Deep Blue Me

Cycles Go ‘Round [Chapter 10]

So I never got to use the pool on my vacation, but I’ll get over it. Regardless, I certainly prefer swimming in a pool to any other body of water. Why? Because you can see the bottom of a pool; there’s no mystery of what could be beneath the surface. Unrelated, my next assignment was taking me to an ocean planet.

Omizumaru was a small planet in a system with two others colonized and thriving, but of course, I had no business in either of those places. I was headed down into the atmosphere of the blue sphere, with nothing but water visible from every angle. On top of the lack of any landmarks, I was given only a vague set of coordinates where the client was expected to be.

“Grep?” I said after tuning into dispatch’s frequency.

“Howdy, Anna. Problems with the assignment?”

“Yeah, I’m just… cruising along here above Omizumaru. Is there… really no land here?”

Dispatch hummed. “Well, let’s pull up the galactic guide… now this is just me talkin’ out loud, but I don’t think the gravitational forces of the universe would be so kind to allow just a big old ball of water to be floating about, but I’m sure there are stranger things too. Hmm, yeah, Omizumaru, it has a solid core in the center. Could that be called land, even if it is submerged?”

“I don’t really know…” I puzzled along with him.

“Me neither. Just another bout of talking out loud. But no, Anna, there is no dirt, rock, or otherwise out there. I don’t take it you’ve considered a water landing?”

I held my breath. “Uh…”

“That’s a joke, don’t do that, even if the ship would… probably… do just fine. The client has some sort of floating platform. That bein’ why there’s no set coordinates.”

“Great.”

“You’ve got this, Anna. But you know where to find me.”

Sure enough, after a little while of flying circles around the designated area, the endless waters revealed a geometric platform gently being tugged along the aimless waves. I slowed to a hover while looking for a spot among the service buildings and collections of solar panels. The waiving of a flapped appendage caught my eyes next, which I hoped to understand as a gesture to ‘land here’.

The wind blew like the sighs of a less-than-satisfied client as I opened the front hatch. The person I had seen guiding me down stepped up to the front of my craft. He was a Penkwhen— a feathered type, puffy and round in a way I imagined the cold gusts would have no effect upon him. “Lookie here, the one from Cycles Go ‘Round,” he chirped.

As I made contact with the platform, my stomach immediately shifted. He reached out a flipper and I couldn’t help but take it up to steady myself. I must have grasped too hard during the brief contact, because as soon as I had let go, he pulled it back to his stomach, stroking it with the other.

“Uh, sorry, getting my… sea legs,” I said wavily, glancing down at a pair of webbed feet sticking out from beneath his outer layers. “And yes, I am from Cycles. Anna is my name.”

“Well, welcome to you Anna. We’ve been in contact with your company for a little while now, I’m sure you know. We hope you can give us your little inspection here and, uh, plop some insurance on us.”

I glanced about the platform, mostly plain apart from the few necessary installations I had noticed from the air. “This seems to be a nice spot. A… good start to… your ventures.”

The client cawed with a few short laughs. “Funny, funny. There is plenty to see. Here, our safety inspector, he comes. Squill is his name. Ack! And I am Poli.”

My eyes caught another of the bird folks plopping out of the water onto the deck, shaking his feathers down before busily approaching us. “Insurance inspector is arrived!”

“Greetings,” I nodded, glancing at his moist flipper. “You may call me Anna. Going for a… swim?”

He tilted his feathered head at me. “Anna! Inspecting, myself. Not myself! No, the construction, yes! To make sure everything looks good from below.”

I chuckled purposefully. “Right until the last moment, huh? Well, I don’t think I’ll be needing to go down below to see anything from the bottom side. As long as this structure is built to code and I get your stamp of approval.”

The inspector looked at Poli and shrugged. “Ah,” the client nodded. “No, you will not have to wet yourself in the water. We will take the ferry submersible.”

“Submersible as in… underwater?”

“Yes. To the restaurant!”

My head spun, trying to deflect. “Ah, no need, I am not hungry, thank you very much.”

“But,” Squill flapped his arms. “That is the reason you have come, no? The underwater restaurant is to be insured by Cycles Go ‘Round. My inspections reveal no issues, but there is insurance required for our guests to arrive first, you see? The documents are down there as well.”

“Of course, of course,” I nodded, glancing around for the sign of their submersible or any rogue waves. “Lead on, then.”

The sub itself was nice from the outside, at least the part above the water line. The plank leading to its hatch moved even more than the rest of the floating platform, but focusing on the destination kept my feet moving one after the other until I was down the slick ladder. The dark sucked us up as the top latch was shut. That darkness was replaced by operating lights and the hum of various ominous sounds. I felt a sinking feeling, which I assumed was more than just my stomach.

There was plenty of space to move around in, but my feet decided to stick in the same spot behind the workers while holding onto a handhold just above my head. I avoided looking at the portholes to the outside, dancing with light bubbles against the watery vastness all around us. “So, this is an unexpected place for a restaurant, huh?”

“The first of its kind!” Poli nodded, turning back from the controls. “Our fishermen spend much time on this planet to bring food back to our homes. But fresh is… more fresh! So we decided that our people would come here to eat, instead of the opposite. Do you like fish food, Miss Anna?” He asked.

The inspector tapped him on the shoulder before I could respond. “That is not the word! I think he means, Miss Anna, food of the sea. Are there oceans where you are from?”

I forced out a motion that was halfway between a nod and a shrug. “Actually no. I lived in a few different places when I was young, the last one being a pretty dry planet. So seafood of any sort is something I kind of missed out on. To be honest, I don’t really even know how to swim that well.”

Both Poli and Squill looked my way before engaging in a bout of whispering. “Don’t know how?”

The inspector shook his head. “Like don’t know how to breathe? Or don’t know how to chew food?”

“She has no beak, either, just the little bony parts.”

“What do those have to do with swimming?”

Squill turned back to me finally. “Excuse our rudeness. There are few of your kind to come to our system.”

I smiled and nodded, still holding stiffly to the rod above my head. “No offense taken, I find myself in plenty of… learning experiences, too.”

Poli leaned back from the controls. “If you cannot swim… what happens to you in water?”

“Oh,” I shrugged, trying to keep my peripheral vision from tracking the movement of the water outside. “If I couldn’t plant my feet anywhere, I would have to try and splash around to keep my head above. There was a time when I was a kid in the deep end of a pool…”

“So your outside covering does not soak up water?” Squill looked me up and down.

I shrugged. “My… clothes might weigh me down if they got soaked, but my skin is quite good at keeping water out. In fact, if I don’t moisturize, it’s more likely to let water out than in. The air on my little ship is so dry.”

The two workers exchanged more glances. “I see, featherless skin is like that.”

“Sounds inconvenient,” Poli nodded in agreement. “Miss Anna, we are almost ready to dock below the restaurant.”

I took a deep breath and nodded. “Well, that wasn’t too long a ways. For some reason, I thought this place of yours was going to be at the bottom of the—“

The hard, sudden jostling of the sub interrupted my relief and nearly took me down to the ground. The handhold just above me suddenly snapped against my weight, releasing a loud hiss. The other two wobbled back and forth on their shorts legs, leaning up on the controls as they began to whir with emergency warnings.

“Oh crap, what did I do?” I said, jumping back.

“It is compromised,” Squill said, looking up to the ceiling and the broken pipe. “What system is it for, Poli?”

“The ballast.”

“The ballast. And what does that do?” I asked hurriedly, leaning over the feathered navigator.

“The ballast takes on water to help us go down, Miss Anna,” Squill spoke up, “Hmm, is that why you cannot swim? Because you are so full of water like a ballast?”

“Because of her… moisturization,” Poli tacked on.

“Uh, sure,” I dodged the implication. “So I messed up… the ballast is broken. What does that mean for us? We were just about to dock, right?”

“We were releasing water to rise and make contact. But we can no longer release water, it seems. And so we are descending once more.”

My chest tightened, and I backed myself away. “Oh. I don’t… suppose there’s anyone you can call from here?”

“We cannot call from here,” Squill said plainly. “But I can promise it is safe.”

“Not safe from grabby, fingered hands,” Poli hummed, looking my way.

“I’m sorry!” I huffed.

Squill stepped up to me and took up my hand, examining my fingers and the open spaces between them. “I see, Poli! This kind cannot swim because there are no webs between their fingers. Look, it is all smooth and disconnected.”

“I see as well,” The architect nodded, leaning in uncomfortably close to my appendage.

I jerked my hand back. “It’s just me! Terrans can swim, webs or not! Not as well as you lot, but just enough. As for me, well, there’s a bit of childhood trauma and a large lack of trying. Story of my life, to be honest. Can we focus on the present, though? How do we get… anywhere besides here?”

Poli was at one of the port holes, staring out into the distance. “It is no problem, Miss Anna. We can swim up to the restaurant and get a tool for fixing the pipe. Not a problem. The submersible is made for staying underwater, after all.”

Squill tapped on the other’s back before engaging in more attempted whispering. “We will fall behind schedule if we do not go back up soon, though.”

“No time to fix?”

“No time to fix, I highly doubt.”

“We shall get the second sub.”

Poli waddled around and looked me up and down, then up at the round, sealed door to the outside. “Miss Anna, if we are to leave out the hatch, I must ask that you stay to close it behind us. There will be much water, but it should not damage the electronics if it is kept to a minimum. If you cannot swim… it is possible for you to hold your breath?”

I stomped loudly, causing a reverberation through the metal and forcing both of them to jerk back. “I can tell you, whatever plan you thought up with just now isn’t going to work for me!”

Poli and Squill scuttled to the other side of the already compact compartment and huddled side by side. “Oh my feathers! I believe that she may be one of those telepathics.”

“Reading your brains?”

“And yours too!”

“Guys,” I said with a huff. “I’m certainly no mind reader, you’re just… frankly, not very good at whispering. I’m sure your plans would work fine if it were just your kind, but there’s no way I’m getting out of this submarine unless it’s to some dry space. The platform, or even the restaurant of yours, whatever is fine. If there is a delay in your work because of that, then I shall have my company reimburse you. Heck, I’ll pay out of pocket if I can convince my boss that I need hazard pay for stuff like this. So I hope you’re going to tell me that there’s another way out of this situation. Tell me about that other sub.”

Poli bowed his head and nodded. “Yes. To take turns bringing down people and supplies to the restaurant.”

“Great! But the problem is,” I sighed, daring to glance at the porthole window for a few blinks of the eye, “Is that there is no way to call to the other workers? I’d dare to say that’s a safety issue on its own, Mr. Inspector.”

Squill blinked at me. “Is that so? Poli?”

“I have not heard of such a requirement. We would never have the need for such a machine. These subs made not in this system, special ordered to accompany some of our workers, and also future guests that are not our kind.”

“When we get out of this, you’ll have to tell me the name of the company so I can remember to never recommend their products to anyone.” I said, slumping my shoulders, “And you might take note of a few things to add and change before they end up getting used by your guests,” I concluded, glancing up at the broken pipe.

“Technically, you are our first guest,” Poli noted. “It was going to be a surprise, but we expected to serve you a taste of our upcoming menu. To oil you up.”

“Butter you up,” Squill whispered.

“Butter you up.”

I surrendered myself to sitting down in a cramped corner against the curved wall. “That’s very nice. I’m not sitting on anything important here, I hope.”

The two whispered a bit more. “Ah yes, she does not like fish food… err, sea food.”

“It was a folly, yes,” Poli slumped down.

A tinge of guilt appeared in the pit of my stomach. “Hey, if we get out of here, I’ll try anything. Maybe your seafood here is different enough from the vile things I’ve been forced to try other places. But… wait, if someone is making food for us… up there in the restaurant, wouldn’t they be waiting for us? Be worried that we are not making it on time?”

“We have not hired a full-time chef, yet,” Poli said with an air of guilt, bowing his head.

“And that means?”

“Well, I was going to be the one to make the food today. It is my restaurant, my design, and my menu after all.”

Squill nodded vigorously. “I have tried his food. It is very well made. Which is why I came here to ensure the restaurant would find completion.”

“He is a good friend, no?” Poli added, patting the inspector on the shoulder.

I glanced between them. “Am I detecting some nepotism going on here?”

“That means?”

“Not to make any accusations, but it sounds to me like your inspections might be quite lax since you’re doing it for your friend and all.”

“Is that not what friends are for?”

I held myself back from continuing the line of questioning, fearing I might strike a nerve before being able to get myself rescued. “Never mind. I’ll shut my mouth so you two might have a chance to figure something better out.”

The two Penkwhens nodded and turned back to the control panels, not making another sound. I curled up, feeling the cold air of the compartment against my still sun-kissed skin. The longer the silence went on, I realized it was not silent at all. The metal hull creaked and popped ever so slightly. The slight rocking motion of the submarine reminded me that we were at the mercy of the water. After some time, I couldn’t help but notice my breath becoming heavier, exiting my mouth with a slight fog. My hands shook next, followed by my legs.

Ignoring the dark porthole window, I laid eyes upon the less-than-helpful crew, still huddled in place in the corner, shifting slightly, but otherwise making no sound. “Damn it!” I exclaimed, jerking myself up. “You two piss me off. We’re going to run out of air in here, aren’t we? What are you even doing there?”

I shoved myself between them. They were busy tapping away messages in a search bar on one of the control screens. “We are sorry, Miss Anna. You said our whispering was too loud. We are thinking of ways.”

Squill held his flaps in front of him. “And yes, the air will run out. Eventually. I do not know when. We do not need much air. But your lungs must be different. You perhaps… breathe more?”

“I can’t help that!” I stomped. “But if we run out before the second sub gets around to us… yeah, that’s no good. Does your other sub even have a way to find this one? It’s impossibly dark out there.”

Poli held his head in his hands. “Too many questions, Miss Anna.”

Squill flapped about. “We can get out of here, insurance girl! You just must… be brave. Brave of water and against drowning!”

“No amount of bravery is going to save me from needing fresh oxygen in my lungs every thirty seconds. A minute. At the very least!”

“Understood, but the fresh oxygen in this submersible…”

I huffed lowly. “Just tell me what you want to do.”

Poli straightened himself up and began with a formal tone. “A bubble will be released when the hatch opens. If you cannot float, it will float for you. It is also air for breathing. Then you may hold us to be pulled up to the restaurant.”

I convinced myself that I had not heard or understood any of the preceding nonsense. “Fine. At least I will meet my end doing what I do best.”

“Not being able to breathe?”

“No, actually, I haven’t had an asthma attack since I was a teen,” I said, rapping at my chest. “So you just want me to shove that hatch open, yeah? How cold is the water? You know what, I don’t want to know.”

I saw the Penkwhens motion to stop me as I mounted the ladder. I ignored them, grasping the cold, slick metal of the hatch’s round handle. I felt them grab at my feet as I gave it a twist.

I felt the immediate spray of salty water, which turned to a waterfall, entering my mouth and interrupting what I had intended to be my final breath. My sinuses burned as the water took the place of the air in my respiratory system. I felt myself being pushed up from the hatch, bubbles tickling me all over, but I refused to open my eyes. I couldn’t help but smack and kick at the two clients as they swam under me, hopefully guiding me to any place other than the water.

My head bounced off something hard. I lurched back, causing me to surface, albeit unintentionally, to the outside. My hands found the edge next, and I pulled myself out, coughing and sputtering. When my feet had exited, I tossed what I found to be feathers from my grip and wiped my face down.

“We have reached the restaurant.”

I let out a laugh against my will, drippingly propping myself against the nearby wall. “Oh, was that it? No, not a… not a problem.”

“We are anchored to a reef,” Squill explained. “It is so the restaurant will not float around. Alas, it is not very deep here.”

I blinked the stinging water from my eyes and glanced at the place we had climbed out of. Not far below the hatch was the vague shape and murky lights of the submersible, bubbling gently as it let out the last of its air.

Slinging the wet hair from my face, I shook my head. “Is the submersible really necessary then? Why not a tunnel to get down here? Does your planet not have the concept of stairs?”

Poli balanced with me on the edge of the platform with me. “It is an entertainment form, Miss Anna. The submersible is part of the experience.”

“And what an experience it is,” I said, finding my feet beneath me once again.

The lobby space was much more roomy and well-lit than the sub. I straightened my dipping clothes in a nearby mirror, only to realize that it wasn’t a mirror, but a wide window looking out into the ocean itself.

“It is quite thick material,” Squill noted. “Do not worry.”

“Oh, I’m not. It’s better than the sub.”

The inspector clapped his flippers together and nodded. “Indeed. No matter how hungry the things are out there, it is us who will be eating them.”

Poli held his flippers out and began something of a rehearsed-sounding speech. “That is what the Deep Blue will bring to our guests! Our nearby home planet has long fished these waters for the delicacies of the deep, shipping them far across our little system here to consume. But now, for a price… people can come to the source.”

Despite my desire to distract myself from the window, I couldn’t help but notice the shadows of more than a few things swimming in the murkiness beyond the clear material. “Oh, so there are just giant things out there swimming, ready to eat whatever might be smaller than them?”

“That is nature, Miss Anna,” Poli nodded.

“Well, I am not interested in becoming one with it. So you better get the second sub here to bring us back up to the surface. We’ll talk about what’s necessary before any policies get thrown into the mix.”

<– Previous Chapter | Next Chapter –>