Beacon of Light in the Dark Sea

As Kim Ga-young and Yoo Geum-yi walked, Lee Jihyun kept looking all around. Like me, this seemed to be Lee Jihyun’s first time in the research center too. The closest one was the Deep Sea Life Center, followed by the Seabed Pollution Center, Rare Earth Element Center, and so on. Yoo Geum-yi explained quickly that our goal was to reach the South District research center freight elevator and escape pod next to it, before we got to the Seabed Pollution Center.

Yoo Geum-yi works at the Deep Sea Life Center and Kim Ga-young at the Seabed Pollution Center, right? Walking briskly, Kim Ga-young said to me and Lee Jihyun:

“Our center is nicknamed the Money Eater, but we were supposed to have a pretty major announcement this afternoon, our first in a while. About how much various countries have damaged the seafloor by tallying up everything that’s happened since the Industrial Revolution.”  

Yoo Geum-yi suddenly stopped, grabbing Kim Ga-young. Caught unaware mid-stride, I bumped right into Yoo Geum-yi and nearly face-planted. Further down the corridor, a person lay sprawled sideways, with golden hair long enough to reach their waist.

Lee Jihyun and I rushed over and slowly turned the prone figure face up. Urgh. I recoiled in shock. Seeing the corpse, Lee Jihyun gasped, covering her mouth and backing away.  

I took several deep breaths to steady myself, then checked their pulse and breathing for signs of life. The woman seemed to already be deceased. No – she was already deceased. What startled me was the state of the corpse, something I had never seen in my life.  

Various parts of her body looked to have been gouged out in circular chunks the size of a grown man’s palm. A large section was missing from the left side of her face. Parts of her abdomen and chest where internal organs would be were gone in two to three places.

Can human flesh vanish so neatly in circles? Now that I looked closer, her thighs were sunken in, exposing white bone. What on earth could cause injuries like this? As I peered at the facial wound and Lee Jihyun at the exposed thigh bone up close, Kim Ga-young shouted in terror:  

“Don’t touch!”

Lee Jihyun flinched back in surprise and plopped down on the floor. Through the hole in the corpse’s abdomen, the internal organs were visible. Oddly there was almost no blood smell, just a faint ammonia odor. I twitched at Kim Ga-young’s yell and took a step back defensively.  

“I didn’t touch the wounds.”

No way would I lay bare hands on an unidentified injury on a dead body when I had no idea what caused it. Still stunned, Yoo Geum-yi choked out upon recognizing the half-gone face:

“That’s Angela Maroni… the director of our center… I didn’t like her much, but no one deserves to die like this…”  

Having examined the thigh wound, Lee Jihyun measured the length between it and an undamaged part of the leg with her finger, then did the same with the belly wound. She remarked with puzzlement:

“The wound sizes are quite uniform at around 20cm diameter… this was deliberately inflicted.”

Kim Ga-young still looked spaced out, but hearing my question, she slowly approached Angela’s body. I gestured at the round wounds.

“Can you tell what made these?”  

“It’s something we use called the O.B. organic decomposer. Originally it’s for breaking down food waste or protein-based substances, to dispose of waste from the lab. It isn’t meant to be shot at people… Don’t touch the wounds. The microbes are still actively breaking things down.”

“Microbes?”

“Eighty percent of food waste is water. We use microbes to eliminate the rest after removing the moisture content. For food disposal, we employed marine bacteria like Micrococcus luteus, Streptomyces, Penicillium, and Debaryomyces hansenii, Rhizopus oligosporus – things like that. The issue is these microbes don’t have the capacity to break things down as fast as humans produce waste. They’re microscopic to our eyes, yet the trash humans generate from just one meal is enormous. The microbes have to produce amylase, protease, cellulase, lipase and such to properly decompose the waste, but if environmental factors like pH levels inhibit microbial life, or salinity is too high, or antibacterial elements like chili powder, black pepper and mustard are present, then another avenue of past research was effectively prompting the surviving microbes to generate enough of the desired enzymes for human needs. When microbes fail to eliminate or break down these organic polymers fast enough, malodors occur, releasing nitrogenous and sulfuric compounds rampantly from the waste, which can be especially toxic if inhaled.”

Lee Jihyun looked at Kim Ga-young like she was speaking a foreign language. I barely managed an “I see” even though I didn’t really understand either. Huh? Lipase? That’s for fat breakdown. And amylase in spit breaks down carbohydrates… I know that from working at the dentist’s office.  

Kim Ga-young seemed to be explaining things as simply as she could for our benefit, but with my completely unrelated background, it was difficult for me to grasp. From what I caught, she appeared to conduct environmental research at the Seabed Pollution Center using marine microbes. Lost in thought, Kim Ga-young mumbled on.

“So our team isolated a new microbe from marine life that’s pretty efficient at breaking down proteins,” Kim Ga-young muttered. “We got a bacterial strain from a new bacillus with proteolytic activity and studied it extensively. Decomposing proteins takes an enormous amount of time, you see. Up until the early 2000s, research only focused on protein synthesis and function. Studying decomposition didn’t start until less than 50 years ago when the isolation process for the proteasome protein complex was illuminated.”  

“Which means this thing isn’t supposed to be shot at people?” 

Lee Jihyun cut off Kim Ga-young’s rambling. Kim nodded quickly.  

“Yes, it’s for breaking down organic compounds.”

Hearing that answer, Lee Jihyun asked with slight exasperation:  

“Are humans organic compounds?”

“…We do contain some inorganic compounds too.”

Huhhh. Listening in on the conversation, Yoo Geum-yi smiled wryly at Lee Jihyun for the first time since discovering the corpse. She snorted, shaking her head at Kim Ga-young.  

“Noona, people won’t understand if you explain it that way. Just say she got shot multiple times with something like a gun full of flesh-eating microbes.”

…Now I see why you said not to touch. The microbes are probably still burrowing around the wounds, decomposing as we speak. Lee Jihyun asked Kim Ga-young hurriedly:

“Is there any way to stop them? Unless Angela here committed suicide by shooting herself with a microbial gun, someone’s walking around out there.”

There was nothing around Angela’s body aside from a smashed tablet lying nearby on the floor. My question seemed to catch Kim Ga-young off-guard. She scanned our surroundings anxiously and blurted out, speaking faster out of fear or nerves:

“What we use is only deployed under fume hoods and the nozzle size isn’t this big either. And how to handle this stuff… is washing with water enough? Best to avoid bodily contact. Otherwise it’s useless. But I can’t think of anyone among our researchers who would have the conscience to modify something like this and use it on human bodies… Of course we all feel like killing our fellow researchers now and then, but shoot it into someone? And Angela wasn’t even a thesis advisor?”

As Kim Ga-young mentally ran through every researcher she knew, I sniffed around and asked Lee Jihyun:  

“…You don’t smell that?”

Lee Jihyun sniffed as well and grimaced, saying to me somewhat hesitantly:

“I have rhinitis so I can’t smell well.”

Ah I see. Yoo Geum-yi chimed in empathetically:  

“I noticed a faint burnt smell ever since we entered.”  

Good to know it wasn’t just me. I thought that was normal here. Lee Jihyun asked Yoo Geum:

“Which direction is it coming from?”

“Can’t really tell… just a general building smell.”

Lee Jihyun’s frown deepened as she looked down the long corridor and labs, saying:

“Let’s head straight for the freight elevator. Ignore any other bodies we come across. We can neither carry them along nor save them anyway.”

We started walking as directed by Kim Ga-young. The Deep Sea Life Center, Seabed Pollution Center, and Rare Earth Element Center were each 7-story buildings built in a U-shape and connected by a single bridge. Apparently the complex started on the 4th floor of the Deep Sea Life Center when entering the South District. 

You could cross over to the other centers via bridges on the 3rd floor of each building. The escape pod and external elevator was located in the Seabed Pollution Center. Seemed like a pretty inconvenient layout. What the heck? So if I was working on the 7th floor of the Rare Earth Element Center and suddenly had to make a run for it like this, I’d have to go all the way down to the 3rd floor, cross the bridge to the Seabed Pollution Center 3rd floor to make my getaway?  

We circled the rectangular 4th floor corridor of the Deep Sea Life Center. Heading towards the Seabed Pollution Center 3rd floor via the Deep Sea Life Center 3rd floor bridge to reach the escape pod, we discovered a stairwell and started descending. Lee Jihyun quickly went down first.  

“Why didn’t they install escape pod ports or external elevators in each center?”

The floor-to-ceiling height between the 4th and 3rd floors was quite tall, making for a lot of steps. Stairs huh. No, a descending stairwell. That was from my dream. Get a grip. As I grumbled while trudging down the stairs, Yoo Geum-yi smiled and said:  

“If you knew how much each center cost to build, you’d be shocked. I can’t even afford a bathroom stall here. Nobody actually expected it to flood like this. We came down into the ocean specifically to avoid getting flooded.”  

Grimacing since her legs hurt, Kim Ga-young slowly descended the Deep Sea Life Center 3rd floor stairwell.