Enthusiastic Amateur Diver Shares His Discoveries With You! (short story)

Enthusiastic Amateur Diver Shares His Discoveries With You!
Main character(s):	Daryl Christofi
Main setting:	2010s, England
Key crew
Publishers:	Punchdrunk, BBC
Release details
Genre:	Science fiction
Release date:	27 April 2011
Website:	Daryl the Diver
Format:	Online short story
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The Crash of the Elysium tie-ins
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Enthusiastic Amateur Diver Shares His Discoveries With You! was the first short story exclusively published on the Daryl the Diver website on 27 April 2011 by the BBC and Punchdrunk to coincide with the immersive experience The Crash of the Elysium. This short story was another part of a range of fiction published on tie-in websites as part of the viral marketing for the experience, by a fictional blog post by Daryl Christofi about his dives to the sunken Elysium.

Plot

Introducing his website, Daryl Christofi apologises that it is still "under construction" as he has been dedicating more of his time to diving. Daryl then writes about the Elysium and how it sank, mentioning its cargo of gold ingots, which is what sparked his interest in the vessel.

Continuing, Daryl reveals that he has only had one successful dive to the sunken Elysium, in which he located the ship and and gained entry inside, rescuing a few pieces of pottery and other artefacts in the process. Daryl details more information about the Elysium and concludes by saying he plans to return to the ship as soon as he gets better equipment.

Characters

• Daryl Christofi

Worldbuilding

• Daryl claims that information about his other dives will be available in the website's archives.
• The Elysium is a commercial steam freighter that was launched in the summer of 1887 and crashed in 1888.
• Daryl obtained some of the salvage rights and, after looking at the shipping logs, decided what he was focused on recovering was the gold ingots that were now worth £10000000.
  • The ship was also carrying machine parts.
• The Elysium was part of the Mayfield Star Lines fleet.
• Daryl compares the Elysium, a cargo ship, to the Titanic, a passenger ship, in terms of complexity.
  • However, unlike the Titanic which isn't in good condition after all this time, the Elysium is.
  • Daryl notes that while the surrounding area of the Elysium is very silty, the interior of the captain's cabin and the prow are visible.
    • Daryl took pictures of the state of the Elysium.
• Daryl mentions that the existence of the gold is contentious in the diving community as some believe it to be merely part of an insurance scam.
• Daryl loaned out the artefacts he found to a touring exhibition about the Elysium.
• The equipment Daryl hopes to get includes lights and scanning equipment.

Notes

• This short story reuses an image previously published in The Elysium.
• Despite the story mentioning other blog posts, no such posts were actually created.
  • In the story, Daryl also mentions having taken photos of the sunken Elysium and refers the reader to look at them, although no such pictures were actually published.
• This story mentions that the Elysium sank, when in other tie-in fiction, is was said to have been beached, although it is not impossible that it sank over the near one-hundred and fifty years since the original crash.

Continuity

• The steamer Elysium and its crash plays pivotal role in the marketing and tie-in stories for STAGE: The Crash of the Elysium, however ironically, doesn't play a large role in the immersive experience itself as another Elysium, a spaceship, took narrative precedence.
• This story also mentions a touring exhibition, an oblique reference to the STAGE: The Crash of the Elysium being set up to appear as a historical exhibit about the Elysium at the beginning.

External links

• Enthusiastic Amateur Diver Shares His Discoveries With You! at Daryl the Diver via the Wayback Machine