I'm taking a risk in revealing the truth about what happened to the Mimas, but I suppose that's an inevitable part of leaking information to the public. I will, when it comes to be my turn, be marched into a small room and interrogated in the expectation that I'll admit to being the one to have 'compromised the investigation'. But there is no investigation, not any more. I rather believe that the government organisation for which I work is hoping for the event to fade from the public's consciousness, for the journalists to become occupied with fresher news, for the relations of the dead or missing to accept the lies that they've been told for expediency. This leak will give them no solace; they are far more likely to dismiss it as a cruel hoax. But I can't let what I know remain secret any longer. I tell the truth and shame the devil.
For those that don't recall, the Mimas was an oceanographic research vessel, a ship with a crew of thirty, which went missing about three years ago, and was discovered floating adrift in the North Pacific by a Chilean fishing boat just over a year ago. It made news worldwide owing to the state in which it was found. The captain and eight of the crew were missing. The rest were in the ship's command centre, all having collapsed and died, apparently simultaneously. After two years of exposure the bodies were in a state of advanced decay, but easily identified by forensic tests and simple deduction from their clothing and personal effects. The missing members of the crew have not been found and it is highly unlikely that they ever will be.
The Mimas was built for sea exploration. It had facilities for a team of divers; air and nitrox filling stations, scuba gear, propulsion vehicles. The aft of the ship was a large work platform with an A-frame, used to deploy each of the two craft that the ship carried; a zodiac and a two-man submersible. The latter was of the modern design, the fore of the vehicle dominated by a bubble of clear acrylic several centimetres thick, capable of descending to a depth of 1200 metres. On the surface the plastic bubble could open like a clamshell, and the craft hooked back up to the A-frame and winched back aboard the ship. The A-frame pivots on hydraulics to suspend its payload over the work platform or the sea to the ship's stern.
Neither the zodiac nor the submersible were on the Mimas at the time it was discovered, one of the facts not reported to the press. Another is that every piece of technology expected to be found on the ship was either missing or thoroughly destroyed. Every computer in the command centre, every camera in the dive equipment store, even any laptops, tablets and smartphones the crew and scientific teams may have possessed were gone. There wasn't so much as a memory stick on the ship. Presumably they were all thrown overboard. Anything that could not be removed was smashed. On the bridge, the communications equipment was broken, prised open and emptied of circuitry. Screens were struck with blunt ends, the glass covers of dials shattered. All of which meant that it was impossible to determine where the Mimas had been for the two years since it last made any transmission. Given the location where the Chilean fishermen encountered it, realised it was adrift and raised the alarm, it had been caught in the currents of the South Pacific Gyre.
It had to be tugged into port, since its own propeller was bent and buckled out of shape, as if by hammering. No other part of the hull showed any significant damage.
One of the crew, one whose body was not recovered from the vessel, wrote a lengthly account of the events leading up to the catastrophe that took the lives of everyone on board. A notebook was found in the mess hall, a ring-bound pad of lined paper, in which was written an extraordinary story, which we transcribed to computer file and that I reproduce here. Given the fantastic nature of the content, either the writer was insane, wickedly deceitful or witness to phenomena which would, well, change everything for us.
The account was written by the crew member who piloted the submersible, and relates the events beginning from when the Mimas was researching and filming ocean life in the marine protected area around the Amundsen Sea, off Antarctica. I present the transcription, unedited, in its entirety. In places I include footnotes to provide any explanations or information pertinent to the account, purely for the purpose of clarification.
For those that don't recall, the Mimas was an oceanographic research vessel, a ship with a crew of thirty, which went missing about three years ago, and was discovered floating adrift in the North Pacific by a Chilean fishing boat just over a year ago. It made news worldwide owing to the state in which it was found. The captain and eight of the crew were missing. The rest were in the ship's command centre, all having collapsed and died, apparently simultaneously. After two years of exposure the bodies were in a state of advanced decay, but easily identified by forensic tests and simple deduction from their clothing and personal effects. The missing members of the crew have not been found and it is highly unlikely that they ever will be.
The Mimas was built for sea exploration. It had facilities for a team of divers; air and nitrox filling stations, scuba gear, propulsion vehicles. The aft of the ship was a large work platform with an A-frame, used to deploy each of the two craft that the ship carried; a zodiac and a two-man submersible. The latter was of the modern design, the fore of the vehicle dominated by a bubble of clear acrylic several centimetres thick, capable of descending to a depth of 1200 metres. On the surface the plastic bubble could open like a clamshell, and the craft hooked back up to the A-frame and winched back aboard the ship. The A-frame pivots on hydraulics to suspend its payload over the work platform or the sea to the ship's stern.
Neither the zodiac nor the submersible were on the Mimas at the time it was discovered, one of the facts not reported to the press. Another is that every piece of technology expected to be found on the ship was either missing or thoroughly destroyed. Every computer in the command centre, every camera in the dive equipment store, even any laptops, tablets and smartphones the crew and scientific teams may have possessed were gone. There wasn't so much as a memory stick on the ship. Presumably they were all thrown overboard. Anything that could not be removed was smashed. On the bridge, the communications equipment was broken, prised open and emptied of circuitry. Screens were struck with blunt ends, the glass covers of dials shattered. All of which meant that it was impossible to determine where the Mimas had been for the two years since it last made any transmission. Given the location where the Chilean fishermen encountered it, realised it was adrift and raised the alarm, it had been caught in the currents of the South Pacific Gyre.
It had to be tugged into port, since its own propeller was bent and buckled out of shape, as if by hammering. No other part of the hull showed any significant damage.
One of the crew, one whose body was not recovered from the vessel, wrote a lengthly account of the events leading up to the catastrophe that took the lives of everyone on board. A notebook was found in the mess hall, a ring-bound pad of lined paper, in which was written an extraordinary story, which we transcribed to computer file and that I reproduce here. Given the fantastic nature of the content, either the writer was insane, wickedly deceitful or witness to phenomena which would, well, change everything for us.
The account was written by the crew member who piloted the submersible, and relates the events beginning from when the Mimas was researching and filming ocean life in the marine protected area around the Amundsen Sea, off Antarctica. I present the transcription, unedited, in its entirety. In places I include footnotes to provide any explanations or information pertinent to the account, purely for the purpose of clarification.
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