Good evening. I am calling from Japan. My English is not perfect, but I will try to be clear. What I have to say is important. I was captain of a deep-submergence vehicle for JAMSTEC, the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science. This was 1991. Our program was not public. We were testing new pressure systems, new materials. Pushing the limits of what the human body could survive at depth. I cannot tell you the name of the vessel. I signed papers. But the vessel existed, and what I saw was real. I have kept this secret for many years. My wife passed last spring, and I find myself thinking about it again. What we found. What is down there. I am old now. I think it is time someone else knows.
The mission was simple. Reach the bottom of Challenger Deep. The deepest point in the ocean. Nearly 11,000 meters. Only the Americans had done this before, in 1960 with the Trieste. We wanted to prove Japan could do the same. It was just myself and Navigator Tanaka on that descent. A two-man crew, you understand. The vessel was small. Tanaka handled navigation and life support. I controlled the descent and the external systems. We had trained together for eight months. I trusted him completely. The descent took nearly four hours. At that depth, you cannot rush. The pressure builds slowly. You watch the numbers climb on the depth gauge and try not to think about the weight of the water above you. By 6,000 meters, Tanaka had stopped talking. By 8,000, I had too. There is nothing to say when you are that far from the sun.
At 9,000 meters, our external lights failed. This was not unexpected. The pressure at that depth does terrible things to equipment. We had backup systems, smaller lights, but they were meant for emergency only. We decided to continue on instruments alone. The sonar would tell us when we reached bottom. The darkness at that depth is not like darkness on the surface. It is complete. Absolute. No light has ever reached where we were going. The only illumination was the glow of our instrument panels, green and red numbers floating in the black. I remember thinking that we were falling through nothing. That the ocean had swallowed us completely. Tanaka said something I will never forget. He said, 'Captain, we are not descending anymore. We are being lowered.' I did not understand what he meant then. I do now.
[ Story continues in the full game... ]