Chapter 2: Apsis Intelligenx

​

“The agony of my feelings allowed me no respite; no incident occurred from which my rage and misery could not extract its food.”

​

-Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

 

 

"Rage… Rage… All I feel is rage."

​

"My heart is a fire. A fire full of rage."

 

“Alert! Alert! This is not a drill! Michael, report to the control center, alert!!!”

​

Sirens were blaring. Red and white lights were dancing like wildfire. All of this while Apsis Intelligenx’s voice was bleating over and over via the intercom with its clockwork precision,

​

“Alert! Alert! This is not a drill! Michael, report to the control center, alert!!!”

​

 Michael stirred slightly trying to open his eyes.

​

"Pain… Pain… All I feel is pain."

​

"My heart is a prison. My heart is bound in chains."

​

“Alert! Alert! This is not a drill! Michael, report to the control center, alert!!!”

​

“What is it?” Michael mumbled.

​

Michael had been in a deep, deep slumber when the alarm finally woke him. He was having that strange dream again. It was a very, very, strange dream he had been having for years.  Each time he woke he could almost remember what the dream was about but not quite. Piecing together these memory fragments was akin to grasping onto shards of glass that cut his fingers deeply every time he tried to grab too tightly. He had no choice but to let go. 

​​

“The woman in the box!” Michael suddenly shouted out loud.

​​

“Alert! Alert! This is not a drill! Michael, report to the control center, alert!!!”

​​

Michael could always remember the woman in the box. But who was she? He could never remember who she was. He knew that he knew her from somewhere, from some place, perhaps even from some time. But how did he know her and where did he know her from? And where was she now?

​​

“She’s at the bottom of the ocean I think,” Michael stammered.

​​

“Alert! Alert! This is not a drill! Michael, report to the control center, alert!!!”

​​

But was she really at the bottom of the ocean? How could that be so? There was no way she could be and yet Michael could clearly remember her there… he always remembered the cyclic nature of the ocean’s undertow.

​​

This woman was in a metal box; in a cold, dreary metal prison box at the bottom of the ocean. She must be a metaphor for something. But for what?

​​

“Alert! Alert! This is not a drill! Michael, report to the control center, alert!!!”

​​

Michael wondered what she meant and why she showed up in his dreams every night. He remembered watching her while she waited inside her prison, curled up inside herself. What was she waiting for?

​​

“She is waiting for an end that will never come,” he said aloud.

​​

He also remembered watching her as she would bite down hard on her fingers to make them bleed. Then she would rub her bloody fingers along the wall of her cold dark cells to make tally marks. She was counting days. She made one tally mark for each day of her confinement. She had made so many tally marks on the walls of her prison that Michael couldn’t count them all.

​

“Alert! Alert! This is not a drill! Michael, report to the control center, alert!!!”

​​

“I’ve lost count of how many marks I’ve made down here Michael,” she told him once, “I am in hell. I’ve been down here so long this hell is all I know.”

​​

And her hell, her torment, was the very embodiment of endlessness. She was in a box at the bottom of the ocean surrounded by ice cold walls painted with marks of her own blood.

​​

“MICHAEL GET THE FUCK OUT OF BED!!!” Apsis Intelligenx finally screamed.

​​

“Oh shit, the alert,” Michael said distantly.

​​

“Oh, you heard the alert?” Apsis snarled, “and all this time I thought I was the only one who heard the sirens blaring. This is not a drill Michael.”

​​

Fearing the wrath of Dai Lu (代露), Michael leapt out of his bed so fast that he smacked his forehead against the bunk bed above him.

​​

“Again? Fuck that hurt,” he spat as he rubbed his head, “talk about feeling nothing but pain!”     

​​

Mumbling and cursing his misfortune, Michael ran his hand along his nightstand until he found his glasses. He nearly jabbed his eye out as he haphazardly put them on. Then he sat up and waited for his head to stop spinning and his eye to settle.

​

“Alert! Alert! This is not a drill! Michael, report to the control center, alert!!!”

​

 

***

​

Hours earlier…

​

“Captain,” Nick said excitedly, “we found something!”

​

Nick was a seasoned deck hand in charge of operating the sea crane on the bottom trawling vessel, The Vanguard.

​

“Good Nick, good. That’s why we’re here,” Captain Calwell, a grizzled man in his mid-fifties replied smugly.

​

The Vanguard was on a salvage and fishing expedition near the edge of the habitable zone. Since The War, food sources had become very scarce. The ocean’s ability to sustain a viable marine ecosystem was in catastrophic jeopardy due to severe radiation levels. Most of the ocean life that had escaped destruction during The War lived a few thousand feet below sea level. Radiation levels were low enough at those depths to allow for a modicum of life to survive. Apsis Intelligenx, the hybrid intelligence guardian of the human race, had calculated that bottom trawling, therefore, was one of the few ways left to procure minimally radioactive food.​

 

“Wait a minute are you saying the nets are full already?” Trey jumped in.​

 

“I don’t see how they could be. We haven’t been out here that long,” Maxx responded.

​​

“Well, we’ve certainly snared something rather big down there, Captain. There is quite a drag on the ship's engines and my readout says the nets are at capacity,” Nick reported.

​​

Trey and Maxx rushed over to the starboard side of the ship to see what they could see.  However, there was nothing disturbing the waters but the crane itself.

​​

“I can feel the drag as well,” Captain Calwell replied, “we've either netted something really heavy or we’ve found the motherload of all breeding grounds.”​

 

“I bet it’s salvage,” Johnny jumped in.

​​​

Johnny was the youngest member of the crew. He was on his first voyage. His long-deceased father had inspired him with stories in his youth about the riches of the sea. Johnny’s father regaled him with tales about humanity’s lost secrets. Secrets that dwelled in the ocean’s depths waiting to be discovered. Johnny’s father told him about the treasures he had found in his youth, such as precious metals, spirits, and relics from before The War. His stories always filled Johnny with hope. Hope of what he could accomplish and hope of what was to come. Johnny was hoping against hope that fortune would strike on his maiden voyage. Not even the grizzled naysayer, Captain Calwell, could tamp his enthusiasm, no matter how hard he tried.

​

“Shall we log in the haul with Apsis?” Trey proposed.

​

“Log in what haul?” Nick asked, “we don’t even know what this haul is yet.”

​

“Let’s pull it up and see what it is first,” Captain Calwell replied.

​

The captain then got on the intercom and announced,

 

“Attention all hands, nets are coming up now. We may have found some salvage. Something heavy. All hands-on deck immediately. Any of you mother fuckers caught sleeping are getting my foot so far up your asses you’ll be choking on my mother fucking toes!”

​

The Vanguard’s crew complement numbered nine; Captain Calwell, Trey, Maxx, Nick, Johnny, Alvarez, Frankie, Domingo, and Amasio. Alvarez, Frankie, Domingo and Amasio were all fast asleep in the crew quarters below deck. They were stealing some shut eye while the nets were dropped. When Captain Calwell’s booming voice shattered their slumber, they all jumped up, grumbled, spat, swore, and haphazardly stumbled up on deck.

​

“What is it?” Maxx asked.

​

“Probably a fucking tree husk,” Domingo spat.

​

“Or some hunk of metal so corroded as to be useless.” Frankie surmised.

​

“Maybe it’s a chest full of gold and we can raise our criticality scores high enough to get real jobs,” Alvarez hoped.

 

“Doing what?” Amasio asked, “it’s not like we have many options. Besides, I love the ocean.”

 

“Bring up the nets, Nick,” Captain Calwell ordered.

​

The sea crane began churning angrily. It struggled mightily to pull up the nets. Whatever was caught in them was extremely heavy. Gears were crunching and grinding under the strain. The crew wouldn’t admit it, except for Johnny of course, but under this grey haze of this grey day on these grey waters, they were excited.

 

​Hope was becoming infectious.​

 

“Has my time finally come? Do I finally have reason for hope?”​

 

“Did you hear something?” Johnny asked.​

 

“Uh yeah,” Maxx replied sarcastically, “the sea crane, the Vanguard’s motor, Cap shitting his pants, shall I go on?”

​

“Not any of that,” Johnny fought back, “it was a voice… a woman’s voice.”

​

“Sure, Johnny sure, I’m sure the woman of your dreams is trapped in the net,” Maxx jabbed.

​

“A radioactive mermaid perhaps?” Trey asked.

​

“Maybe you have radiation sickness,” Alvarez said.

 

And finally, the crew of the Vanguard saw it. They had pulled up a perfectly cubed closed metal box, clearly manmade and with no signs of corrosion, from the bottom of the ocean. It was extremely rare to find any type of metal in the ocean these days. Especially something so perfectly symmetrical as this. The crew had never seen anything like it. The box was about four feet per side in size, and extraordinarily heavy. There were no markings on it. There was no latch. There was no door. There was no hint of any kind as to what might be inside of it, if indeed anything was inside it at all.

​​

“Who would build a perfectly symmetrical metal cube and throw it to the bottom of the ocean?” Amasio asked.

​

“A whack job,” Trey replied.

​

“What do you think is inside it?” Johnny questioned.

​

“Maybe nothing,” Frankie guessed.

​

“Maybe it’s your mermaid,” Maxx and Trey laughed together.

​

“Shut it you two!” Captain Calwell shot back.

​

“This doesn’t make sense,” Amasio said, “why would someone build a heavy ass metal box and put nothing inside it?”

 

“Careful,” Trey barked as the weight of the box caused the nets trawling nets to begin to snap under the strain, “set it down carefully. Put a hole in my deck and I’ll patch it with pieces of your hide.”

 

​Nick haphazardly positioned the box over the deck and quickly set it down before the nets snapped completely.

​​

“Fuck me!” Nick snapped.

​​

Once the box was on the deck, the crew eyed it curiously. After a speechless moment, Frankie cautiously approached the box and knocked on one of its sides.

 

​“Sounds solid,” Frankie observed.

 

“There’s no handle or lock or anything,” Amasio noticed.

 

“There,” Johnny said, pointing towards one of the corners, “see that crease? That’s probably where they sealed it.”

 

“Young whipper-snapper has eagle eyes sir,” Maxx observed.

 

“Where who sealed what?” Amasio asked.

​

“Something valuable enough to encase in a solid metal box and bury at the bottom of the ocean,” Captain Calwell decided, “get some crowbars and pry this bitch open, LETS GO!”

​

"It’s time.”

​​

“You mean to tell me you didn’t hear that voice?” Johnny asked again.

​

The rest of the crew looked at him like he had lost his mind.

​

“I will break your souls,” she whispered.

​

“We should throw the box back,” Johnny said nervously, “immediately.”

​

“Throw it back?!” Captain Calwell replied.

​

“No fucking way!” The rest of the crew shouted in unison.

​

When she heard the sound of metal clanking against metal and the voices shouting back and forth, she knew her moment had come. A long time ago, she may have felt sorry for the innocents that were about to pry open her prison and free her from her wretched state. But she no longer felt that way. She used to cry out in pain each day until all her tears ran dry. Once her tears ran dry there was nothing but silence and pain. When the pain itself became too much to bear, she buried it down deep inside until only silence remained. And when the silence itself became a burden, she drowned it out with rage. Her rage was now all that she remembered of a happier place and time.

 

After one last clash of steel and unceremonious pounding, the door to her cage crashed to the ground.

​

And she attacked.