“Oh god! You are doing it again!” Peter Manes said from his post at the sensor station.
“I like looking at the ocean.” Michael replied sullenly.
“Well, normal people like me, are creeped out. All that nothingness, it’s weird, you are looking but you don’t see anything.” Peter responded shivering.
“Then don’t look.”
“I can’t not look.” Peter said exasperated.
“Well then shut up and watch the screens.”
They spent the next ten minutes in silence, Michael stared into the dark ocean, there was nothing to see of course, they were seven hundred meters above the ocean floor, there was nothing around them but water, and the lights couldn’t illuminate more than a couple meters in front of them. From time to time he would catch glimpse of something out there moving fast, on the outskirts of his vision. He tried to follow it with his eyes, trying to discern what it is, what it looked like. Much of the oceans remained unexplored, and its life unknown. Most of the underwater cities were built close to the coast, and most of the Concordis cities were in the Mediterranean, with only two cities built in the Atlantic, and both were placed at around ninety kilometers from the coast, and the League had only one underwater city. Olympus had many mining operations in the Atlantic, but none of them were anywhere close to the depth the Merman was currently at. The Merman was slowly mapping the bottom of West European Basin, at the depth of four kilometers. The searcher class submarines were equipped with state of the art sensors, which made Michaels and Peters job easier, they were meant to map the ocean floor, discover metal reserves, and discern if it was profitable for a mining operation to be constructed here, if it was, a message was sent to Olympus headquarters in Nephthys, if not, the deposits were marked and coordinates sent to their base in Sedna, the second city built in the Atlantic. It was a boring job, with sensors and computers doing most of the work, the only reason for a crew was that the computer couldn’t be programed for all eventualities, so the crew was more of a failsafe.
“That’s strange.” Peter said and snapped Michael out of his reverie.
“What?”
“I just got a signal, but it’s strange…” Peter answered taping his screen,
“Strange how, we get bounced signals all the time, that’s how we know we found something.”
“Yes, but the signals deteriorate as they move through water, or as they bounce of metals or rock. This signal isn’t deteriorated at all.” Peter said dumbfounded.
“What do you mean? Is it a glitch?”
“No, I’ve verified that the signal is coming from the outside, and it is our signal, but it seems that it was boosted. And it’s not a returned signal, whatever it is, it’s broadcasting continuously at us.”
“So what, another sub caught our signal, boosted it and sent it back to screw with us?” Michael said maybe more harshly than he needed, but this was starting to creep him out, open viewer might have had something to add to the atmosphere.
Peter didn’t seem to notice his tone, he was completely engrossed at his station, furiously taping his screen, bringing up various graphs and running the signal through the computer “No, baring the fact that there isn’t another sub anywhere near our position, our submarines don’t have the capability to send a signal through water without it deteriorating, that’s why we go to the surface to get into contact with the base.”
“The League, or the Americans?” Michael asked in a low voice.
“No, the League is on par with us, our equipment might even be slightly better and we couldn’t do this, and the Americans are at least a decade behind us technologically, they are still recovering from the war.” Peter raised his head and looked at Michael. “I’ve found the source.” Peter said.
Michael looked at his friend; he saw the same emotion there that was starting to creep into him, fear. He swallowed and asked. “Where is it?”
“The signal is originating some fifteen hundred meters in front of us, from the ocean floor.”
“Can you tell what it is?”
“There is some kind of interference with the sonar, all I’m getting is rock formations, and it’s absorbing any signal I try to send, it’s like they just disappear. But we know that there is something, since whatever is there is broadcasting.”
“Could it be something natural? A strange fish, or something.” Michael asked, grasping for anything to make sense of the situation.
“I don’t know, there are a lot of strange creatures in the world, some can create electricity or mimic different sounds, but radio signals? It’s true that Earth’s Oceans are the least explored part of our planet and that there are strange and different beings living here at the bottom of the Oceans more than anywhere else, but I just can’t see a living organism having the capability to catch radio signals and then aim them and broadcast them, not to mention that it would need to have organs specifically designed to do just that, I mean an entirely biological beacon it wo—”
“Peter stop!” Michael said, he recognized his friend’s dealing mechanism, whenever he became nervous or afraid he had the tendency to ramble on. “What you are trying to say, is that it can’t be any kind of life form, and must be something man built, correct? Yes, well then, if it isn’t another sub, it could be some top secret project of Olympus, seeing as you said it had some absorbing qualities, maybe some kind of stealth or something.” Michael said, trying to explain the situation through logic.
“Well, yes, yes it could be something like that. Yes, yes, even though I don’t think that we have anything near that kind of capability, nor does anyone else, but yes, yes if it is a top secret project we wouldn’t know about it right? Yes they would keep it a secret an—”
“PETER!” Michael said again to snap his friend back. “Focus Peter, if it is something of ours, and is top secret, then they wouldn’t have sent our signal back at us, so the only thing that makes sense is that they had some kind of complications. Maybe the only thing they can send is our own signal, and are trying to get our attention. There might be people there trapped with no way of sending a message out.” Michael tried to convince that what he was about to do, is a correct decision. “We need to go and check, see what we find.”
“Michael, this sub isn’t equipped to carry out rescue operations.”
“Maybe so, but we need to verify the situation, if there is need for rescue, we’ll surface, and call for help.”
Peter hesitated a beat, and then nodded “Yeah, ok.” He whispered. Michael knew his friend was scared, he was as well, but he also knew that as long there was a chance that there was someone in need of help he couldn’t just turn his back and walk away. He took control of the sub from the computer and set a new course. It took just under four minutes to get to the origin of the signal.
“Where is it?” Michael said, there was nothing but rock in front of them, at least as much as he could see, they were just a couple of meters away from the coordinates Peter sent to his screen.
“It’s coming from the rock. Whatever is transmitting is buried inside the rock.”
“Alright, I’ll go around let’s see if we can find an entrance of something.”
Michael moved the sub around trying to find anything that might explain the signal they were getting, the sensors were useless, anything they sent towards the rock got immediately absorbed, yet the signal they received was still coming strong. The reflectors outside shined pale white light on the rock as the sub moved, there was nothing that looked out of place, no cave entrance, nothing.