The Aquatic Diary of the Last Human #1: Follow the Entrails Home
by Amr (@siegarettes)
- Developer: YCYJ
- Publisher: Digerati
- Switch, PC, PS4, Xbox One
A cloud of viscera surrounds me. It hasn’t been a half hour and I’m swimming in gore. I found a harpoon and set out open up the gate mechanisms trapping me here, and was immediately ambushed by a massive, razor toothed worm. Worms the size of my submarine shot out of its gullet, and it ambushed me from tunnels in the walls. Growling synths shook the air around me. My slow charging, pitiful harpoon couldn’t even cover the space above me so I had to bide my time and slowly cut away at it until it finally gave and disintegrated into a pile of flesh.
I’m in one of the tunnels it carved now. I’m hoping this leads me out of this cavern.
~~~
The whale! I need to tell you about this whale! From out of the claustrophobic tunnel I’ve enter a vast, open ocean. The flora, the skeletal tubes of the underwater apartments–all signs of life. But it was this magnificent whale that was proof that underneath this barren icescape this planet was thriving. I’m not sure I’ll ever seen it again, but these few seconds witnessing it will do in the absence of a proper welcome home.
~~~
I don’t remember clams being this big. Specifically, I don’t remember them being park sized monstrosities with endlessly clattering mouths, threatening to swallow me in every corridor. Everything has grown to the size of a skyscraper in our absence. It’s difficult to even gauge their size from the viewing windows in my ship. From a distance they seem to throw off my sense of perspective, and from up close they blot out my path entirely.
~~~
I’ve entered the Seaweed Forest now. Tendrils of seaweed reach out from deep rocky formations towards the surface. Coral the size of apartment complexes sit next to government buildings. Train sized crabs crawl alongside them. Somehow the light from above has filtered down here and everything is covered in a bright glow. It’s like an aquatic rose garden. I imagine it’d be warm out there–the gauges certainly say as much. Not that I can feel it within the strict temperature controlled hull of my ship.
I sense the same hostility I faced near the surface. Even in this relative peace something keeps battering the hull at high speed, making it difficult to navigate. Projectiles are launching from both the cavern walls and sea floor, spit out by some creature I can’t identify. Thick brambles of seaweed are blocking the path forward.
The only path open to me now is below, where the light can’t reach.