resurface. I couldn’t get inside, anyway. But surface diagnostics indicated the station was safe to enter, meaning Otto had completed his task. When the electrical team came down, they found him curled up in the animal quarantine. Dead. Embolism. He just finished his job, then laid down in the dark and died.”
The only one who died , Luke thought, except for Westlake.
“It’s all self-contained,” Al said. “Electricity, air, waste removal. Food and water are brought down as needed. A perfect little microsystem that thumbs its nose at the laws of physics.”
Luke barely heard her. He was still dwelling on Otto Railsback, who’d crawled diligently through the tunnels with his foam gun until he reached his own end.
7.
THERE IS A SPECIFIC DEPTH you’ll hit where the soul finds it impossible to harmonize with its surroundings.
It’s not the darkness. A man is acquainted with it by then—as acquainted as he can ever be. It’s not the vast silence or the emptiness or the absence of any life-forms he can draw warmth or certainty from.
It’s not the pressure. It’s not even the fear of death that constantly nibbles at the edge of his mind.
It’s the sense of unreality. This out-of-body feeling that you’ve stepped away from the path your species has always tread. Things become dreamlike, inessential. Your mind, seeking solace in the familiar, retreats to those things you understand, but those things become so much harder to grasp.
Memories degrade. You remember parts of people, but you surrender their wholes. Abby could crack an egg with one hand. It was a quirky skill Luke remembered wishing he had. He could still recall the sight of her doing it and the yearning that he could do it, too. But the more essential parts of her were already failing him.
The water wasn’t the same down here.
Water is what runs out of our kitchen taps or a playground drinking fountain. It fills bathtubs and pools and yes, of course, the ocean—but at a certain depth, water becomes a barrier from all you remember, all you think you know.
You’re trapped within it, a plaything of it.
Focus erodes. Your thoughts mutate. The pressure.
The pressure.
The soul can’t cope with that. It shouldn’t be expected to.
Humans weren’t built for this. There’s a reason nothing lives down here.
Or nothing should.
8.
LUKE WAS UNAWARE of the exact point when it began to snow.
Marine snow, according to Al. The detritus of animal and plant life that had died miles above. It fell steadily through each zone of the ocean, down and down, shredding into flakes, leached of pigment until it became bone white. A snow of death.
It fell without cease, each “flake” composed of lace-edged rags of flesh and bone and gut. Looking at it, Luke thought back to that first night with Abby—the snow falling from a coal-dark Iowa sky. He tried to isolate the details of Abby’s face but they slithered through his mind, eelish and ungrippable.
Al toggled the joystick, angling the Challenger slightly downward.
“We’re here,” she said quietly.
Luke squinted through the porthole. Darkness thick as grave dirt. Then, permeating that darkness, the tiniest speck of light.
This speck attached to another speck, and another. From these specks, a rough shape resolved and the Trieste came into view. Luke sat by the window, jaw open, staring.
It was repulsive.
The blood backflowed in his veins, the strangest sensation—like a clock running backward against its mechanics, stripping gears and snapping springs.
We need to ascend now, he thought wildly. Seek the sunlight , fast, and never come back.
1.
LUKE COULD ONLY GLIMPSE the Trieste in sections. Whenever Al swung the Challenger around, illuminating a section he’d already seen, it looked different to Luke—as if it had shifted subtly, somehow reconfiguring its arrangement.
Luke’s mind continued to fight the reaction of his initial horror. It was nothing but steel and foam and space-age
The only one who died , Luke thought, except for Westlake.
“It’s all self-contained,” Al said. “Electricity, air, waste removal. Food and water are brought down as needed. A perfect little microsystem that thumbs its nose at the laws of physics.”
Luke barely heard her. He was still dwelling on Otto Railsback, who’d crawled diligently through the tunnels with his foam gun until he reached his own end.
7.
THERE IS A SPECIFIC DEPTH you’ll hit where the soul finds it impossible to harmonize with its surroundings.
It’s not the darkness. A man is acquainted with it by then—as acquainted as he can ever be. It’s not the vast silence or the emptiness or the absence of any life-forms he can draw warmth or certainty from.
It’s not the pressure. It’s not even the fear of death that constantly nibbles at the edge of his mind.
It’s the sense of unreality. This out-of-body feeling that you’ve stepped away from the path your species has always tread. Things become dreamlike, inessential. Your mind, seeking solace in the familiar, retreats to those things you understand, but those things become so much harder to grasp.
Memories degrade. You remember parts of people, but you surrender their wholes. Abby could crack an egg with one hand. It was a quirky skill Luke remembered wishing he had. He could still recall the sight of her doing it and the yearning that he could do it, too. But the more essential parts of her were already failing him.
The water wasn’t the same down here.
Water is what runs out of our kitchen taps or a playground drinking fountain. It fills bathtubs and pools and yes, of course, the ocean—but at a certain depth, water becomes a barrier from all you remember, all you think you know.
You’re trapped within it, a plaything of it.
Focus erodes. Your thoughts mutate. The pressure.
The pressure.
The soul can’t cope with that. It shouldn’t be expected to.
Humans weren’t built for this. There’s a reason nothing lives down here.
Or nothing should.
8.
LUKE WAS UNAWARE of the exact point when it began to snow.
Marine snow, according to Al. The detritus of animal and plant life that had died miles above. It fell steadily through each zone of the ocean, down and down, shredding into flakes, leached of pigment until it became bone white. A snow of death.
It fell without cease, each “flake” composed of lace-edged rags of flesh and bone and gut. Looking at it, Luke thought back to that first night with Abby—the snow falling from a coal-dark Iowa sky. He tried to isolate the details of Abby’s face but they slithered through his mind, eelish and ungrippable.
Al toggled the joystick, angling the Challenger slightly downward.
“We’re here,” she said quietly.
Luke squinted through the porthole. Darkness thick as grave dirt. Then, permeating that darkness, the tiniest speck of light.
This speck attached to another speck, and another. From these specks, a rough shape resolved and the Trieste came into view. Luke sat by the window, jaw open, staring.
It was repulsive.
The blood backflowed in his veins, the strangest sensation—like a clock running backward against its mechanics, stripping gears and snapping springs.
We need to ascend now, he thought wildly. Seek the sunlight , fast, and never come back.
1.
LUKE COULD ONLY GLIMPSE the Trieste in sections. Whenever Al swung the Challenger around, illuminating a section he’d already seen, it looked different to Luke—as if it had shifted subtly, somehow reconfiguring its arrangement.
Luke’s mind continued to fight the reaction of his initial horror. It was nothing but steel and foam and space-age
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