I had an interesting dream. They often have an investigation or search-and-rescue theme, and this was one of them. I was on a boat with a crew of 6 or 7 other people, way the hell out in the ocean. The job this time was to investigate a report of a submarine floating in the middle of nowhere.
We found it. If a submarine can be gothic looking, this one was gothic looking. There were no flags or markings whatsoever. It was just floating there, as reported. No response to our approach. Someone in our crew tried to establish contact. Still no response. Since it wasn't doing anything and was still in the same spot as it was whenever it was reported, and since it wasn't submerged, we decided to board it and see if the crew was dead or what.
Nothing. We found nothing. No dead crew. No monsters. No mess. No sign of a struggle. Nothing obviously damaged. There was a room full of diving suits, all neatly stored, and there were no empty spots so it didn't seem like any were missing. We kept going (it was a pretty big submarine) and never found any clues. We were convinced that we'd checked everything, so we started to make our way back. Then without warning the submarine sank. I didn't make it out.
Well crap. I was lucky enough to end up in an air pocket, I guessed. Is having time to think about it better than just drowning? My hope was that someone made it back to the boat and could find a way to get me out of there. But I had no idea if anyone did, and even if they did the clock was ticking. So I waited. I had a dry spot to sit, and a window, but there was nothing to do but sit there. It was boring and depressing.
So I left my air pocket and started exploring. I found another air pocket close enough to swim to, so I went for it. Fortunately this one wasn't one wasn't a dead end like the one I'd been in. The sub was pretty full of water, but not as bad as I feared. I kept going until I found what I was looking for. The diving suits. So I suited up (not easy without assistance, but I had time to do it the slow way) and began exploring the areas that were completely submerged. The possibility of swimming to the surface occurred to me, but I would have to find a way out of there before I could try that. So I continued through the sub.
After a long time, the dream decided to throw another plot twist at me. The sub started rising somehow. Then it got noisy, and things felt funny. It took a bit to realize why. The sub wasn't just rising, but moving forward too. It eventually breached the surface, which definitely improved my mood a bit, but the forward movement didn't stop. It sped up. Then it started turning. Not being underwater was reassuring but I was still trapped with no way off the thing, and it was now steering itself somewhere. There was no way to know where it was going. I just had to hope it would hit land eventually.
It eventually reached land somewhere and hugged the coast, but it didn't slow down, and it was starting to turn back towards open ocean. So I jumped off.
