Have you ever heard of Deep-Sea Gigantism?

by John Nyman

“Have you ever heard of deep-sea gigantism”? Those were the first words I uttered on stage, smugly preparing to present my surely monumental speech. I had been invited to speak before an audience of the world’s most brilliant zoologists on my theory of ‘deep-earth gigantism’ for the first time in my decades-long history as an expert on the subject. I had written books, essays, arguments, and uncountable papers on the topic throughout my career, yet all had gone unnoticed, dismissed as preposterous, presumptuous, or based on sketchy evidence. Excuses were all these criticisms were, but as I paced back and forth on stage, white-haired and constantly adjusting my reading glasses to glare down at my prepared speech, I realized that all of my struggles had been worthwhile.

The only unfortunate part of the entire affair was the exact circumstances under which I had been invited to speak to the zoological community. As if my lifetime of historic papers and outstanding evidence had not been enough to fuel further speculation on my theories, it took a news story, characterized by international television coverage, to increase interest in my ideas. However, not at all bothered by this reality, I continued with my speech. “Deep-sea gigantism, for those of you not familiar with the concept, is the tendency for certain species of marine organisms to grow to enormous sizes at low depths. Examples of such are the giant squid and giant isopods that live at depths thousands of metres below sea level. Furthermore, it is still mostly unknown to science why these creatures reach such incredible sizes. Knowing this, consider that last week, two miners entered machinery housings at a depth of 2,568 metres underground. In the end, one of the miners returned, claiming that his friend had been killed by a 20 metre long worm. Is it possible that gigantism exists not only at underwater depths, but at underground depths as well? After my meeting with the sole surviving miner, now residing peacefully in a psychiatric facility, I believe that he indeed came into contact with a giant nematode, grown to an astronomical size due to the effects of deep-earth gigantism.”

A few days before, I had arrived at the psychiatric facility where the miner was staying, busy preparing my interview. The press had not been allowed to interview the miner, as he was suffering from delusions and hallucinations after the death of his co-worker, however, after a little bit of persuasion, I found the facility’s staff were sympathetic to my cause; the cause of science, and allowed me an exclusive interview with their patient. I walked into the miner’s room slowly, and explained my being there cautiously, “Hello Mr. Ungin, I am a scientist, a zoologist actually, looking into the existence of such creatures as the one you are reported to have seen, and I’d like to interview you on your recent experience, if you don’t mind sharing it with me.” He answered back quickly and nervously, although he was a burly man, his mouth and chin quivering under a thick black moustache. “Yes,” he said, “I’ve been alright these past few hours; I’ll tell you what I saw.” I eagerly pulled out my pen and a clipboard, gleaming with fresh, blank paper, and then looked back up at the quivering miner. “So,” I asked, “Shall we begin”? For an indeterminable amount of time after that statement, I listened to the miner speak, choppily, his voice filled with disturbing pitch and speed changes, while I frantically detailed every aspect of his story onto my clipboard, knowing that it would be the key to having my theories finally respected in the scientific community.

“I’m a technician at a mine just outside of town. With modern robotic techniques, my job normally doesn’t require me to go underground at all, but a few days ago we were faced with a situation that required me and my partner, Bill, to go down the mine shaft and examine the situation personally. The mining equipment at the bottom of the shaft had stopped working, and no computer programming or control problem had been detected. It appeared as though there had been a jam in the machinery. What made this situation out of the ordinary, however, was that the machinery is specially designed to keep the falling rocks and debris out of its main cavity. The mechanical parts were protected with a tough metal barrier, almost impossible to breach, and kept well out of the reach of material being mined by the extending portions of the machine. Due to this oddity, Bill and I were supposed to find out what had caused the machinery to jam, and determine what design changes could prevent such a thing from happening again.”

“We took some tools, scanners, notepads, and emergency provisions, and then went to take the elevator down the mineshaft. With all of our equipment ready at hand we soon found ourselves over 2,500 metres underground at the bottom of the mine, and opened the elevator doors to find ourselves in a small, well lit metal room at the foot of the machinery, where a simple control panel rested next to the door leading to the main mechanical parts of the device. Bill went over to the control panel to check it while I waited, and informed me that it displayed the same data being shown on the above ground computers. He entered a password into the control panel and the door beside him rose up promptly. I was the first to go through.”

“The machinery room of the mining device is a long metal hallway with high walls and a wide floor. The door opens into the side of the long wall, close to the near end of the hallway, which holds the base of a long horizontal cylinder extending the rest of the hall’s length. The rest of the room’s main cavity is littered with thick metallic and colourfully insulated wires which run back and forth from the main cylinder to the various connected machines and digital display panels around it, until the far end of the hall, where the cylinder disappears into the wall alongside a second doorway. Normally, the entire room would shine with a silver metallic lustre, musty from the great depth and dust, but still in factory perfect form. When I entered this time, however, a far different sight greeted me. Spread all over the room, hanging from the walls, and dripping from the machinery and wires, was a hodgepodge of sickly coloured jelly. Staining and sticking to every part of the room were bright red and yellow liquids, pink jellies and gels, and oozing clumps of pink and grey spongy matter. Upon seeing the sickening appearance of the room, the first thing that came to my mind was that some sort of enormous, horrible creature had spilled its innards across the machinery, but the question that baffled me and Bill, once I had called him into the room, was what kind of creature could fit the description, over 2,500 metres below the surface of the Earth.”

“After the initial shock we began to comb through the parts of the machine, trying to determine what had gone wrong. The guts of the creature that had died there loomed over us menacingly as we went through the mechanics. In some places the blood was still dripping from overhanging mechanical arms, and every drop sent a shiver down our spines as we spread out across the room, looking for the source of the problem. I had made my way very close to the far wall, while Bill was on the other side of the main cylinder, when I found the problem. In a short trail from the far wall I saw a series of slashed and crushed wires overloaded with the shredded innards, leading to a mass of machinery in front of me, also dripping with the stuff. As I walked around it I noticed that in the centre of the mass of hydraulics and powerful mechanical devices was a massive, roughly tubular hunk of light grey flesh, with both ends open and bleeding and aligned with the sharp blades of the machine, sitting just before the most powerful hydraulic crushers, suggesting that the creature, whatever it was, had been chopped up by the mechanics and squeezed, causing its guts to spill all over the room in the resulting burst.”

“I called Bill over to examine the problem. Besides the fact that it was unfixable with the tools we had brought, neither of us would go near the remaining mass of metre-wide flesh, as we were nearly prepared to throw up at the sight or thought of it. Always the vigilant workers, however, when Bill noticed a jagged exit hole in the metal of the far wall beside the door, approximately large enough to allow passage of the mass of severed flesh, we were both extremely frightened and yet diligently obligated to investigate. We examined the hole, and then traveled through the door, finding ourselves standing on the hard earth below the enormous, stagnant drill that extended from the main control room. The bright, safe lighting of the metal sanctuaries was gone, and we realized more than ever how far underground we were, amassed in the darkness and dampness of the middle of the Earth’s crust. With the only light being emitted from the closing door of the machinery room, we switched on our headlamps and peered around the area. Aside from the looming presence of the gigantic drill, the main mining area appeared normal, until I saw a hole in the rock face at the far side of the room. Bill and I moved over to investigate, and discovered that the hole was actually the opening of a tunnel, just as wide as the hole in the machinery room and as wide as the tube of flesh that sat jamming a part the machinery within. As Bill peered towards the back of the endless corridor, it became starkly clear to both of us what had happened, although if any doubts of such a fantastical occurrence remained in either of our minds, they were at that moment mere seconds from being disproved.”

“Just as our feeble minds were about to reach the evident conclusion of the situation, Bill and I noticed a deep rumbling echoing from the tunnel. Bill stepped back a pace from the opening, but the sound approached us with alarming speed, until we had retreated almost half of the way back to the machinery room. By that time, the sound was loud in our ears, and in an instant, we witnessed the horrible sight of its creator. Out of the tunnel slithered the pointed head of a gigantic, light grey coloured worm, which instantly began to move towards us at an incredible pace, flailing back and forth with violent oscillation. As the worm emerged from the dark of the tunnel, our tiny headlamps seemed to cower under its sickening might, and we were finally overcome with one thought: to run.”

“Both Bill and I turned and ran from the beast as fast as we could, overcome with fear. Once we got out of the dank cavern and back into the brightly lit machinery room, I looked over my shoulder for the beast, as though the brightness would keep it away, yet, in the light it was more horrific than ever, and as its nearly 20 metre long body rushed through the hole in the metal wall, I knew it wouldn’t give up the chase. Even worse, the remains of its gruesomely deceased comrade, and the blinding lights that hung all around it, seemed only to increase its rage, and its movement speed. As Bill and I ran frantically down the metal hallway, I noticed Bill slip silently on a stream of blood that ran across his path, and turned around to observe his plight. As he dropped behind me in the chase, I watched in horror as the worm slithered back and forth up to him with its muscular body, and, almost in slow motion, horrifically rammed its oscillating head into Bill as he stumbled, knocking him across the room with incredible force, while the worm continued to rush towards me, untouched. In horror I watched over my shoulder as Bill’s head crashed against the side of the giant metal cylinder, cracking with a flurry of blood to join that of the first unfortunate worm.”

“After I watched Bill die before my eyes, with the deadly worm still approaching at a nearly inescapable pace, time seemed to slow around me into a blur. The scene was the stuff of nightmares; the dread that had always only found itself in the back of my mind had morphed into reality, and I was losing my sanity by the second. I ran for my life, knowing only to avoid the fate of my friend and co-worker. I ran through the machinery room door into the lobby, with the worm close on my tail. Its head and the first third or so of its body made its way through the door when the opening slammed abruptly, severing the worm cleanly. To my continuing horror, however, the remaining portion of the worm continued to flail after me with renewed vigour, again untouched by the apparent loss of most of its body. My fear escalated with my heartbeat as I continued to run into the elevator, the door of which again slammed shut with lightning speed as the worm leaped through it, leaving only its gigantic head in the tiny cavity with me. The elevator itself was a dead end though, and I stood pinned against its wall as the worm’s head flailed in front of the controls like a dying fish in a fisherman’s boat, only moving to kick it quickly away when it got too close, or when my heartbeat seemed to skip and the twitch of fear overcame me. The worm guarded the controls with its flailing, and my fear of it was too great to brave; I simply stared at it with a look of pure nightmarish fear, sweating and pressing every part of my body away from its gruesome, bleeding, and randomly vicious remains with all of my strength. My heartbeat increased again, and my mind flew into a dizzying haze as I realized that the view around me was becoming a blurred white. I fainted. When I woke up, I was in the hospital, being told that I was found unconscious in the elevator beside a jagged hole in the metal wall about a metre wide. Still dizzy, I went back to sleep, and haven’t since been able to escape the nightmares of the giant worm.”