Bradley Vaval, Period 1, 11/16/21

Hexafluoride, Installment 1:

Your memory is hazy. You’re not really sure where or who you are, or even what a “you” is. It’s practically pitch black and freezing cold. The only things you can see are distant dim light sources and a small box on the ground before you. You recognize it and instinctually palm it in your cold, almost lifeless shell of a hand. The one glowing button on the box entices you to indulge in it, almost enchantingly so, almost like a smoker to his cigarette box, not that you know what either of those are. You’re not sure what the button will do, but somehow you’re sure it will do something. The button clacks. The box clicks. 

“Is this thing working? I’m assuming so, the light is flashing,” says the box. You keep listening.

“Yeah, looks like it. You should be good.” This time it was a different voice.

“Alright good,” the first voice replies, “Log date twelve, two, one seventy-three. We are currently aboard the Anchor descending kilometers on kilometers below the surface of Theta one sixty-eight G. We’re about to commence an expedition with the hopes of gathering intel. We as in Space X Sector B Exploration Squadron Manta. I’m here with my four squad members.”

“Is this when we’re supposed to—”
“Yes, go!” interrupts the first voice.
“Uh, my name is Davey. I specialize in marine biology,” says Davey. This is the second voice that you’ve been hearing.
“Sarah, I’m a forensic scientist,” a third voice adds.
“Hi, I’m Alex. I’m mainly here as an archivist but I know a decent amount of botany,” a fourth.
“I’m Raj. I’m the expedition leader,” and finally, a fifth. “Ben, why are you recording this again?”

The first voice, Ben, answers, “Just in case we make a massive breakthrough, I want people to see our humble beginnings. He just ruined my introduction, but I’m Ben, the lead engineer in our sector. As for where we’re headed, Theta one sixty-eight G, or Tisa as we in the facility call it, is a planet near the edge of our sector that we’ve been monitoring. It’s a planet of just water inhabited by small aquatic creatures not unlike ones native to the deeper regions of Earth’s oceans. And while normally we wouldn’t need to visit a planet like this, our sensors picked up an anomaly that might have catastrophic implications, to say the least.”

“We’re nearing the seafloor,” exclaims the expedition leader, “Everyone prepare for deployment!” The box clicks. It startled you, as you had gotten rather attached to the voices in the box. It made your cold, desolate surroundings feel a bit warmer. The box clicks again.

“Ben again. It’s about ten minutes later. We should be hitting seafloor anytime now.”
“How much longer Ben?” asks Raj.
“Uh, I’m actually not too sure,” answers Ben “the sensor’s readings stopped around here. From the readings, we’re in the seafloor?”
Raj significantly louder and noticeably perturbed, “What do you mean in the—”

The box abruptly bellows thumping and metallic crumpling which echo through the abyss you once again find yourself sitting in. The walls seemingly shiver as all speaking from the box came to a halt and the noise impersonates a broken record in your head. The scuttling in your environment that you’ve been ignoring seemed to jump in unison with you. You push your back up against the wall, catch your breath, and wait for the box to pick up again, but it doesn’t. After the sound fizzled out, all that was left to break the silence was the occasional dripping and distant scuttling. Whether it was your brilliant intuition or remnant fragments from your once not-broken mind, you play whack-a-mole with the other buttons on the box until it speaks again.

The first voice again, Ben, but he sounds shaken. “Ugh,” he coughs “Ben again. Log date, not really sure, we’ve lost contact with HQ, but I’d guess it’s been about a week. I come to you with a different reason this time. If you are listening to this either we made it out of here in one piece, we found a way to broadcast the signal, or… Or—”
“Ben, don’t push yourself.”
“I’m alright Sarah… We were wrong. There was no seafloor. It’s straight out of science fiction. There is a layer of dense air resting below the ocean. It’s practically pitch black and freezing cold. The only things you can see are the distant dim lights of fungi and other creatures. Speaking of which, there is an entire thriving ecosystem down here consisting of a plethora of fungi, bovine-sized arthropods, and what I dare call amphibians that are capable of transitioning between the air and the water above. We’re assuming that we mistook the air for a solid seabed simply due to its density, and had it not been for our suits, we would’ve been crushed much like the Anchor and… And… And,”

“Ben,” says Sarah with a motherly, comforting tone. Her voice echoes in your head for a bit. You keep listening.
“Right,” Ben sighs and takes a deep breath. “T-The other day, Alex... They had taken notice of a geothermal vent. It was our first source of heat since the crash, our first source of energy, and our first source of hope. It wouldn’t have been too difficult to build a generator and utilize the vent at all, so I told Alex to stay put and set up tent while Sarah and I went to bring back materials from the crash to hopefully get something working. What we saw on our way back, it-it wasn’t… The vent, it heated up the air around it, making it lighter, and well, like oil under water, the scorching air burst out up into a pillar of destruction. Alex… Alex… I’m sorry.”

“It rained for a while after that. Kinda poetic if you think about it,” Ben laughs. “That God finds a way to make it rain after someone’s death even in the deepest reaches of hell.”