Not less tough is the crew though!
Pela and Ta'Hira are two of the most skilled and best adapted members. Yet even they know, only one fatal technical failure is required on an off-board mission to cut them from help and or their air supply. In that case, everything they have are their well trained bodies.
Therefore it wasn't surprising that they volunteered for some of the more special experiments. That kind where it comes really handy in terms of laws, that they are in international waters most of the time.
Here they have been given two different kinds of "emergency rebreathing" equipment - quite an embellishment for those measures which mainly just had the purpose to let their wearer suffocate instead of drown.
Nevertheless they were supposed to find out how much those can help or whether they can even be used to extend 'mission time' when air supply was scarce.
Withstanding the effects of CO2 build-up was the main goal.
To simulate the maximum realism of a dangerous task, they were only given half a minute to prepare and had to strip bare before they were sealed into a tank with icy cold water.
While Pela was used to cold waters, being a penguin, she had been given an additional handycap to exhale half her breath before putting the stretchy, transparent bag on. After all her regular breathhold time of over thirty minutes would have been unfair to her partner.
Finally cameras and hydrophones were pointed at them to document the progress of the experiment accurately.
First the two ladies held strong. They decided not to breathe a good while so that their bodies would feel just like on a regular freedive. That allowed them to slow down their heartbeat and thus oxygen consumption.
Being entirely calm also meant less heat being produced though and Ta'hira felt that very soon. Pela decided to help her more tropical crewmate and share some warmth and the otter girl returned the favor by giving Pela's slightly sucked-in chest gentle rubs.
The scientists watching the nude 'divers' probably must have had quite some fantasies during those intimate moments but in the end they were all one crew and had had exciting times before. One or two of them may especially enjoy the breathless aspect of this unintended show though.
Breathless was indeed the right word because having started with her lungs only half full was soon becoming noticeable to Pela as she felt the urge to breathe set in after only ten minutes.
She held back slightly longer until she confirmed alongside Ta'hira that they would start making use of the bag and hood around their heads.
Slowly they began exhaling at at first the result was lightly confusing. The buoyancy shifted greatly from their chests to their heads, pulling slightly upwards.
Exhaling whilst knowing that there was no fresh air was definitely against their freediving instincts but they hoped that was a better choice than to hold out until they would be too exhausted to re-breathe at all.
The warm, isolating air was welcome around their faces though and they kept the bags inflated for a good few dozen seconds until finally daring to inhale again.
The air was naturally everything but refreshing, but it still soothed their lungs to breathe at all. Movement of the diaphragm was - at least up to a certain amount - way better than to keep it locked and tensed in place. Hence why they sometimes oped to re-breathe into their cheeks briefly on extended freedives.
More minutes passed like this. At a rate of about two breaths per minute they exchanged what air they had between their chests and the bags.
At least Ta'hira was actually quite positively surprised. Her absolute record of a breathhold was at little over eighteen minutes. And now it seemed like she could pass that with just reasonable effort.
She even dared to lean back against the glass and close her eyes to relax better.
Pela immediately made a distressed sound though and pulled at her partner's paw, giving her to understand that it was dangerous to let her guard down! The CO2 that was building up would make them sleepy after all. She nodded and remembered that they were supposed to pretend they had a task to solve. In a future experiment they would be given something to do for sure, like Rubik cubes to solve or to assemble and disassemble some device.
Time kept passing relentlessly as it was visible on the large panel with the monitor data about the two participants. They measured a lot of data. From oxygen and CO2 over heart- and breathing-rate as well as temperature and even tension of their muscles. Last but not least, brain activity was meassured as well, making them wonder slightly at what point they would be released actually. They tried not to think about it as they trusted they would come out stronger from this long term!
As expected, motion of their lungs was only good up to a certain degree and eventually that degree would be passed. It was inevitable. After all the instinct to breathe is mainly triggered from CO2-build up and to a small degree from lack of O2. So after each cycle of exhaling air into the bag or hood, the air they would reinhale was in a way a disappointment for their bodies. After all in theory it triggered as much of a breathing reflex as the one that caused them to exhale in the first place.
It was solely a mindgame that they could convince themselves of the satisfaction to breathe at all! The two ladies encouraged each other to keep breathing calmly and hold inbetween. Ta'hira even seemed to have gotten used to the cool water - or maybe the increasing oxygen deprivation just let her body prioritize pure survival over staying warm. They placed a paw or wing on each other's chest as if feeling the other breathe was helping themselves too.
Naturally despite all their efforts, that satisfaction of just getting 'some' air through their windpipes had exponentially diminishing returns. A steady decrease of the delay they could bear between two breaths was the result.
For the whole challenge up until now the experiment had been a fairly quite one. Only the humm of water rushing through the filter of the tank was audible. This normally double served as an aquarium after all. Due to the nature of water, the sound was fairly amplified by the hydrophones in the tank.
After the nineteen minute mark, noises became more prominent. Neither Pela, nor Ta'hira could control their breathing accurately anymore. Instead it was the pure survival instinct that triggered their diaphragms to clench and suck in air, resulting in audible gasps.
Especially Pela who had roughly half the volume of air compared to Ta'hira found herself wanting to inhale way more than physically possible.
The stretchy material bent slightly into her beak, almost making her choke.
With her 'mission' partner shuffling shoulder and placing a webbed paw onto her shoulder, the penguin girl remained strong. Surely the oxygen deprivation was clouding their judgment by now, but in a way proud of what they were capable of and wanted to show it!
If they could see it themselves, they would likely even cherish the purple blush which was starting to spread across their faces.
Holding back was futile now so they cycled the entirely stale air in and out faster and faster.
Standing upright they floated closer to the glass and stared at their viewers who looked just as tensed back. The girls would push through this even if it took another five minutes!
For most of the time it had been only their lungs that spasmed vigorously in need of more air but in the end their whole bodies became restless now, rocking back and forth. At minute twenty-one, every cell in their bodies was demanding fresh air and the blush turned more and more towards blue. Yet they didn't even give a sign of wanting to give up like making a cutting motion at their throats or similar.
It would not have relieved them anyways. This was a test for an emergency situation after all and in an emergency like that, signaling for help was no guarantee.
The two ladies would need to hold out with that useless air and otherwise surrounded just by water until the conductors of the experiment deemed it too dangerous to continue. They knew very well from experience though that the otter and the penguin were highly resilient...
Even when their survival instincts made them slam against the glass and their noises became shaky and utterly desperate, the experiment continued. "Imagine you are still two hundred feet away from your diving bell!", someone yelled at them, likely in hope to encourage them, but he was quickly told to be silent.
The participants had to do it all on their own after all! And they would do it - and provide a wonderful show in the meantime~
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This has been quite a special project~
It started with Feerone's incredible original animation he did for me (the second page).
I found just posting it as a mute gif is not doing this justice - so I went all in >w<
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First time someone did voice acting for me...
Finally I have assembled this with a 3D scene (after making the glass transparent), frame-interpolation, animated/programmed text and the sound in the game engine Unity.
Sound synchronization was manual - something I definitely have to do different next time.
The voices/sounds were edited via FMOD Studio. First time I touch that software. Please bare with me >w<'
But I'd love to hear your feedback on the sound! Did I go too far with the filtering to be "underwater"?
Resources used (mostly from some developer-humblebundles):
- 3D Facilily
- Display
- Postprocessing