Life as a deep-sea geologist is about as high pressure as you can get... Quite literally! Thousands of metres underwater, way down here in the deepest regions of the Abyssal zone, where absolutely no natural sunlight can ever hope to reach. It creates a darkness you can scarcely imagine. Where you are completely reliant on the spot lamps on your dive suit to see anything at all. Even then with all the silt being stirred up with every single step you take, and the endless descent of marine snow falling down from above, you’re lucky if you can see a whole 2 metres ahead of you at any one time. But thankfully these new dive suits are like walking tanks! Try to picture Iron Man, but if he’d put on a few pounds here and there. The last few years have seen massive developments in new super strong metal alloys and durable plastic substitutes. With a huge investment from both government bodies and private industries, these materials have become significantly cheaper to manufacture and export. So now everything from naval submarines to orbital satellites are being constructed from high tech materials, capable of enduring extreme temperatures, high pressures and heavy impacts, all while remaining as light as a feather. In a deep-sea application these advances are worthless without Androcore’s patented, Motion Amplified Rig System (MARS) running the show. I remember as a kid watching so many cartoons of men and women in big robotic suits lifting boulders and chucking cars around like they were toys. Well these things are the real deal! Inside that super reinforced outer shell you are essentially wearing a second skin. A tight body suit covered in flexible metal strips that stretch up your back and over your extremities. The gloves are the same, with small sensor strips all over your fingers, so each time you move any part of your body, these sensors are sending instant messages to all the high tech computer gizmos inside the armoured suit, telling the hundreds of motors and systems to activate in sequence to effortlessly move the heavy arms, legs and even the fingers on the hand shaped adaptors in perfect synchronicity. Well, not perfect exactly, you’re moving but always in slow motion, like an action replay or something. They say patience is a virtue and that slow and steady wins the race? Well, in one of these suits, it’s a simple fact of life. But that power assist is amazing! The demonstration video showed a single person of average build and strength overturn a fully loaded shipping container like it was made of paper. Of course, flashy sales gimmicks aside, we dive operators are expected to be a lot more safety conscious while working at such extreme descents. Because the truth is that even while inside a monster suit of armour like this one, in these unforgiving ocean depths, if you fail to follow safety procedures then you may as well be wearing a string vest!

So my team had been working in the Miranda Basin, 800 miles off the continent for about nine weeks. Five men and three women, 5'775 metres below sea level, all cramped into a small habitat base barely big enough for four people to live comfortably. Its basically a windowless box, about as big as three tennis courts, one atop the other and built from the most advanced metal alloys ever known. It serves as a bedroom, kitchen, dining room, living room and even a laboratory. Aside from the bulkheads and airlock’s, only the twin toilets and shower cubicles have doors, so while you instinctively try to fight it at first, you eventually just concede that no matter how much you resist, personal space is just something that is never going to happen. But on the upside, having to interact with each other on such an intimate level means we have become a very tight knit group. It’s a survival instinct I guess, to bond together under such hazardous conditions. When you are so far removed from safety, when danger is forever present, and you only have each other to rely on, it’s no surprise that someone who was once a complete stranger will swiftly become like a close brother or sister. People you can trust, even with your life. Because in all earnest, the second we all entered that habitat, we already were. But while it is kind of tough living down here, the team had trained a long time for this mission. The kind of intense training NASA use for their astronauts. The space program! What the hell has that got to do with the ocean? I hear you ask. Well, we may not be on an alien planet, but once you climb out of that airlock and step off the ramp, you look up all you see is black, when you look down all you can see is sand and rock. You are surrounded by a savagely hostile environment that will literally kill you if the seals on your suit or habitat were to ever breach. If something were to go wrong, no one could hope to reach you in time. You are totally and completely on your own. So, for all intense and purposes, we may as well be on the Moon. Walking alone in absolute darkness, there is a lot to lose your head over down here. Anxiety becomes a constant companion. Your eyes have this habit of seeing things just outside of your visible area. Little glimpses of faint movement, a bit like when you see shadows move out the corner of your eye. What makes things worse is the suit’s transparent face plate creates a sort of mirroring effect. So you’re never sure if you actually saw something, or if you are simply seeing a partial reflection of your own face on the glass. Let me tell you, among the ugly and scary looking deep sea fauna, so many monsters of the mind live out there in that perpetual night, where your spot lamp fades out into the creeping depths. That's why we always teach the newbie’s to keep their sights fixed on the ground in front of them; and you keep your mind there too if you know what's good for you! Because if you ever let your imagination run ahead, you’ll never catch it. Fear is like a fire and you really don't want a fire burning while you’re trapped inside a sealed metal suit. So if you see movement, it was just a fish. If you see a silhouette, it was just a fish. If you see a face with a big pair of eyes staring at you from the shadows? It was just a damn fish!.. Now I'll admit, that I've had a few wobbly moments myself that have pushed me close to my limit. Some of the creatures that live down here are truly terrifying to look at. The deep sea Angler Fish is a good example. Those things are a god awful kind of ugly! And many of the larger Viperfish I’ve seen have huge jaws full of thin pointy teeth that look like they could punch right through you given half the chance. But they’re nothing compared to that one time last year, while I was gathering rock samples close to the Dempsey Trench. I looked up from my display only to come face to face with a Giant Squid, as big as a limousine! Just sliding past me at walking pace, it’s one huge eyeball looking me square in the face before slipping away into the darkness. That one nearly caused me to soil my body suit! But by falling back on my training I always managed to get through without any real hazard. But what they neglect to tell you during all of those classes, simulations and exercises is that there are going to be things that even training can't prepare you for. Because the fact is that there are things living down here that the Human race has never seen before.

We’d been on mission for about forty days charting the Miranda Basin to identify sites for geothermal activity. The massive increase in pollution from the constant use of fossil fuels had created a demand among the worlds population to find a clean, safe and renewable form of energy. A demand made all the more emphatic after the infamous Moreland Nuclear Disaster which sent a massive cloud of radioactive material high into the Earths atmosphere and irradiated parts of the planet that are still being cleaned up to this day. So, with all the latest technological advances in heat resistant materials and high strength molecular bonded construction, geothermal energy (being a natural process) had become the most preferred option available, almost overnight. But of course, seeing as geothermal energy works by harnessing the heat produced by the planets life blood of molten rock, and seeing as one of the best places to find this life blood is right down here, deep underwater in the crushing depths, exploration teams like ours were soon formed to descend into the Abyssal Zone and assess them. So, there we were, dangerously close to 6’000 metres below sea level, three of us in Deep Dive suits moving through the deepest part of the basin surveying volcanic vents. Due to bad weather and technical issues with our deployment we had lost ten days at the very start, so we had to begin the mission without the aid of our remote submersibles which were still being prepped back at base. I was three miles out from the habitat, with Hofbauer and Simpkins in lead. I had to stop because of a malfunction with my Dive Suit. The knee had seized up again leaving me practically immobile. I mean it wasn't serious or anything, it happens all the time. Something to do with the extreme pressure interfering with the hydraulics. But we found that after a few modest taps with a rock hammer, you’re back in business! By this point I’d lost visual on my team mates who had carried on ahead. But I wasn't too worried as we had transponders on our suits and so I could see them clearly on my suits Heads Up Display (HUD) about sixty metres ahead of me. Oxygen was good, batteries were at maximum and my spot lamps were shining bright. So with no immediate concerns, I just carried on with the mission. On reaching the first designated location I stopped to take a seismic reading. Low orbit Satellite scans taken months earlier had suggested that volcanic activity in this area may be much higher than in the surrounding vicinity. A quick look around at some nearby natural vents spewing out plumes of black smoke and enough heat to render flesh from bone certainly helped identify the site as having a significant potential. As I happily concluded my tests, I suddenly heard a strange sound coming from the back of my helmet. Now let me just say that it's not uncommon to hear sounds in your suit. Under fluctuating pressures the metal structure is designed to adapt and adjust, so you do have to expect the odd creaking or popping sound every now and then. But this was different! Unlike anything I’d heard before, almost deliberate. Like someone gently wrapping their fingers on the metal. My suits display showed everything was in the green and so I just tried to ignore it, convinced it would soon stop once everything settled into place. But it didn’t, it just kept going on and on with a few momentary pauses here and there. As my ears hung upon that sound I suddenly felt my whole body go hot and sweat began to rapidly build up under my bodysuit. My anxiety was spiking as my mind began to fabricate a flurry of possible scenarios, and when you are all alone in the dark, many miles beneath the surface, surrounded by monsters both real and imaginary, and all you can hear are unexplained noises coming from your suit - the one and only thing preventing the extreme pressure of the ocean from pulverising your body in an instant - then none of those scenarios are going to be very good! I quickly looked at my HUD and saw that the nearest team member was Simpkins, but she was 180 metres to the North, with Hofbauer a good 200 metres off to the west. Procedure states that if you are ever concerned, run a quick diagnostic on the suit as focussing on this can help to reassure you should you find yourself panicking. Within seconds the results revealed the integrity of both my suits structure and it’s seals were perfectly fine, which was good in one respect as at least that weird sound wasn't the suit failing, but on the other hand that would mean that whatever this sound was, it was something making contact with the outside of the suit! Stood motionless, my anxiety was killing me! So even though the prospect of doing so scared me to death, I knew that I would have to turn around and look or else I would probably lose it altogether. This however wasn’t a simple thing to do, for while the suits heavy design is great at keeping you safe from external hazards, being so big and strong and bulky meant that you can't just turn your head or spin around on the spot in one rapid motion. Turning around in one of these things is akin to turning a heavy goods vehicle around in a narrow street. So, I tried to step backwards in order to pivot, but as I did so I immediately felt some kind of resistance preventing me from moving. I had engaged full power to my rig, but still every time I tried to step backwards the more this resistance kept me in place. I was trying to rationalise it, asking myself if I was just stuck on something? Was there a rock behind me that I hadn’t noticed? But before I could ponder any further, this seemingly immovable obstruction, under its own power, bashed against my suit with a heavy thump! My heart rate leaped so high my suits bio-monitoring system sounded a warning!.. I just stood there trembling at the realisation that there was something alive, right behind me and whatever it was must have been big... I mean really big! Much larger than any creature I’d ever encountered before. Hell, even bigger than that giant squid that breezed passed me in the darkness. I've seen these suits push through a wealth of sturdy obstructions, but this thing kept nudging me forward, like I was nothing! I wanted to send a message to my team mates, but I was too scared to make sound in case it caused, whatever this was to attack. A second warning appeared on my heads up display because my breathing was greatly elevated, increasing the carbon monoxide levels in the suit. But thankfully the air scrubber system kicked in automatically and began recycling the air without me having to move a muscle. I could only stand there and listen to that alien sound chipping away in my ears, mere inches from the back of my head. It was like I was being studied, analysed by something with a thinking mind. Probably trying to ascertain what I was. Am I food? Am I a threat? These thoughts fill you with an unimaginable terror because once it reaches its conclusion, what the hell happens then? Anxiety is a raw and ancient beast in the human consciousness, it demands instant action. I just wanted to run! To get away as fast as possible, but how can you run when you are trapped inside a metal suit that moves everywhere in slow motion? And even then, where would you go? Your miles away from anything that resembles safe shelter. Scambling for ideas I suddenly remembered the rock hammer clipped to my tool belt which was big and heavy enough that I could possibly use it as a weapon. But then if this thing was really as big as I believed it to be, then it would be like attacking a rhino with a nut cracker! That's when I heard it... A sound that will echo in my mind for as long as I live. The most chilling, unworldly roar that reverberated through the thick hide of the suit and rang painfully in my ears. I honestly thought my heart was going to stop! I just closed my eyes tight, trembling in terror and prayed. I'm not a religious man by any stretch, but I stood there and I prayed to God (if he could even hear me standing this close to hell) to reach down and save me from this nightmare. It was like waiting for someone to knife you in the back! The trepidation was unbearable! But then, as quickly as it started the bizarre tapping sound stopped abruptly. Replaced by a loud yet fleeting whooshing sound, and suddenly everything fell eerily silent. My ears were hyper sensitive, listening for even the slightest unexplainable noise. But all I could hear were the low blips of the caution alarms in my suit reacting to my severely distressed state. After a tense few minutes, I managed to pluck up the courage and I stepped backwards. Only this time I felt no resistance at all and the suit glided backwards with ease. I gradually turned around, eyes still closed, mind screaming with fear, and slowly opened my eyes.... But there was nothing there... Just the marine snow gently falling from the darkness above. I wasn't exactly sure what was worse, seeing something or seeing nothing? Being stuck in a room with a venomous snake is scary enough when you can see it, but when it disappears, that's when you really panic! Regaining my senses I jumped on the radio and even though I wasn't the mission leader, with no authority whatsoever to do so, I ordered everyone back to the habitat immediately...

That slow walk back felt like an eternity. I was counting down the miles like seconds on a clock. Even while I was encased in that strong armour plating I don’t think I’d ever felt so vulnerable in my life. Even the sight of the spot lamps on the habitat emerging from out of the gloom provided no reassurance, because your mind plays this sadistic and repeating scenario over and over, where the minute you reach safety, the very second you believe you are out of danger, something reaches out of that darkness and drags you to your death! I stepped onto the ramp with a clatter, crammed myself into the airlock and the door slowly closed behind me. As the water flushed away and the concerned faces of my team mates appeared at the porthole window, I finally breathed a long awaited sigh of relief. On telling the others about what I had experienced they just thought I was mistaken. They studied the telemetry of my suit and concluded that my oxygen systems got messed up and caused me to suffer hallucinations. Either that or I’d just had an anxiety attack or some other psychological issue, the names of which I can’t possibly recall off the top of my head. So they put me on a medical observation and suspended my dive activity. I didn't fight it of course. Personally I was happy to sit in the habitat for a while. But I did fear for my comrades still operating out there in the dark. I was like a mother worrying for her children, not at rest until you see them come through that door safe and sound. Because regardless of the what they might say, I know without any dispute that there was something out there, and whatever it is, it’s certainly not the last we have seen of it that’s for sure! Being surrounded by such extremely inhospitable conditions, whether it's outer space or inner space, clearly tells us that human beings are by their biological nature not meant to be here. But if we are going to venture into this dark unknown place then we have to accept that we are the aliens. And that these lands, these worlds belong entirely to the beings who live there... Beings that may even resist an invasion of their territory!..