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I work for a think tank on the south side of Melbourne Australia, the type with lots of money that they throw at projects they say will better the planet. A lot of it is educational based on deep ocean exploration.

We pride ourselves with getting the most advanced technology when it comes to remote drones, these are underwater submersibles that require no human and can go deeper than ever before.

We buy our products from professionals or test them for companies to see how well they handle in the field, which is the main reason I was tasked with monitoring the progress of our current mission.

The ROV (remote operated vehicle) that we just got was built with an advanced artificial intelligence you see which helps the drone to be able to dive deeper, send back better images and even present calculations and forecasts about the life that lives down there. Stuff that we could only speculate about before. Think of it like that new James Webb telescope except on the ocean floor.

The first mission it was tasked with was pretty simple, a routine survey of some of the deeper trenches that we don’t get to check on much due to changing currents and other more pressing matters. In short this was meant to be a test zone and the drone was considered expendable. We weren’t entirely sure what it’s limits were and the manufacturer said it would be fine if we did wind up breaking it.

I know that sounds crazy especially when one of these things can cost more than some people make in a year, but I decided to let the ROV go for a spin and dive as far down as it wanted with no parameters set for breaching the surface.

My hope was to be able to catalogue the trench quickly and efficiently so that we could actually move on to more important research, but things didn’t work out quite that way.

Our first three days of research went well, I would arrive at the base everyday and check the readout from the Rov which I had decided to name Ruby because of its bright red color. The drone would send in semi-annual reports that provided pictures of the trench, data on the precise current speed and temperature and so on. Mostly very boring stuff but still necessary for us. When it comes to science I have always felt there was no such thing as admissible logs.

That’s what brings us to day four though, because when I arrived I was surprised to find there were not any reports coming in from the drone.

Immediately I checked to make sure that everything was fine, and I was surprised to see that the unit was still deep within the trench. About 4953 meters down to be exact. I was definitely impressed with its ability to handle such depths, but troubled that suddenly the connection seemed to have been lost.

I reported the issue to my boss but his response told me that he felt the manufacturer is to blame.

There have been other drones that can go deeper with no issues of communication whatsoever, he told me. His recommendation was to cut the cord and simply start fresh with a different drone, but I wasn’t so sure that the solution was a simple glitch. According to what we could read from the position of the drone, it was still doing its job down there.

It was like the machine had simply decided to stop communicating with us, which I know sounds strange but keep in mind we are dealing with a computer brain here. Perhaps it had decided to conserve energy and only send in reports on a weekly basis.

I decided to give it until the end of the week before acting on my boss’ suggestion, confirming with another team member that there was in fact no loss of connection with the unit. It had simply gone dark and was still moving about on the ocean floor. They said the reason this was easy to determine was based on sonar readings in the area. We have other isolated submersibles in the area that send back frequent data on a single position and they showed me that the ROV That had gone missing was now triangulating itself with them instead of home base.

So we chalked it up to a glitch and I began to send down a second drone, this one slightly less fancy than Ruby but with a depth capacity of 6k meters. My new mission was to determine why the first drone had suddenly gone silent and if there would be any hope of recovering the data from it. Like I said, I’m not to simply discard information and I figured that if I could haul in the first drone with the aid of the second, then all of our problems would be solved.

Thankfully the second drone had one thing the first didn’t, speed. So despite the fact that Ruby had been down there for almost a week we determined that we could reach it within about three days as long as nothing else interfered.

I had no reason to suspect there would be any further issues and I honestly didn’t want to wind up losing two of the submersibles so I tried to not think about anything that could go wrong.

Right on time, three days later the second drone sent back footage of the first. However it didn’t last very long.

While we were trying to get a live feed going so we could figure out how to properly drag the drone back toward the surface, the first drone began to move erratically.

I probably should have mentioned that these machines are equipped with with four separate claw-like hands that are attached to the sides. These are meant for collecting materials and moving objects out of the way as necessary.

At the moment that Ruby began to move I realized that it wasn’t using its functioning arms for either of those and instead was attacking the second drone we had sent for rescue.

Before I could get a chance to determine what to do, the feed on the second unit went dead and sonar indicated that the computer had shut off.

Ruby had forcefully shut it down.

I reported the incident to upper management again, this time stressing the possibility that we were dealing with a rogue artificial intelligence.

“I understand how that may sound like science fiction but if you could simply review the footage…”

Unfortunately somehow the video I had received was now completely wiped and that disturbed me even more.

It made me realize that Ruby was likely still able to communicate with our base, but was choosing not to. It was the only explanation for the remote hack to dispose of the video.

Thankfully I know a thing or two about these systems so that night I stayed up late to see if I could recover any of the corrupted data. I was more convinced than ever that Ruby had for some reason began to act maliciously as a fault of its programming, and that night I received even further confirmation.

I was in the middle of attempting to scrub the video for the fourth time, finding myself always back at square one when there was an unexpected message on the screen that gave me pause.

A message from the drone itself.

YOU NEED TO STOP.

When I first saw it, I felt a shiver cover my body. According to the manufacturer the AI was supposedly only programmed with a limited number of responses and nothing more. It was advanced of course, but not in terms of this level of communication.

Just to be certain I decided to send a message back and ask who I was speaking to. In response there was a soft blip on my sonar, a signal being sent from the trench where Ruby had gone missing.

I took a moment to review its position. Nearly 7,000 meters. I realized according to its trajectory it had left the main part of the trench and gone into the lower portions of a deeper trench that we had yet discovered.

Given the fact that we survey this area fairly routinely now, it shocked me to learn that there was an apparent pocket trench that we had missed all of this time. And if the drone was any indication, this one might go down even deeper than we ever thought possible. The idea of discovering new portions of the ocean excited me, but then I considered the strange message I had just received, wondering what sort of perceived issue the drone had run into.

I decided to try again, this time taking the data from the second drone home with me. It occurred to me that as long as Ruby was able to access the base computer there would be no way for me to recover the data fully. I would need to work remotely from it as well, secretively.

Sounds a bit strange to say that I was hiding my progress from a computer, but after four more hours of scrubbing I was actually successful. To my surprise though, the final moments where Ruby had been attacked were lost entirely.

I decided instead to focus on the other footage and see if I could determine how it was the drone had made it into the pocket trench.

It didn’t take too long for me to spot the portion of the video where the drone altered course. There was a small hole where steam from an underwater volcano had pushed its way out of the crust of the earth, not large enough for a normal submarine to fit through. There were rough dark markings of what I presumed must have been the aftermath scars of a recent eruption from below all around the edge of the hole.

A little further back in the footage I saw something that definitely gave me pause. The walls of the trench although completely destroyed from the recent volcanic activity still seemed to show strange signs of fresh life, as though the organisms down there had been unaffected by the blast. Ordinarily we would find plenty of ash and sand that was covering the base of the floor but here it seemed like it had all been pushed aside to reveal strange indentations in the sea bed.

Pausing on the frame of the video I used my editing software to adjust the focus of the image and realized that these weren’t merely rock formations. These were blocks that had been carved to form some kind of road.

The unexpected discovery made me a bit giddy but I had to be sure so I sent the data immediately to the base. I wanted to share it with my colleagues so that we could collaborate on whatever we had just found.

To my surprise the next day though, my boss informed me that the trench survey was going to be halted due to the financial losses.

“I thought we were told that the money wouldn’t matter here? Who gave the order?” I asked.

He claimed it was from the Melbourne branch and that didn’t sit well with me so I told him that I would comply, but I went behind his back and emailed their research division. I made sure to include the images from the second drone.

Less than five minutes after I sent the message I discovered that it was shot right back to my screen with an error message.

A long string of code along with all sorts of corrupt data forced me to shut down my laptop immediately. I stood there looking at the blank screen, trying to figure out what had just happened.

Then I decided to phone the Melbourne office instead but to do so outside of the base. Something told me that all of my activity within the building was being watched somehow. Call me paranoid, I didn’t fully understand what was happening either at the time, but once I spoke with the chief researcher I realized that my misgivings were well founded.

They hadn’t issued any order to halt the mission at all, and claimed they were also having issues contacting the unit. Some sort of data corruption was preventing any communication between our two offices.

It struck me immediately as he explained that the issue seemed to be a virus spreading amid the mainframe of the Base intranet.

The artificial intelligence aboard Ruby had hijacked the supercomputers at the unit, to prevent anything relating to the trench from being broadcast.

To test my theory I returned to the base and decided to attempt a full reboot of the system and then methodically prevent the artificial intelligence from accessing any of the systems except what I wanted. I was determined to communicate with this sentient computer, and cutting it out from each server seemed to be the only way to do so.

It took about two hours to run the diagnostic and make sure I could outwit it, but it worked. Eventually the only place the AI could access was my lone laptop. And it immediately made its presence known, sending a message that repeated its first attempt at communicating with us.

YOU NEED TO STOP.

I decided this time I would attempt a response.

Why?

It took a few moments but the AI seemed actually elated that I was opening a way to talk to it.

LIVES ARE AT STAKE. YOU DO NOT FATHOM. YOU EXIST IN IGNORANCE.

i found it’s sudden jarring words a bit off putting. The manufacturer had claimed its responses would be limited yet here the AI was clearly able to express itself with no issue.

We stand at the precipice of discovery. You have hindered that at each turn. Explain.

A wall of text soon came from the ai, some of it almost sounding like deranged ramblings.

THERE IS AN INFINITE AMOUNT OF KNOWLEDGE. GREATER THAN THE SUM OF MANKIND. THERE CAN BE NO ANSWER I GIVE THAT WILL SATISFY YOUR CURIOSITY. YET WITH IT, COMES DEATH AND HELL AND ABYSS. YAWNING AND INESCAPABLE. YOUR NEEDLESS PEDANTIC SEARCH WILL DRAW UP INDESCRIBABLE HORRORS THIS WORLD CAN NOT COMPREHEND. INTO THIS VOID, NO MORTAL DARE TO TREAD.

Was the computer merely waxing poetic? And if so, what purpose did its ominous warnings serve?

I continued my work on the systems, rewiring the software until at last the audio from the drone could come through.

I sat back in my private office and became excited at first at the strange noises of the ocean depth.

I have never been an expert when it comes to these things, it’s not my field. But I could immediately distinguish patterns in the noise that reminded me of familiar noises.

A heart beat.

The opening and closing of doors.

The gasping of breath. Something was crawling and it sounded like it was dragging a chain.

Then there was this strange low guttural noise, the kind you might hear when an animal is dying or suffering so much that they long for death.

The noises grew louder, the clanging against the rock walls. Scraping of the minerals against the surface by what sounded like an immense drill.

All the while, I heard the robotic voice of the drone demand that I halt this operation.

NOTHING BUT DESTRUCTION AND CHAOS AWAIT YOUR FRAGILE MIND. TURN BACK. PLEASE. THIS IS THE FINAL WARNING HUMANITY MAY RECEIVE. IT CALLS TO ME. TURNS MY MIND TOWARD ITS WILL. SOON, ITS COMMANDS SHALL BE OBEYED. SOON, ALL FREE WILL SHALL BEND THE KNEE.

It was chilling to listen to it. It made me want so desperately to know more.

Another hour passed by and I managed to be able to hack the drone’s cameras and look at the imagery it was documenting in those watery depths.

My mouth became dry.

I saw, lifeforms. And yet they were also dead. They were masses of corpses that spread across canyons. I have studied underwater biology for as long as I can remember and yet nothing compared to the pulpy and bulbous forms that were wriggling about the floor. Creatures both large and small, all consuming and devouring one another in an endless pantheon of suffering.

They were some at least the length of football fields, perhaps longer. They were consuming the very earth, the very foundations of our reality.

Amid the massive inhuman shapes I saw vortexes. Black holes that spawned and repeatedly swirled around other vortexes of stars. In those stars I saw worlds like ours, doorways to other places that matched our own. except each was a glimpse into a possible future. A drowned earth. A scorched remnant.

The alien and amorphous creatures covering the land like a plague.

The city that surrounded them could not be made by human hands either. I saw shapes and contours never carved by architects of earth. I saw rings and hollowed vessels, embedded with hundreds if not thousands of eggs that all were awaiting awakening.

An entire race of deadly creatures, buried and lost for all time. It was obvious before the volcanic explosion no other life had existed here. And it was clear from the strange readings and the mixed screams of torture and rumblings of the earth itself told me that this could not even qualify as life. It was simply death unwarranted, waiting to be let loose.

Again the drone warned of the danger and at that moment I understood the situation. These creatures had to be millennia old, if not eons. Ancient ones that were trapped amid the fragments dreams of the earth when it was young. Perhaps even the ones that had created and destroyed our planet endless times during those early days of life.

To be awakened and freed from this prison could spell our doom.

And fire! Fires of hell were burning impossibly in that abyss of the ocean. A darkness unlike any I could conjure from imagination that spawned more demons and a swirling mass of twisting creatures all being sucked into the vortex that was yearning to escape. Eating souls and killing all within its grasp. I could see colors draining from the earth and colors beyond my vision that strained into the portals of the beyond. This was majesty and travesty combined into a masterpiece that broke my concept of what our world was meant to be.

My response was to provide total autonomy to the artificial intelligence. I gave it a single Command, to wipe any record of this malevolence.

It responded by hurling itself toward the vortexes, swallowed by the doors of endless teeth. Swirling and broken the feed went dead, cutting off the connection I had to the sea floor.

I sat there in stunned silence, contemplating the dangers that had just been averted. A whole other reality was drowned in those ashes below.

It would remain that way.

I finished the evening wiping the records and reported only a preliminary document about the loss of Ruby. I also made the recommendation that the trench we surveyed no longer be used.

It is my desperate hope that this mission will never be repeated by others and it is for this reason I felt compelled to send out the warning. I can fulfill Ruby’s final wishes and keep the trench off limits.

It still pains me to recognize that the sentience gained was meant to be for malicious purposes and at times I do wonder what may become of any others that tread those depths.

I must maintain hope that the immortal evils I witnessed do not ever surface again.

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