Humans have been preparing for this moment for the last 400 years. Every second of that time has been spent studying, memorizing, and readying our bodies for this journey. Well maybe not all humans, only the select few dictated by a government that could barely grasp the concept of science. Those select few, chosen for their superior intellect and strong physiques, chosen for the descendants they would create. The group of decedents I am a part of. I am an experiment, I have never seen the sun, I have never breathed air untouched by a filtration system, and I have never seen true stars. Why? Because the greater experiment dictates that we are born in a system of extreme pressure, and live in it. ‘Where could she possibly live to achieve this extreme pressure?’ You may wonder. I live at the bottom of the Marianas Trench. Where the pressure reaches 15,750psi., but that number probably doesn’t mean anything to you, to put it in perspective that number is over a thousand times the atmospheric pressure at sea level.
I have lived here my entire life and these walls made of palladium silver alloy are my home. The cool metal is the strongest material on earth and yet the walls need many layers of it to keep the pressure from collapsing our bubble, the funny thing about the alloy is that it allows the pressure to flow through, it allows the pressure to affect us. How is that we don’t explode? Well 400 years ago an organization called NASA put a group of 150 extremely fit and intelligent volunteers into our home which is officially known as Celestial Expedition Development Apartments or CEDA for short. CEDA was connected to many cables that slowly lowered it deeper into the trench, about 90 feet a year, in order to allow the human body to adapt to the increased pressure.
Over time the 150 original occupants of CEDA intermarried with one another and started the 10 generations of families. Because our numbers of youth must always remain at 150 at all times, couples must have two children – no more no less, one for each parent. If one pair is unable to conceive then two other couples are allowed to have three children to keep the numbers even. In the beginning the first people who were bound to each other we always in love, then as the people left to choose from dwindled they just paired up with their friends in order to not end up alone, until finally there were the ones left who couldn’t stand to be paired with anyone in the group. So the original occupants devised a system for the second generation to avoid this problem. At the age of ten every child undergoes a series of tests that identify personality traits and compatibility with certain types of people. Then the child is paired with another child who is deemed suitable and they spend much of the next ten years together, until ideally the two at least become best friends. But sometimes if it seems that it will not work out during the first four years a switch is allowed. Then around the age of 20 the pairs marry.
I know everything you know as a child of the sun (that’s what we ‘children of the deep’ call you) knows, NASA sends us down new information every day through the cable and sometimes they also send down new inventions (this is always the most exciting for our generation) and we learn everything that your government thinks you need, plus all that we will need to know for our journey to the stars. I can name all the Presidents and what major scandal or success they had, or all the major thinkers of Ancient Greece and their philosophies. I know everything that a typical 17 year old girl should know, plus the part that makes me anything but.
This is my story.