#usa #fyp #foryou

To make a million dollars fast, I took on a job that nobody else dared to do, complete this one assignment, and I would walk away with $100,000. All I had to do was follow a cruise ship out to sea and dive down to scrape every last barnacle off the hull. Before I got in the water, they warned me to never go near the stern. I asked why, and they just told me not to worry about it, that it was for my own good. I suited up, strapped on my oxygen tank, and jumped in. The hull was in far worse shape than I had imagined. Barnacles had completely covered the entire bottom, packed so thick that in some spots my scraper could not make a dent. I had to find the looser gaps, wedge my tool in along the grain, and pry them off little by little. Watching the broken shells drift slowly down into the water, two days in, I had worked my way from the bow to the midpoint of the hull, burning through six oxygen tanks. Barnacles are no small threat. The acidic substances they secrete steadily eat away at the hull coating, and over time they can compromise the structural integrity of the entire ship, which is why they have to be completely removed on a regular basis. That was when an underwater current suddenly shoved me toward the stern, and what I saw next stopped me cold. There were other divers down here, but they were bound tightly to the stern, completely motionless. To be continued, see part 2.