My first impression upon getting into the escape pod was that I’d been placed in a coffin. The occupant had to stand upright in a straight line, and the space between my body and the pod was far too narrow. If two adults had gotten in here, they would have been pressed together so tightly they wouldn’t have been able to move an inch, let alone breathe properly.
It felt as if I’d been forcibly locked inside an elevator built for one person, a tiny space where anyone with claustrophobia would pass out in three seconds. The last thing I saw was Tumanako’s eyes, and as soon as the escape pod door closed, I shut my own.
The moment I realized I had been locked alone inside this cramped escape pod, fear came crashing down on me. I tried not to be swept away by the helplessly surging wave of terror, struggling to comfort myself and instill confidence in myself.
This is a safe place.
I am perfectly protected.
There is nothing dangerous anymore.
If I wait here just a little, I can leave the undersea base.
As I closed my eyes, breathed slowly and deeply, and gathered my thoughts, a surprising sense of calm washed over me. It was because it occurred to me that this was like squeezing into a narrow wardrobe I’d hidden in as a child, or the extremely cramped space under a bed.
In fact, the inside of the escape pod was tightly lined with a soft, pliable, tube-like material to reduce impact. When I opened my closed eyes, an improved pale-green perfluorodecalin was spraying out explosively, wrapping around my entire body in 0.5 seconds.
For a moment, I was frightened by the soft pale-green liquid that kept flooding into my mouth and nostrils. But I already knew this liquid wasn’t toxic to the body, so I tried to inhale and exhale as usual. My body instinctively rejected the liquid filling my bronchial tubes and lungs, but the more I tried to breathe, the more automatically I was taken over by it.
My lungs, startled by this sudden disaster, began protesting furiously to me, their owner. When I couldn’t breathe the way I used to, my chest hurt as if it were burning up. According to the undersea base guidebook, it wasn’t supposed to be terribly painful, but now that I thought about it, that explanation was an outright lie. It felt as if someone had set fire to my chest.
My chest and bronchial tubes hurt and stung so badly that I wondered if drowning felt like this. Tears fell without my realizing it, but the soft pale-green liquid swallowed them completely, leaving no trace. Like a creature that had accidentally fallen into a sticky swamp, I desperately flailed my arms and legs, resisting with a scream. But the more I struggled, the more it felt as though my body had plunged into a cup filled with green jelly.
Only when the pain reached the level where I truly thought I was going to die could I finally breathe. It was so fascinating that I could breathe through my nose inside the liquid that I tested this and that, only to be forced to drink about a cup of it. It was salty enough to snap me wide awake.
They said a slight salty taste had been added to keep occupants from drinking too much, but after actually tasting it, seawater seemed like it would be sweeter. Having forgotten that everything was filled with liquid, I instinctively tried to spit it out with a ptooey, but it came rushing into my mouth instead, so I had to swallow about another mouthful while crying.
As soon as the pain in my chest subsided even a little, I thought of the people who had ridden escape pods out before me. Wait, Henry went through this pain and got out? ……When I meet these kids’ parents, I’m grabbing them by the collar first.
As I breathed with a bubbling gurgle, I suddenly began to worry about the Rhaphidophora in my bag. Would it be all right? I hadn’t heard anything about this liquid affecting plants or animals. Tumanako had said that if anything happened to the Rhaphidophora, he wouldn’t let me off, and it hadn’t sounded like an empty threat.
I thought that if I didn’t want all my hair shaved off, then no matter what, the moment I reached the surface, I would have to shake every bit of the Rhaphidophora root out of my bag.
Basically, escape pods were single-person and disposable. Once they got close to the surface, a lifeboat would automatically deploy, not only preventing the escape pod from sinking under its own weight, but also allowing the person inside to survive at sea until rescue arrived.
According to the guidebook, each escape pod had GPS, as well as its own radar transponder, a SART—Search and Rescue Radar Transponder—that continuously sent rescue request signals to nearby ships. If any vessel passed near the escape pod, that vessel’s radar would show that the pod was here.
The attitude escape pod occupants were supposed to take was to stay alive as best they could and wait for rescue. I’d heard that these days maritime rescues were increasingly handled by drones, but this was my first time going through anything related to the sea, so I didn’t really know. I’ll be rescued. I just have to wait. Breathing in the pale-green water, I calmly settled my mind.
They said the earliest escape pods used in the deep sea had nothing displayed inside them. In the cramped escape pod, the occupant couldn’t see outside, and there was nowhere to look except at whatever watch they had.
So the people who used escape pods in the beginning were trapped inside coffins twice their own size, unable to move, forced to hope that someday the pod would properly reach the surface. Just imagining it was horrifying.
On top of that, they supposedly didn’t even know when to open the escape pod door. It had apparently been designed so that, after a certain amount of time passed, you opened the door. If the person riding the escape pod opened it by mistake while ascending to the surface, they would be forced to swim with the marlins right then and there.
In fact, one person who rode an escape pod out opened the door only after enough time had passed for them to think they had sufficiently reached the surface, but for some reason, they were dumped straight into the water at thirty meters below sea level. They survived by the skin of their teeth because they were an experienced diver, but thinking about my current situation, it was terrifying enough to make me faint.
It seemed that in the beginning, they had considered it a waste of money to spend extra on disposable escape pods by installing panels showing the pod’s location or doing minor things like displaying the time. Every safety regulation and rescue agreement had been written in blood and lives, and only after escape pod occupants began dying in the middle of their escape did panels appear inside the pods so the occupants could check how far they had come.
It was only much later that they acknowledged that it wasn’t enough to scold people by asking if they couldn’t endure a mere fifteen minutes. If someone was in a situation where they had no choice but to use an escape pod, then the occupant’s mental state would already be a mess from anxiety and tension, and in that state, they couldn’t make rational decisions.
They began paying at least a little attention to cases where claustrophobic patients couldn’t bear being trapped in a narrow space and threw open the sealed escape pod door with the emergency release mid-ascent, or to the circumstances of people who couldn’t remain still in one position due to injury or disability. Only after more people than could be counted on two hands had died because of money.
The current escape pod had undergone countless improvements. Along with the door opening automatically, the rescue boat would automatically unfold before it reached the surface, so the occupant didn’t have to do anything. If I searched inside the escape pod, there would surely be a life jacket for temporary use as well.
Thinking about it now, I couldn’t understand how the people who used escape pods in the early days had done it without going mad from anxiety. No, come to think of it, it wasn’t as if they’d used them because they wanted to. They must have had no choice either.
When the escape pod was launched, the red dot had been marked at one thousand meters below the surface; now it was passing five hundred. I quietly watched my escape pod move. At this speed, it would soon reach two hundred meters below, where the Second Undersea Base was located.
The escape pod was faster than I had expected. Withstanding the high pressure of the deep sea, it was shooting upward toward the surface like a rocket at tremendous speed. If the escape pod encountered any marine life along the way, it was said to be completely torn apart by the pod’s speed. I couldn’t even imagine how badly the sea would be thrown into chaos just from countless escape pods rising to the surface all at once.
Please let there be no marine life at all in the path of my escape pod. Especially no whales. I hate even imagining a hole being punched through the enormous body of such a magnificent creature, and I also hate the idea of my escape pod crashing into one and breaking. ……Sharks are fine. If the escape pod crashes into the shark that tore up my side on the way up, that’s fine. That really can’t be helped. I prayed recklessly, without a god.
The escape pod was now passing three hundred meters below. Inside the pod, I couldn’t do anything. I could only wait quietly. Once the brief period of terror at the beginning had passed, I was simply bored and anxious. I hate waiting so much.
I brushed my fingertips over the smooth cloth bag slung over my shoulder. What would it have been like if Tumanako had ridden the escape pod? If I’d stayed at the undersea base, wouldn’t I have been at least a little more help to the others? ……Or maybe not. I might have been a burden instead. Then and now, I probably wouldn’t have been much help to anyone. It was hard enough just taking care of myself.
Seo Jihyeok, Baek Aeyeong, and Sin Haeryang, who had remained under the sea, must have wanted badly to ride an escape pod too. They just hadn’t shown it on the outside. ……I was so ashamed that kids younger than me had yielded their place to me, and I had ended up riding the escape pod like this. If I had lived even one year longer than them, then I had to bear responsibility equal to that time.
The red escape pod was now passing the number two hundred meters below. That was the place we’d struggled so hard to reach, claiming we were climbing up those broken stairs in the darkness. The fact that I was easily passing the Second Undersea Base just by sitting still in an escape pod was so absurd that I laughed.
As the escape pod rose higher and higher, worries about the people left in the undersea base and worries about the people on Daehan Island came rushing in at the same time. How were the people left in the undersea base supposed to enter the Second Undersea Base now, and how were they supposed to reach the surface? The path I had traveled with them only went as far as the cable car at the Second Undersea Base, and no matter how I thought about it, it had been a failed route.
Would it really be all right, with three armed people and one civilian? Would it be a little different this time? After chewing over all the regrets and remorse from the first attempt, in the end, I reached the conclusion that there had been no helping it. I couldn’t have done better. Those people and I probably made the best choices we could in that situation. Even if I turned back time, I couldn’t have done any better. Since I’m not there now, they’ll do better.
I Jihyeon, Yu Geumi, Henry, Gang Sujeong, and Shuran would be on Daehan Island. I hoped they were safe and doing well. Emma would have escaped well. She would be hiding somewhere with the cat and the snake, without being caught by the people with guns. Emma was so small when she curled up that you couldn’t find her, but she had good reflexes and ran quickly.
I hoped Gang Sujeong had already taken everyone else and left by boat for the Marshall Islands or Hawaii. I should just look at the sky until someone came to the escape pod. Even if a typhoon was raging outside, and seawater, rain, and wind were slapping my face, and lightning struck the escape pod, I wanted to breathe the outside air. I would absolutely not go back into the sea.