Chapter 2
Corbin
If there was one thing I loved about my job, it was that once I was in the water, I was free.
It took some time to make it to the sea floor, since even with my enhancements, I needed to go slowly and allow my body time to adapt to the increasing water pressure.
Around me, the dark depths stretched into infinity, while above the light of the sun receded, dimming from white to yellow to green with each meter I descended.
Below, the floor of the continental shelf was covered in rock and the twisting beauty of coral formations, with darting shapes of fish flickering as the faint light reflected from silvery scales.
Some humans, I am told, found this upsetting — the dark, the isolation, and the silence — but I didn’t. To me, it was peaceful.
This section of the shelf was new to me, which was always interesting.
My internal positioning system indicated we were off the eastern coast of what had once been the United States, near the border of Georgia Protectorate and the Carolina Unclaimed Zone.
All my sensors were set to maximum; not only was this territory unexplored, the remains of a nuclear facility to the north that had been destroyed in the Climate Catastrophe had leaked radiation and who knew what else into the ocean before it could be shut down and quarantined.
Good chance there would be mutations closer to the new shoreline, and even out this far, beyond what had been the previous coastline, there was always the possibility of a nasty surprise.
My position was being transmitted back to Dr. Gail, but the deeper I went, the less timely the data would be.
Despite all the advances in biology and chemistry in the last two centuries, there wasn’t any way to violate the laws of physics.
Transmission rates slowed with every meter I moved away from the ship above me, and once my optical connection cut out, I was left with only sonar.
This meant there was no possibility of a timely rescue.
If something decided to chomp me, I’d be dead long before the signal reached the Nautilus.
This thought, strangely enough, didn’t bother me, and I turned my attention to the approaching sea floor, letting the automated systems take care of themselves and alert me if something approached from above or around me. The biggest danger would be from below, so that’s where I focused.
I was somewhat surprised that the reef beneath me seemed to be in good shape and teeming with life.
There were so many I had mapped that were dead or dying, falling victim to pollution, changes in the ocean currents, or damaged beyond repair by the seaquakes that had shaken the entire globe in the first decade after the CC.
The presence of a healthy reef was exciting, and while it meant that this area would be interdicted from construction — humans had learned that lesson the hard way — it was still part of my mission to explore and map it.
As I reached the seabed, I used my tentacles to scurry over the uneven surface.
This was part of what made me so special for this kind of work.
I’d lost my human legs in the accident that had almost killed me, but in their place, I had biomechanical limbs of various types.
In addition to the legs I wore while on the Nautilus, I had a fluked tail I could use for swimming long distances quickly and the set of eight tentacles I now wore, which enabled me to “feel” the sea bottom and collect data through touch.
It had taken me a long time to get used to the tentacles, but once I had, I found I preferred them to any of my other artificial limbs.
Where once the amount of sensory input they gave had been almost overwhelming to me, I was now exhilarated by it.
Every rock, coral spire, and shell I touched were imprinted in my CPU to be analyzed and catalogued later.
Fish darted away from me, which wasn’t surprising.
Even if they’d never encountered a humanoid before, no doubt my tentacles identified me as a predator, so they departed in flickering schools.
Crustaceans scuttled away, and even eels darted into narrow crevices for protection.
I was used to living creatures hastily vacating my vicinity, which was why when my sonar and infrared cameras detected something creeping toward me, it brought me immediately to alert.
Despite my efforts to train myself out of the habit, I turned my head instinctively in the direction where the motion originated.
The creature was fast, faster than me, for it was out of sight behind the coral before my head finished turning.
The cameras picked up only a blur, but this was actually reassuring.
A shark or other predator would have charged toward me to attack, not darted away.
It was likely an octopus or a squid; they were always curious about me, but cautious.
After I’d been here a while, they’d probably come out once they realized I was no threat.
I continued my exploration, mapping the reef and cataloguing the sea life I encountered, all while keeping an eye — actually a camera — out behind me for my curious visitor.
I caught flashes of motion from time to time, always too quick for me to get an image to analyze.
But I was very patient, and I slowed down, hoping that the creature would decide I was friendly and come out to visit.
I’d made “friends” with several octopi in other parts of the ocean, and they were always interesting to watch.
I’d even tried communicating with them using sonar, my optical transmitter, and even humming, but none of them had ever responded other than to tap me on the top of my head with one of their own tentacles.
I’d often wondered if they were trying to communicate or patting me and calling me stupid.
The reef was truly beautiful, and I was very glad to see the variety of life in the area.
As I turned a corner, however, I came upon a sight at once sad and hopeful.
The remains of a ship, something no doubt sunk shortly before or during the CC, since it was metallic rather than wooden.
Not a very large boat, possibly a fishing vessel, though it was hard to tell from the way it was lying tilted on the sea floor.
It was being reclaimed by the ocean, rusted and overgrown with the verdant plant life spreading from the reef.
It might even have been placed purposefully, during the few decades before the climate imploded, when some humans had realized the importance of the sea and had deliberately cleaned and sunk ships to help provide a framework for reefs to grow on.
I prowled around it, looking for any identifiers to report back to Dr. Gail, but I found nothing, so I continued with my investigation.
I was in the middle of analyzing the types of anemone near the wreck when I gradually became aware of an odd sensation of pressure in my head.
It wasn’t water pressure, nor did it come from any sense of external crushing, but it was the sort of thing you might feel if your sinuses were to suddenly clog from a change in altitude.
I wasn’t even using my sinuses, since I had gills that had been engineered into my sides and back to allow me to breathe underwater without assistance.
In fact, my sinuses were currently filled with seawater to equalize the pressure in my head so my skull wouldn’t be crushed at depth.
I stopped my cataloging and focussed my attention on the strange feeling, hoping I wasn’t about to suffer some odd malfunction.
At the same time, the faint, low-rate data signal that my CPU exchanged with Dr. Gail on the Nautilus abruptly stopped.
This was somewhat more concerning than the pressure, and I looked upward as if I might actually spot the Nautilus, which was ridiculous.
I saw nothing but the gleam of the sun above, faint and remote as a star in the night sky.
Of the bright homing light from the Nautilus there was no sign, but that was likely due to the depth of the reef.
I quickly analyzed the last transmission I had received, but there was nothing beyond the normal contact pings that assured me the ship was still there, identical to the way the response from my internal transmitter let Dr. Gail know that I was still functional.
My transmitter seemed to still be working, but I had no idea if whatever was blocking the Nautilus’s signal to me was also interfering with their reception of mine.
Losing signal lock was unusual, of course, but certainly not unheard of.
The recommended procedure was to ascend to a depth where comms could be reestablished before continuing the mission.
But the sensation of pressure in my head grew steadily stronger. It wasn’t painful, but it quickly became alarming. Fortunately, I was experienced enough not to panic, and instead I began a series of internal diagnostics to discover if anything in my biomechanical systems was malfunctioning.
I’d only just begun the process when there was a strange alteration in the pressure.
A sort of ripple, as though something was being modulated through it.
It was almost like sound, but not a sound that came through my ears, nor even a signal through the antenna that transmitted and received the data for my CPU.
This was something I felt in my head, more like the somno waves from my sleeping unit.
I had no other point of reference for what I was experiencing. At the same time, the sensation was oddly familiar, as though I had felt it before, which was ridiculous. And in that bizarre moment of awareness, I perceived a word.
Michael?