One day in Atlantis

How a couple found a way back to a long lost time...

Dr. Amelia Kerr had always believed the Atlantic kept its secrets well. Forty-five years old, sharp-minded, blue-eyed, and still arrestingly beautiful in her quiet, windswept way, she’d spent half her life coaxing stories from drowned ruins. But nothing had prepared her for the discovery that now loomed like a dream in the floodlights of the dive team’s submersible.

A mid Atlantic city, perfectly preserved beneath thirty meters of ancient sediment, its crystalline towers rising like frozen lightning bolts from the ocean floor. Amelia wondered with some hope if this was Atlantis. Or something older. Either way it was the find of the century.

The three divers swam toward its half-excavated entrance chamber: Amelia, her ex-husband Gareth, and the man who’d once come between them, Leo, ten years her junior, handsome, cocky, ambitious, and resentful that she’d ended their affair just before coming on this expedition.

All three knew this dive was history in the making. But only two had come to mend what was broken between them. She knew that Leo was angry with her. Gareth was also angry but with better reason , she had been unfaithful to him and she regretted that now. But all Amelia really wanted was peace and Atlantis was the perfect distraction for her.

The entrance chamber was enormous, carved from a smooth metallic stone that shimmered violet when the submersible’s beams hit it. Strange glyphs pulsed faintly along the walls, like dormant veins waiting to wake. As they passed the entrance the place lit up as blue lights clicked on.

“Pressure looks stable - we are passing visuals to the mother ship as planned,” Gareth reported, his voice clipped and professional. She knew how he felt, could read his emotions even behind the divers mask and suit but she trusted him to do his job.

“Stable,” Leo echoed, swimming past them both toward a broken archway. “Then let’s see what's down here.”

“Leo, stay in line,” Amelia cautioned, worried that he was behaving more emotionally than rationally in the current situation.

Leo ignored her, pushing ahead through a narrow corridor half-blocked by collapsed pillars.

The quake had struck the site just hours earlier. They shouldn’t have been diving so soon, but Leo insisted they needed first-claim documentation. Amelia suspected he was pushing for fame again, hoping to eclipse Gareth and win her admiration back. She followed him anyway.

Beyond the corridor lay a vast rotunda. The lights came on as before as they entered, lighting a great submerged hall filled with technical marvels and sculptures of men and women that looked very like those of ancient Greece and Rome. These cast shadows across the marble-like tiles which were inlaid with crystal and sparkled in the blue light. A low tremor rumbled through the chamber. It was another quake and they were already too far inside the city to escape.

“Get back!” she shouted—

Too late.

A slab of marble dropped from the ceiling. The shockwave sent her sprawling, her air tank slamming into a crystal pillar. Pain shot through her leg. Something sharp grazed her ribs. She tasted blood. She saw Leo swimming fast back through the corridor through which they had come. Gareth was desperately trying to lift the masonry that had her trapped. He loves me she thought to herself, he stayed for me. But then a new deluge of masonry hit Gareth breaking his mask, bubbles surged from his suit. She thought it was all over, but just before she blacked out Two sleek, eel-like drones unfurled from slots in the wall. They scanned the injured pair with needle-thin beams, clasped them gently with mechanical arms and took them away from the hall

She woke some time later cradled by an armature of warm, luminous light. Her body tingled with a sensation like static rain in what looked like a kind of crystalline pod, shaped like a teardrop, its surface veined with dull gold filaments. Gareth was also in a similar pod beside her. Both pods opened at the same time, and they stepped out into an air filled chamber bathed in white light. They had been dressed in white robes their diving gear was piled to one side of the room but seemed in tact. They examined each other with some surprise. Two silver robots with a variety of medical implements for appendages hovered over the room.

"Wow," said Gareth, "You look gorgeous. Maybe twenty years younger. The scar above your left eyebrow has gone."

Amelia studied Gareth and thought the same. "You are twenty years younger, all your scars are gone, you shoulders seem broader, you have no tummy fat and your hair is no longer grey. These must have been healing pods, they have fixed us. What is this place - some cradle of alien or Atlantean science that has rewritten our cells according to some resonant human blueprint? This is amazing!."

She noticed how smooth her skin was now and how strong she felt. The two robots herded them toward their diving gear. They got back into this. When they all dressed a door opened at the side of the room which included a diving pool. They entered the room and the door closed behind them. They could not even see a seam in the wall where the door once was. The only way out was through the pool. They tested each others equipment, Gareth's face mask was now as good as new, and then dived into the pool following the lights out of the city. As they swam the light behind them switched off as if suggesting they could not return and various doors closed also as they swam through the corridor before them.

As they emerged from the city entrance they were greeted by the onsite diving team but their communications were not working and so they made their way to the surface taking their time with the ascent to avoid the bends. Back onboard the Expedition Ship they were greeted by the crew with some amazement. They were holding hands not even aware that they were doing it unless Jake, a colleague pointed it out to them. Amelia giggled and Gareth kissed her on the cheek. Leo came into the cabin just as Gareth kissed her. He was pale. He stared at Amelia now young, radiant, alive and fury twisted his features.

"You've be gone two weeks, " Jake said.

"Where were you?" asked another.

Amelia seeing Leo and anger on his face said, "Leo left us to die and apparently he did not even call for help."

She met Leo's gaze, steady and unflinching. “Gareth saved me. You left me to die.”

The team fell silent. Leo flushed, opening his mouth to speak—but no excuse came.

Annoyed and angry murmurs spread around the room and Leo quickly left missing the debrief that followed. After sharing what they had seen they were placed on helicopters and shipped to an American aircraft carrier and from there took a transport to London to the Royal Society which had funded their expedition and wanted an in person report of what they had seen. As news broke of what had happened around the world warships from five nations converged on the site. British, American, Russian, French and Chinese.

They followed the news on their mobiles on their way to the Royal Society in a taxi. A five-nation standoff hovering directly above the lost city.
Their youthful faces were all over the media which was speculating about a device that gave a person eternal life. This only fueled the hysteria. Nations were demanding that the technology be shared or that they had proprietary rights having gotten their first

In the Royal Society the auditorium overflowed with journalists, scientists, politicians, and military officials. Amelia and Gareth walked onstage, hand-in-hand, two people in their mid-forties who now looked scarcely twenty.

Gasps rose from the crowd.

“This is not a longevity technology,” Amelia said into the microphone. “It’s a medical repair system, far advanced, yes, but not a path to immortality. It responded to injury, not age.”

“But surely,” one official pressed, “the system could also be used to prolong life?”

“We don’t know,” Gareth replied. “We barely understand the principles. Interfering with the city could be dangerous.”

Dangerous was an understatement. Above the ruins, nations had already positioned nuclear submarines. The standoff was a hair trigger waiting to snap.

During the Q&A session, a furious whisper crackled over Gareth’s satellite pager from the expedition vessel:

“They’re firing.”

Amelia’s heart stopped. “Who?”

“Russia and China. Torpedoes, heading straight for the ruins.”

Why would they do that, that technology could be a blessing to all of us. The auditorium screens flickered to a live feed from the remote underwater cameras. The torpedoes streaked downward, white trails in the dark. Then a glow erupted from the city. Pillars of light speared upward from its towers. A shimmering dome materialized around the ruins, an energy shield protecting the lost city.
The torpedoes evaporated on contact, reduced to harmless vapor.

Gasps filled the hall. Then the city retaliated. Beams of blinding blue cut through the water, striking the submarines that had fired. The Russian and Chinese submarines evaporated in a cloud of blue light.

The city was protecting itself. Defending its secrets. And then, before the world’s eyes, the crystalline towers retracted. The shield brightened. The entire city folded inward, collapsing into a lattice of light.

With a deep, resonant hum, Atlantis slipped beneath the ocean floor, vanishing entirely.

As if it had never been there. The auditorium erupted in shouts of panic, awe, disbelief.

Amelia squeezed Gareth’s hand, her voice trembling. “It left because we were fighting over it.”

He nodded. “Maybe because we’re not ready.”

That night, alone in their hotel room overlooking the Thames, Amelia stood beside Gareth at the window, the city lights warm on their newly healed skin.

“So… we’re young again,” she murmured.

“We’ll grow old together,” Gareth said softly, intertwining their fingers, “properly, this time.”

She leaned into him, resting her head against his shoulder, the same shoulder she’d once fallen in love with twenty years ago.
Behind them lay betrayal, forgiveness, and the impossible gift of a second beginning. Before them lay a world forever changed by Atlantis’ brief awakening. But for once, Amelia felt no fear of the unknown, only wonder. And the steady, familiar rhythm of Gareth’s heartbeat, strong as the ocean.

Together, they looked forward to the life they had reclaimed, which had been given back to them as a gift from ancient times.