The reason the International Undersea Station, IUS, came into being was simple.
First, ocean pollution had reached the point where it could no longer be ignored. In the past, for the sake of development projects and fishing, the extinction of marine ecosystems and marine life meant nothing to capitalists. But now, almost every marine creature had been designated a protected marine species. What that meant was that even anchovies were now protected marine life, so you couldn’t catch them, process them, distribute them, or store them.
Take Korea alone, surrounded on three sides by the sea and bordered by tidal flats—prime real estate for marine life. Of the roughly fourteen thousand marine species that had once lived there, four thousand had gone extinct, and only about ten thousand barely remained. Coastal development and reclamation, ocean pollution and overfishing, water contamination, radiation—the marine ecosystem had already been wrecked. If any more ocean pollution occurred, it would be directly tied to the survival of humanity, so the developed nations finally gathered their morally bankrupt heads together.
Second, humanity needed a new place to live. Only after mankind reached the point where it could no longer even consume seafood did space development, which produced nothing but corpses and garbage, come to be judged a money-devouring hippopotamus. After bringing home the last three astronauts, every nation officially abandoned space development. They finally gave up that grand and base idea of terraforming Mars, abandoning Earth, and allowing only an infinitesimal number of humans to survive on a new planet. Instead, they poured every bit of money squeezed out of their citizens into developing undersea bases.
Oil drilling companies and firms developing marine resources jumped into IUS development. One way or another, humans were much better at developing the environment than preserving it, and eight developed nations succeeded in building an undersea base in the middle of the Pacific while causing new ocean pollution. Apparently, even choosing the site for the undersea base had been a huge problem, but I was still in elementary school back then, so I don’t remember it very well.
It was originally supposed to be built in the Atlantic, but through the selection of a location unlikely to suffer earthquakes, the mining of various rare earths, oil, and natural gas, lobbying by each nation, and all sorts of underwater wars I know nothing about, the first undersea base was constructed in the Pacific. Now they’re in the middle of pouring money into the Atlantic, saying they’re going to build a second undersea base.
Third was mining. No matter what reasons they bring up, this was really the first one. The ocean is still an underdeveloped land. It is a place where tremendous fishery and mineral resources lie hidden. Oil and natural gas, rare earths and manganese nodules, and deep waters that have not yet been polluted. Newly discovered information about the deep sea, and deep-sea fish that, surprisingly enough, have been found to be edible. Humanity still has not completely given up the idea of surviving by consuming Earth’s resources.
It’s a little funny for me to say this when I’m about to work at an undersea base, but I think the construction of undersea bases is incredibly contradictory. They spent all this time shoving garbage into the ocean, and now that they need it, they talk nonsense about returning to the bosom of the sea and build houses on the ocean floor. It’s ridiculous. Earth’s resources and life are already close to spent. With vanished glaciers, destruction of the ozone layer, overhunting of living creatures, nuclear waste, and the like, they completely destroyed Earth’s temperature system with their own hands, creating a range from minus forty to plus forty-five degrees, and now that they can’t endure it, they’re trying to hide in the sea.
Those who stand directly opposed to space development claim that, as one of the living creatures on Earth, it is only natural to face extinction like this. I don’t agree with that opinion, but I do often feel regret over how far we’ve fallen into the very bottom of survival.
Unfortunately, I was born after the year 2000. Personally, I do wish I had been born just a little earlier. I wanted to live in an era when people could use resources however they liked, pretend not to know about environmental problems, and didn’t need to apply sunscreen in order to survive. Most people born in the twenty-first century are basically armed with skepticism and depression toward life, but their instinct for survival was far greater than that of previous humanity. And so, by sinking roughly six hundred trillion won in capital and labor into the ocean floor, they finally created an undersea base in the North Pacific.
The North Pacific International Undersea Station, NPIUS, is broadly composed of four layers. First is the artificially created zeroth level, the “Artificial Island,” built on a shallow continental shelf. Directly beneath that island is the [First Undersea Base], then the [Second Undersea Base], built to match the epipelagic layer (-200 m), the [Third Undersea Base], built in the mesopelagic layer (-1000 m), and the [Fourth Undersea Base], built in the bathypelagic layer (-3000 m). The fifth level in the abyssal zone (3000–6000 m) is still under construction, so for now it consists of four bases in total.
The undersea base I would be staying at was the [Fourth Undersea Base], in the bathypelagic layer (-3000 m), the one completed last. They were opening a new dental clinic there, and I had been selected as the dentist.
Priya, who had several coral models gathered on her desk, checked my passport and began taking out documents.
“The eight nations bordering the North Pacific—Korea, the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Russia, Japan, and China—participated.”
“......What about the Philippines? Doesn’t the Philippines border the North Pacific too? I’m not great at geography, but I think Mexico does too. No, now that I think about it, Taiwan and Hong Kong as well. So not every bordering country is included.”
“There was one most important condition for participation. Only countries that could invest at least one trillion won a year into the undersea base development budget were allowed.”
“The participation fee is pretty expensive.”
......Did our country have that much money? How much is one trillion, exactly? Now that I think about it, I vaguely remember seeing a newspaper article saying that because more budget had been poured into the undersea base than space development, both unmanned and manned space exploration would be pushed back considerably, and asking what we would do if our space-related research fell behind that of other developed nations. Priya spoke cynically.
“The eight nations took part, poured money in together, and agreed to divide up whatever came from the mining. I hear they fought a lot under the table. Well, that’s none of my business or yours, Mr. Park Muhyeon.”
Saying that, as someone from India, she had been able to enjoy watching this dogfight over North Pacific mineral resources, she proudly held out the documents she had brought.
“What are these documents?”
“They’re about employment security, along with enrollment forms.”
“NEP is responsible for my employment security......? Why?”
It was the first I’d heard of it. Please, I wish people would stop making organizations and shortening their names into English acronyms.
“It comes from Neptūnus, the Latin name for Poseidon. What happened during the construction of the undersea base was this: a Japanese construction company delayed paying the people it had hired for two months. The Japanese workers hired by that company stayed quiet, but the Chinese workers hired alongside them caused an uproar. And then they said if they weren’t going to pay, they shouldn’t even think about putting up buildings, and collapsed the elevator of the Second Undersea Base with a manned submersible. A Russian construction company also had an attempted bombing of the central elevator due to unpaid wages. At a Korean construction company, there was no hazard pay and the annual salary was too low, so a strike lasted three months. In the United States, subcontracting was passed down through subcontractors, so quite a lot of people from Malaysia, the Philippines, and Myanmar worked there, and there were several fatal accidents. And there was no compensation at all. Then, during the next stage of construction, one Indonesian bereaved family member scattered a suicide note and carried out a suicide attack, completely collapsing the deep-sea aquarium. There were countless incidents and accidents involved in building a single undersea base. If you buy me a cup of coffee later, I’ll tell you about even more disastrous situations. Anyway, rather than letting people keep dying over a few coins, or letting the completion of an undersea base that had cost hundreds of trillions never happen, they finally did something called ‘thinking’ and decided they had to come up with a measure.”
“......I suppose that’s why NEP was created.”
“Only lunatics accomplish something through continuous labor with nothing in return, relying on willpower or mental strength alone. Proper compensation is absolutely necessary. Everyone staying at the undersea base is enrolled, and once you sign the enrollment and contract here, even if you were to die tomorrow, Mr. Park Muhyeon, more than two hundred million won in compensation would be paid out. And whether the company goes bankrupt or the country collapses, within the budget already received, your salary will be paid on time on the first of every month—”
I immediately began scrawling my signature on the documents. Now I understood why it was named after Poseidon. I suppose it managed those who lived in the sea. As long as my salary came on time, I was confident I could work hard under Poseidon or under a shark.
Perhaps Priya found my behavior quite funny, because she smiled faintly. The annual salary contract was behind it as well, and the detailed pages numbered over forty. I stared hardest at the salary and vacation sections. All treatment at the hospital on the Artificial Island was free. Ah. They did say the hospital was directly connected to the undersea base. There was also a nondisclosure agreement related to personal information protection.
My translator was an old model, so it couldn’t translate documents. Everything was in English. When I began reading through the contents carefully, Priya fiddled with her phone and said I could take as much time as I needed. I was inwardly grateful for her indifference. There were probably a tremendous number of people like me. Cursing my atrocious English ability in my head, I slowly read through the contracts. Only after signing more times than I ever had in my life did I hand the documents back to Priya.
“The more detailed information is in here. Please read it.”
She handed me a thin book. I was a little surprised it wasn’t electronic paper. I flipped through a few pages, and it was all in English. This is driving me crazy. It wasn’t that I couldn’t read it. I needed time. A very long, considerable amount of time.
“Don’t people use electronic signatures these days?”
Priya laughed when she heard me.
“Even in this day and age, there are still people who don’t have computers, and people who want paper for storage.”
I see. They did say eight countries were participating. Priya showed me the copy signed by the company, then digitized the papers and sent one copy to my email. An alarm went off on my phone. It seemed the email had arrived properly.
“Thank you. You’ve worked hard.”
“You’ve worked hard as well. Welcome to the undersea base staff.”
At those words, I let out a sigh and leaned my whole body back against the chair. That took care of the most urgent matter of the day. Priya rummaged through a drawer and gave me an electronic pad the size of two palms, and the pad was blue. On Priya’s desk, I noticed an identical blue pad, though hers was covered all over with cute dolphin stickers.
As I accepted the book and the issued pad and put them into my bag, Priya gave me a beginner’s manual for the undersea base. This was paper too. I opened it and saw it was entirely in English, but I nodded as if nothing were wrong and put it into my bag. Somehow, once my salary comes in, the first thing I’m buying is the latest interpretation and translation device. This is going to drive me insane.