Immortal Abyss

There was a time we, or, at least, the smartest of us, thought human immortality would be achievable sometime in the first few decades of the 21st century, albeit via a mental upload to a computer, but imagine, however, that we were able to achieve this feat with the body intact. Death is at the center of many fears, so, removing that from the equation, some of the weaker willed among us might go a little wild with power. To keep the world from degrading back to the lawless days of the wild west, those rebellious few would have to be dealt with. I was part of a group formed to decide how.

We could stick the worst offenders in a prison cell, like old times, but for a potentially infinite number of life sentences? The population would only be increasing and land would be needed for everyone else. We considered launching them into space, but the (admittedly) infinitesimally small chance that they could land on a faraway planet with the right chemical makeup to mutate them into some ungodly creature, one that might want to return to earth, it was too risky. What if something came back with the power to find a weakness in us that we didn't know was there, we thought. It's a reach, sure, but the grim reaper's visitation still lingered on our immortal mind, it turned out. So instead of looking up, we looked down, deep, to the bottom of the sea.

It was a simple punishment, but a hellish one: an unbreakable coffin, inmate restrained within, weighed down to sit on the ocean floor. They would spend an amount of time down there relative to their crime, in a quiet darkness. We would come to a realization during our planning that, despite our unending lifespans, our lizard brain held on firmly to fears of small spaces and large bodies of water, or claustrophobia and thalassophobia, respectively. We confirmed this, not through a firsthand experience, but through interviewing the first, and only, inmate to be sent down.

A former high ranker on the most wanted list, known for burying his victims, tied up and deep enough they'd be inaudible to anyone above them. By the time we got locations out of him, they'd have already lost their minds. Imagine that, an eternal existence of insanity. We nicknamed him the "Gravedigger", and thought it appropriate he should be first in line to endure this new form of imprisonment; a torture not too unlike his own.

Originally intending to keep him down there for, well, the rest of time, we decided to bring him back up after a year had passed to gauge how effective the punishment was. More so, the effect it had on the mind. Wouldn't want him being entertained by the wildlife down there, you see. We would find out we weren't far off; his mind was indeed altered, as was his body, presumably by the pressure down there. The spot we chose wasn't quite Mariana Trench deep, but it was deep; the sunlight, nor the warmth it provided, would find its way to him, we made sure of that.

When we brought him back up to the surface, my team and I immediately saw a difference in his appearance: from a bigger than average sized man to an eerily thin, skeletal one; he wasn't just skinny, he was unnaturally so. There was practically no muscle mass to him, and his skin had become nearly translucent, bluish in tint, as if he was sapped of all his blood. The most visibly off-putting thing about him however was his eyes. At first we weren't sure if he'd become blind, though it appeared that way judging from the paleness of his irises, he was still able to track movement. And I swear there was a glow to them. Subtle, but it was there.

Despite his lack of muscle, he seemed to handle moving around without any issue, so we sat him down to question him on his year-long experience. From here we could see changes beyond the physical: his demeanor, more calm and willing to talk. A complete flip from the "Gravedigger" we interrogated before. It was like the fire within him was put out, leaving a cold, dark husk behind.

The chilling feeling of it escaped his eyes, like a mist wanting to engulf me; consume me. I'll tell you, my attention was sufficiently grabbed and, before I knew it, I'd found myself lost in them, searching for something, anything. I felt like I was trapped in the same darkness we confined him to. Then I swear I could hear whispering, slowly but surely invading my mind. Was I imagining it? I don't know, but, thankfully, he decided to break the silence, bringing me back to my senses. In an abnormally deep, raspy voice he asked me what I wanted to know, so I asked him back, "what were your first few months like down there?"