[ WP ] Two scientists are in a deep-sea submersible , six miles down , exploring the Mariana Trench , when one of them notices that the other is starting to act a bit ... strange .

Pamela guided the submarine between two massive rocky outcroppings, the weak light from the front lamps playing off of the monolithic stone walls as we moved smoothly along through the dark. I traced my fingers across the foot-thick glass and it felt cold. Was it just my imagination, or was it truly that *cold* down here? 
 
 `` The data from the anglerfish genome have been really amazing,'' Pamela said, taking us deeper as she spoke. I watched pieces of deep-sea detritus and small, transparent organisms swirling around in the beams of light. 
 
 `` It's almost like..'' 
 
 Pamela cleared her throat, then shook her head. `` It's stupid.'' 
 
 I looked over at Pamela. We had been working together for many years, in fact had same the PhD adviser and had been graduate students together. Even after all this time, Pamela had the terrible habit of doubting herself. It left me to wonder how many breakthroughs lay in the bottom of her waste bin, discarded before they could be born. 
 
 `` Pamela, you know this is a safe space.'' She punched me in the arm, but smiled warmly, then shrugged. 
 
 `` Look, when I've run the cladograms, there are a few where the anglerfish come up ancestral. Basal.'' 
 
 I shrugged. `` Alternative, less parsimonious trees are common. Nothing embarrassing about that. So you've got an alternate tree where anglerfish are basal to other bony fish, so what?'' 
 
 Pamela shook her head. `` To *everything*,'' she said quietly. 
 
 I laughed sharply. `` Pamela, that's absurd.'' I instantly felt bad. *Nice safe space you've created, asshole. * 
 
 I cleared my throat. `` I mean, some of the best ideas have been ridiculed at first, though... who knows, maybe... I mean,'' 
 
 I was tripping over myself now, and Pamela graciously saved me. `` Look, Steve, I know, it's silly. I said so when I brought it up.'' She looked out the other window and I felt the moment slipping away. 
 
 `` Well, what do you think it could be? I mean, what could explain that?'' 
 
 `` Panspermia.'' She said simply. 
 
 `` You mean life originated off-world. *That* panspermia?'' I said. 
 
 She shrugged. `` Imagine if they came here fully formed, along with the single cells that started everything else off. Maybe from the same world. Maybe the Anglerfish were the only macroscopic life to survive, somehow.'' 
 
 We traveled on. I was lost in thought. I felt a growing feeling in my gut, heavy and thick and cold. `` Pamela,'' I said, my hand shooting out to grasp her arm. At first I could n't tell what was making me nervous, then I knew. I saw it. *The bottom. * We were far, far below safe depth. I heard a creak. Imagined I heard a pop. The metal must be straining against the pressure. Any instant, we could disappear. Cease to be in a flash of compression and decompression and foot-thick metal crunching in on itself like a discarded paper ball. 
 
 `` Pamela, where are we?'' 
 
 She smiled at me. `` Shhh, Steve, it's okay. We're at the lip of Challenger Deep.'' The submersible gently slid to the ocean floor, and I saw we were on the edge of a chasm that, despite our incredible depth, descended below out of sight and beyond reason. 
 
 `` Pamela, get us out of here,'' I said, frantic. I looked over at her and she was calm. Serene. She had turned away from the controls and was making eye contact with me. She placed her hands gently on my shoulders. 
 
 `` Steve, what if the Anglerfish were n't the only things that have been here all along, waiting? What if the Anglerfish were n't here first?'' 
 
 Pamela's eyes. There was something about them. Something in my brain was shouting at me to run. *Where? * Shouting at me to fight. *There's no need. * Shouting at me to resist in any way. *You want this. * I could n't break contact. 
 
 `` Pamela,'' I said, and I could hear my voice quavering as I spoke. `` You never told me where you were born. We worked together all this time, and you never...'' 
 
 She put a finger to my lips, and crossed her arms over her body, gripping her shirt hem and lifting it over her head. Her bra was white and lacy patterned. Beads of sweat were visible on her bare chest and along the lean, taught skin of her stomach. 
 
 `` You want this, Steve...'' she whispered, and as she spoke I thought I caught a glimpse of needle-like teeth between her lips. `` We were meant for each other. We always were..'' 
 
 `` No, Pamela, I..'' but as I spoke I knew it was true. I was meant for her. My place was with her. My place was as a *part* of her. It was time to bring the circle to a close. It was time to fulfill my purpose. It was time to make the incomplete complete. 
 
 A fissure began to form at Pamela's belly button, opening and running like the spiderwebs of cracking lake ice in the spring thaw. It split its way around her side, wrapping up toward her spine. As she leaned over it opened wide, impossibly wide, revealing a red, angry gash. Blood dripped and poured down her side as her body leaned at a sickening, impossible angle. Her hand opened and gently gripped the top of my head and she began pulling me toward the wound in her side. The pressure was the gentle, intimate pressure of a lover. The pressure of someone who knew I would not resist. 
 
 What happened next was a folding of space and time that would make no sense described in three dimensions. I'll try. I folded my hands in front of my like a diver, and felt them slide smoothly into the groove in her side. I slid into my groove, fitting perfectly and merging despite the impossibilities of scale, my clothing sliding off and away as my flesh merged with hers. This brings us to the present... 
 
 I feel, *know* somehow that acid in her flesh is eating away at mine, dissolving the space where her body ends and mine begins. I sense the borders of *me* fading away, feel my thoughts becoming less organized and less my own as my body becomes part of hers. I feel my selfness fading, know that not for long will coherent.. but I want, want, want. 
 
 `` Make me part of you,'' my mouth says. 
 
 `` Make me part...'' 
 
 `` Make...'' 
 
 -- - 
 
 Tenderly Pamela strokes the flesh on her side that was Steve, smoothing over the little bump that used to be the mouth into a flat, smooth surface. `` Shhh,'' she says soothingly, feeling his last thoughts spread out and become lost like oil on the surface of a puddle as the last of his brain dissolves. Only his gonads will remain, pumping fertile sperm into her body to conceive the next generation. 
 
 Pamela gives the engine one last burst of fuel, pushing the little submersible over the edge and into the abyss. 
 
 
 

