“Hadal Dive”
MISSION LOG 7HA-11A5S0-Ph-013 (1a)
Interviewing Phylicia Hazlet.
NOTICE: This recording and associated transcript has been flagged by Staff Counselors as potentially disturbing. Continue at your discretion.
Beginning Playback
The room is cramped and uncomfortable. A token effort has been given towards furnishing the room with small armchairs, couches, and tables. Yet it fails utterly to dissolve any sense of unease the 4 blank walls and the clinical environment bring. A woman sits on one of the couches. She has positioned herself perfectly in the center of the couch and as far forward as possible. Her feet are firmly pressed against the ground.
Every few seconds the woman gives a single shiver. It looks like a tiny but harsh twitch of her whole body at once—as though she felt a constant chill in the air. She is otherwise healthy looking. She has deep brown hair that stops just beneath her shoulders and is dressed in a plain but well groomed blouse and pants.
She clearly doesn’t want to be there.
The door at the far side of the room opens with a squeak. A man wearing a dress shirt, slacks, and a black tie enters with his jacket hastily stuffed between his arm and his side. He tosses it onto a chair opposite the woman and then falls into the chair himself with an audible “pomf.” He wipes sweat from his wrinkled forehead and attempts to brush back his graying hair.
“Getting hotter every summer, I swear,” he groans.
“And way too humid,” the woman responds, her expression blank and her voice monotone—as though she had answered by reflex rather than conscious thought.
The man adjusts himself into his seat and loosens his tie. He tries to make himself sound a little more professional as he speaks; managing to at least give off the impression of effort (small though it was).
“Doctor Phylicia Hazlet, my name is Doctor Francis Krafton. I know you’ve probably already talked to the police, soldiers, and all sorts of other folks about what happened with your diving team. I’m sorry, by the way.”
“Thank you,” Dr. Hazlet replies. She focuses her attention on Krafton as he continues.
“I’m, thankfully, the last person you’ll have to speak to. I’m a leading mental health professional from Massachusetts. Trained in psychology, psychiatry, social work, and all sorts of other boring stuff. Since the project was funded in large part by government grants, a few fine men from Washington came to me and asked that I speak with you out of concern for your well being.”
Dr. Hazlet nods in understanding.
“Let me be clear. I’m not here to figure out where the government’s money went or if you’re guilty of anything. I just want to hear your side of things and see if I can make sense of what happened. Hopefully then we can talk about getting you proper treatment so that you can sleep a little better at night. Sound good?”
Dr. Hazlet nods again.
“Alrighty. So why don’t we start with some basics. What would you prefer I call you?” Krafton asks, immediately returning to his more relaxed intonation.
“Phylicia is fine,” she replies. “And yourself?”
Krafton moves his hand into his chest as he speaks. “Frankie is good if you’d like to stay casual.”
They both chuckle.
“Alright. So why don’t you fill me in on everything from the beginning? What was this project all about?”
Phylicia takes a moment to absorb the question. She breathes deeply for a minute or so, collecting herself. Then she begins.
“The whole thing was called ‘Hadal Dive.’ Hadal, if you didn’t know, refers to depths below 6,000 meters in the ocean. If you couldn’t tell from the name, it comes from Hades.”
Frankie responds. “The God of the Dead, yeah?”
Phylicia corrects him, “Half right. Maybe a quarter. Hades was the God of the Underworld. The place itself was even named after him.”
“Oh so the term’s a fun little joke. Deep ocean. UNDERworld. I can see the connection.” Frankie chuckles.
Phylicia does not.
“Exactly. The region is notoriously underexplored because of the intense pressure, among a ton of other reasons. But supposedly that was going to change.
I was approached a few months ago asking if I would join the first real expedition into the zone. The [REDACTED] claimed they’d had their engineers in [REDACTED] create a new material for submarines and diving suits. They’d made the things look like sci-fi tanks and armor but apparently they were specifically designed to withstand the harshest ocean pressure. And to their credit, it worked. Don’t ask me how they did it. I’m a Marine Biologist, not an engineer. But somehow, it worked.”
“So you were brought on as a research expert?” Frankie asks, seemingly more out of his own curiosity than professional requirement.
“One of many. But out of all of the researchers working on the project, I was the only one who volunteered to be part of the dive team.”
“You volunteered?”
“Why wouldn’t I?” Phylicia begins to smile warmly, seemingly lost in nostalgia. “The sea is so alluring in its own way. History has tons of sailors and pirates and researchers who’ve gone on and on about the call of the ocean. Those songs and stories of the open water are hauntingly timeless. And I wanted so badly to be a part of that tradition. To maybe inspire another little kid in the backwoods of Pennsylvania to want to see the ocean for themself.”
“It’s good to see that you’re proud of your work.”
“I was for a long time.”
“So you volunteered for the diving team. How many others went with you?”
“Six total, including me. Three of us were research specialists in one form or another. Two were armed with harpoons and a couple other tools to scare off hostile wildlife if needed. The last one was our Communications guy. He was in charge of coordinating all of us in the dark, telling the sub what was happening, and having them yank us out in an emergency. So of course he was the first to go.”
Frankie blinks slowly, as if not registering what he’s hearing.
“I-I’m sorry I’m not sure I fully understand. Could you explain?”
Phylicia folds her hands atop her knees. She leans all of her weight into the ground.
“It was the crack of dawn when we left. After training for months and months, we finally loaded up onto a big ship with a crew of hundreds and sailed out towards the open ocean. From there we crammed a smaller expedition of dozens into the specially constructed pressure sub. And off we went.
“Once we got to around 6,000 meters deep, the dive team left the specialized sub with an emergency cord. Our suits were capable of fighting off the ocean pressure and even could supply their own oxygen for a few hours. But if anything went wrong, the cord would help us get the hell out of there quickly by yanking us back as fast as the winch could go.”
“We swam down a few hundred meters into the depths. It was so dark. Our diving suits were equipped with lights and special goggles, but…still.”
Frankie leans forward, and in a sympathetic tone asks, “I imagine the lack of light must have been terrifying.”
Phylicia shakes her head.
“It wasn’t like that. When you go out into the woods on a cloudy night, and you can’t tell the difference between when your eyes are closed or open. THAT’S a lack of light. What surrounded us down there was like…”
She trails off, her thoughts seeming to drift away from her.
“It was like I was being smothered. Like the dark was some kind of black tar reaching out to take me.”
Frankie swallows, gulping down his growing nervousness. Phylicia continues.
“Something came swimming out of the blackened water. Couldn’t have been much bigger than a person, since it was able to sneak up on us all. One second the Comms Officer was on the radio and then nothing. Not even static. Not even a scream. The only reason we knew he was gone was because we realized the emergency cord had been torn in two.”
Phylicia shivers.
“I don’t know when they took the others. The radio was silent the whole time. All I could see was the darkness in front of me, and all I could feel was the cold suit on my body. And for a moment I was grateful that it kept me alive and safe.
Then it hit me all at once.
I was alone in open water. Thousands of feet below the surface.
And I was going to die there.
The suit that now kept me breathing and safe would also be the coffin I’d fall to the ocean floor in.
I wanted to panic.
I wanted to scream.
I wanted to go home.
I wanted to see my parents one last time.”
Small single tears drop from Phylicia’s cheeks onto her legs. She does not stop speaking, even as she wipes them away.
“I don’t know how long I sank. An hour? Six? Hell, maybe it was only 15 minutes. There was no way to know. The dark never changed. I just floated there. Falling and falling. Falling forever.
I’d given up by then. I resolved myself to just stare at the darkened world beneath the waves that I’d given my life away to. If I had to die, I wanted to see some beauty in the depths before I went. Besides, looking around was really all I could do while I fell.
I felt something rush past me. An enormous mass that moved the water as it swam. I was caught in the current of it passing by, but I still managed to get a look. I thought maybe it was a whale. Some gigantic variety of Sperm Whale. The thing was enormous. Bigger than the sub I’d come down in. Maybe as big as the ship we rode on.”
Frankie shakes his head in shock. “My god—but, but how?“
“No. Not yet. We aren’t anywhere close to done yet,” Phylicia snapped. “If you don’t want to believe me, fine. But you promised to listen.”
Frankie nods solemnly, making a mental note to do his best to not interrupt further.
“I could barely see with the lights the suit had on it. But now that I had an incentive, I started fiddling with every setting of my suit. Eventually, I managed to find the night vision settings.
Then I saw it in full. Beautiful, graceful, and enormous. It resembled a whale in shape but it had no eyes and I could see every room-sized organ and muscle beneath its skin. The whale-thing was at least the size of a city block and I could feel the water surging as it passed me and swam out into the void.
It didn’t get far.
I watched a tentacle that was nearly as long as the whale’s body shoot up from the depths. Several more followed it after. I don’t know why I didn’t panic then. Maybe because I’d already made my peace with dying back when I first started sinking. Or maybe I knew deep down that I was far too small for those monsters to know I was even there. And so I watched them fight. I watched tentacles and teeth and flippers smack and flail against each other. I watched the head of the largest…god, I think it was a squid? It was by far the largest squid I’ve ever known of. It rose upwards past me. Then the squid wrapped its entire body, head and all, around the whale like a snake and squeezed. I was sure it would be the winner.”
Now Phylicia is the one who swallows. Beads of sweat crawl down her face and drop down near the tear stains on her clothes.
“So who ended up winning?” Frankie asks.
“Neither,” Phylicia responds, coldly.
“I saw something else rise upwards from the dark below the fighting giants. Something far, far too large. It was like watching a skyscraper rush upward from the dirt, fully built. The water rushed around me as it rose up and up.
And then the giant thing cracked open. Little by little I saw digits coming loose and unstuck. They broke off barnacles and rock and coral as the enormous fingers uncurled. There were 8 of them. Too many for one hand. Each one unfurled and writhed in the water, all attached to that mountainous hand and arm. Then I watched each finger close around the pair of titans. Each and every one of them latched onto whatever uncovered part of the animals they could find like leeches. Then the many fingered hand sealed itself around them with ample space in its palm.”
Frankie cannot stop himself. “But-but, you said the whale was at least the size of an aircraft carrier. And the squid was even bigger! And you say that this…this HAND was big enough to grab them?”
“As if they were cheap toys, Doctor Krafton.” Phylicia replies in a monotone. Her face has gone blank and her body shivers even more aggressively than before.
“It just dragged them down. Far, far down. Far, far deeper than any of us could ever know or imagine. Then everything shook, and went quiet again.”
“How did…how did you survive? How are you here?!” Frankie barely whimpers out.
Phylicia remains detached and emotionless in her responses.
“I don’t know. After that I just kept sinking. Sinking and sinking until I couldn’t take it anymore and fell asleep. I thought maybe my air could run out while I was sleeping. Maybe I could go peacefully.
But I woke up on the Massachusetts shoreline. Just a few hundred meters away from the dock we left from. The diving armor was laying in scraped and torn pieces all around me, like it was peeled off with a can opener. But I was alive. Somehow.”
Frankie tries to collect himself. He produces a notepad from his crumpled jacket, cursing to himself for not remembering to do it before he began asking questions.
“So then, just to sum up the story from your perspective, what do you think you saw down there?” He asks, clicking his pen.
“I..I don’t know if I can say for sure,” Phylicia begins. Her voice quivers slightly with fear. “But…since then I had an idea. A thought that popped into my head one night after a nightmare.”
She lets out an unsteady breath.
“My Nana used to think God was up in the sky. That He was all powerful and was watching over us from far above. I was always a smartass and used to snap back that we’ve been to space and back and seen no sign of Him. Then she’d scold me.”
The story should sound nostalgic. Yet nothing in the words makes them seem like cheerful reminiscing.
“But now I’ve started wondering. Maybe there is something out there. Something great and fearsome enough that we could call it God. And if it isn’t living up in the sky…
…Then where else could it fit?”