My deepest apologies for such a late update, but I misplaced my digital journal tablet, and only just found it, hiding under the stove in the galley. I’m not entirely sure how it got there, but this is now remaining on my person at almost all times.
Aside from that, it’s been a most exciting week. We touched the bottom of the ocean on Saturday the 13th, about a mile from where the abyss begins. The strangely intelligent and odd jellyfish remained a constant factor in our descent, and the large thing that had appeared on our sonar has not returned.
I went out in the mini-sub a few times during our descent, but never managed to collect any samples; the occasional deep-sea fish and all of the jellyfish were able to easily evade my clumsy maneuvering. Oh well.
The water, though, is most interesting. While the green glow of the plankton is still visible above us – stretching out as far as I can see – there appear to be absolutely no plankton below them. I haven’t found even the smallest planktonic cell! I’ve found a few dead cells shrugged off of fish and other denizens, but no independent microbial organisms at all. This baffles me beyond my words; I don’t understand how any ecosystem, particularly one in which food is so scarce, can survive without a healthy population of microscopic organisms. No one else really seems to understand my bafflement, save the oceanographer, who is worried by this.
The water pressure has also eased up a considerable amount. By no means is it safe to go outside unprotected, but the water pressure was actually greater above the bed of plankton than it is down here. It seems as if the plankton are somehow able to actually hold back the water, keeping it suspended somehow. I took out one of my samples of the plankton and examined them, and found them to actually be astonishing hydrophobic – sometimes. It appeared to come and go. It is most odd.
On Monday night, we began to move out, sufficiently disturbed by our readings. The boat above us moved with us as we slowly and cautiously approached the abyss. We should arrive there sometime in a day or two, or maybe three.
What has slowed us down now – otherwise we would have been at the abyss’ edge already – is our discovery of a gargantuan corpse. Because of the lack of any form of microbial organism here, its body is perfectly preserved. I took a mini-sub out when we came across it, and it appears to stretch miles and miles, beyond my vision. It is enormous beyond belief.
What exactly it is is anyone’s guess. It possessed what appear to some form of gelatinous body, with what may be pseudopods all over the place. It also has a wide array of tentacles, and at least two mouths lined with razor-sharp fangs. Its highly-porous skin is embedded with countless eyes and other structures I believe to be sensory organs. I went out in the mini-sub and have dissected parts of it. It appears to have a nervous system similar to ours, but everything else is completely alien. It is enormously disturbing, and I have had to avoid looking out of the viewports when I can; it is much easier to work on bite-sized sampled in the lab than to look out at the mountain of flesh, easily stretching forty or fifty meters high.
Its body is long and thing; while its length is several miles, as I said, and its height is between forty and fifty meters, its width is about a hundred meters. When we had descended, we had originally mistaken it for a rock formation. Were that it were. I fear now that there might be others like it out there; thank God it is dead. I hope. I can’t really be sure. I wish to move on, but our expedition leader insists I glean everything that I can from it. If it’s sleeping, I hope it does not wake up.
I will return to my work now, so we can get moving away from it. It is a shame I cannot send pictures; the world would be astonished by what I can see even now. I will write to you soon, I hope, assuming I am not eaten by the monster or its brethren. Wish me luck!
Z. M. Wilmot 