Since I was a child, I have been captivated by the ocean. The idea that most of our planet is covered in something that we hardly know the first thing about was incredible to me, and I spent every moment of my free time in high school engrossed in nature documentaries, books, and research papers about the sea. Once when I was 15, my parents took me to the California coast (a long way from my childhood home in the sticks of Iowa), and I got to see the ocean for the very first time. And it was beautiful. From that moment, I felt it calling to me wherever I went, a calling that was only satisfied when, while working on my MS in marine biology, I got the incredible opportunity to be part of a research team based out of an area near Key Largo, Florida.
The research team consisted of 6 lab workers (including myself), 4 boat crew members, and 1 or 2 custodial staff. I was incredibly lucky to have been given this opportunity, as only one other member of the team, Elena, was a student like myself, and even she had known most of the other lab technicians for years.
Looking back on it, I’m not sure anyone ever told me exactly what we were supposed to be studying. It hardly mattered in the end anyway, but thinking about it now, that probably should have been a red flag… Anyway, the lab had a pretty regular daily routine. Each morning, the boat crews would be dispatched into the waves (seemingly regardless of weather conditions), and each afternoon they would return with a collection of…stuff… to be analyzed in the lab. I say “stuff” because it was something different every day, and I wasn’t always quite sure what everything they brought back was. I didn’t get much exposure to it, as, due to my non-doctoral status, I was mostly put on grunt work like plugging in data, writing meaningless procedural reports, or emailing whoever it was we were working for back on the mainland.
Still, the few times I caught glimpses of the baskets the crews brought back, it was strangely varied: a spotty eel with 3 eyes one day, a barnacle-covered jar full of mysterious sludge the next, and then a glove with six fingers. No matter how trashy the items seemed, the group of people conducting the real research in our lab always studied them for almost a concerningly long time, spending a great deal of time staring and the rest writing vigorously on notebooks or laptops. Overall, it was a very strange work environment, but nothing really struck me as odd until about two weeks into my working there.
The first odd incident came when I spotted another of the items that the boat crews had dragged in with them. It was early afternoon, and I was just coming back from lunch when one of the crewmen, a man who we all referred to as Pisk (affectionately, I think) squelched past me on his way to deposit the basket in the lab. As he passed, I got a brief glimpse of what was in the basket and…well… I think it was a dumbo octopus. But that’s impossible. The dumbo octopus only lives in extremely deep water, at least 13,100 feet deep, and I’ve seen those boats. They don’t have an ounce of deep diving gear on them. In fact, I’m not sure they have any gear on them. In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever seen one leave the facility. But how else would they be bringing in all this stuff?
The next odd thing was, as I was on my way to the bathroom, I spotted a trail of grimy looking water leading out of the men’s shower room. Looking a little closer, I noticed that it had a few small, silvery flecks in it, almost like fish scales. As I was examining the strange water trail, one of the lead researchers, Dr. Montgomery, walked by and stopped to see what I was looking at. He let out a strange, raspy laugh before making a vague comment under his breath about forgetting to clean up after himself and continuing along the hallway. As I watched him go, I could swear a few of those silvery flecks were stuck in the tangles of his hair.
The most alarming incident, however, happened this evening. I was doing some late work on a report (I usually work the latest as I have to wait for everyone else to finish their job before I can do mine) when Elena, the closest thing I have to a friend in this place, stopped in to check on me. There was a pretty big storm raging outside, and we spent some time playfully joking about what would happen if the research station got swept off the coast by a gigantic wave. And then the lights went out. It was very startling, and I actually let out a little shriek of fright, prompting Elena to let out a strange, raspy laugh not unlike the one I had heard out of Dr. Montgomery. I looked at her and suddenly became aware of just how glassy and…aquatic her eyes looked in the darkness. More than that, I could see as she laughed that her teeth looked a little too sharp and her skin a little too shiny. She noticed me staring and smiled. “You’re not like us, are you…” she said, with a half-smile “It’s too bad. I don’t they knew that when they hired you. I’m not sure how they’ll react when they find out. But don’t worry. I like you. I won’t snitch.” She let out another raspy chuckle before turning and strolling casually out of the lab, as if she hadn’t just turned my understanding of reality completely on its head.
That’s it I guess. All of my colleagues are here this morning, as usual, and nothing seems amiss, but I’m not sure if I should stay here or not. I’m not sure if I can leave either, to be fair. So, I’d like some advice. As stupid as it sounds, I think my colleagues might be fish. What should I do?