Burial at Sea

Burial at Sea

My suit injected a sedative the very millisecond it detected the violent change in the probe’s direction and velocity. This is the only reason why I’m capable of articulating myself. I perceive clearly, and I can function well enough, but I barely feel. And so, as I sink lower and lower into the benthic blackness locked beneath the ice, I am satisfied to narrate my last few hours.

I can easily posit my undrugged self, as though he were right next to me. He is frantic. His suit is soaked. Sweat drips along his gloved fingers, stings his unblinking eyes. Every few seconds, he summons the depth readings in some wild, desperate hope that the ever-growing numbers will somehow slow, or even reverse. He is too panicked to formulate a plan, transmit a farewell for his family, even rig a dignified suicide - futile as any of these gestures would be. He is pathetic. I am vaguely discomfited that I will soon become him.  

Is he screaming? I’m not certain. Perhaps that comes later, deeper. 

An interesting fact: this has never happened before. We have sent piloted probes to a great many of the Solar System’s moons, but this is the first time that one of these distant observers has been knocked out of its orbit to intrude upon its own subject. I don’t know what collided with my probe. I don’t know what killed me. I have no way of knowing, and not enough time to find out. 

The probe’s exterior is layered graphene, but even this would not be strong enough to penetrate the kilometres of densely packed ice that cover most of Europa’s surface. My probe must have fallen through a thin crust of ice into a water vein or sill, perhaps even a diapir. A one-in-a-thousand shot. I suppose that I should consider myself lucky. 

The Mariana Trench is 11 kilometres deep.  Back on Earth, that seemed rather impressive. All that unseen water pressing downward. But here on Europa, 11 kilometres down are sunlit shallows by comparison. I passed that feeble milestone nearly 10 minutes ago. The average depth of Europa’s ocean is 100 kilometres. It can go as deep as 150. I have been falling for over an hour, but I am just beginning my descent. 

Another salient fact: this just happens to be my hell. There is no greater terror than unseen depths. And so, growing up, I never could stand to swim or even step into a body of water if I couldn’t see what might be underneath me. Think: a soft, mud-gripped corpse giving way to my blundering toes, pale strips of flesh parting easily from bone to cloud the waters about me. Think: the slimy, flaked cold of rust-infested steel strewn across the seafloor. Think: colossal wrecks looming within the endless, airless dark – invisible and irrecoverable.

I could barely get through underwater spacewalk training. But I was determined to earn this role. I wanted to be at the frontier. I wanted a small place in humanity’s forefront. So I persevered. And where did all that perseverance and pride get me? Here. Blind. Falling.  

This is the last place I want to be. I will be here forever. 

*** 

22 kilometres deep. Two Earths’ worth of lifeless ocean above me. Untold fathoms below, pulling me ever downward. 

I’ve been directly in front of the viewport this whole time. Gone are the revolving pinpricks of light, the familiar brown- and blue-tinged expanse of Europa’s surface. Now there is only utter, starless void. I have no lights with which to illuminate the passing deep, but even if I could, why would I? I have no desire to reach out into those infinite waters. I want to shrink inwards. Would that this small, cramped orb were the whole universe, and I an unknowing atom nestled safely among it. 

But reality intrudes. I don’t know what is below me. I have no way of knowing. The probe was designed to make inferences from subtle hints held displayed by Europa’s icy surface, not to plummet through it. Perhaps some unthinkable mid-ocean berg grows to enormous proportions beneath my feet as I rush toward it, hidden from view by a paltry few layers of carbon. Perhaps I am falling through an awful tangle of pressure-tortured basalt and will be snagged at any moment. Or perhaps there is simply nothing - nothing but black crushing waters, all the way down. 

The only thing that I know for a certainty lies below me is my own death. There it waits, deeper down, somewhere directly beneath me. I am dropping steadily toward it. The smart wager would be implosion, but this is by no means inevitable. If the graphene holds, somehow, then it will be panic-induced heart failure. Perhaps even dehydration, if I have been underestimating my own tolerances. 

The exact nature of my imminent death holds some distant interest to me, but, after all, this will be just one data point among countless many. Even the mundane salinity measurements I transmitted just before I was knocked out of orbit hold more meaning. Yet another organism is about to die. There is nothing remarkable about this.

***

The sedative is wearing off. A trickle of black insinuates itself into my stomach, threatens to become a flood. 36 kilometres deep. This is real. This is happening. It’s happening to me. There is no remedy.  

I’m ending the thought transcription now. I know what I’m becoming, and I don’t like it. I don’t want to share it with you, whoever you are. 

I have no farewell for you. I have no parting platitudes. I resent every breath you take. The fact that you will continue to exist and I will not is absurd. It’s impossible. It’s vile. I would gnaw your eyes out if I could. I wish you were down here with me.  

I don’t deserve this.

Please help me. I know you can’t, but please help me anyway. 

Ending now. 

***