Dive: Lab PI

It was a few days after Craig visited Douglas's dorm. He was tired from swimming and his cafeteria steak burger didn't look so hot to eat.

Douglas asked, "What's up?" He took another spoonful of mashed potatoes he was playing with and added an archway for the heavy morning gravy traffic on the plate highway.

Craig sloughed and ran his hands through his chlorine-soaked hair. The question was obviously coming from the ceiling because he answered it. "Sub-Marina won't let me call home."

Douglas saw Angel coming over and smashed the highway on his plate. "Oh, I'm sorry to hear that. Hi, Angel."

"Hi, Doug." Craig heard the song in her voice. He could only remember that kind of music from when he met Tammy. She sat next to Doug. "How are you?" she said to the table, but mostly to Doug with her singing voice.

"I'm just peachy." More singing. "But Craig can't call home." Craig didn't want to be the focus of their singing conversation. He wanted to melt into his plastic chair with his eyes glued to the ceiling. He was just about to leave, maybe get some reading in, when Doug said, "Craig, stop for a sec. I want to do you a favor. I have a connection outside. Want to use it?" Angel sat back in her seat and zipped her lips.

Craig blotted up in his chair. "Yes! Thank you so much."

"Glad to make your day," Doug said. "If you could come to my place, after B-shift, I can try to get you to my connection."

Craig could only wait. He walked small rings around his living space. Cigarettes filled the ashtray. He didn't realize how much he'd miss Tammy or the baby. Having no contact with them burned a hole inside him. He left after B-shift, trying not to sprint over to Douglas's.

Douglas answered the door wearing pajama bottoms and a Rolling Stones T-shirt. "Hold on," he said, grabbing his white lab coat. "All right, now I'm ready."

They had hopped on the shuttle bus before Craig said, "You seem underdressed."

"You think? I haven't laid down for bed yet, I don't think I will. Stress," he mumbled to himself. The shuttle bus stopped at the lab farthest on the dock. Douglas swiped his card at the door then again at the elevators.

The elevator was heavy metal with a small glass porthole. Douglass pressed a big green button hooked to a side rail and the elevator fell backward. Craig held on to his rail in a death grip. From the porthole, Craig saw Sub-Marina's underwater lab. As a small disk resting on the sea-shelf below, it looked inconsequential to the surface. Dropping farther down into the black water, the lights haloed the lab with their blinding brilliance.

"You understand I'm doing you a real big favor, right?" Douglas lowered his voice to a whisper only Craig could hear.

"Yeah," Craig said.

"Yes, but do you understand how much I'm trusting you?" This company's pockets are deeper than deep. They pay for their privacy." Douglas looked right at Craig. "You must never tell anybody what I am about to show you."

"Of course."

"No, understand how shady this company is. Ever heard of AGI before they approached you?"

Craig paused to think.

"Yet here we are. Underwater lab on the seafloor. This company is big and hidden, like a monster under the bed. All this is a bad idea, so keep this to yourself," Douglas turned away to the undersea lab.

Thankfully the elevator stopped before Craig felt sick. "I'm not sure I feel all that great about the ride down here," he said, standing straight. Outside the lab, divers in heavy pressure suits lighted an open panel on the lab's hull. Craig felt dread. The money supporting this scientific marvel went over his head.

He had googled the Large Hadron Collider in curiosity. It had cost 9 billion dollars. He had no idea what an underwater one would cost. Craig didn't care about the company. He just wanted to contact his family.

They stepped off the elevator and onto a grilled platform. A C-shift operator waved them in when Douglas showed him his badge. Douglas walked the curve tunnel counting the junctions until he found his workstation, lab PI. Inside, the walls spread along the lab's curve reaching up and curling around the acceleration array above his head. "This," he said, taking a seat at his computer, "is my project. I work under an honest-to-god accelerator. Self-contained, no leaks or radiation. No black-," Douglas stopped mid-sentence. "Give me a second to find some files."

"Sure," Craig said, walking under the array. It looked sophisticated and intricate. He went up the platform to a glass box crossing the accelerator. In the case was a wire scrap looped in a ring. Stepping closer to the box, Craig heard hissing from a welder's torch and felt fire on his hands like he'd left his gloves off. His head felt a hundred sizes too small.

"Don't get too close to that," Douglas said, taking his flash drive from the computer. "Now, about finding an outside network."

Craig forced himself away from the wire. They left lab PI and followed the curve, Douglas counting the junctions as they went. After counting to twenty, Douglas stopped in the middle of the hall. Moving his hands around the wall, looking for the loose panel, he found it and brought out the laptop hidden inside.

The laptop booted up with Chinese characters. This didn't distract Douglas from clicking the familiar links and emailing the files from his flash drive. He handed over the laptop to Craig who, after a few seconds, typed his address and password.

Distancing himself from the strangeness of typing around foreign letters, he wrote his email. Both emails bounced around the undersea cables linking the internet to the world. From China under the Pacific Ocean back to the USA. One to Tammy's home computer in their new home, the other to the University archive where Douglas backed up all his work.

"Good," Douglas said. "Let's go."