There’s a kingdom lying, uninhabited just beneath us. While we all crowd onto less than 60 million square miles of dry land, acres upon acres of certain promise spread out before our eyes: the ocean – where Human population is now and has always been zero. For Captain Catullus Carmen it was the perfect retreat. He wanted to live underwater. After sailing the stormy seas of consequence, that’s all he wanted.

Due to a lack of available and lucrative employment, I had been scrambling for work since my final year of college. Desperate for relevant experience, I scrolled Facebook, and Reddit endlessly, while simultaneously posting to sites like Fiverr and Freelancer. I found his post on Craigslist, while virtually window-shopping for writing gigs.

“Seeking undersea biographer-,” his listing read, “generous compensation!”

Curiously, I clicked the link, which brought me to a small wall of text:

“My name is Captain Catullus Carmen, age 56 and soon, I will live underwater. I have grown weary and tired of other people. I have finally lost all faith in humanity. Furthermore, I am to retire to the Atlantic.

I have experienced far too much, however, to vanish without note. It is a shame that my wisdom cannot be passed down, not even as a cautionary tale. I have no family. No friends. Noone to succeed me, yet my soul still yearns to leave its mark.

I am prepared to pay handsomely, a personal biographer, per se. One who will record my intrinsic monologue. Work is on-site and will last at least a month, during which you will write everything I say for eight hours, each day. Food, travel, and lodging is provided. You will have your own room, completely furnished, within my underwater habitat, with a marvelous view of the barren abyss. Serious inquiries only. Thanks.

– Captain C. C.”
Somewhat suspicious of the ad and dumbfounded by its somewhat melancholy conclusion, I researched the old man. Eventually, on Google’s second page, I found something. Sure enough, some obscure news site had already covered Captain Carmen’s Solitude and, sure enough, six months from that date, he was to submerge himself to live what remained of his life, under the Atlantic Ocean.

It would cost him tens of billions of dollars to build and upwards of a million annually to live there alone – not to mention the aquanauts who would, in the name of science, come with him. Although they would abide, separately, by his secluded abode, yes, other people would be staying undersea, alongside the Captain. They were the only reason his ludicrous project was even granted permission by the United States government, to begin with.

In order to achieve his dream, Catullus Carmen had assembled the most remarkable and experienced team of aquanaut explorers, scientists, and engineers. His extensive body included those certified aquanauts with the most logged hours underwater and an incredible slate of records in duration and depth. World-class habitat designers, submarine systems engineers, and world-class diving experts compose his construction crew. If there was any team on earth that can make this happen, it was his.

In addition to a couple of colleges and research foundations, Solitude I, as the project came to be called, received funding from several sources, including a heavy donation from Atlanticity and similar organizations committed to colonizing the seafloor. Like the three prongs of Poseidon’s trident, their primary objectives meant to protrude a world without sun, in order to carve out a permanent human niche, preserve and intelligently protect the ocean as Earth’s essential lifeblood, and, eventually form the frontier of an aquatic human, whose colonies would seed a “new empire of human dominion.” The Captain, himself, however, simply had his assistant start a Kickstarter account, then hired some tiny, Asian, ukulele-playing girl to write and record a song for his campaign. The video went viral in a week, and so Solitude I was soon underway.

According to the article, components required to survive under the sea included the habitat itself, an air-tight structure in which the occupant lives, and some sort of life support buoy to generate energy, air, and freshwater; a Personnel Transfer Capsule to be lowered and bring the aquanauts back to the surface safely. Diving Support Vessels, adorned with decompression chambers on-deck, were to standby during and after construction. The western wing, built for research and _ would require much more, including a base station on shore, where operations could have been monitored. Nonetheless, this second side of the habitat remained under construction long after Captain Catullus Carmen’s lonely death.

Off to one side of the sealab, Carmen’s super-dome would stand, as a spire in praise of no sun. It was to be the largest and most expensive, operational, undersea, human habitat to ever exist on Earth. Inside his semi-autonomous biome, the Captain could perform all of the basic human functions of a 24-hour day: working, eating, sleeping and tending to personal hygiene. In the posted blueprints, there were even extensions devoted to leisure, such as a grand library and study, tennis court, movie theater, and of course, a well-stocked bar. His kitchen was that of an Olympic chef, and bidets were installed in all ten toilets in all ten Turkish bathrooms. Above sea-level, the captain’s mansion, alone would have probably cost around $1 billion.

After I finished reading the article about Captain Carmen, I finally replied to his ad by anonymous email – I am, unfortunately, no stranger to internet trolls and bots, after all. I remained a skeptic of the post, half-expecting not to hear anything back. Within the hour, however, I had a response. His email seemed legitimate and his emphasis sincere, so we scheduled a time and place to meet and speak more on the subject.

“The very basic core of a man’s living spirit is his passion for adventure,” said Christopher McCandless. Whatever a world, I could not expect what I would dive into, although the best, new experiences are seldom foreseen.  Soon, I would descend underwater, just as he had. Soon, I would descend into that world without sun.