Amelia Through the Clouds

They both waited on the deck as the crew prepared Amelia. When the time came, they boarded the tiny submersible, were lowered into the sea, and began their long journey to the ocean floor.

. . .

Amelia descended into the Pacific for hours. The man looked out the large round porthole at the front of the sub and pressed buttons. The woman spoke to the crew of the main vessel above via a headset, communicating readings and levels from the gauges and displays throughout the small cabin.

. . .

Browsing the seabed untethered, Amelia roamed slowly. Hovering just above the contours of the ocean floor, the sub scanned the terrain with a maneuverable light that extended from the top of the vehicle. Inside, the man controlled the light with a pair of handheld joysticks. The woman examined the landscape through the porthole as the man moved the light about the area. She noted the environment's poor visibility to the crew above.

. . .

Some time later and a short distance away, the ocean floor began to slope downward. As Amelia breached the edge of the incline, the woman caught the first glimpse of something unnatural-looking below.

At the bottom of the incline, where the landscape flattened back out, she could see four distinct black circles on the undisturbed seabed. Alerted to the oddities, the man illuminated the zone. Each circle was of the same diameter, slightly larger than Amelia. They were arranged in a perfect two-by-two grid, the way four boosters might look at the bottom of a rocket to the moon.

They appeared exactly the way they looked in the photos their client had sent. She knew on sight that they'd found the "Formation."

. . .

Hovering above the mysterious "Formation," Amelia shined downward onto the pattern below. Monitoring it on a screen inside, the man remarked that the light beam seemed, to him, to shrink, become narrowed, or be absorbed whenever it came into contact with any of the four circles. Observing the phenomenon herself out of the porthole, the woman agreed that it looked that way to her as well.

Amelia zoomed directly over the nearest circle for a closer look. Again, they observed the beam being swallowed upon contact with it below. Watching meticulously, the woman could make out a texture on the edges of the circle which seemed different from the surrounding area. It occurred to her that the light's behavior could perhaps be explained by a vacancy. She suggested that the "Formation" was not a solid structure extending upward from the ocean floor, but rather a collection of empty depressions or holes.

While this theory didn't explain their seemingly intentional arrangement, she suspected they were actually seeing the wall of a cavity that extended downward, beneath the perceived seabed. Investigating further, they began a slow and cautious descent towards the surmised opening.

Approaching it, Amelia lowered into the tight-fitting puncture. From inside, the two watched through the porthole in front of them as the sub penetrated the ground like a glass elevator piercing the floor of a lobby to bring its payload into the basement.

Once inside the cryptic borehole, they could see nothing at all. The confines of the pit were such that Amelia fit snugly inside it, surrounded by a perfectly smooth, curved surface along the perimeter.

. . .

The plunge felt like it took days—longer even than the descent between the surface and the seabed. The journey was dark and the two were silent inside the machine. After enough time, they became incapable of knowing how long they'd spent dropping into pure blackness. The sub never rose. It never turned. It simply sank, deeper and deeper and deeper into the abyssal tunnel.

. . .

Suddenly, an explosion of blazing light pierced the porthole, soaking every surface of the vehicle's interior in white. At the same moment, the sub experienced a rapid and violent acceleration downward. The force of the sudden drop ripped the two inside from their seats and pinned them both against the ceiling as they plunged. It was as though the water around them had evaporated, initiating an abrupt free fall through the resultant open atmosphere. During the instant-onset nosedive, through squinted eyes, the woman caught the briefest of glances at what looked like clouds passing by the porthole as Amelia plummeted towards the ocean surface miles below.