My name is Agustin, and I work as a Teniente, a First Lieutenant, in the Armada De Chile- what you Americans would call “the Chilean Navy.” The big difference is that I serve in what you think of as a “coast guard,” but in Chile it’s one organization. Please understand that In Chile, our coast guard performs rescues all the way to Antarctica; beyond the Cape Horn, across the drake passage, over the roughest seas in the world. This is a point of national pride. We boast some of the greatest mariners on Earth. We go boldly where others do not dare. Over seas where men have died by their thousands for centuries. Where seas 24 meters tall swallow ships whole, and the gods hammer their fury against the rocks of our shores, and still we go. We fear nothing.
We fear nothing. But these journals? This lifeboat? That body? If the stories had come from anywhere else, I would have called it fiction, and paid no mind. But I was there the day they found The Mariner. These journals chilled my blood. I felt the need to make it known. My superiors have dismissed them as a hoax; as the flights of fancy of a sailor who happened to find himself on a doomed vessel. And sure- In these waters, it happens a few times a year. It is tragic, but of no special note. But the circumstances around this case? And these journals… well… There is something strange here. Something more. I can’t get it out of my mind. I will copy them here. The Capitan has ordered that they will not be entered into the official record, as he fears we will be mocked as madmen. I say we let the world make of them what they will.
The lifeboat was found adrift by a freighter called the “Ourang Medan,” on the 12th of February, at 11:34 AM (GMT-003) at roughly 58°23’54” S 73°14’33” W It was a polar class lifeboat, fully enclosed, and rated for occupancy of 35 souls, with provisions to keep them alive (though not comfortably so) for two weeks. The freighter crew found the body of a single mariner inside; the body appearing fresh and not long dead, harnessed into the seat nearest the main hatch.
Seawater was found to be ankle deep inside the lifeboat. The sailors from the Medan soon noticed that the water in the lifeboat was rising. They decided to remove the body and it’s personal effects, and return to their ship. The bridge officers of the Medan reported the sighting of a lifeboat immediately on discovery, but the Armada de Chile could not reach that location by surface vessel in less than 15 hours. The Medan reported the lifeboat was taking water and that they would rig pumps to keep her afloat until the authorities arrived. An hour later, they reported they had been unsuccessful, and that the now empty lifeboat had gone down. It remains visible to deep ocean sonar scans, but lies too deep for recovery or investigation to be practical.
Analysis of photos taken by the crew of Medan prior to the sinking show a lifeboat which meets all international safety standards, with the exception of the two emergency radio beacons. These appear to have been deliberately destroyed, though it remains a mystery if this damage was done by the mariner or some other agent. The first radio beacon appears to have been carefully, and with some difficulty, removed from a mounting bracket designed to withstand the tremendous forces of the southern ocean. The beacon seems to have been thrown overboard, as it was not present on the lifeboat, and it’s redundant attachment cables were also detached; an act which must also have been deliberate. The Second beacon was disabled by having been dismantled, which would also have been a difficult task for a mariner in distress and apparently without significant tools. The body was found to be wearing a “leatherman” style multitool as well as a sheath knife, but it is not believed the feat could be accomplished with only these. Why would a man adrift at sea disable his rescue beacons? Was he attempting to hide from the very ship he left? Why would someone do that?
The hull markings and the lifeboat’s bronze plaque clearly identify the lifeboat as having come from an American Icebreaker named Celeste. Authorities investigating found no such vessel has ever been registered. Celeste remains entirely unknown to American maritime authorities. Neither is she known to any groups currently operating in Antarctica or upon the southern ocean. This anomaly has not been explained, and the Capitan has ordered an end to the investigation. He is convinced that pursuance of this case will result in damage to his career and reputation. We Chileans are a proud people; and our sailors proudest of all. The Capitan wishes no association with the inexplicable, or unsolvable.
The Mariner was examined on the Medang first by the ship’s medic, and later aboard my ship of the navy. (I must not give the name of my vessel here, as I am telling this story against orders from the Capitan.) The mariner was found wearing work pants, a leather belt with sheaths for his multitool and a knife, workboots, and an orange parka marked with a “United States Polar Services” shoulder patch. A plastic bag was found tucked inside the mariner’s parka, pressed against his chest by the seat harness. The bag contained (5) standard sized notebooks. This bag kept most, but not all of the water out, preserving at least some of the mariner’s… Journals? In legible condition.
He was found to be in good health at the time of his death, not malnourished, and with no signs of major physical trauma. The Cause of death was determined to be hypothermia, likely owing in part to the liferaft leaking prior to her sinking. The Mariner displayed numerous but minor cuts and bruising over the entire body, especially on his hands and arms. These were not believed to be unreasonable for a man who worked at sea, especially for one who had spent any time in a lifeboat upon the southern ocean. The Mariner was photographed thoroughly, the exam completed, and the mariner was buried at sea near the location of the sinking of the lifeboat on which he had been found.
It fell to me to examine the mariner’s notebooks, while our ship’s doctor examined the body. These were found to have been badly damaged by intrusion of water. They appear to be journals, written in (5) notebooks, standard size, with wite and black marbled covers, common everywhere. Most entries were written in blue pen, which ran badly where it had been exposed to water. These entries were entirely illegible. Some entries had been set down in pencil, which survived the water largely undamaged. These I will transcribe below.
Notebook #1. First legible entry:
Dec. 5, 2021
Arrived in Chile yesterday. The hotel is [this section illegible]
… to the ship sometime next week, which I’m not really looking forward to. It’ll be tough having a roommate again, and they’ll be working us 12 hours a day, 7 days a week.
It’s strange that I haven’t met anyone from the ship yet. I met some people on the flight down, but they were going out on our sister ship, the Marie, to do supply runs to Antarctic research bases and swap out some personnel. Seems weird that I haven’t met anyone from my ship yet, given that [this section damaged]
***
Entries destroyed.
***
Date illegible.
[This section damaged]
…Team seems like they’re all good people. Except that one guy. Fuck him. But whatever. Can’t win ‘em all, I guess. They have a handful of robot submarines- AUVs, they call them, Autonomous Underwater Vehicles. We’ll program a mission into one, toss it in the ocean, and then pick them up days -sometimes weeks- later. So the plan is to get multiple sensors in the water to listen for the mystery sounds. While the robots are out listening and snooping, the ship will be going around doing additional science, collecting all kinds of physical and chemical data on the ocean, grabbing deep water samples and such, to see if anything points to a source of the sounds. Even if not, the data will be helpful for mapping currents and monitoring glacial melt and global warming stuff.
We have two small boats on board, inflatable ones like the navy seals use, that we’ll take out for science ops and sample collection away from the ship. I’ve never liked inflatable boats, but I suppose they have some upsides. Whatever. We’ll launch them with the crane when we need them, and then they get strapped onto the ship’s helipad when they’re not being used.
Anyways, we’re still on the dock in Punta Arenas. We have several truckloads of supplies coming in daily, and we’re waiting on some steel to be delivered. I have to weld up a mounting system for the deck to mate one of the robot submarine platforms to the ship, and then one of the science teams is waiting on parts to arrive. We should be leaving port in a day or two.
Really looking forward to seeing the ice.
***
Jan. 15, 2022.
We are in the drake passage. Bucket list item achieved. We left the straights of Magellan on the west side, so I didn’t get to see cape horn, which is a drag. Hopefully I can catch it on the way home.
I feel like something is wrong. Maybe it’s me. There’s… friction? with my coworkers and- no. y’know what? Fuck that. That guy is an asshole and I [Illegible]
…of the Science team people. And I told him so.
I can’t really write anymore tonight. My head feels… I dunno… maybe I’m just seasick? Weird. That’s never happened before.
***
[The rest of journal 1 has been destroyed.]
[journal 2 begins. Many pages are damaged.]
[date illegible]
I swear I don’t recognize most of the people on the ship. I’ve been trying to keep my distance and sticking to my headphones and just ignoring everyone whenever I can, but… how can there be this many new people on a ship? The boat is 300 feet long. There’s 60 people on board. We’ve been out here for a month. I must’ve seen them all by now, right? But I swear I keep seeing new people. They don’t seem to want to talk though. I tried introducing myself to one today, but he just nodded and walked off. Or… kindof staggered, I guess. We’re in rough seas right now. Everyone feels like shit and we haven’t had a hot meal in days. The boat is rolling too hard for the chefs to cook. Maybe he just didn’t feel like talking. Fair enough. I don’t either.
Speaking of- I don’t understand why we aren’t there yet. It’s only supposed to be a 4 day trip across the drake. Maybe double that, if the weather sucks? Spoiler alert- it’s the drake. The weather sucks. But by my count we’ve been out here for 12, maybe 14 days? It’s hard to remember exactly, but… seems like a long time. I suppose everything seems to take longer when you’re being scrambled like an egg all day and night.
Too Rough to go outside. We’re all locked in. The decks are constantly awash, and you’d be swept out to sea for certain if you went out there now. Hopefully we’ll break through it soon.
I just want to see the ice.
***
I woke to find my ship standing motionless beside the ice shelf, which is a term of herculean understatement. You’ve heard the term, right? “The ice shelf?” Turns out the ice shelf is actually a sheer cliff of glacial ice, standing more than 200’ tall over the ocean, stretching unbroken from horizon to horizon. The scientists tell me it extends 800’ below the water as well. It is surprisingly straight, geographically, without coves or peninsulas. Just a sheer cliff. The face is jagged and broken. Facets catch the sun and glare like sodium lamps, and other facets glow in the shadows in electric shades of purple, greens, and blues. Those colors thrum with a strange magic that refuses to show on camera, though I have tried taking pictures for you all nonetheless, and will share them when I return to the world.
The most unearthly part of this place is the lack of scale. I left the ship in the small boat yesterday for a science mission, going a few miles out into the nothing, and was able to glimpse over the snowy cornices atop the ice shelf. There’s a long, slow, gentle slope, impossibly high, that I had mistaken for days to be a cloud formation. In today’s clear I discovered it’s more ice. Ice, *thousands* of feet high. Ice, covering literal mountains, hundreds and unfathomed hundreds of feet over the rocks, looming into the scathing, impossible abyss of the leaden sky, where it often meets the cloud it appears to be. I have checked the charts on the bridge. Those buried mountains have no names. Those icy tops have never been trod by men. They are inscrutable, and they seethe malice into the wind that buffets us. We pray they will not notice our tiny boat, or take umbrage at our trespass. We science gently. Men whisper on the bridge. We do not speak of our fear, but soup spoons tremble in the galley and coffee mugs shake over work stations. We blame the cold, but our eyes tell of terror. We fear, and we cower. We sense the ice giants stir around us, without moving. We nightly suffer our strange dreams, and daily suffer still stranger dreams on waking. The ship stands beside the ice. We wait. We know not what for. The ice moans. The ice knows. The ice has been waiting, too.
***
[pages destroyed]
It is another science day. Today we are capturing water samples from the frigid deep. We are conducting a CTD survey, testing for “Temperature, Conductivity, and Depth,” as the acronym says. We also test a great deal more, but the scientists won’t speak of that. Today, we send machines to trespass in the abyss; just as we did yesterday, just as we will do tomorrow. Again, and again, and again, as though we were machines ourselves. We capture samples, though I have never seen them afterward, their bottles gray and opaque; and strangely heavy, much heavier than they were when I sent them over the side, and far too heavy to be full of seawater alone. There is a camera on the machine, in it’s stout little pressure casing, secured to the sampling machine with stainless steel bands and stout bolts. My job includes plugging it in. Another technician is responsible for turning the camera on. Later, he downloads
it’s data. He does not speak of what it sees. I sense that I am not to ask. The machine reaches unfathomable depths. It dives miles. The deepest depths of the ocean are known, and yet we carry far more cable than that. We spool out mile after tremulous mile, far beyond the depths
of reason. Far beyond the deepest reaches of earth and ocean. My job is to watch the cable. It whines and shudders like a living thing, terrified of where it it is bound. It moans, straining at the
impossibility of depth. straining under a load far greater than the weight of cable and the sampling machine. As though something were pulling it down, dragging it deeper with the strength of titans. Where does the machine go? What are we sampling? Why would they need so many?
The machine is on it’s way down again. Down, down, down, and deeper still. At present, it is as deep as passenger jet would fly above, and still it sinks; deeper and deeper with each breath, with each turn of the winch. I stand at the rail, a heavy restraining belt and tether at my waist to stop me from surrendering to the void, weather by accident or otherwise. I hang my toes over the side, steel shod and booted against the cold, and I gaze down into the unutterable, shrieking
depths. There are dark miles between my boots and the bottom of the sea. Miles, stacked atop frigid miles, down and down, too cold to freeze. Dark miles where monsters feed, who have never known the sun. To whom light is an abhorrence undreamed of. Who’s farthest ancestors forgot the warmth of the world the day the oceans ceased to boil from their creation. I look down past my boots. The deep calls.
I would not fall to my death. I would float to it. Far above those endless miles. Humans cannot reach the abyss below. It is forbidden. It is forbidden by laws of nature. The same laws that say the ocean should have a bottom here. And yet, the cable rolls by. Meter on meter. Mile on
mile. Far, far deeper than the ocean can be. The deep calls.
The belt is tight against my waist, and I find that I am leaning. Leaning, well over the side. Leaning over the yawning abyss. The cable rolls out. The machine dives deeper. The world is mad. The machine is mad. The belt is an iron band around my waist, and I am chained here.
The deep calls.
***
[Entry from notebook III]
There are noises from down below. From the deep belly of the ship. From the engineering decks which we are not allowed to enter. Noises echoing up through the pipe chases and the spaces between the walls, resonating up the steel plates of the hull itself. Sounds of an unseen army at
work. Of clanking and banging and the dragging of chain. Of grinders and drills and the unnerving, mechanical purr of ratchets, slowly turned, as though someone were savoring each click of the pall. But it’s the more exotic sounds that vex me. That wake me in a cold sweat night after awful night- the rending of metal, torn, not cut; shrinking like a demon, or that damned unearthly, rhythmic thrumming. I don’t know what that sound is. It is not a sound made by
Machines. I have fallen asleep to it too many times. A sleep that yields no rest. A sleep that brings no dreams. Just the sound. I wake with it stuck in my head like a song. That rhythm. Until I can’t tell if I’m hearing it out loud or just in my mind…
At times there is the sound of wind. Not a simple movement of air, not a rustling of papers and a whisper of pressures equalizing. No. The sound of a hurricane rushing through the underdeck. It comes and goes, irrespective of any movement of the ship or time of day. Sometimes it rages for an hour, as though it would tear apart the bulkheads, and sometimes it screams for a few seconds, dying as quickly as it came. And always there is the vague mechanical hum of a ship at sea; now a roar and now a susurrus, but never a silence. But perhaps worst of all, as I
lay in my bunk night after sleepless night, below all this discordant noise; between the outbursts of radio static and the churn of angry machines, I sometimes hear the shuffling of… of people? If they can be called that? I hear a shambling of movement; the rasp of hard, dirty cloth on cloth. A stumbling, absent-minded motion between the tool noises. There is an army down there. But there are never voices. Never a word. Men do not work like that.
I have seen them eating in the galley. Strange men in blue jumpsuits, with grease stains and rust and the flat affect of the damned. They never speak, never sit with other crew, and I have never seen the same face twice. They eat, numbly, and they return below decks, Through a thousand
hatches and doors and stairwells heavily marked with warnings and forbiddances and unspecified threats of security breaches for the unauthorized. I am not authorized. I have never seen a person again after they walk through those hatches. How could there be so many? The
ship is not large enough to need so many…
I find myself staring at one of those doors when Radio calls for me, the noise harsh and piercing from the mic clipped to my shoulder. I do not know who the voice belongs to. I do not know where he is on the ship. We call him “Radio.” We must always obey The Radio. The Radio orders me to the deck, to secure a science machine that is no longer being used. I make my way astern, shambling now myself, as the ship rolls on building seas. A storm must be coming, but there are no windows to see it. The noise of the ship torments me as I make my way aft, until I can’t tell which noises are the wailing of machines and which are the screaming inside my skull. I make my way aft, as Radio commands.
The noise is omnipresent. The noise is constant, and ever changing. The noise has no rhythm. It churns and re-invents itself, second by second, so that it never fades into the background. It forces itself to the front of your mind every moment, always new. Always loud. Always deafening.
Noises of engines. Noises of machines. Of science. Of the growl of steel on ice; the ice we break through as we move forward, the car-accident noises of wrecking, crashing, crushing ice. The shattering, shuddering, jarring of house-sized, ancient icebergs meeting their end of eons against our hull with a noise I can scarce describe. The propellers chatter and shake and buck and chew ice into ruins of brash in our wake. The noise gets louder as I stagger aft. The noise is
violence. The noise is pain. The noise shakes the railings I clutch for balance until my knuckles feel their unmaking against the vibrating steel. The chomp chomp chomping of the props detonates in my skull, each hammer blow of steel on ice striking white fire in my vision. I moan
with the pain of it, my sound lost entirely to the wailing of the world. The noise is a living thing. The noise is gnawing at my insides. The noise shakes my bones. The noise rattles my teeth in my jaw. I clench my teeth hard enough I fear they’ll crack and still they sing in their
sockets like they might burst at any moment, burst with the noise. The crashing, endless, overpowering noise. I cannot scream.
The noise is in my lungs.
I go aft. Radio must be obeyed.
***
The Mariners journals continue, but I will stop here. For now. Please. If anyone has any information- a missing persons report, or maybe if you know of the icebreaker Celeste… please contact the Armada? Tell them you have information about the lifeboat. About… THE Lifeboat. They will know which one you mean. I have more for you, if you come forward. These Journals… they… it gets worse. It gets… I have not been able to sleep while I am at sea ever since. I hope it’s not real. Please tell me it is not real?