Joanne tilts her head away from the monitor a few degrees, not quite giving the team leader her full attention. “Stable,” she says, and shifts her focus back to the screen. “And please don’t call it that.”
On an average day, the control room is stationed by six occupants.
Joanne Lewis oversees the health and general biological study of the Specimen. Her monitor’s current visual is a bird’s eye view of the Aquarium. Inside the clear molded plastic box, a red amorphous shape pulses and ripples, shifts and, occasionally, spreads its gooey bulk against one of the polycarbonate walls … as if testing it. As if just making sure.
Also in the control room are two technicians, Jim Stuart and Robbie Bell, whose jobs are to maintain the Aquarium itself, as well as the control room equipment. They also oversee the hangar’s many cameras, gauges, and general habitability, keeping the two techs constantly busy with updates, installs, or repairs. Given the stakes of what could happen if they make an error, neither sleeps well at night.
Marisha Harper, the team’s catch-all science nerd, is the leading voice for decisions involving chemistry, physics, mathematics, or any other tough questions that need an educated answer. She spends most of her time both devising and studying the results of a variety of tests carried out on the Specimen, which include subjecting the creature to cold, heat, or electricity. There are also “tests” involving a smorgasbord of acids, toxins, or any other chemical compound she thinks may have some effect on the Specimen, be it positive, negative, or neutral. Joanne feels many of Marisha’s tests are “cruel”, “barbaric,” or otherwise malicious (and often excessive), and while Marisha respects Joanne’s input, she rarely capitulates to her concerns. Unlike her colleague, she doesn’t worry (or care) about the Specimen’s emotional state or psychological well-being since, in her estimation, it has neither emotions nor a consciousness. Marisha likens the Specimen to nothing more than a dangerous, unicellular bio-organism, such as an amoeba (albeit one that consumes flesh). To her, it’s as sentient as a cancerous tumor, even if it is the size of a sporting goods store.
Daniel Tessier is the software and communications expert. For the last year his primary occupation has been developing a program that will, potentially, act as a sort of translator for the Specimen, a task Marisha thinks a waste of time, but Joanne believes could be the breakthrough they’ve all been working toward.
Bob isn’t sure he agrees with either of them. No, he doesn’t really think the thing can communicate, but that doesn’t mean it’s a waste of time, either. Daniel and Marisha have a hypothesis. Fine. And it’s his job to make sure it doesn’t become a theory, which would mean more study, more resources, more time stuck out here in this warehouse. So, he’s made the development of the language software a priority, second only to the Suit, which has been finished for months. As for the Suit, it’s been tested and retested and over-analyzed until there is no longer any point to gathering further data.
The Suit is safe. Now it’s simply waiting for the software.
“Don’t ask,” Daniel whines from his station as Bob approaches. “I know what you’re going to ask, so don’t even bother.”
Bob strolls casually to the middle of the control room, the large viewing windows filled with the eerie white light that comes off the Aquarium, the disturbing visual of the massive creature harbored within, its writhing bulk filling more than half the cube’s internal space. “I was just going to say good morning, Dan,” he says, eyes comically innocent.
Daniel spins away from his monitor and looks up at Bob, a twitchy smirk on his lips, dark eyes narrowed and wary. “I don’t believe you, so I’ll preempt your next volley by telling you this: Yes, it’s close. Yes, it needs more testing. No, of course it will never be perfect, but I need to be sure it won’t misunderstand the data, either. This isn’t a conversation we want to get wrong.”
Bob opens his mouth to respond, but Daniel lifts a finger, stalling him. “That all said ….” His eyes brighten, and the smirk transforms into a smile, revealing the programmer’s youth beneath the mask of cynical scientific genius. “I think we can move to the next stage.”
Bob’s eyes widened earnestly this time. He glances around the control room, sees Robbie smiling, obviously giddy with excitement. He notices Marisha’s scowl of disbelief and Joanne’s wary hope. Jim Stuart, grinning like a schoolboy at the beginning of summer break, types a command into his workstation and his monitor springs to life with a 3-D rendering of the Suit. He looks over his shoulder at Bob, eyebrows raised.
“Wait, did you guys ….” Bob sets his coffee down on a nearby workstation. “No way … you didn’t!”
Robbie laughs and slaps Jim on the shoulder. Daniel gets up and stands next to Bob, both of them focused on the Suit’s rendering. He looks down at Jim.
“The upload finished?” he asks, and Jim nods.
“It’s your lucky day, boss!” Robbie says, and then all of them—even Marisha—begin clapping. Applauding what’s to come. The next phase.
“Holy shit, you guys. So, we’re ready? We’re really ready?”
“They wanted to surprise you,” Joanne says halfheartedly. “I told them it was against protocol, that you hadn’t technically approved the install ….”
But her words are drowned out by Bob’s loud “whoop!” of joy as he begins hugging each team member, one-by-one. “You sly bastards!” he yells, shaking Daniel so hard the younger man wobbles unsteadily when released. “You sons of bitches!”
“Now wait a second, wait a second,” Robbie says, standing up to get everyone’s attention. “Before we make this official, there’s one last thing we need to do.”
All eyes stay on him as he walks across the room to his locker, pulls out a stack of small paper cups and a half-full bottle of whiskey. The room brews with anticipation as he hands each team member a cup, fills it with liquor. When finished, they all stand and hold up their drinks, facing their leader.
“To Bob Cronus, the world’s first living aquarium diver,” Joanne says.
“HEAR! HEAR!” comes the response, in unison, as Bob fights back tears.
“And here’s to not getting eaten!” Jim adds, and they all laugh. Even Bob.
IT TAKES BOB AN HOUR, and the assistance of both engineers, to get inside the Suit.
Similar to a suit for an astronaut or a deep-sea diver, the Suit is all about protection. Unlike a spacesuit, however, there is no globular faceplate that allows an astronaut a wide view of the world around them. The Suit has only two narrow slits for eyeholes, crafted with the same polycarbonate material as the cube. In addition to its protective functions, such as armor plating and the ability to lower its external temperature to freezing, it also serves as a high-tech laboratory, able to do everything from analyze sample tissue, monitor a target’s biorhythms, or measure electromagnetic radiation (the same kind humans themselves emit).
Thanks to Daniel Tessier, it can also now capture vibrations from the Specimen and attempt to translate those vibrations, or waves, into speech.
It was Joanne who first offered the suggestion nearly a year ago, soon after the Specimen had been transported from the arctic (now grown too warm to reliably sedate the creature). She postulated the vibrations could possibly be a form of communication.
Or more to the point, language.
The more the team tested the theory the more it seemed (hypothetically speaking) logical. When Marisha subjected the Specimen to more … extreme stimuli, the vibrations coming off it grew fast and—for lack of a better word—loud.
As if it were screaming.
Now, hunkered within the Suit (what he still thinks of more as a vessel, or a ship, something he harbors inside of versus something he wears), Bob stands in the antechamber separating the hangar space from the Aquarium. He stares through the translucent door toward the massive, blood-red, black-veined creature waiting inside.
“How big is it now, anyway?” he asks, his voice monitored by the entire team, with Joanne running point.
“Last we checked, and there’s no reason for it to have grown, it was around 25 feet high, ditto for width and length, so approximately 15,000 cubic feet, with a weight of about 100 pounds per cubic foot ….”
Bob runs the math in his head. “Nearly a thousand tons,” he murmurs, knowing the Suit can take it, but not liking the lofty heights of the number.
“That’s correct. Or, if you want to be accurate: 781 tons. The big guy weighs the same as, oh, a couple hundred full-grown elephants, give or take a trunk.”
All in one big, gelatinous, flesh-devouring blob, Bob thinks, fighting off the sparks of panic, of fear, fighting for traction in his mind.
Bob knows the creature can’t get to him. It can only absorb organic material, and the Suit was built from thick steel (the same used by modern submarines) and unbreakable plastic. It’s airtight and designed to absorb nearly 200 PSI without bending or cracking. An early iteration of the Suit had it tethered to a steel cable, for extraction, before they developed the more elegant solution of the temperature plates beneath the armor—if the suit gets cold enough, the Specimen will push him out, like the whale spitting Jonah onto the shores of Nineveh.
