Merrick Moore
For 28 days the only thing of note Merrick Moore’s three million dollar sea expedition had found was a new species of deep sea octopus. On the 29th day they found the sunken ship. This was slightly better. It made for some more exciting footage for the under sea cameras to pick up. The camera’s like everything on the Theseus had been developed specially for this expedition. (When Moore had been asked if he understood the irony of naming a brand new ship Theseus he had surprised tabloid reporters by responding that yes, he did, and he had a feeling their journey would be over before he ever needed to replace a light bulb). Actually the whole voyage had surprised the tabloids. Not when first announced of course. At first no one had been surprised when eccentric billionaire CEO Merrick Moore announced he was taking some time to sail around the world. Images of luxury yachts and bikini clad models filled the public imagination alongside Buzzfeed lists of the celebrities most likely to accompany Moore.
It was when the passenger list for the ship had been released that people became suspicious. Not a single supermodel or pop star was sailing with Moore. Instead he was taking scientists, researchers, and a crew of veteran sailors. Moore had been pretty transparent about the whole operation, keeping secret only one thing: what it was he was looking for on the bottom of the sea floor. (Better keep it a surprise, he had said with a wink).
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The crew of the Theseus also hadn’t known what to make of their financial backer, but as the voyage continued even the most cynical among them grew to realize that Moore was serious about the expedition. He had also been serious about not expecting it to take this long.
On the 29th day after being summoned to the Viewing Room only to see wreckage of an old and rotted wooden sailing ship Moore was sharing a drink with his Head Researcher Dylan Chan, whom he jokingly referred to as his first officer.
“How much longer do you think Dylan?” He asked as he poured them each another glass.
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Dylan paused. He liked Mr. Moore, and understood that to a certain extent the man had been born in the wrong time. There were no new continents to discover or mountains left unclimbed. There were only two frontiers left: the bottom of ocean and space. He didn’t know why Moore had gone with the ocean when the fashionable thing for the other billionaires was space. He found himself giving the older man a lot of patience. He knew without Moore he couldn’t be here, and the stars had never called to him the way the sea had.
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“Hopefully not much longer Sir,” Dylan said because it was the most honest thing he could say.
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“We’re close. We have to be close.” Moore was muttering under his breath.
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Dylan said nothing. The ocean was a big place.
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“We lost another lens. Camera B-4 this time,” he commented.
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Moore only grunted. The cameras developed for the expedition were extremely powerful and cutting edge, but Moore hadn’t ever intended to keep them in the water this long. Another thing for him to replace. He eyed his first officer. Dylan Chan. A good kid. He wondered if maybe it was more than just equipment he should be replacing around the ship. He liked Dylan of course. But if they weren’t getting results…
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The definition of madness is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. Merrick Moore would be mad if he kept everything the same and kept expecting something different.
He watched as the kid took another drink quickly, hiding the immediate grimace the whiskey brought to his face. Moore knew he hated the burn of the drink but Dylan always agreed to sharing a bottle with him anyway. It was a hard job. Maybe a couple more weeks before restructuring.
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They’ll need to resupply in two weeks anyway. They’ll have to head into port...Greece maybe. May as well wait the two weeks, Moore reasoned, until we’re all on land there’s no point making waves.
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Moore found himself unable to sleep that night. He had found the rocking of the ship to be incredibly soothing for most of the expedition but that night the sandman was avoiding him. He found himself on the deck leaning against the railing and looking down into the black water. The salt teased his taste buds, and a cooling breeze brushed by him. He wanted to go back to the city, but not as badly as he wanted to find what he was looking for. He wanted to boil the sea until all the water evaporated and he could walk along the bottom of the ocean floor.
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He entertained himself with that image for a while. A new rocky and sandy landscape covered in the corpses of suddenly beached whales and less magnificent smaller fish. All the wrecks and wraths of the sea easily exposed to the world. He could use a satellite and pindown what he wanted in mere hours if he just drained the sea.
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He played with the idea for a little while longer but ultimately tossed it aside along with his cigarette into the tumbling waves. It would be expensive. All the environmentalists would get pissy about it.
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Merrick Moore never had to find out if a new first officer would have a taste for whiskey. On the 34th day they found it. It had snuck up on them. One of the exploratory subs had passed over a sea trench and in the flat sea floor before them it was just there.
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Ruined and preserved by salt. Ravaged by the waves and remarkably still standing. Destruction and Destiny right there waiting for him.
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White columns lay crisscrossed and stuck out of the ocean floor at jagged angles and appearing on the film like bones unearthed from a graveyard.
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That’s part of what it was of course. But only part of it.
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The bones of the city spread out for miles some broken, some cracked, and remarkably a few remaining straight and sturdy looking.
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Moore barked into the radio in the Viewing Room to Sub One “Go for that big structure in the middle”
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He could hear Dylan Chan start to disagree from next him, something about taking this slowly and trying to preserve the integrity of the space for as long as possible.
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“We’ve gone slow enough. Its go big or go home. Look around Dylan, does it get any bigger?”
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Dylan was silent and Moore clapped his shoulder. It was a hell of a thing to see. Moore felt himself drink the sight in like a man parched. Sub One’s camera began to slowly sweep over the ruins as it made its way closer and closer to the big building Moore had indicated.
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“Could have been a temple,” Dylan commented.
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Moore grunted. He was gorging himself on the camera feed: there were things strewn around the bones of this city. Cracked pottery, dulled swords, and children’s toys. A few things glittered in the lights of the sub; something the size of a pocket watch, coins, and knives.
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He found himself clapping Dylan’s shoulder again grabbing their bottle of whiskey from a few nights before, “When they make a movie about all this, I want to be played by that Andrew Garfield guy,” he said.
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***
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The first film made about Merrick Moore’s discovery came out 93 days after the discovery was made. Well that’s not exactly true. Technically the first film showing the ruins of Atlantis was that very footage watched by Moore and Dylan Chan in the Viewing Room of the Theseus: Moore released the footage to the world three weeks later. He made it available for free on youtube. (A discovery like this belongs to the world, he had said).
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And then he sold rights to the rest of the footage picked up by the expedition, and the rights to his life story for hundreds of millions of dollars. He had used his three weeks to start a mass hiring process for the expedition. While Dylan Chan remained on the Theseus, he soon had colleagues of some of the best researchers, archaeologists, and scientists in the world all snatched up under Merrick Moore’s payroll before anyone else could have them. Sister ships named Hercules and Perseus were launched from Greece, and while they didn’t have the same irony as the Theseus, Moore was beyond his private jokes.
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But the first film, the first movie with any kind of direction and cinematography made about the Expedition was the documentary which came out 93 days after the expedition. Breaking box office records, and sweeping award shows that year the doc simply titled “Finding Atlantis” depicted the eccentric Merrick Moore making the discovery of the century. What some called the discovery of the millennium.
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Six months after that Merrick Moore would attend the movie premier of “Atlantis: The City that Fell” starring Andrew Garfield. Garfield was playing Dylan Chan and Moore was quite upset about this until Dicaprio was announced to be playing billionaire. It was a little older than Moore had been hoping, but he didn’t complain much. Unlike the documentary the Hollywood film was nothing close to the truth, and wasn’t even really about the discovery. In the film Garfield’s character of the first officer was the star and he discovered the ruins of Atlantis only to somehow travel back in time and start a doomed romance with a mermaid of the city before it fell. Or was the city in the water by the time of the romance? Because she was a mermaid? Moore didn’t really know or care since Leo had won the oscar that year for playing him.
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Moore’s discovery of Atlantis wasn’t so much a splash as it was a tidal wave to the public imagination. Soon museums around the world were showing those smaller objects from the ruins. There had been some debate about which country had a right to the ruins but Moore’s lawyers had won the argument that the sea didn’t belong to anyone. By the time tour companies started offering under sea submarine tours only the skeleton of the city remained. Moore had plucked all the fleshy, and gooey bits from the city; anything that pulsed with life from the sunken city had been catalogued and donated to museums. (Well most of it. Some was sold to private collectors, and Merrick kept his own souvenirs of course).
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Thanks to Merrick Moore anyone could see Atlantis and take their own photos. It’s estimated that soon his company will have developed the diving technology to allow for people take under sea walks of the city and Atlantis will be full of people once again even under the waves.
