For the first time, Catherine felt the heaviness of the air and the leagues of pressure pushed in all around her. She was struck, hard, by the need for the enormity of the open sky and the presence of the breeze. For the most part, she was content in her posting, deep within the dark pits of the ocean trench, aboard the semi-mobile research platform. A dream, really, to work so closely to the strangest part of the universe with a team of passionate and talented scientists. But now that same, extraordinary collection of minds all stared down at the display before them with the same, primal fear written across their paling faces. And who could blame them?
It had moved.
For the longest time, they’d even been unsure if it was alive, let alone conscious. Hard to believe something so colossal, that they could not even accurately measure it, could be a living thing, like them. But their listening posts had picked up the slow, sonorous beat of its heart, nestled somewhere far into its torso. A sound so low, human ears couldn’t hear it. Just feel its rhythmic vibration on the edge of their senses. She felt it most at the precipice of sleep, lulling her into the darkness.
Dying or hibernating, they thought. Unmoving. Dreaming. Wishful thinking perhaps. No one considers what a limb, several miles long, might do, had it some intent behind it, until it is moving before their very eyes. Which is what it is doing now.
Catherine hadn’t the words to mark this beautiful, terrible moment. Just the obvious suggestion; ‘I think we’ll need to move the platform.’
Paddy Dobson
15th October 2020