#the only existing pictures of peter small online are of his dead body and moments before his death

[lostnlucky]

what’s the keller small dive ?

AHA! YOU'VE ACTIVATED MY TRAP CARD!

(cw: discussion of death, suicide)

Allow me to introduce you to Hannes Keller, mathemetician and theoretical physicist:

Keller (working with Dr. Albert Bühlmann, namesake of Bühlmann decompression) pioneered deep-sea diving by developing breathable gas mixtures and designing diving bells. He broke a lot of records for deep-sea diving, most notably (and notoriously) in 1962, when he descended to 1,000 feet with Peter Small off the coast of California.

Peter Small was a journalist who had befriended Keller years earlier, and he wanted to dive with Keller in order to write about his first-hand perspective and bring publicity to Keller's accomplishments. They did several test dives before the famous Keller-Small dive in 1962 and worked well together, with Keller remarking on how he appreciated Small's calm under pressure.

In preparation for the Keller-Small dive, two safety divers were brought on board who would be able to intervene if something went wrong with the diving bell. These divers were Dick Anderson, who I can't find much information about, and Chris Whittaker, a 19-year-old UCLA student and good friend of Peter Small.

The day is December 3rd, 1962. Press boats are gathered around The Eureka, waiting for Keller and Small to descend 1,000 into the ocean and plant a flag on the ocean floor. The actual dive was delayed several times due to weather concerns, but finally, the time has come to make history.

Armed with a specially designed camera positioned within the diving bell and a photographer on board The Eureka to document their victorious return, Peter Small kisses his wife Mary goodbye, Hannes Keller double checks their canisters, the safety divers suit up, and the dive begins.

Hannes Keller noted very early into the dive that one of their pieces of equipment seemed to be leaking, but they were still within safe numbers to continue the dive (they would just need to spend less time on the ocean floor than they had planned). The descent goes relatively smoothly, and Keller and Small make it to the ocean floor. Keller leaves the diving bell for just a moment to plant the flags outside of the diving bell.

Or at least, that was the plan. Instead, Keller got tangled in the flags. After a few precious minutes, he ended up dropping the flags on the ground and hurrying back into the diving bell, where he realized the internal pressure was off and they were in danger of not making it back to the surface. Both Keller and Small end up going unconscious in an attempt to amend this.

On the surface, the safety divers, Dick Anderson and Chris Whittaker, are sent into the water to try and secure the bell as it's hauled to the surface. They resurface to update the crew of the Eureka, and Chris Whittaker looks bad. He has a bloody nose, he seems like he's not thinking straight, and he's told to get out of the water. He refuses, wanting to help his friend Peter Small, and dives back down with Anderson.

Anderson attempts to fix the bell's internal pressure to delay the leak, and tells Whittaker to return to the surface to tell the crew to haul the bell out faster. Whittaker leaves, and nothing changes. Anderson waits ten minutes before leaving the bell to surface himself, and learns that Chris Whittaker never made it to the surface.

Inside the bell, Keller regains consciousness as the bell is lifted and tries to revive Small, who looks bad. He's clammy, has delayed responses, and can't stand for more than a few seconds without having to lay back down. While Keller's symptoms alleviate after a few minutes of consciousness, Small's seem to get worse. This is where we get the iconic photograph of Keller inside the diving bell trying to save Small's life, who you can see in the bottom-right corner:

As the bell is lifted out of the water, Small goes unconscious again, and he never wakes up. The bell is opened later when Keller starts screaming and crying for help. Small is rushed to the hospital and pronounced dead. The search for Chris Whittaker begins, and his body is never recovered. Mary Small, Peter's wife who was on board the Eureka for the whole dive, commits suicide months later.

Pictures of this event currently do not exist digitally outside of the iconic picture of Keller and Small in the diving bell and a few scattered photos of different moments (I believe a picture of Small's body was published, but as far as I'm aware, no proper pictures of Peter Small or Chris Whittaker exist on the internet). All that to say, original photo negatives taken throughout the event, as well as Keller's full account of what happened from about 3 days after the dive, coming soon to a digital archive near you.

[ecotone99]

[SF] You're Not Me, You're Anything But

The Pesta building was a twisty and messy multi-coloured skyscraper. As John and his parents entered the building, its doors opened in a convoluted way that took more time than needed.

They walked up to the E-kiosk to sign up for a clone. There were many people inside the building, most of them were just there to take pictures of the "artistic" rainbow-coloured sculptures.

The rest were there to buy the company's newly released Pesta clothing; head-turning clothingware with the large words PESTA running across the front and back.

None of their products were cheap, but the most expensive of all was their main attraction, what had started their company in the first place, Memory Clones (This product was used to advertise many of their other products).

So when John, at the age of 16, had applied for a clone with his parents, they were immediately brought to the interview room as no one else in the building could afford to buy one.

He had always wanted to learn more and more things. The only thing that could stop him from doing so in the future is that there isn't enough time to learn everything. So when a company had claimed that they improved other company's clones by allowing the clone and the buyer to transfer each other's memories, John had wanted his wealthy parents to get him one ever since. Not only that, he could show off to his friends.

The interview room was completely white and had some extremely small but fancy chairs, a chamber with a chunk of machinery beside it, and a monitor that covered the entire wall similar to the ones in every other household which people used for communication and entertainment.

The screen flashed on and explained how the interview works. It would use the company's trademark memory bank to scan John's memories for any signs that would show that two of him would mean double trouble.

John nervously approached the monitor, which had a smiling face flashed on it. Atleast it's a machine thats looking through my memories and not a human, he thought.

John put on the memory helmet, and after a few minutes in which the machine had flipped through every moment of John's life to be stored into the company's database, John was deemed to be a "safe person" and a Memory Drive (designed after a thumbdrive used in the olden days) popped out of the machine.

John was then needed to insert the Memory Drive into the machinery linked to the chamber. His parents had left long ago to buy Pesta merchandise while John took off his clothes and stepped into the chamber, where a green horizontal light scanned his body. After which, he was required to come back in two weeks.

At school, John liked a girl named Connie. They were good friends even if the both of them were frequently annoyed by each other. Connie was very nice to people but she did not have a lot of friends, even if she wears all the latest fashion trends and eats all the latest trendy food. (John thinks that it might be because she isn't as sociably active as everyone else. This had caused Connie to ignore John for three whole days before both parties apologised)

Even though they were good friends, he never dared to even hint at the fact that he liked her. If he were to be rejected, his entire school life's reputation would be doomed.

During the two weeks of wait, he didn't think much of Connie, he could only think about the infinite possibilities of having a clone.

He had another best friend who was as excited as he was. "Is he going to come to our school? Do clones even get education? You could totally let him learn everything in the textbook and then take those memories, right?"

John thought those were good questions, and they made him even more excited. Although, no, he thought. He is not going to come to my school. This thought made him feel sort of bad, but after all, he bought the clone for a lot of cash and it was a product after all, right?

The day finally came, and John could not stop posting about how excited he was while on the car ride. The room in the Pesta building was tense, and when the clone came out from the chamber, John had completely different feelings from what he had expected to feel...

The ride home was quiet. John could not stop thinking about how the clone had looked when he stepped out of the chamber. It, or he, was scared, probably from standing inside the chamber for hours for dramatic effect, but also because although the clone looked exactly like John, John also knew that the clone wasn't him.

John felt disturbed by that fact, as if he was looking at a shapeshifter. It had skin and eyes and a nose like John but they weren't his. They were the organs extracted from dead corpses that matched his.

Not only that, the clone looked like an improved version of John. He had noticed this as he watched Clone John awed by himself while looking at the mirror. There were no imperfections, not a single pimple.

There was also an implant at the side of Peter's neck that not only shows that he is a clone but also stores his memories which can be transferred using the Memory Drive to John.

The first day with the clone was extremely uncomfortable for the both of them. Their parents had immediately left them to get to know each other. (This was dumb of course, as Clone John had the exact same memories of John)

John found Clone John to be extremely unsettling. It walked around the house without saying a word. Clone John meanwhile was extremely confused and traumatised by his existence.

He remembers that he himself had bought a clone, but that product he bought turned out to be himself. There was a memory gap in between the moments where the machine scanned for John's memories and the moment when he had been created.

It was terrifying for him. When he first woke up, he thought the machine had stolen his memories and the evil businessman had taken him away to a dark room for experiments. Everything was eventually explained however, but it made it worse.

"What? I'm not a clone! I wanted to buy a clone, this must be a mistake!" He had screamed frantically to the Pesta Clone Counsillor. "I suggest you to not think about it too much and get in the chamber, you and your family are coming to pick you up", the Pesta Councillor replied. "Anyways, there are many clone therapy groups out there".

After Clone John reached "home" and changed out of its complementary Pesta clothing, which Original John had taken from it, it used John's monitor to ask online about how he was supposed to act, but it already knew this, it was supposed to do anything the original wanted it to do.

This was what clones were originally made to do. A robot regularly malfunctions and it doesn't know what you want. A clone knows exactly what you want, it is you after all.

When John's parents called for John to wash the dishes and Clone John had reacted, John freaked. "They weren't calling you! You're not John, you're not me, okay? Next time, your name is freaking Peter!" He didn't even think about the name, he just thought of Peter, it was the first thing that came to his mind.

John woke up the second day to find the now-called Peter watching the latest album by Tricky on the huge monitor. The speakers blasted and it felt like the wall was screaming at you while you watched the high resolution images flash across your eyes. If you don't blink every few seconds, you could get a seizure.

John decided to be more open towards Peter and so they started to play online games with each other. It was fun at first, but that was because they didn't converse. The experience was completely ruined for the both of them the moment either of them started talking.

John noticed that Peter made alot of unfunny sex jokes. He even tried to impress him or something through relatable humour. Yeah, no shit, John thought, I'm literally you. Even so, he tried his best to force a laugh.

Peter caught the fact that John was fake laughing and rolling his eyes, so whenever John did that, Peter scoffed and rolled his eyes as well. Who the hell does he think he is, and my name isn't fucking Peter.

The next time Peter ever said anything to John, he said it so softly that John had to say "What?" a bunch of times before he could hear him. This low level of confidence annoyed the hell out of John.

At 12 o'clock, it was the start of school. John picked the most trendiest set of clothes he could find that wasn't dirty and took 20 minutes to make himself look "presentable" while Peter watched from the bed, which they had to share.

At one point, Peter got fustrated by how long John had to do his hair in which John responded by saying "Well you're not the one going to school asshole" and then rushed off in embarrassment.

Two hours had passed and Peter had become extremely anxious as to what John was doing at school. He had not gotten used to the fact that he was supposed to be the "inferior" version of himself and was extremely mad at how John could track whatever Peter did but he couldn't.

The feeling of not knowing what you yourself was doing felt mind-boggling to Peter

It was 6p.m. when John had returned home from school. This was supposed to be the happiest time of the day but instead, he was met with angry parents and a crying Peter.

John's parents used the Memory Drive and took a copy of Peter's memories before inserting it into the monitor to be played. It was a first person view of Peter's perspective.

Peter had went online and searched up porn before being caught be his parents. John felt like vomiting. He was going to say that it wasn't him that did it but then he realised that was a shitty excuse.

Instead, he apologised while completely blushed. He had never ever wanted his parents to ever know that he watched that type of stuff. He knew most of his classmates watched it but he felt so morally and ethically wrong that he wanted to end his life.

"Get out! Get the fuck out of the house! You're not me, you barely resemble me you annoying obnoxious asshole!"

Three days in and Peter was already kicked out. It was alright, John thought. They were rich anyways. It was all fine.

But it wasn't. He looked in the mirror and he couldn't see himself anymore, what he used to be.

He thought he was attractive but now he finds himself disgusting. He thought he was funny but now he cringes everytime he thinks of the things he says to his friends.

In this happy, sociable, attractive, open, progressive world, he was nothing. Overshadowed by his friends, who would become celebrities if they liked. He was barely bare minimum in this world where you buy and buy and buy and eat and drink and wear all the shit other people wear.

He was rich but there was nothing special about that, he had other rich friends who were much more social and attractive than he was. They could do something and it would become a trend. Trendsetters were the real celebrities in this society. John was only a trend follower, a normal person.

Except a trend follower was bare minimum and he didn't have any of the stand out traits that you atleast need to have or you would be like a sheep in a pen full of sheep. Atleast the other trend followers were funny or smart or... or...

Quickly and unexpectedly, prom was coming and in the spirit of a long long tradition known as Pride Month. Everyone went up to the latest social media platforms to spam hashtags.

The school was suddenly pink and rainbow and all the students were as well. Companies rushed in products with HashtagLGBT and HashtagPride imprinted over all of the cups and shirts and caps.

Soon, everyone was wearing all types of colourful clothing and dancing, having a good time. (This only lasted a month before everything suddenly reverted back to normal, which to be fair is quite similar)

A happy happy tradition to celebrate progressiveness and equality. To celebrate the suddenly booming economy of companies and the likes that overfill on people's posts and oh joy, next month is going to be Earth Electricity Month!

John, nervous as ever, struggled to get through the rainbow crowd of laughing and dancing schoolmates wearing Pesta hoodies. He was trying to find Connie to ask her out for prom which started two weeks later.

There she was, in the middle of a crowd by herself, dancing with a smile on. John held his left elbow with his right hand and trembled towards Connie.

Connie saw John approaching her and stopped dancing. At a closer look, she was more beautiful than ever, John thought.

"John!" She exclaimed.

"A- Alot of people... huh? What... What is it someone's uhh... birthday party or something?" John tried to deliver a joke as well as he could.

Connie laughed at this. Not knowing what the laugh meant, John forced a laugh and rushed out of the school before it even started.

He was in need of someone to talk to. He wasn't going to talk to his parents because they were too busy doing emotional therapy for other people, which was more like constantly telling them to be happy.

After everything he had witnessed about himself through Peter, he was too ashamed to even talk to his best friends.

Day One of hiding at home: John cried for the whole day, it is extremely rude and socially unethical to cry outside anyways. This was what Peter did however, as he walked through the streets of Sengkang, causing many turned heads and glares.

Day Two: His parents scolded him for skipping on school. Making friends in school was a crucial part of life. Now how is he going to know what everyone else liked doing?

Day Three: John talked to people online, they were mostly people asking if anyone could sell them an extra set of Pesta clothing, but atleast he talked to someone.

Day Four: John met Indiana. He started talking to him on a small subreddit for sad people. Most of the people there had been using newly made accounts, including Indiana.

I feel lost and sad. I used to be fine and happy and well but now I feel as if all of that part of me left and I'm left with the part of me that's a goddam loser, oh God, I don't even know if my friends like me or maybe they just want to seem like nice people or something idk, im sorry i dont usually express myself like this im sorry.

John's post was then replied to by an account named "throwaway12134423".

"If you need someone to talk to you, I can be that guy, I'm feeling down myself"

At first, they introduced themselves, which was an extremely numbingly long procedure. John had to carefully decide all the words he wanted to use so as to not scare away Indiana. He tried to portray himself as as likable and as relatable as possible.

Indiana, however, introduced himself with no hesitation at all. He was currently living with a nice family and was unemployed. However, lately, he had been dealing with troubles similar to John.

"Wait, wait. How do you usually relieve your fustrations?" John had typed out to Indiana. (Of course, it wasn't exactly what he typed out, just translated from slang)

"Uhm... Read books, reflect about your life and uh... believe in yourself?"

"Dude, that is cheesy as hell hahaha"

"Come on, man, that's literally what I do. What do you want me to say when it's actually what I did, no matter how cheesy it sounds. Doesn't this happen to you sometimes as well?"

"Uhm... I guess? Although I'm not sure if I only do that because I want people to like me"

"Bruh, mood"

John was legitimately having fun talking to Indiana. Sure, sometimes they don't agree with each other like how John thinks that being yourself doesn't always work.

"You can't always be yourself. What if you're like a pedophile or a racist or something, are you seriously just going to quote on quote be yourself"

"Dude, you know that's not what I mean. Also, something must have gone wrong in your life in the first place for you to be a racist or a pedophile"

"How would you know anyways, I heard a long time ago that people thought being LGBT was a choice"

"I'm just thinking for myself, which is by the way, what you should do. I've been trying out myself these past days and boy, I am feeling free for once".

"Oough, I think you added too much cheese"

John knew he was right though. Even if it was something so obvious like a moral of the story in those children books where they learn "Teamwork is good", for some reason, John realised he hasn't been thinking for himself.

He could have just told Connie what he really wanted to say. The only reason why he left was because he didn't act like what other people acted like; happy.

He and everyone else have been living their whole lives restricted to displaying emotions of happiness and anger and nothing else. Happy to say yes and angry to say no.

He could see it not that Connie wasn't just happy that day. She was feeling lonely and sad and angry at herself for not being "truly happy" like everyone else. What would have made her truly happy would be if John had just said what he really felt.

"We've been talking behind a screen for nine freaking days. I want to meet up. Tomorrow, 6p.m. at Punggol Park?" John typed it out and hesitated before finally putting in the courage to send it.

"Definitely. I swear I was going to say it right before you did hahaha"

Four days before prom: The park was almost completely empty, everyone else was out at Orchard Road and Serangoon Road partying about Tree Conservation Day with a mix of Pride Month.

Anxious and excited, John sat on the bench and could not stop fidgeting. He had arrived two hours too early and now it was five minutes from six o'clock. "What if he doesn't come?", he had asked himself.

This thought was dismissed, Indiana didn't seem like the kind of person to miss this, but then everyone else also didn't act like the person they really were.

Suddenly, a loud bang came from behind John which made him jump and land back hard on the bench. He turned around and there was suddenly a crowd of people.

Knowing it was trouble, John ran towards it instinctively to see the commotion. Everyone else was pushing one another to get a good look, picture, and video of what was going on.

They were surrounding a pink car and a pool of blood was starting to form underneath everyone's Pesta shoes. John could hear someone scream "It was an accident, I'm not a bad person! Please! Stop taking videos of me! He ran in front of the car, it was his god damn fault, I swear!"

John tried to push to see who it was that was hit. Suddenly, one woman saw John and exclaimed, "Look! It's him!", and soon, everyone started to point their cameras at John.

He circled around the crowd that was now following him with their phones and saw who it was.

It was him.

It was Peter.

Unexpectedly, tears started to form around John's eyes. He didn't even like Peter when he was with him and now when he died, John felt a weight of guilt drop on him.

It was just four days before the prom and John had to deal with the death of a family member. John demanded that his parents get Peter a proper burial. This had confused them as they thought John didn't even care for the clone.

For the next two days, John was constantly bombarded with messages and posts that tagged him saying "RIP John's Clone" with a bunch of sad emojis and a gray picture of John. He did not even know most of these people well.

One of them had even said "Rest in Peace John, you were my best friend #RIP #Sad".

John extracted the clone's memories and watched everything that the clone had experienced on three times speed for the whole day.

He had felt so bad for him, not just because Peter was John himself. John had even momentarily forgot and thought of Peter as a completely different person.

Peter had screamed for John and his parents to let him in while crying for the first two days after he was kicked out.

The next day, which was the start of Pride Month, Peter had roamed the streets, begging for food from the dancing and partying youngsters and adults.

On the second day, Peter had been taken in by a kind stranger for one day. He had introduced himself as Indiana and he was living all alone. Alone but happy.

Indiana had made Peter food and had let him read some of his books. As he sat on the bed while Indiana slept on the couch, he read many of the books and poems that Indiana had and cried.

He did not understand many of them at first, but as the night progressed, he felt more and more connected to the characters. He felt, for once in his life, truly free and happy.

On the third day, Peter went back on the streets and started writing about the things he saw. He used to think that the twisty and colourful buildings were creative and beautiful before, but he now realised they looked extremely unnerving.

He realised there was almost no nature to be found anywhere. The city was symmetrical and colourful and nothing else. It was full of streetlights and neon rainbow colours because the tall glass buildings made great big shadows over the city.

He slept behind the Pesta building where it was dark and quiet. The next morning, he was immediately caught and taken away by authorities to the Clone Holding Center.

They referred to the code on Peter's memory implant so as to find who the owner was. Peter, however, told them that it was not necessary. Meanwhile, Peter used the monitor in the holding center and started to make an account on Reddit.

"throwaway12132243"

He went on that subreddit, and saw John's post. At this point, John had started to burst down crying.

On the day that "Indiana" was going to meet John, he looked at himself in the mirror.

"John... I know that you will see this when I die or when you find me again and you want to see my memories or whatever. I want you to know that I'm sorry for everything that I have caused. Most importantly, I want to... to say is to be yourself. I have finally met someone I can relate and feel connected to, and I finally feel free because... because I accept now who I want to be, not what others expect me to do, which is to follow what they do...

I know that on the day I was kicked out of our... your house that you feel off from the world because that's what I felt. When we were together, you know that we were both acting the way society wants us to act... because I caught the cues you made and you caught the cues I made and we both realised how wrong it was. So to that, I just want to say, stop acting like someone you're not. I know it sounds cheesy but it is working out for me and it will work out for you because we started out the same except for that two week gap which I am sure won't mean anything. Alright, I got to go. I'm meeting a friend, which if you have been watching my memories, you already know... okay, bye."

They walked around the park. Connie was still confused as to why John had suddenly disappeared for so long. "Where were you? I never saw you again after that moment at school!"

"I'm sorry, it won't happen again."

"Yeah, you better be! I was all alone by myself at school for a week! I literally cried in class by the fifth day you weren't here and I'm pretty sure everyone hates me now..."

They both laughed.

"Heard your clone died... sorry about that. Must be traumatising to see yourself... uh..."

"It's fine. We had a short time together but it was good times..."

"Connie... We've been friends for about four years now and I am so god damn sad that we are never going to see each other ever again after this year..."

"Yeah...", the tears from Connie's eyes were threatening to drop and she tried her best to hide it from John, "M- me too..."

"So... Connie, I want to..." John had let off a deep sigh.

"Will you go to prom with me?"

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