Memoirs

An Excerpt from the Memoirs of Cameron G. Spence, explorer of Meropis and discoverer of “Atlantis”.


Funding again was cut short on March 26th, 2833. The funding cut meant that we were now short 17,000 Gigacoins to spare on the expedition, and it meant that we were now dangerously close to bankruptcy. The Craft & Sons Mining Company had pulled out after our last failure to turn up anything substantial in the past month, which meant our last sponsor was also gone. All of our ROVs, built from scrap parts and spare items, were destroyed, broken, or missing.

The Meropis expedition was dangerously close to failure.

We were a crew of seven, using only a submarine we converted from a modular section of Colonial Station M-2, it took us almost all of our gigs to pressurize it, to buy the equipment, hire laborers, and other expenses that eventually would balloon into a massive debt. A debt that I realized that I could not pay off in my lifetime if we did not find anything.

Previously, we had spent money and time on sending unmanned ROVs (Remote Operated underwater Vehicle) down below Meropis’ watery surface. Over a course of two years, we sent at least thirty. Only two came back, one was too heavily damaged to recover any useful information, the other had suffered water damage of all the things. As we sat in our crowded, stuffy office on board CS M-2, where we would kick up our feet and study our screens, we knew increasingly well what would have to happen.

We needed to go down the well.

And so we built our Submarine, a medium-sized cigar-shaped sub that we built from spare mining ship parts, sections of CS M-2, and more. It rather looked like a chimera of mismatched materiel. At the forefront though, I insisted on installing a bubble canopy, to give us the best view of the outside into the sea. When we stepped first stepped foot in it, I could smell the scent of rust and old metal along the walls. The floors were lined with shoddy, hasty welds, and the walls looked rather smashed together.

Even with our increasing debt, we were still in high spirits. My assistant, a lovely girl of fifteen years by that time Miss Thessa Andronike, a senior from CS M-2's Academy, was one of them. Even when the rest of the crew felt the hope of finding substantial information fading, she knew we could find something. She was our little beacon of hope in the desert of Meropis’ seas.

And so, the submarine was brought down. I knew from previous seismographic reports and geographical reports that there was something down there. Officials, colleagues, everyone dismissed them as just mountains eroding under the sea. But these mountains were something else. I had the greatest feeling that we were looking at something more. Something alien in nature.

For 800 years since humanity has taken to the stars, we still had no answer to the ultimate question: were we alone in the universe? Were we the only civilized, intelligent life, that could think abstractly. Was humanity alone in being able to appreciate the arts, or build towering structures that struck the sky, or create machines that moved and flew through the air?

Our answer would be down beneath these depths.

We dove straight down. We were at the exact coordinates. All that was left was to go more than a kilometer under the sea. The submarine was rank, clouded with the scent of body sweat. I could not tell which was making us sweat more, the anticipation, the fear of the submarine becoming our grave, or the exposed engine venting a certain amount of excess heat into our crew cabin. We all stripped to our skivvies and at eleven-hundred kilometers onwards, we looked over the pilot’s shoulders. Thessa had taken the co-pilot’s seat, managing the auxiliary systems, while my pilot James Short had the helm.

Our modular was not meant to be a submarine, we had water leaking in, which we stopped up with tape and smart welding, but we knew we could not dive greater than two-thousand meters.

Our target was at two-thousand seven hundred.

I could feel the electricity in the air, the silent agreement between all of us, that we were going to our graves, but we would do it for science. At least if we died, we would take our debt with us. It was a total of fifteen grueling hours going below the waves. Cans of rations and stimjuice lined the floors, and for another hour we continued to look through the bubble window.

“Thessa… Thessa, what are we looking at here?”

We had only one good searchlight, barely powerful enough to give light through the murky darkness of these cold blue waves. But we saw it. It was a rectangular structure, overgrown with bright pink coral and green moss. We could barely discern its silhouette, its size, its shape, and its form.

Then another structure like it came into view as we dived deeper. The submarine rumbled as the water pressure built up and tried to force us away from the beauty of this view. We did not care.

We had our answer to that ultimate question. What we were looking at was definitely not the work of a primitive animal mind. Our searchlight shone upon a city, a city of wonders. An Atlantis of the stars. It was there, buried into the sides of the mountains, like a man crying out against his fate.

While humanity was exploring its own oceans and crafting maps of the New World, this city was here, and there was life here.

I felt tears roll down my cheeks, as I realized what we were looking at. We were at the pinpoint, between two great civilizations. That of humanity, and that of Meropis.

We could not stay much longer. My xenobiologist Paul Kaufman insisted that we leave just in case the pressure overcomes and we agreed. But we knew then that our expedition was saved. We could endure and even thrive. The intense years were behind us now, and all that was left was to seek out these ruins again, with better equipment, more manpower, and with the support and backing of many. And we did. Another six months later, the SCV-R Holland was commissioned, built from a part of CS M-2, and was laid to dive in the waters in such a short time.

I write now with the hindsight that they have now christened my discovery “Cameron City”. I still chuckle a little at the thought. I was embarrassed to have such a simple name placed upon such God-like ruins. I did not argue. Everyone felt I deserved it and it felt wrong to deprive them of that. What was more important was the discovery. We now know that at some point we were not alone in the Milky Way or even this galactic arm.

But there were still so many questions to answer. What did the sea have to offer us? What could we learn from those who came before? What secrets do they have in store for us?

“Wouldst thou”— so the Helmsman answered, “Learn the secret of the sea? Only those who brave its dangers Comprehend its mystery!”




The sea is everything. It is an immense desert, where man is never lonely, for he feels life stirring on all sides. The sea is only the embodiment of a supernatural and wonderful existence. It is nothing but love and emotion. — Jules Verne, Twenty-Thousand Leagues Under the Seas