Beneath The Continent

Even in an airtight vessel, you can feel the pressure. It's not exactly what one would understand as pressure just by sensation, but much rather the uneasy pit in your stomach, building just by instinct, without any outside information. Eventually there's not enough light for that information to get in anyway. The windows, layers upon layers of thick glass, go pitch dark. What sounds might be in the water are first deadened by the thick hull of the diving vessel and then overwhelmed by the dull rumbling of the motors. The vessel, christened Tortuga just yesterday, stops sinking abruptly, at the 3/4 marker in the steel wires. My assistant pulls the central lever, switching it into active mode. The machinery whirs to life. It's familiar, yet so far untested.

When the lights are completely on, the wire unlatches, freeing the vessel. It drops immediately, before catching itself in the rotors. It glides beneath the large slab of land that holds up the continent, and inside the opening that has been the center of our professional lives for so many times. My assistant and begin the routine, practiced often in dry runs above the surface countless times. Under water once. Lights, Pressure, Motor, in that order, with five seconds in between each. Lights go on, about the same time as the pressure control springs to life, just a split second before all the motor gauges spring to life. The power usage carefully balances on the edge between too little to keep us going and too much to last the expedition.

The rock shifts above Tortuga. I take careful notes of the texture as we pass it by slowly enough to turn it around if we need to. It's ultimately a trifle, compared to what we're here for. The analogue instruments towards the front zip back and forth. It's unperiodic. Noise. We're really just waiting until it's not anymore.

"You think the cable will reach?" my assistant has been skeptical of the viability of the mission, thought not enough so to refuse joining me in the attempt. Obviously I'm glad that I didn't need to train somebody else in the operation of the instruments. It saved us considerable time on the preparation front. They're old instruments, not built to function properly in this environment, and reading and operating them requires doing offset computations on the fly. He's got a phone to help him, obviously, but in case of emergencies it's good to be able to do without one. I don't know too mamy people who can approximate logarithms.

"It'd better." in all honesty, that's the one point I'm not sure about. We'll hear, no doubt. But hearing is not even half the story. I'm prepared for the case where it doesn't, but it cuts my chances of coming back up down by a not insignificant fraction. Part of that is because of time and decompression reasons. We turn down the lights, now that I'm done noting down whatever lithography I can make out with the naked eye. My assistant moves to let me take control over the steering, while he prepares several sterile jars. Tortuga is set to almost exclusively drift in normal operation mode. The more fuel we have as we rise back to the surface the better.

"Doc, we might have a signal." there's excitement in his voice. I look over my shoulder at the needle. It's runing up and down in sine waves and modulations. Definitely a signal. I swat down the recording switch and it starts to feed paper underneath the needle. It pools at the bottom of the machine. We're going the right way. The Tortuga's light reflects off the tunnels, and it's immediately apparent how many there are, not all large enough for the Tortuga, or even a swimmer, to pass through. The rock before us looks like a sponge, and while each of these tunnels could hold its own secrets, we have to pick one. For our own operational safety, we choose the opening with the most space and drift the Tortuga through it. This is the most taxing stage on our power supplies. The margin of error is relatively slim, and because of the small size of the windows our information any portruding formations is incomplete at all times. There are a number of those. Few enough to count if one wanted to, but more than would make it economical for us to do so. I can't help but watch the growing accumulation of paper on the floor. At about the half-way point of the reserves, I shut off the motor. There might be more interesting sounds later on and this probably contains a full cycle in there somewhere. We slowly move the Tortuga further into the hollowed out rock. At this point, we must already be several kilometers into the foundation of the continent. I take more notes on the geological structures, which have started taking on almost fossilesque features. What were once stalactitenous portrusions into the tunnel flatten out into evenly segmented sails with a spine running down the center, not unlike ferns. Their placement seems unusual, if they are indeed fossils, but unfortunately we can't get closer to investigate. To my relief, the path we chose doesn't taper off into a dead end either, but of course we have to take every curve and spiral with it. Still, we make it out of the rock. Our signal did change, as would be expected by the sudden change in surroundings. As the Tortuga leaves the tunnel, we are suddenly left in what we suppose is a cavern under the continent. There's no way to be sure. The dark swallows our light almost immediately. I let the Tortuga drift forward and pull the lever to continue the recording. My assistant has already labeled the area on the paper according to where they were taken. Our new signal is so much more complex, but still very clearly not noise. Even without being able to hear it, the waveform has a strange vexing quality. It's also difficult to make out any points that could be the beginning of a cycle in the data we've seen so far. It almost pains me to shut off the recorder to conserve what little paper we have left. We continue drifting into inky blackness until a sudden snag reminds us that we are still on a tether. I almost fall into the recorder.

"Well, that's that." my assistant pulls the Tortuga back a little, to not stress the tether too much. It feels like we barely made any progress. I turn the recorder on again, hoping catch at least one cycle. The needle dances over the paper, but never repeats its pattern, at least not until the paper runs out and the needle scratches into the wax cylinder holding the last sheet for protection. My assistant quickly shuts the recorder off. Both me and him understand what this means. Neither of us can just let this go. Not when this expedition has emalready eaten our entire research budget and several years of our lives.

I sit in the pressure chamber at the back of the Tortuga. The diving suit is several times heavier than me, so currently I'm fully relying on the hooks in the back to keep me upright. We would have had the option to make it lighter, if we didn't need it to have all the same equipment as the Tortuga. They're much worse quality and more easily breakable, but they can get me about 200 meters closer to whatever I want to look at. The Tortuga's light flickers off just moments before mine comes on. It's a piercing white, compared to the large, but lower powered light of the Tortuga. It's collimated white light, so it doesn't have the spread of a searchlight, but it's easier to operate. I can't swim too well in the diving suit, so I'm content in just dropping down from the Tortuga, shining the light beneath me in search of the floor or at least rock formations that would suggest that the continent isn't entirely hollow. I can feel the recorder on my back running, but more strikingly, I can hear it. "The melody", we called it back at the lab, where we first heard it while looking at seismographical data of the area. It was muffled and smeared beyond recognition, but a melody nontheless. Being able to hear it myself though opens entire new dimensions to what had only shown up as an ebbing and swelling droning that occasionally modulated in pitch. Down here, it was like the ocean was singing. I wonder how much of this was audible as we made our way here. Tones from all over the the frequency spectrum reverberate over one another, shifting, each with their own time, but always into a pleasing harmony. The texture of the note is soft, but full-bodied, like a faraway orchestra of church organs. It's about as ominous too. From where I am, it's earplittingly loud. So much so, that I wonder how we didn't hear anything from within the Tortuga. I can also feel it in the water. Excitations of what should have been either static or regular flow of water push me back and forth like a pendulum, and depending where I am, I feel like the music shifts subtly. Down here, I am part of the melody. I don't notice my recorder running out of paper, nor the morse-code from the Tortuga. It too has began to move subtly, not unlike a pendulum, rendering me the end of a complex system. The melody begins picking up pace, notes shifting not one at a time, but in quick succession, at once, into vexing, but unsettling disharmonies. I feel a thud at the back of my helmet and notice that I'm once again in contact with the Tortuga. The hatch opens and I'm pulled inside the pressure chamber. I find myself thrashing and fighting against the mechanism, desperately wanting to keep my place in the melody, see it through to its end. I only come to my senses, as the water drains out of the pressure chamber and the pressure cuts me off from the melody completely. I shut off my personal recorder.

I spend the rest of the journey in the pressure chamber. We're low on power and we only need one person to pilot the Tortuga. I have time to lie on the floor, pinned into position by the weight of the diving suit to reflect. I scarcely remember the melody, only the all-consuming quality it had, and the place that I'm still sure only I, suspended from the Tortuga by 200 meters of steel cable can take. My personal recorder has recorded over itself several times, so the data I collected will be useless. We will have to do with the imperfect recordings inside the Tortuga.

Back on land I have the recorded data loaded into the transport back to the lab. I'm still a bit winded from the rapid climb to surface. My assistant comes up to me as I watch the transport reverse out of the harbour's parking lot.

"What now?" he's massaging the sides of his head. He probably also still feels the pressure difference.

"What the Tortuga recorded is everything we found." I try not to sound too heartbroken about it "Down there is not a place for people who plan to return."