People love to say that we know more about the depths of space than we do the depths of the ocean. They like to throw it out there as if they have just stumbled onto some cosmic secret that no one else has thought before. It doesnt matter if theyre right or not, what matters is that people hear them say it. Then those same people repeat it in the same way. Theres no depth, excuse the pun, to this exchange of factoid. Its a superficial rite. Nothing more.
It shouldnt annoy me. I shouldnt let it annoy me. I have more important things to do than worry about what other people say and do, but because I have a job that involves learning about the depths of the oceans, I hear it almost daily. Every time someone new comes into my life, I hear the same thing. Over and over and over. I try to smile each time, to force out the chuckle I know they want to hear. They dont want me to go into depth on why we dont know whats under the ocean, or what we do know is there. They just want to prove that they know something. Pretend that them and I are equals. We both know that we arent, but they cant express that. Im not someone that people want to admit is better than them. Im not a big person, I dont have model-level looks. Im a quiet person who just gets on with their job. Not that it counts for much, but my personal life is sufficient for me, but when people dont see that, they assume I dont have one. I shrug it off. My friends tell me to keep shrugging it off.
I dont think Im better than those other people. I have a job that they dont understand, that they dont want to understand. They want to show that they know enough so that my existence doesnt belittle theirs. Which is never an argument I have ever put forward. But whatever. If they wanted to know, actually wanted to, theyd go off and do their research. Theyd find my name on several papers, theyd learn that I have a doctorate and should be referred to as Doctor. But they dont.
But, listen, it doesnt matter. And as much as it might sound petty and vindictive, I dont bring this up because of what is about to come to light. I dont bring it up to rub it in peoples faces. Because what would the point be? They dont care about my work; thats the point. They dont care that I discover things, that I push the research forward. That I am one of the people who closes that gap between what we know about space vs oceans.
Then again, the announcement next week is going to be pretty heavy. My name will be plastered all over the media. Some will look at me with new eyes. Ill say I dont care. Part of me wont actually. It doesnt matter.
I found an underwater castle that pre-dates any civilisation that existed on this planet for the last hundred or so thousand years. Tomorrow I get to go inside it.
When someone does something wondrous, your first thought should always be: how? If someone can talk to the dead, or make the fields bloom at the height of a drought, you should always question by what mechanic do these so-called miracles work.
You might get shouted at, you might get exiled. You might get the screws put to you. After all, being able to speak to your long dead parents, to gain closure on their lives is a good thing, isnt it? To have a field of crops to feed your people, to survive the famine that covers the land is not something to turn away, is it?
But if some outsider is doing these things, genuinely and truly, and they dont give you the ability to?
What good is a one off miracle when your society numbers in the thousands? How many people could do with one final talk to a dead loved one? How great would be it if farmers could grow their crops no matter the weather?
So you must, you are obligated to, ask how. Ask how, and then ask to be taught. For the betterment of everyone.
But everyone knows that magic isnt real. That anyone claiming to be magic is trying to fool you. To take things you value for themselves. They will abuse and exploit you so long as they can still gain something.
Such was my defence. The answers to the questions put to me when I stood against this alleged wizard. This apparent holy man who could perform some of the greatest feats I, or anyone of my tribe, could even perceive.
The wizard demanded I be put to death, and I laughed. Surely questioning someone on the manner of their work, something I would do to anyone in our tribe, was not a crime worthy of death. Yet, I was tried under that very ruling.
Should I have ignored the walls the wizard conjured? A precaution, he said. From what? I asked. A question that is still yet to be answered. Our people have lived in this valley for as long as anyone can remember. There has been no enemy. No disaster. No anything that has challenged our existence. We are as safe as we can be, but we need walls?
And the castle. The one that sits at the head of the valley. The one made from a black stone that none of our smiths can make head or tail of. Where this wizard chooses to live. Why would he live up there, when he claims his only goal is to protect the people down here?
Its like no one cares enough to look past themselves into the greater whole. I made the mistake of conceding that walls are a good idea, in the face of an oncoming threat. Every counterargument I made, however, was dismissed. By conceding that walls were a good idea in a very narrow context, nothing else I had to say was worth anything.
I didnt leave willingly. I made my stance clear. There was no one left who was willing to stand in my corner, though. No one who was willing to give up their life, or new life, I suppose, to join me. People seemed to have forgotten that there were other villages, other tribes, outside of the valley. People thought I was heading out to die.
People need to feel safe. They need to feel like that no matter what they do, or how they do it, theyre going to be safe. They can say what they want to their neighbours, or their coworkers, and 90% of the time, theyre not going to suffer harm or even death because of it.
I give them safety. I find out what theyre afraid of, what theyre really afraid of, and I give them a way to feel safe from it. Some people find this easier to accept than others. Sometimes people push back against me. They claim Im dangerous, that they are already safe. That I provide nothing and take everything. While I can never, and would never, guarantee them total safety, I cant stop them from thinking certain things and if they decide that my presence is more worthy than some of their fellow townsfolk, well, they have their own structures for dealing with them. I dont intervene in any material way. But my opinion is often asked for. And I give it freely. I do not look kindly on people who do not recognise that safety is the most important factor in life.
I dont think Im wrong. This valley is a dangerous place. The mountains along each side are topped with immense snowfall in the winter. That snow melts and flows down the rivers during the summer. Should the winter be particularly hard, and the snow fall higher than normal, what then during the summer? Flooded rivers are often more dangerous than the animals of the woods that climb the lower slopes of those same mountains.
Outside the valley, not that these people recognise it, are violent people. People who only exist to violently take from others for no reason other than they can.
I cant protect these people from the weather. What happens at the peaks of those mountains is God’s domain. I can teach them, though, how to prepare for a hard winter. For a summer that floods their fields. But I cant do that if I am being questioned at every turn. These people they do not, they can not, understand the way in which I work. If they start to question it, they might learn something. I cannot let that happen. These people are innocent. They must remain. There are threats. It might not be a giant flood, it might not be violent invaders. But there are threats out there, and they creep closer each night. I will protect them. I must. These people are my future.
The castle looms before us. Our little submarine is shining its extremely bright lights all over the walls. The people who claimed these were natural markings are extremely wrong. They are brick and mortar. Very intricate work. I doubt many people could build like this now. Lots of things have been lost over the years.
The windows of the castle are blocked by something. Its hard to tell what from here, but it doesnt look like bricks. Its almost as if someone went to great efforts to block the windows up from the inside. No one has said anything for a while. We’ve just been hovering here, looking at the monitors that have the video feed.
The castle is huge. 100 odd meters from the base to the tips of the parapets. We dont know if thats all of it either, for all we know, theres more of it beneath the surface.
Im watching as the little thing that comes out from the front of the sub prods and pokes at the material thats blocking the windows. There is a real time feed back to people on the surface. Theyll get any data immediately and they can tell us what we need to know down here. But from my untrained, at least in this, eyes, the material is soft. Even under the gentle prodding, we can see it breaking away, dissolving quickly in the sea water. The deeper we get, the harder it is to contain our excitement.
Theres a hiss on the radio. Its nothing, it does that. We hear it all the time. We dont have time to fix it, we are getting closer to breaking through into the castle.
Im thinking those words, they are at the front of my mind, and Im about to say something similar when the probe breaks through. We see salt water rushing into the hole created in the window of the castle and, to our surprise, we see something break out. Something thick and black. Tendrils of something that had been locked away inside the castle. It was the last thing we ever saw.