Sea of Secrets Anthology

by J E Feldman

  “It’s an awful feeling, knowing you were party to something immoral. I don’t want to get caught up in something again, no matter how good your intentions, or mine either, might be. Do you understand that?”

  “Of course.”

  She knit her eyebrows. “When I first got here, you said they have regenerative powers.”

  Simon nodded grimly. “You’ll want to watch the footage. You won’t believe it otherwise.”

  A half hour later, Laura sat alone on her tiny cabin’s uncomfortable lower bunk, playing back a video. Queasy, she listened to Tom narrate. Tom...now he sounded like a proper 19th century scientist. In his bubbly, almost perky voice, no remorse about his actions, no compassion for the plight of a fellow living being—just brutally cold, hardened curiosity.

  “The first animal, Betty, initially refused a number of provided food sources. When we moved from canned goods to live bait, she seemed to force herself to adapt. Her companion, Bea, however, remains stubborn. While we may only speculate at this time how often and how much they must eat in order to survive in the wild, our observations do indicate a high calorie, fatty diet is necessary. As she will not accept being fed by us, Bea has found another route to temporarily sustain herself. Obviously, it cannot be expected to last for long…”

  The camera panned down to the lower part of Bea’s tank, angling itself so that, just barely, it managed to see through a chink in the bottom of her gliders. Inside, the murky stump of one hand was, even with a night vision lens, clearly and pathetically visible. Her puckered lips uncouthly chomped, each time exhibiting those far too long, sharp, slender teeth. Between each tooth was an expansive gap--a mouth perfectly designed for deep penetration of flesh. Laura squinted, not sure at first of what she was seeing, but then she understood all too well that one of Bea’s own fingers was being very lightly chewed before it and the rest of the hand with it was swallowed altogether.

  “The rate at which these animals repair those parts of themselves that have been injured or severed entirely,” Tom’s voice continued, “far surpasses any other species currently known to mankind. In one week alone, this is the second time we have managed to catch Bea practicing autophagy regarding one of her hands. She has also eaten the end of her tail, though there is certainly no indication of any tissue damage there now. The flesh has completely regenerated.”

  “She’s stressed, you jackass,” Laura muttered. “She’s not eating herself to feed her hunger. It’s a psychological reaction to her new environment…”

  The footage stopped, starting again on another day.

  “Earlier this morning, Bea was sucking rather aggressively on the stingers from her head, rather like a child with trichotillomania,” Tom went on. “Betty has similarly been observed with her stingers placed inside her own mouth, though in the latter’s case, this was a direct reaction to pantomiming Dr. Akimitsu brushing his teeth before her tank. Betty, in particular, seems to respond to his gestures and behavior, almost as if she can sense a pecking order between those working here…” Tom chuckled. “The crew’s been joking that she’s trying to get in good with the boss.”

  Once again, the footage fast-forwarded to a future date.

  “Bea continues to remain withdrawn, enshrined almost entirely within her gliders, whenever she detects a human presence. She has taken to no longer sucking on her stingers, but biting several dozen of them at a time off with a ferocity which makes one wonder whether self-mutilation poses a greater threat to this animal than any other factor. One must also question whether this aberrant behavior is entirely natural or the direct result of her inability to repair the noted genetic damage.

  “Betty, on the other hand, shows visible signs of thriving. Dr. Akimitsu remains skeptical that an animal that evolved at, at least 500 of bars of pressure, could endure. It is my own theory that Betty and Bea, in fact, live at a much higher level than where they were found. I propose that, like the sperm whale, they are capable of temporary excursions to a deep sea environment to which they are not in fact native.”

  As Tom continued theorizing, Laura frowned. Noted genetic damage?

  “The testing we did was very extensive,” Simon assured her that evening in the mess hall. A dozen other scientists, most of whom Laura knew by their previous work, sat with them at a long, white table. “I assure you, there is no genetic damage.”

  “There was—” Tom began.

  “Your results were wrong,” Simon cut him off. “If they weren’t, the data would have been the same the second time we checked. The very standard of scientific results is reliable repetition.”

  “You know how these animals repair themselves—”

  “Sure, but there’s a limit,” Simon fumed, twirling a fork around a pile of spaghetti with far too much marinara sauce. He swallowed a mouthful, sighed in frustration, and then looked to Laura. “After this, how about I show you more of the ship?” he inquired, trying to steer her away from a topic which so clearly had him riled. “There’s this favor I was hoping you’d do for me.”

  Laura frowned, unwilling to let this drop so easily. “Exactly what results did you get, Tom?”

  “Heightened radiation levels—” he started.

  “I’m telling you: the Geiger counter must’ve been broken!” Simon argued, dropping his loaded fork back onto his plate with a loud clank.

  “And I’m telling you,” Tom threw back at him with equal verbal force, “that Betty and Bea, fresh out of the Trench, had radiation in them several times what was normal or acceptable. But, now that they’re in clean tanks, they fixed themselves.”

  Laura cocked her head to the side, watching as the two men continued to bicker about it for the next few minutes. Heidi, a freckled environmentalist that specialized in jellyfish, nudged Laura’s side, rolling her eyes.

  “It’s all Fukushima’s fault if you ask me,” she murmured quietly. “Ever since the reactor melted down, it’s the ocean that’s been paying the price of human negligence. Damn, but we sure are good at screwing things up! I swear, one of these days, we’ll cause a second Permian Extinction. My only hope is that, when we flush the rest of the ecosystem down the toilet, we go right along with them.”

  “Let’s just bring back the rule of the dinosaur, eh, hippie?” Tom laughed, alerting her that her whisperings weren’t actually so whispered.

  “Well,” Heidi snorted ruefully, “if I have to choose between them and you, I certainly know where I stand.”

  “Tom and Heidi,” Simon clarified, “are so committed to this project that they have chosen to overlook the fact that they can’t stand each other. A most generous sacrifice.”

  “Have you decided whether or not you’re going to stay with us?” Heidi inquired, ignoring the comment.

  “I think...I might….” Laura now picked at her food, lowering her gaze evasively.

  “What made you change your mind?” asked Simon.

  “Bea’s autophagy,” Laura responded carefully, “could be a response to being encaged, but it could also be in reaction to the people she’s worked with thus-far.”

  “Meaning?” Tom raised an eyebrow with instant ire.

  Meaning that you’re a jackass who freaks her out! “Meaning,” she began as diplomatically as possible, “that you need new people on board or she might inadvertently kill herself.”

  “In other words, she just doesn’t like Tom and Simon?” Heidi laughed. “They’re the main two that go inside the lab.”

  “The current theory is they increase the level of their brightness based on their familiarity with whomever they see. Thus far, this has been considered them losing their shyness. But they come from a world where a display of light can also be a demonstration of aggression. Maybe they were trying to tell you to go away…”

  “But you think you can do better?” Tom sniffed.

  “I’m not trying to step on anyone’s toes here,” she murmured gently, “but I have training that you don’t.”

  “Training?” He scoffe
d. “No one’s been trained to work with these animals. We’re all just fumbling around in the dark—literally!”

  “This is not a job for an entomologist,” Laura insisted. She wished she didn’t have to be so brutally honest about this, but there really was no other way. “Until we really know what we’re dealing with here, the only people interacting with these creatures should have a solid background in deep sea marine life.”

  “So you’re saying I’m not qualified,” he huffed.

  “Well…”

  “I’ve been here, from day one, taking care of these animals with Simon before any of the rest of you got here. I know them better than you probably ever will!”

  “That’s great,” she shot back, “but I’m not saying this to insult you. Your work is with insects. I don’t know how exactly you came to be involved, but I sincerely doubt it was on purpose. My best guess, after watching the tapes you shot, is you were just in the right place at the right time. Well? Can you tell me that I’m wrong?”

  He reddened in response, but said nothing.

  “Look, kudos for everything you’ve done,” Laura replied, cooling slightly. “I mean that sincerely. But if I found a new kind of fruit fly, I wouldn’t think that made me competent to be in charge of the research being done on it. That’d be every bit as much your niche as this is mine.”

  “Amen,” Heidi agreed resolutely. “Your cockroach and wasp tidbits, fascinating as they may be, Tom, don’t hold water here—pardon the pun. You should’ve left gracefully a long time ago. It saves the people who should be here the inconvenience of having to kick you out.”

  “Hey,” Simon put his hand up diplomatically. “Let’s calm down here.”

  “I am being calm,” Laura informed him smoothly. “The animals in those tanks are dangerous. I don’t get the impression that you all have any clue just how much, despite what happened to Yoshi. Now I’m willing to work with them, but I sure as Hell won’t do it unless I know I have a team behind me that has the same experience and background that I do.” She looked into Simon’s eyes directly. “If you half-ass this, somebody on your team’s going to wind up dead. That’s not going to be me.”

  “I’m not being taken off of this team!” Tom shouted at her, surprising all of them with the loudness of his outburst. “And I swear to God, NDA or no NDA, if anyone tries to remove me from the nursery, I’ll take everything I know to the press.” He scowled coldly at Simon. “You understand me? Everything! We’ll just see what happens then to all of your precious careers.” He slammed his open palm down on the table, making several dishes clang. A monstrously tense pause passed at the pace of a snail. Finally, Tom rose to his feet, looked down at Laura, and hissed, “You’re not a scientist. You’re a bleeding heart hack! Even so, I had every intention to be nice to you, but now...stay out of my way, lady.”

  He stormed out of the room, with Simon’s eyes trailing after him apprehensively.

  “Gah,” Heidi snorted to Laura. “In case you were curious exactly why I don’t like him, there it is. He’s always been too big for his damn britches and he’s always, always flown off the handle at the drop of a hat.” She huffed in irritation and then began munching at some of the food off of his abandoned plate. “Simon, you know that Laura’s right. She and I are the only ones here that should be conducting any of the experiments—”

  “Experiments?” Laura gawked. “I thought the goal at this point was just to keep the animals alive.”

  Simon frowned at Heidi, but said nothing. Frustrated, Laura wiped at the corners of her mouth and, hoping she would avoid Tom, also stormed away from the meal.

  At first, she walked in the direction of her cabin. But then, almost as if they had a will of their own, she found her feet moving toward the lab. God, these people didn’t know what they were doing! There Betty and Bea were, alone and unmonitored!

  “For a bunch of geniuses, this whole thing has been pretty slipshod,” she fumed, shaking her head back and forth.

  She strapped on some night vision and approached one of the tanks. Instinct screamed at her not to be alone with them, but she brushed it aside, reminding herself that both Tom and Simon had interacted with them solo at length without any problems.

  In the corner of her frigid tank, Betty shone with whitish-blue brightness. Observing Laura’s approach, her lips peeled back to shriek with such ferocity that not even the water managed to muffle the sound. She threw herself against the thick plating, pressing her broad, flat features and giant eyes into the glass. That gaze, so frightened, so sad, so full of understanding about the grimness of its future, pulled at Laura’s heart which was, just as Tom stated, bleeding indeed.

  “Please,” the creature’s eyes begged, as if a look was capable of speaking. “Please…”

  Its pupils moved from Laura toward Bea, prompting Laura to do the same. Then she let out a long, sympathetic sigh, shaking her head back and forth at the sight of the deceased creature floating listlessly, surrounded by chunks of its own retched up flesh, at the top of its cage. Before its death, it had indulged in one final mass self-consumption—swallowing its own hands, tail, and a quarter of the stingers on its head.

  “Well, PETA would certainly have a field day with this,” Laura muttered minutes later, after bringing the others back to peer at the grotesque display. “She looks like she got stuck in a goddamn blender!”

  “Agreed,” Heidi sighed. “She’s none too pretty now. Still, I’m sure millionaire nerds and museums all over the world would pay top dollar for what’s left of her, eh, Lowensohn?”

  Laura folded her arms over her chest, not deigning to respond.

  “So who’s going to fish her out of there? Are we going to draw straws or what?” Heidi inquired, raising her eyebrows. She approached her boss, snapping her fingers in front of his transfixed and crestfallen face. “Simon, snap out of it… We should get her on a slab as soon as possible. Get her photographed, get her autopsied, and shove whatever is left over into the freezer.”

  “Autopsy her here?” Laura queried a little incredulously. “Don’t you have someplace else set up for this? A proper lab on the mainland rather than something makeshift?”

  “This is extremely time sensitive, Laura. We can’t wait. Heidi, go get Tom. He’s the one that wrestled her in there. He should be the one to get her out. The rest of us will start scrubbing up. We’re getting this done now—tonight.”

  As the rest of them exited the room, Simon took one last look at Bea. “I guess today is your lucky day, Laura,” he remarked bitterly.

  “Oh? How’s that?”

  “There’s more people, more scientists, coming in tomorrow morning, but they’re going to miss seeing this. You arrived just in time to witness this; to take charge.”

  “Take charge?”

  “Well, no one else here has as much experience with marine autopsies. You should certainly be the one to do it.”

  Laura leaned against a desk, stared at the hovering corpse, and bit her knuckles just at the thought of opening it up.

  “Bea didn’t die of complications from the pressure change,” he remarked, audibly stunned. “She should have...but that’s just not what happened.”

  “I don’t think she ate herself to soothe the stress of being here,” Laura noted softly. “I think that she consciously, very deliberately killed herself just in order to get away from people.”

  “Animals kill themselves sometimes,” Simon shook his head, “but it’s not a conscious decision, Laura. They don’t have the mental capacity to understand their self-destructive behavior can have such serious consequences.”

  Laura only huffed in response, exiting the room on brisk heels so as to catch up to the rest of the team.

  A half hour later, Tom was dumping Bea’s remains out of a net and onto a cold, metal slab in a room filled with overbearing, bright lights.

  “You know, guys,” Tom put forward, “it’d probably be better to just make some general observations; not actually open it up
.”

  “Spoken like a true novice,” Heidi snorted. “If you don’t want to be here, Tom, I’m sure no one here would miss you.”

  As they began to argue, Laura ignored them, noting to herself how the overhead lights would’ve caused terrible pain to the animal while still alive. And yet now, here it was, up close and under the neon—unmoving; uncaring. No longer did that smooth, translucent skin illuminate its surroundings. No more did those gargantuan eyes assess the behavior of perhaps the only beings that it had ever encountered which could successfully hunt it. It was just cold meat now, possessed of as much ceremony and dignity as a tin of sardines.

  But dead or not, Bea still made the scalpel clutched inside the palm of Laura’s plastic-gloved hand tremble in a way that no other animal before ever had. Biting her lip anxiously underneath the surgical mask she wore, Laura realized she had never been so upset at the thought of moving forward before—not even when she’d seen Hector chew her colleague’s fingers off. Around the dissection table, her colleagues looked to her, waiting; expecting. Slowly, she made an incision in the abdominal region.

  She had only half-considered the concept of a corpse “fighting back;” was not prepared for it when it actually happened. An opening, located at the lower portion of the creature’s abdomen, like a knee-jerk reaction to the cutting, suddenly sprayed Laura’s gloves, mask, and gown.

  “Damn it!” she cursed.

  “What is that?” Simon gasped as Tom burst out laughing.

  “It’s an ink jet. Yet another cephalopod trait,” she fumed. “They spray as a means of self-defense against predators.”