Non Plus Ultra: "The Appointment" background story

Back when I was a diving instructor, I spent some time on a Mediterranean island to achieve specialty dive certifications. One of those specialties was “deep dive” and being the undisciplined, rebellious and irresponsible madmen that we were (it’s always “we,” madmen always find each other), another quite experienced diver and I decided to acquire further experience on the field.

One afternoon we escaped from the camp, borrowed a boat and another friend at the oars rowed us to a place where we knew we could take photographs of precious red coral. We knew it was below -very much below!- the so-called Elephant Rock. Indeed, there we found it and we took breathtaking photos, in the deepest dive I had done thus far, my second deepest ever.

Breathing air at that depth meant that we went straight down as fast as we could, found the blood red branches in the dark, took photos while completely drunk on nitrogen and then, battling disorientation and dizziness, we guided each other in an excruciatingly long and slow ascent, and then through long and excruciatingly boring decompression stops.

Later, as we lied down in the boat to not be seen by the course director when our friend rowed us back to the camp, I learned that our escapade was not my accomplices’ first attempt: they had unwittingly become local celebrities during the previous summer, when both had surfaced paralyzed with bends, the decompression sickness, after trying the same feat and both had been evacuated by helicopter. The friend who this time stayed on the boat told me how the MRI taken for possible brain damage found instead a quite advanced brain tumor. He joked that trying to get killed underwater had actually saved his life, because it was diagnosed just before it was too late and he was recovering from an emergency surgery.

Other times, in other seas, I knew or met a few other madmen who attempted similar exploits. One had lost a buddy trying to find the same accursed red coral, some had lucky escapes after improbable hallucinations, some later died trying again. Their stories, however exaggerated, delusional or confused, were frightening. Things that we give for granted above the ocean’s surface, like gravity, light, breath, even our own shadows, are very different underwater and once beyond the safe limits of recreational diving, everything becomes terra incognita, literal uncharted waters where few venture and even fewer gain enough experience to learn to stay away.

I consider myself lucky for having recognized my personal Pillars of Hercules and for having always been able to stop just one step before.

At the time, an incredible and later completely discredited story about a Soviet submarine lost at sea after supposedly laying nuclear mines in the Bay of Naples, our diving home yard, hit international headlines and left us scratching our heads.

Also in the same years, divers’ lore included urban legends of war dolphins or sea lions, trained to kill and escaped from military facilities, either Soviet or American or Iraqi or Israeli, according to the sources’ preferences and their geographical areas. Some of those legends claimed that they hunted human divers in revenge for the experiments they endured, some swore that divers they personally knew had mysteriously disappeared, others alleged that those dolphins were genetically modified, perhaps not even dolphins anymore, some preferred to blame radiation.

Finally, back then I used to date a then famous cyberpunk rock singer. After a pointed argument over my criticism of her favorite novel, she challenged me to write a better story in the same fashion. I eagerly accepted and I wrote it as a letter which I duly mailed to her address. To her credit, once she recovered from the shock she liked my cyberpunk story better and I felt flattered enough to post it on my first personal website.

Last week, in true cyberpunk fashion, I found that 20 years old link among the “bookmarks” in an old backup folder and I was amazed to find the old primitive website still online. It was clearly a sign that I had to rewrite it in English and post it again, just in time for Halloween.