//------------------------------// // A Wrecked Interruption // Story: Of Hooves and History // by Ahmad J Charles //------------------------------// Exploring the Bermuda Triangle is no easy feat. This triangular expanse covers several tens of thousands of square miles of endless blue, with hundreds of unique and often wild conspiracy theories surrounding it, and many more vanished ships and airplanes within. Such disappearances are often dismissed as wild storms or navigation issues due to imbalances in the Earth’s magnetic field, but I felt there was more to the disappearances. Right off the bat, I got my first wake-up call as to where I was when I tried using the radio to scan for my home receiver. Nothing came through the mesh of static. I shut off the radio, flicked on the lights, and pulled open my sea chart. It was marked with the known routes and timestamps of several ships and planes that had gone missing throughout history. Some were close to the southeastern part of the Triangle, while others – likely planes – were much further up north, a mere fifty or hundred miles off Bermuda’s coast. I continued moving forward slowly on the surface, using the engine to recharge the batteries for a longer, deeper dive later in the night. My father had pressure-tested the sub’s fourteen-inch thick double-paned walls to nearly 4000 psi, so I could dive over a mile below the surface, or around 2500 meters. It was no Alvin or Trieste, but at least I could reach within a mile of the seabed’s deepest points. Having marked a GPS point every mile from the moment I reached the Bahamian border, I could at least get a rough sense of my location if something did sabotage the navigation systems. Feeling confident, I dove down and began my search, starting out heading south, eighty miles or so north of the Turks and Caicos Islands. Gradually I turned up the sonar, sending out ping and after ping, trying to map out anything on the sea floor a good mile-and-a-half below me. A few beeps rang out, and I immediately initiated a scan, hoping to find a plane’s propeller or a section of a boat hull. Nothing. “How odd. Well, false positives are a given in such a vast, dark world.” I shrugged and kept going, peering closely at the sonar as I tweaked the pinging frequency. A few more blinking objects appeared further ahead, so I scooted over and hovered over the area, boosting the frequency even more. The scanner slowly revealed a rotting metal beam and bits of dark rock, looking like a crushed grey granola bar. Rocky debris was nothing odd in the depths of the ocean, but to have this much in one place seemed off. I backed away and a blinking red light appeared on the instrument panel, along with a looping beep. This was a signal to warn me when I was approaching the limit of the sub’s depth range. The closer I reached it, the faster the light would blink until it was solid red, and the alarm would sound at full volume. Not something I wanted to happen, but if I was to discern these debris, I needed to go deeper. At 2000 meters the alarm started to get louder and the red light blinked rapidly. I typed in a secret code which disabled the sound and light, then turned the lights back on. This time the findings were more promising. More clumps of the rocky debris came up, and they were spaced apart by about a hundred meters. Shifting my direction a little, I noticed even more rocks… and they seemed to have a pattern, as if to… “This is a trail left by something!” I exclaimed, quickly deciphering what I’d just observed. I fired up the motor and started moving slowly, observing the rocky debris. By midnight I’d mapped out a trail that led to the Triangle’s heart, a good hundred miles north. A feasible journey, but it’d drink up most, if not all, of the precious juice. That’d be fine – I could simply rise to a safer depth, shut all power, resurface in the morning, and just mindlessly putter around for hours to recharge. But that’d be done using the emergency backup batteries, which despite having sufficient power to raise the sub from its maximum depth, were still not something to be used unwisely. But given the uniqueness of my current discovery, I figured the reward would be worth the risk. I boosted my speed to ten knots. The trail of debris – which looked like metallic ore - got larger but decreased in overall size at times. A couple of yawns were had, as I’d been awake for over fifteen hours now. At this rate, if there was anything cool to encounter down here, I’d reach it by sunrise. My body, however, would say otherwise obviously. So, I cranked up the speed to twenty knots – as far as the sonar’s perception would allow. I took some catnaps, letting the sub guide itself with some slight steering adjustments and keeping one sleepy eye on the sonar. After three hours, I stopped and pointed the sub in the direction I’d come from, and boosted up the sonar. Yup, the piles had grown larger in size. I was on to something big. Turning around, I pressed onward with the lights on brightly, keeping an eye out for anything. And there was. Tiny transparent jellyfish, and some glowing little animals that I’d never seen before. It was an astonishing sight amidst the blackness and snow-like powder. While I was an archaeologist at heart, I knew little about the animal kingdom. A bleep came from the sonar, indicating an object was ahead by just a few miles. I lowered the power and speed down to five knots, initiated a scan... and squealed with delight. The mapping showed a sideways triangle – a likely indication of a ship’s bow. It was much further down, at around 4500 meters. As more scans were performed, the shape of a ship emerged. I frantically pulled out my notebook and started sketching the shapes forming on the screen. I slowed to a stop and sat, droopily eyed, sketching the sonar mapping. A closer look at the scan revealed a straight-sided bow and part of a H-shaped front mast. My eyebrow cocked as my mind started piecing things together. Could this be the long-lost USS Cyclops from the end of the First World War? I had to get a closer look. Glancing at the instrument panel, there was still 40% battery left. Maybe I could dive to the limit and activate one of the arm’s cameras… A sudden jolt in the distance broke my zeal and deducing mind trail, leading to a burning question: Where was I, exactly? I pulled up the GPS module, but it refused to load, even after a hard reboot. I tried retracing my steps to when I left the Bahamas, but there was a wide gap between the last downloaded coordinate and wherever I was now. It was too vague to provide a reasonable estimate. And then, a loud sound rang out in the distance, but its impact felt much closer. Not a siren, but a big explosion. I was thrown against the side like a drop-kick from a kung-fu master. The sub was tossed sideways and threatened to spin upside down. There was not a moment to think. I grabbed a handle, fired up the motor, and jabbed the throttle whilst jostling the yoke, desperately trying to roll the sub upright. Thankfully I’d fitted all my storage containers and the closet with locks. My beddings, however, were flying about like clothes in a washing machine. I pointed the sub upward and slightly sideways, countering the roll at an angle, then gradually added air into the ballast tanks to re-align it horizontally. I shook my head. There weren’t any serious bruises but I did feel dizzy with plenty of body ache. In the back, my possessions clanged about as they fell back down to the floor. I tried resetting my course to where I’d originally discovered the shipwreck. But then… boom! Another explosion rattled the sub, and my heart shook from fear of the glass dome breaking. Thank God, it didn’t. I cranked up the exterior light’s intensity and noticed a discoloration in the water several hundred meters away. It looked like methane gas. The seafloor was erupting, and I had to get out of here. I added more air to the tanks in the hopes of surfacing, but weirdly, the water started to push sideways and spin, almost like a hurricane. I tried spinning around but the water started tossing me sideways. It was like being a ballet dance in a musical, just spinning and waltzing across a stage a thousand meters below the ocean’s surface. My heart dropped as the instrument panel screens started to glitch. I quickly shut them off to avoid shorting or surges. Amidst the chaos, a theory popped into my head that the explosions had released a strong influx of magnetic metal from within the Earth. What I couldn’t see just yet was what it was actually causing; an underwater vortex as the explosions amplified the turbulence more and more. I grabbed my stomach as the sub spun and spun upwards, gaining speed. No amount of jiggling with the yoke or throttle could change anything. I tried restarting the electronics but the radio was dead; not even any static buzzed through. The situation felt completely hopeless. In a last effort to gain control, I cranked the throttle all the way up and yanked the yoke to the side, causing the sub to drift sideways and glide a little. For a moment, it appeared to work, only it didn’t. As I tried going slightly out of line with the rotating current, there was a strong pull from behind, and I could hear the transmission grinding. I eased off the throttle and shut it off, whimpering a silent prayer as my eye caught a glimpse of where my destiny lay; a large, black-centered wormhole of water, with grey metallic fibers diluting the water’s bluish-black color. Another loud boom was heard, shaking the sub. The lights sparked with a bright blink and cut out. This time, my whole body was thrown back, knocking my mind out of line – and my consciousness, too. The last thing I saw before blacking out was some sort of electrical pulse amidst the spinning metallic water. This is it, alright, my mind muttered sadly, as a fragmented picture of my parents flickered within before all consciousness ceased.