Standing at the shores of the dead, I ask:
To where does one return?
✦ ✦ ✦
Z aaa . . . Zaaaaaa . . .
Zaaa . . . Zaaaaaa . . .
He focused his gradually expanding awareness on the noise—a simple two-phrase structure, regularly repeated. Already it echoed within him, filling him, pleasantly stimulating the nerve endings of his as-yet unhardened form. Something inside him was changing dramatically, something new becoming something even newer. The rich ripple of sound raised all of his metabolic functions to their limits. As he gave himself over to the experience, something deep within him ruptured with an audible pop.
At the same moment, the lid of the pod flew outward. A massive rush of air bubbles erupted from the circular porthole. The tiny spheres glowed with a silver sheen in the deep indigo of the water, rising steadily toward the surface. The pod was firmly wedged between two shelves of rock, yet it shook so violently that it seemed for a moment as if it might break free.
When the shuddering subsided he considered his surroundings. All of the machinery inside the pod that had supported his life until now had ceased to function, its work complete. The silvery needles, the air pumps, the circulators, were all unneeded now. They hung limply from the interior walls.
He slid out from beneath the framework of metal pipes where his body had been held like an astronaut in a G-seat. A single, dim orange lamp lit the pod’s interior, revealing features that would not have seemed out of place in a sophisticated spacecraft.
A dull pain throbbed deep inside his head, keeping time with the beating of waves against a distant shore. He flailed with ungainly limbs and made his way out of the structure that had sheltered him for so long. The water was surprisingly cold, and he struggled against the temptation to retreat back inside the pod. With every breath he took, a swarm of air bubbles escaped from beneath his jaw, racing upward and obscuring his vision. Far above, slanted light that was neither blue nor gray penetrated the veil of the water. It occurred to him that such dim light wouldn’t be able to warm this ocean.
The water was ice cold, as heavy and hard as steel, and filled with an inorganic cruelty that seemed to abhor life. It took him an incredible amount of energy and willpower just to move forward.
Suddenly, something pierced his mind like a fiery hot needle. The force of the psychic impact made his body go as rigid as stone.
To the land! Out of the water, onto the land!
The voice tore through his mind, reverberating under his skin, echoing back down into his core.
Onto the land? Whatever for? What is “the land,” anyway?
Words crisscrossed through his mind, illuminating the web of his memory from the inside, flashing like half-seen lightning. Within the folds of his brain, complex signals and combinations of meaning became apparent—yet he was not given the time to confirm each one, to explore or compare.
He raised his roundish head, pushing against the weight of the water, blind to and yet still aware of the unknown territories that existed beyond the unreal blue that surrounded him. And still he heard the ceaseless echoes of the waves surging and receding.
Now go! Onto the land! Go forth, and quickly!
The voice again, goading him on from behind. Ahead of him stretched a blue crevasse. He paddled through the water unconsciously, slowly drifting out over the depths. He found that his body did not move as reliably as he wanted. A place in his head was hurting—deep in his inner ears. The pain made him realize that he was swimming downward now; he had already sunk halfway down the crevasse. The pain increased, bringing him fully to his senses. Every nerve in his body screeched with alarm, and the muscles in his four limbs spasmed like springs.
Facing upward now, he pushed with all his strength to regain the altitude he’d lost. Gradually he advanced at a rising pitch, seeing the vast underwater valley recede far below.
At last the surface became visible above. He rose until his head broke through the water, and he took his first, deep breath, his lungs expanding like parachutes. The ionized air had a strong, sharp smell. Its acidity burned his nostrils and his throat and made his eyelids swell nearly shut. His eyes, narrowed to thin slivers, gave off a blue luminescence.
He made his way through a shoal where waves broke against the rocks, spray misting around his head. His round face bobbed along on the surface of the dark water, unable to leave it very easily, or for very long.
✦ ✦ ✦
The land was low and flat, barely higher than the ocean’s surface. The wind wailed incessantly around him. The sky was painted a solid gray, varying only in degrees of gloom. Beneath its canopy, it was impossible to see where the sun might be, whether it was noon, or evening.
Feet still soaking in the water, he looked out over vast, barren flats. He saw no signs of life. He left the water then, stepped across the wet sand, and headed for the plains that stretched beyond the beach. The wind blew from behind him, whipping past, racing ahead of him far off across the flats. The line of white that stretched between the gray sea and the light brown of the flats, jagged as a broken potsherd, stretched off into nothingness like the line separating life from death. The land beyond seemed strangely featureless, its slight slope almost imperceptible.
Then something caught his eye far off to his left, floating like a mirage. He moved toward it, peering through the stinging air.
Slowly it came into view: a giant walled city, with pointed spires that rose thick as a forest, their tips lost in the low hanging sky. The gray curtain walls that surrounded it, rising from massive foundations, formed a distinctly geometrical pattern, contrasting starkly with the entirely alien sensibility of the complex vertical lines traced by the spires above them.
The city was very far away. For a while, he stood motionless, gazing at it. Gradually, cold fear grew within him. He looked around several times, hoping to find a different goal or direction for which to aim. Primal fear was robbing him of his basic intellectual capacity. Yet in the end, he could find nowhere else to go but toward the city. That, it seemed, was to be his destination.