?” Derek demanded. 

“Sir, we haven’t moved!” 

“Retract the arms!” Nejem commanded. He pressed a button. “Full power, Scrivens! Point our nose up, Kovac.”

“I can’t get a read, sir! The instruments can’t see an up!”

“Up is up, dammit! Don’t you have any sense?”

“Relative to what, sir? I don’t know which way we’re oriented around the—” he stopped, breath taken.

Through the thick glass windows of the submarine, the brightest, whitest light Derek had ever seen shown through. Everyone froze, squinting, trying to determine what the light was. The command room blipped red, red, red.

“Turn us away from that, Kovac! I’m going blind,” Derek ordered. Kovac obeyed, but what Derek saw horrified him more—it was clear, bright blue water. He could see hundreds of shapes. Are they… whales? A squid? Submarines? It was like opening your eyes in the pool back home and seeing toys, not being a mile deep in the ocean.

Then the submarine ratcheted to the left, then the right. Nejem was sent flying into a bar, crashing into it with a deafening clang and a host of snapping sounds. Kovac’s face was buried in a computer screen before being shot back out, slamming his head against his chair. His face was ruined. Derek was hurled out of the control room, back down the hallway, and landed on something soft. The submarine groaned, the lights flickered. 

Derek slowly got back to his feet, rubbing his head. The bright white light flooded the submarine again. The ghastly bright blue water sloshed against the submarine. Derek stumbled toward the control room. Hearing yelling, he began to run.

Hart was screaming in pain. But Rutgers was stabbing Kayode, who was silent. Rutgers had a hand on Kayode’s shoulder, holding him upright, and driving the knife in and out of his chest, throwing blood over the entire room. The silhouette of the slaughter caused Derek to writhe with chill. He could see the bones of Rutger’s and Kayode’s bodies nestled within the red glow of their illuminated flesh.

Derek sprinted the short distance to tackle Rutgers and knock the knife away in the process. Without missing a beat, Rutgers put a hand on Derek’s face and crawled his fingers to Derek’s eye. Derek squirmed his neck, trying to wrestle his face out of Rutger’s grip, but it didn’t work. Rutger drove his fingers into Derek’s eye.

Then Derek heard a disgusting sound. Scrivens, on whom Derek had landed, struck Rutgers’ forehead with a huge wrench, in which it became lodged, killing him instantly and spraying Derek’s blood-soaked face.

Derek fell away from Rutgers, hands cupped over his gushing eye, whimpering.

Scrivens scurried to Kayode, shouting for Taft, the medic.

Whatever Kayode whispered to Scrivens, Derek never found out.

Kayode’s head went limp as Taft scrambled in, so Scrivens directed the medic to Hart.

The submarine rocked again, sending them sprawling. Hart was tossed against some controls, Taft was hurled back into the walkway, and Scrivens collided with the window, cracking the innermost layer of glass. Kayode, Rutgers, and Nejem’s bodies were scattered about, planting spots of blood wherever they struck. Kovac, who was surely dead but strapped into his seat, was whipped about like a wet noodle in a windstorm.

The submarine continued to convulse, throttling its contents. The sailors’ limbs, caught in gruesome nooks, were snapped and torn relentlessly. Their bodies crushed pipes, they mangled controls. Hot and freezing gasses sprayed everywhere.

Derek, with a gouged eye, broken leg, and twisted fingers, managed to strap himself into a control seat. Even then, the turbulence subjected him to the debris of his former shipmates, various tools, and anything else that had become dislodged in the commotion.

The lights flashed red, red, red. The control room became redder.

Soon he was the only survivor, and he was there when part of Scrivens’ body made its way to the reactor and bashed against the cooling pipes along with a wrench and a cot. Derek was still awake when the neon green and red lights frantically flashed, desperate to make themselves seen against the bright white, bleaching light. A few seconds after they started, he heard a dreadful creak, and he felt the air grow thin. Jess… Ev… Vaughn….

Outside, miles and miles away, one could see the perfectly-spherical, pale white blast of the submarine’s reactor near the middle of the bright, undulating mass of ocean water which congregated amidst the void, steaming away into oblivion. Large as it was, the blast of Derek’s ship could not compare to the oppressive white light of the sun.