A great, metal, yellow submarine plunges into the darkness, falling like a penny in a well.

A submarine— an aimless, lumbering being, with little pale creatures inside it. It knew not how to take the currents at advantage, nor how to feel through the murk. It was foreign, and it was the exact opposite of a fish out of water.

Squids and fish and sharks hurry by, curious but protective of their lives— some are bio-luminescent, others are too blind for it to matter. While several, like the Greenland shark, utilize their giant size to keep themselves safe from predators, others harness a small physique to ensure safety from starvation.

The gangly creatures in the submarine point and stare as a pimpled red squid ambles by.

Strawberry squid; _Histioteuthis heteropsis_. One eye is large and yellow, catching the faint light that sometimes breaches the borders of the deep. The other is smaller, and faces the depths below.

They take out a dark wooden board, and scribble something down. The submarine rumbles under the massive water pressure.

The strawberry squid emits no light, but the next creature does— a siphonophore; it’s a long, tendriling worm-like animal, emitting a ghostly glow as it swims. However, it is not one animal, but many— an elaborate colony of tiny organisms, called zooids, all collaborating to create their own entity. The creatures in the submarine marvel again, and they scribble on their boards once more.

In their descent, the members of the meandering submarine see a great variety of specimens: see-through animals like the elegant peacock squid and glass octopus, fearsome predators like the angler fish and enormous magnapinna, and many creatures that look more like aliens than earth dwellers— some highlights being the telescope fish and barrel eye.

Finally, the adventuring researchers reach their intended destination; the bottom the sea. Without the lights of their submarine, the water here would be blacker than black.

The sea floor looks barren at first, but one of the researchers points— a whale carcass. The machine’s propellers take it forwards.

The carcass is nothing but a pile of bones, colored an aged murky-yellow and fully picked clean. However, despite the whale being long dead, its body is full of life.

Deep-sea worms have tunneled through the skeleton, and although there is no more flesh, the bones hold valuable nutrients. Small sea-floor scavengers huddle close, including a variety of crustaceans, some small octopi, shellfish, and giant isopods— which look like mutant roly polies.

The researchers watch this feeding ground with great interest, and again rattle off their notes. A giant claw reaches forth from their submarine, and secures itself around a small rib. This rib will be studied, and it will provide more information to the researchers on the biodiversity present.

The researchers have now gotten what they wanted, and have taken many notes. This undersea world is no place for machinery and its strange human beings— it is dangerous and unknown.

They press a button, and fresh air pumps into the tanks controlling the submarine’s buoyancy. The great machine heaves itself off the floor, and begins its long journey back to the surface.

— — — —

My original idea for this prompt was that the sun had been blocked out by clouds and the power lines destroyed by some natural disaster, and the protagonist was a blind guy who was the only one who could navigate properly because he was used to not being able to see— but the way I was writing it felt really bland so I swapped course. If anybody thinks that idea is interesting feel free to use it!

Does anybody else think it would be cool to just hang out at the bottom of the sea? Like, no societal pressures, no commitments, no stuff going on… just the strange creatures that live in the deep, and darkness.