How Poseidon likes his fish

1986, a lecture at Oxford university. Astrophysics.

“When we look at the colour of a star, we can determine which elements can be found in them, as all elements radiate a different hue in the extreme heats we find in all stars. This allows us to know what chemical elements exist in what parts of the galaxy, without the need to send out an actual expedition. Mapping the stars from the safety of our homes, as it were. You can find the elemental graphs for the nearest stars in your books, starting on page 785.”

The sound of pages being turned fills the classroom in no time. A young man slowly raises his hand as he sees the graphs. “Mister Jenkins, is there a problem?” The lecturer asked surprised.

“Most of our stars, along with the universe is made out of the simplest of elements, hydrogen, right?” The student asked.

“Why of course! As a matter of fact more than a baffling 98% of the universe consists of this specific element.” The lecturer said.

“And a large amount of the remaining percentage is the second least complex one, helium, right?”

“This too is correct, yes. As you can no doubt see in your graphs” The lecturer said, a bit impatiently.

“But what happened with all the lithium?” The young man asked.

“Lithium?” The lecturer asked, unable to suppress his surprise.

“Lithium is the third least complex atom, and it should be all over the galaxy. But according to these graphs, there’s hardly any in our nearest star systems, why is that?”

“Ah!” the lecturer sighed “I’m afraid you have found a question no scientist has yet managed to answer. Your observation is correct, and your question legitimate. I’m afraid I can’t give you the answer, but if you happen to figure it out, please make sure to share it with the scientific community, we’d be most pleased.” He winked.

2017, Norwegian oil platform.

A red light is glowing in a row of little red LEDs, all of them but the one glowing is dark. A notification appears on one of the computer displays. Machinery is buzzing here and there as a thick-coated man walks in with a cup of hot coffee in his hand. He brings the hot liquid closer to his lips, but drops it again when he remarks the small red light, burning for his attention.

As he puts his coffee on a small table, his eyes roll from left to right as he reads the note on the screen. He picks up a small phone from the same control panel that bears the rows of red lights. He starts talking, there is a little break every sentence during which another voice can be heard but not understood. “There seems to be a small change in the ionic properties of the water … No, just this minute, sir … Negative, no hazardous readings until now … oil pressure is normal, no other alarms so far … I see, I’ll be right to it sir” The man puts the phone down and leaves the room with a box of testing equipment, his coffee got cold by the time he returned. He picks up the phone again.

“The small decline in ionic properties seems to be the result of a massive decrease in lithium particles … no we can’t be causing this, lithium has nothing to do with raw oil … how massive? Let me put it this way: we went from a bit of lithium in the ocean to nearly nothing at all … Sir, I insist we call the weather institute, whatever this is, they should know … I see, I’ll leave you to it then” The man hung up the phone again and saw how the red warning light kept burning.

2019, The Icebreaker, a scientific vessel designed for polar expeditions. Near Spitzbergen, Norway.

A group of people stood together on the upper deck, each well tucked in winter clothes, yet still shivering. A large cloth was being pulled back, revealing what seems to be a large yellow orb. “Are you ready, mister Jenkins?” one of the team leaders shouted to top the howling wind.

“Ready to board” he said, barely audible.

“Good! If our data is correct, the seas’ lithium reserves are somehow being pulled in this direction, right underneath The Icebreaker. Whatever is causing that has yet to be identified, the seabird here can take one person to it.” He pointed to the yellow spherical submarine. “You are an excellent physicist, I know you can do this, Jenkins.”

The man called Jenkins entered the little seabird through a tiny hole, which was sealed of hermetically by two crewmembers outside. Jenkins checked pressure and oxygen levels, next was the energy and communications systems. “All systems are a go!” he said. After a brief silence, the lead scientist said a few words Jenkins could hear trough an intercom, but the howling wind made it impossible to determine what it was he said.

A little crane lifted the seabird, moved it over the deck and above the water. Slowly, it dropped Jenkins until the little porthole to his front showed a rising water level. When he was submerged completely, there was the silence that made underwater expeditions so frightening. The contrast with the surface’s howling winds, shouting crew members and blaring engines made everything below the surface feel silent as death itself.

After being robbed of sound, Jenkins soon found that no more surface lights came to the seabird. Instead, a red light burned in his little seabird to make sure he could keep reading the little gauges: the pressure was rising at a fast rate. It meant he was dropping fast, his oxygen levels and the inside pressure were stable.

During the next ten minutes, he kept checking the gauges and talking to the lead investigator. This job was hardly any different from an office job, he thought. Only his office was being moved down to the ocean floor. It struck him as a funny thought, as the lead investigator blasted through the intercom: “Jenkins! Are you all right? What happened?”

Jenkins quickly checked all the numbers and hands again, and after coming to the conclusion that nothing had happened at all, answered with “I’m fine, why?”.

“Jenkins? Where are you? Do you copy?” A slight panic came through in his voice.

“I’m still fine, what’s going on?”. But no more response came. Jenkins continued for three whole minutes to try and regain contact, but to no avail. His seabird kept diving deeper into the cold inhospitable darkness.

Somehow Jenkins always expected some dramatic music, or some background noise at least, like you’d always hear if a submarine is being lowered in movies. But the silence was like usually surprisingly deafening. The darkness continued to penetrate until the porthole looked like nothing more than a mirror, showing a ghostly red face that was Jenkins’ own image, made red by the sub’s internal lighting system.

A sudden vibration told Jenkins he had reached the ocean floor. Again, he attempted to contact the Icebreaker. “I don’t know if you can hear me, but I have safely arrived at the bottom. I’m performing the mandatory check of my systems now, all seems functional, apart from communication systems.” Another small vibration came through the seabirds’ hull.

A stunned Jenkins tried to grasp what just happened. He obviously couldn’t have landed twice. And the pressure gauge showed that he wasn’t descending anymore since the first shock. But then what was the second shock? Was some sea creature bumping into the seabird? Before he got to report his findings, an unearthly roar made the hair on his arms stand straight up. “Sound…” he said to himself. The noise wasn’t that different from a train riding somewhere in the distance, but there were no trains here. Most sounds would not have penetrated the thick, high-pressure water, so Jenkins believed the shock must’ve come from inside the seabird. A third roar shook the entire vessel once more, making Jenkins realise that no equipment on the seabird was made to produce sounds on this level.

He reached for the small switch that controlled his front lights. It would shine a bright light so he could watch through the porthole, and instead of his own reddish reflection, he’d see the ocean itself. He somehow started considering a prank from his co-workers.

The lights went on as Jenkins flipped the switch. His red image was instantly replaced by a dark ocean floor. There were no fish here, or anything else that seemed to be alive. He did notice a curious rock formation, however. The rock formation was on the exact coordinates to which his calculations had lead him. This rock was somehow decreasing lithium reserves throughout the entire world’s oceans.

The silence was once more penetrated by an alien roaring such as the ones before. This time, however, the rocks shook a little too. And a bright blue light shone from them as they did. Jenkins was puzzled, and decided to go closer. After flipping some more switches, the sub’s propulsion systems kicked in and brought the vessel nearby the strange-looking rocks, blowing off some tiny bubbles of air as it did.

Jenkins watched the rock formation and listened for more ill-omened sounds. The next moment, Jenkins felt like his head was exploding: a fierce pain pierced his brain as if someone had injected boiling acid into his skull. Jenkins could hear a faint static noise, as if he could hear the blood stream in his head, he saw a bright flash of blue light through his closed eyelids and he forced himself to open them, despite the pain.

He saw the rock formation glowing, and floating several meters above the ocean floor. He had opened his eyes just in time to see it shaking of the sand in clouds of dark brown dust. The rock formation was a clean, glasslike object, several times the size of the Icebreaker. A blue light radiated from its centre, and it seemed to be shaped like a massive diamond.

As the dust settled back down, the static in Jenkins’ mind started to take shape, as a voice said “Hello”. His pain seized immediately. “Who… are you?” a rumbling voice said inside his head. Every word was stressed by the blue light getting a bit stronger.

“I… I am Jenkins, physicist from the Icebreaker, I’m on a mission to… to… how are you speaking to me?”

“I can read your brainwaves, I can influence your brainwaves, mortal. You are human, are you not? Humans live in trees and caves, why are you here? Down here in the ocean, human?” It roared in his mind.

“We don’t live in trees or caves anymore. We have evolved. I came here to find where the lithium is going… I…”

The diamond shaped thing interrupted: “Lithium? The third element. I need it. We need it, it’s why we are here. I absorb the lithium and I grow strong. The ice around me has melted at last, it means my brothers have found me, and have freed me.”

“Your brothers? There’s more of you?” Jenkins asked.

“You don’t know? Have humans evolved to be blind? There’s dozens on this planet, your foolish chiefs worship us. You give us names. You build us monuments. You shaped civilisations to us.” The voice in Jenkins’ head struck him as unbelieving.

“We have no chiefs anymore, we don’t worship any living thing anymore, many years have passed since this part of the ocean was first covered in ice.”

The object remained silent.

The ocean trembled and a pain struck Jenkins’ head once more. “NO!” The voice rumbled intimidatingly. The sound came from within his mind, but gentle soundwaves seemed to come from the thing. Now the wave made the entire seabird shake, an alarm started ringing in the vessel.

“They have left this world, my brothers are no longer here. I can’t feel their presence any longer!” It shouted, if shouting would be an appropriate word for this telepathic way of speech.

“But what are you and your brothers? Why did you absorb all this lithium?”

“We come from a distant galaxy. A distant dimension. We have evolved too. We were once a planet, like this earth. But we became sentient. Then, disaster struck as we were hit by a rocky planet. We were divided in nature, but still one in mind. All pieces of us became individuals in a swarm. The swarm moved through the galaxy. We devoured stardust to survive and to keep moving. There is only one hope for us to be one again: we need to find the third element. It is what makes us, it is what can make us grow, it is what can make us one again. We are one, we are not named by ourselves. Your kind once named us gods. Your kind once named me Poseidon.”

“Poseidon?” Jenkins thought perplexed. “God of the sea?” he thought.

“Yes. I was responsible for finding lithium in your seas. It was my duty. But I failed. The sudden cold made me weak. I couldn’t leave the ocean anymore, I did not have the energy. I was trapped here, and frozen. Now my brothers have abandoned me, I am alone. I will never know peace and unity again, it is my ultimate punishment. I can only hope my brothers will find their peace and unity.”

“What will happen next?” Jenkins asked.

“Next?” said the trembling and sad voice in his head. “You will return to your world. I will return to mine. I will leave the third element alone. I don’t need it. Not anymore. Thank you, human, for visiting me. And for enlightening me.”

“Hell if I know what’s going on! We stopped receiving all data, no communications whatsoever!” a voice shouted, trying to be louder than the shrieking winds.

“Captain!” a deckhand yelled. The captain looked at the deckhand, following his pointing arm in the direction of the ocean’s surface: a metallic, yellow orb was floating, breaking waves.

Jenkins remained unconscious for several days, and suffered memory loss after that. Nobody knew what had happened in the darkness, but one thing was certain: the lithium levels had finally stopped decreasing.