Submarine dreams: the makers of Deep Angel use the Internet and a high-tech hook to fuel a futuristic fantasy. (Web Animation).

At its simplest level, Deep Angel is a story about a man, a woman, a world at war, and a very fancy submarine. It's a story that could be made into a movie, a television show, a computer game, or a series of online animated episodes, but it hasn't been made into any of these--yet. What Deep Angel currently consists of, besides the premise, is a well-designed Web site with some attractive 3D models both human and mechanical, and a futuristic hook. However, Deep Angel's creators, Kacper and Krzys Kotwicki of k26 Design Group, have big plans for the property.

The story takes place in the year 2078. Giant city-states made of rock and steel drift across the earth's oceans. Many of these floating nations are at war with each other, and a principal player is the Kalithan Empire, which has been busy overtaking city-states in the pacific. The only thing standing between the Empire and total world domination is the US Navy--and its state-of-the-art vessels.

A key aspect of this conflict at sea is the emergence of crafts that use an advanced, "supercavitational" technology to travel beneath the waves at extremely high speeds. Underwater dogfights are now possible; in fact, the Kotwicki brothers describe Deep Angel as "Top Gun under water." As the story unfolds, the Navy has just unveiled the USS Angelus (aka Deep Angel), its first supercavitating carrier, which is capable of traveling at ultra-high speed both on and under the water. Charged with helping to defend the pacific aboard the revolutionary craft are Lieutenants Ryan Hunter and Sarah Summer.

Supercavitation

Central to Deep Angel's identity is supercavitation, a real, though still somewhat far-off-in-the-future technology that is currently a hot topic among scientists and military personnel. It's a solution to a problem that has existed ever since early humans shoved off in the first water-borne craft--namely, that friction slows down objects in water. Or, as we learned as children, you can run faster on the ground with your legs moving through air than you can when you're waist-deep in a lake. Supercavitation solves this problem by enveloping an underwater vessel--such as a torpedo or a submarine--in a bubble of air that allows a craft to zip through the water with virtually no friction.

That's the theory, anyway. Getting supercavitation to work isn't simple, though at least one piece of machinery, the Russian Shkval torpedo, is based partly on this technology. A Scientific American article about supercavitation ("Warp Drive Underwater," May 2001) also cited a possible connection between the accident that destroyed the Russian submarine Kursk and the testing of high-speed, supercavitating torpedoes.

By the time our story takes place, however, these sorts of technical difficulties have been hashed out. The USS Angelus is equipped with transducers that create a lubricating strip of air between her hull and the water, so that she flies along both above and below the ocean at thousands of miles per hour without ever actually getting wet.