On the Level

by Tepal_tea

Summary:

Marine biology researcher Stanford Pines takes a job working at the Dexamene Ocean Bed Facility, an underwater research facility operating in the depths of the ocean, alongside his best friend and engineering expert Fiddleford McGucket. Always fascinated with the weird, he could never have predicted what they would find down there. Encoded whalesong, strange dreams, and impossible technology malfunctions are just the start of the mysteries. But how dangerous is Ford's new muse? And how far will Ford go to uncover the truth?

(AU where Ford is a marine researcher and Bill is the Lovecraftian sea monster he unintentionally stumbles upon)

Notes:

I'm very sick right now with a mystery illness and feeling sad and lonely so I decided to write monster romance fanfic for fun. Please let me know if there are any mistakes cuz I feel like my head is filled with bees adn I wouldn't be surprised

Chapter 1: Whalesong

Noticing didn’t take much effort. In fact, trying to put in effort was what made it disappear. When Stanford was wiped out from diving and analyzing population counts all day, his brain buzzing like TV static, he would simply take notice, without really trying to, of the fact that there was something watching him.

It was kind of like meditating. Letting go of greed and anger and fear, he became an empty bottle, through which a presence could be seen, magnified.

Well, not really seen . Stanford had never seen anything when he noticed the presence. To become alert and look about, perhaps through the nearest porthole, would only cause the mind to lose that sense of emptiness. Ford had tried before, suddenly cold and alone when the fleeting sensation of those eyes left him. There was a trick to enacting will upon your body while keeping your mind blank. Even then, the only thing he saw through the porthole was the dark water.

He might have assumed he was simply imagining things that weren’t there---after all, he had been living in high pressure at an underwater research facility off the Florida Keys for nearly two months now, which was sure to make anyone feel a little odd. But he knew he wasn’t the only one.

“Do you ever feel like…like there’s something watching you, from the ocean?” Fiddleford asked one black day---though most days were black in the Dexamene Ocean Bed Facility, a little metal tube of a a research facility clinging to the floor of the bathypelagic zone where no light could travel. Fiddleford was Ford’s closest friend; they had attended the same college, though Ford had gone on to study marine biology, and Fiddleford had turned to engineering. Still, they had found their way together again. In college they’d spent many long nights studying for tests together, and now they spent many more nights with Stanford stewing over ion composition in seawater samples while Fiddleford fussed with a disobedient rebreather.

“I hadn’t noticed any watching sensation,” Ford lied, already brandishing his journal in preparation to jot down anything interesting Fiddleford mentioned. Perhaps it was not kind to lie to his friend, but he didn’t think stoking the fires of Fiddleford’s anxiety would be of any use to him. Perhaps once he knew more, he could confide in his friend.

Fiddleford chewed on his plastic fork absently, frowning at the galley porthole. In his hand, forgotten, was a plastic freeze-dried package of what had been tentatively labeled “oatmeal”. The galley was a cramped space, so the two deliberately ate at unusual times, to avoid crowding. 

They were joined today by Jennifer, rattling a bag of freeze-dried peas and carrots which she’d just filled with water. Jennifer mainly studied volcanic vents and kept track of seismological shifts. They weren’t very close, but Ford liked her well enough. He sort of had to, since stays in the Dexamene Ocean Bed Facility tended towards months of time stuck with a crew of ten or so. At the moment, the current crew consisted of seven researchers; Stanford, Jennifer, Parker, Amir, Tom, Mark, and Lena, as well as three technicians responsible for keeping the facility running, the tools in working condition, and the divers safe; Helen, Fiddleford, and Brett.

“Maybe the pressure’s getting to me,” Fiddleford admitted with a laugh, “It’s just, sometimes when I’m all alone, I feel like something’s looking at me through the window.”

“Maybe it’s Sheriff Blubs,” Jennifer suggested, with characteristic humor. Sheriff Blubs was the name she had given to a stout little barreleye who sometimes made its way near the facility, visible only by its bioluminescence. A rare animal, the first few sightings of Sheriff Blubs had been rather exciting, but over time the researchers got used to him.

“It wasn’t Sheriff Blubs. I would have seen Sheriff Blubs,” Fiddleford insisted, somewhat sullenly, “I couldn’t see it. But it was real, and aware. I felt like it knew that I was in here .”

Jennifer paused, her plastic spork an inch from her mouth, holding a mushy bite of freeze-dried vegetables, “Dude, that is such a creepy thing to say.”

Fiddleford stirred around his oatmeal in the plastic bag, “I’m sorry. I just---it’s been bothering me.”

“Hey, I’ll keep you company when you walk around the facility,” Jennifer offered, “You said it only happens when you’re alone, right?”

Ford would have liked to offer to keep Fiddleford company as well, but he actually did want to experience that feeling of being watched more. It made him curious, and he couldn’t help but wonder what caused it. His working theory was some form of infrasound produced by the goings-on of the facility, or even of the sea, as well as psychological factors like the constant presiding terror that came from being nearly 3,000 meters under the surface of the sea in the aphotic zone with only fallible human technology to let you know the time of day. Or maybe he and Ford were both having a little shared delusion.

The Dexamene Ocean Bed Facility had been designed based on a facility stationed much closer to sea level, near the coral reefs. For that facility, having many portholes in each room was a nice touch that helped the crew feel less like they were trapped in a little metal tube, allowing them to see out into the blue ocean. In the Dexamene Facility, however, this just meant that in any given room there were a couple of big round holes feeding directly into the Great Black Void. The twilight zone looked like it was lightless---the midnight zone, where the facility was located, was actually lightness. Of course, no person would have chosen to work at the facility if they were impairingly fearful of the dark---researchers had to take regular dives to gather information---but it could still grate on even the sturdiest mind. Anything could be watching in the dark, and they wouldn’t be able to see it in turn.

 

“Hey, fellas,” Lena called into the surfacing room. Stanford jerked to attention where he’d been hovering over a monocular microscope. The surfacing room was where divers would surface, as the name implied. Stanford had just returned from a dive with a few samples.

“Lena,” he adjusted his diving glasses, made smaller and flatter to his face so he could fit them behind his diving mask, “What’s going on?”

She tapped her short fingernails on the side of the doorway, “Are you the only one here?”

“As far as I’m aware,” Ford glanced down to the deep black water, “I think Amir was planning to resurface in thirty minutes. You should ask Fiddleford.”

She shook her head, “Doesn’t matter. Come on. You’re gonna want to see this.”

Ford had seen Lena’s work station before. She did her research with Jennifer and Tom on seismography. Apparently, they’d all come from the same program. Those geothermal vents on the sea floor, black smokers, were possibly the source of the energy required for the formation of life on earth, as Jennifer had told him once. The room was a mess of wires and tech---the disorganized layout and delicate sensory equipment were the bane of Fiddleford’s existence.

It seemed that whoever was currently unoccupied by a dive was present. Tom and Jennifer crouched in front of a blinking screen, and Parker had on a pair of chunky gray headphones, frowning as she listened.

“Ford, take a gander at this,” Jennifer stood up, offering him another pair of chunky gray headphones, “You worked with marine mammals for a while, right? I thought you might be able to identify the sounds better than us.”

Ford placed the headphones over his ears, instantly muffling the ambient sound in the room. 

It took him a moment to hear it.

A low noise groaned through the headphones, keening and long. It felt enormous and distant, sending shivers up his spine. There were more low groans, and then a high squeal, like a violin. He’d never heard sounds quite like it, though it did resemble…

“This is whalesong,” he said, “Isn’t it?”

“We thought so,” she looked doubtful, her voice muffled by the headphones and the slowly disappearing song whirling through his ears, “So it’s really just whalesong? We’ve never heard whalesong so deep under sea level.”

Ford started, wrenching the headphones from his head, “Where is this recording from?”

“We recorded it at out elevation,” she explained, “But…we think it probably came from below us.”

Ford spluttered, “Are you sure?”

Tom spoke up, “I know sometimes sperm whales will go down to midnight---”

“Sperm whales don’t sing, they click. Even then, a whale has never been recorded to venture deeper than our current elevation. The furthest ever recorded was a Cuvier’s beaked whale at about three thousand meters, and they still don’t even make noises like this. Can you tell how far below us the noise came from?”

“I’m not sure,” Tom admitted, “But quite a ways. I’m putting my best estimate at two thousand meters. Ish.”

“Two thousand ,” Ford scraped a hand through his hair, “Two thousand meters. What could have made that sound?”

“My guess,” Parker volunteered, taking off her headphones, “Earthquake.”

Ford scoffed, “That was no earthquake. That was---that was an animal. Something big. Not anything we’ve ever heard of.”

Jennifer shot him a look, “I know this speculation biz is your thing, Ford, but remember the Bloop?”

Ford frowned, discomfited by her accuracy. It was true that he’d spent a good while being convinced that a creature large enough to make such a sound might possibly exist. Having learned more in his studies at uni, and being the temporary laughingstock of every other student in his major, he eventually accepted that it was quite unlikely. Nevertheless, a fragile little part of him still wanted to believe it could be true, that there were anomalies no one understood yet, anomalies he could be the one to uncover, if he was bright enough.

“There are many species we just haven’t found yet. Even species that seem impossible,” Ford said, “I’m sure you remember when the giant squid was a simple myth. It is arrogant to believe we have discovered all there is to discover.”

Jennifer turned her head, possibly to roll her eyes, “Well, we have no idea what the sound is. Not like we can dive down there and find it.”

“Right,” Ford agreed. It was much too deep for their diving suits to withstand.

Lena pulled out the tape, scribbling down “Whalesong <4,000m” as a temporary title.

“If you don’t mind, Lena,” Ford cleared his throat, “Could you make a copy of the recording for me? I’d like to run my own analysis.”

Lena raised her eyebrows. Jennifer turned her head away, and this time Ford heard her let out a little laugh. His hands curled at his sides.

“You can have it,” Lena said, in the tone of someone dealing with their dementia-ridden grandparent, “But you know it’s probably an earthquake or something, right?”

Ford smiled tensely, “Right. Of course.”

Ford spent the night listening to the tape again and again and again in the bunk above Mark’s and next to Fiddleford’s. He couldn’t put it down. He began to memorize the sounds, what twist in the music came where, the point at which the song rose to a violin’s squeal, the point at which it rumbled like a landslide. 

He felt as if his blood was made of electricity. This could be his proof, his monster.

He’d show them. He’d show everyone.

Chapter 2: The Rabbit Hole

Notes:

hiii i finally finished with finals and got over my sickness and now I can post. This chapter is a little short cuz I had to split one chapter in two but I like it

“Ford,” Fiddleford gently pressed his arm, and Ford jumped, “Whoa! Sorry.”

“No that’s---that’s alright,” he buried his fingers in his hair, “I was just occupied.”

Fiddleford hummed, “You’ve been occupied a lot recently. This isn’t still about those whale noises, is it?”

Ford turned red, “No.”

Fiddleford didn’t seem convinced, “Just don’t get sucked in again.”

Ford had often spent time at school becoming infatuated with a specific subject until it was the only thing he could do. He would spend hours focusing, not drinking, or sleeping, or eating. He didn’t do that anymore, of course. He was an adult, and had learned to regulate himself.

“I’ll be fine, Fiddleford,” he laughed, “I swear it.”

Ford dreamed of floating now, nearly every night. He was floating in the air, in a lone black void. There was nothing around him. All was quiet. They were peaceful dreams, and he thought that said a lot about his mental state; blank calm. He was doing good.

Additionally, he was pretty sure he’d uncovered a pattern in the whalesong. There were a few repetitions of noises, which he could organize into matching points. He wasn’t sure before, but he was now convinced it was a solvable code---or perhaps a language. Some species of whale were capable of relatively sophisticated “speech”, a wide variety of sounds with different, complex meanings. Perhaps he wouldn’t find a monster or an unknown species, but a new whale would be a stunning discovery as well.

With the whalesong to focus on, Ford could admit that he hadn’t been as on top of his research as he normally was. Because he was an adult with control over himself, he amended this by finishing his data analysis for all of the new seawater samples in only two days in a flurry of numbers and papers. 

Since Mark had a recent experience with an equipment malfunction, the technicians had asked everyone to go out with partners for the next few weeks at least. Ford’s preferred diving times just so happened to coincide the best with Lena’s, which was somewhat awkward. Thankfully, there wasn’t a lot of talking when they were diving. They would make a plan prior to the dive and commence their dive. While they could communicate to Brett on the through-water system, and Brett could pass on messages from Lena to Ford and vice versa, the delay was usually too long, and hand signs were simpler. Hand signs were great. A specialized code used only in Deepex stations and adapted from some parts of ASL to work with the thick gloves of atmospheric diving suits, there was a select amount of hand signs useful only for professional work; meaning no awkward interpersonal conversations. Ford was sure there would be no issues. Lena was a professional, and so was Ford---whatever she thought of him.

Ford could admit, to a certain extent, that he would not have drifted as far from Lena as he did if he was more pleased with her at that time.

He only wanted to explore an interesting glowing item in the distance---a jellyfish, he theorized. He informed Brett he would be breaking off for about five feet and signed the same to Lena.

The light had seemed close before, so he was surprised to realize he hadn’t reached it yet, even after kicking for a while. Perhaps he wasn’t making as much distance as usual, but it still seemed as far away as it had been initially, like it was moving away from him as he moved forward.

With the open consideration of a scientist, Ford paddled backwards. The light seemed to follow. He paddled to his left. Again, the light moved to the left. 

The first and most logical explanation was a trick of his perception; an item far enough away that it seemed to follow him when he moved. Like clouds. It would have to be incredibly large to produce this illusion. The other explanation was that it was a creature who was intentionally mirroring his movements, for whatever reason. Both of these possibilities were unsettling, but also very cool.

After some thought, Ford decided to head back to Lena. 

“Heading back, Brett,” he said, his voice captured on the contact throat mic looped over his neck.

He turned around to where he’d left Lena. 

There was only the black ocean.

His head whirled with puzzlement. 

She had been right there, the lights on her atmospheric diving suit glittering, just a minute ago. He couldn’t have been swimming for that long. The ocean around him looked unfamiliar. Casting his gaze downward, he no longer was near the sea bed where the divers generally tried to stick. It was too dark to see below him, but it looked like open ocean.

“Brett,” he said, realizing he hadn’t heard any confirmation from the man that he’d been heard, “I’m not seeing Lena. Do you copy?”

Nothing.

Equipment complications were bound to happen sometimes, he reminded himself. A malfunctioning through-water system was better than a malfunctioning joint---that had been Mark’s problem. Ford would simply have to work through it. He had six to seven hours of air, and he’d only been out here for an hour and a half. He had plenty of time.

He paddled in the direction he remembered last seeing Lena. It occurred to him to look behind him at what the light was doing. As he’d expected, it appeared to be following him from the same distance.

He still couldn’t see anything in the blackness, other than that light behind him. He had never been scared of the depths before, aside from the first few times he took a dive. His suit was thick and secure-feeling, and the facility had always been easy to find. When he’d came across one of the many strange creatures living in the bathyal, it had only been a wondrous experience, like seeing his textbooks come to life before his eyes.

But now he couldn’t see Lena, or the facility, or even any animals. It was not unusual to not see any life for a while, but for some reason the blankness now disturbed him. He looked to the light behind his back. It almost felt like it was taunting him. 

Maybe he was losing his mind. 

Maybe he was dreaming---this was a lot like his dreams of floating, except in the dreams he was in the air, light and free. Right now he was under the kind of pressure that would collapse his skull if he weren’t in the diving suit, only capable of pushing very, very slowly through the water.

Ford tried not to panic. The more he panicked, the more air he would use up. Thinking about not-panicking just made him want to panic more.

His sense of direction spiraled. He couldn’t tell up from down. 

He had never been so aware of his own smallness. A tiny speck in a vast ocean, enshrouded in the darkness. He was nothing.

With effort, he slowed his breathing, stilling his body in the water and closing his eyes behind the glass of his suit. He let his mind clear, let himself feel blank. When he wasn’t moving, forcing himself against the syrupy water resistance, he almost felt as if he was on the surface, in the air. His heart beat slowed; he drifted horizontally.

He noticed, in a detached sort of way, that something was watching him, the way he’d felt in the facility before when he was alone.

Dreamily, he opened his eyes.

Below him---and he knew it was below him, because he could feel the greater sense of gravity now that he wasn’t panicking---waited a round white shape with a black center.

It was very far away, but still quite visible. He tried to comprehend its size, and just couldn’t.

It twitched, dilated, focused on him. 

An eye.

Ford struggled to keep his mind blank and his body relaxed.

Giant squid had the biggest eyes of any animal on earth. About the size of a human head, Ford had one in his office on land, preserved in a jar. It had been a real catch. One of the best-preserved specimens he’d ever found.

This eye was much, much bigger, studded within the dark body of some moving beast whose curling limbs faded into the depths, light glancing off and unable to reach the bulk of its body. This animal must have been thousands of meters below him. It was so much bigger than anything he had ever seen before. 

Ford had no idea what to do. Flee upwards? Try to find the facility again? Go…downwards?

A thrum of terror filled him. He started to tremble, broken from his meditative state into cold reality.

The eye vanished in a wink, leaving only black nihility below him.

Chapter 3: As Above So Below

Notes:

Sorry I was gone I got a new job and stopped having any spare time ToT
Anyway happy MLK day don't forget that disruptive protest is the only avenue for political change

Ford floundered, gasping, his heart sputtering like a broken hose. 

There was a hum of electronics in his ear.

“-ford! Stanford! Diver 7! Come in, Diver 7!” Brett shouted loud enough to hurt.

“Brett, I’m here! I’m here!”

There was a chorus of voices over the radio, distant, as if they were in the room with Brett. They seemed to be crying out in relief.

“Where are you?” Fiddleford asked into the earpiece, “You’ve been cut off of the system for five hours. We haven’t been able to find you with the scanners.”

“I don’t know,” Ford admitted, “I might be closer than before if the through-water system is working again, though.”

He continued to swim in that direction once more. 

When he looked over his shoulder, he noticed that the light that had led him away from Lena was gone. It had simply vanished.

He spotted, in the distance, a few lights, manmade ones. He recognized the distinct visual pattern of another diving suit.

The other person in the suit grasped him with clumsy gloves when he came near, and they swam together to the facility, nestled in the sea bed.

Ford had never been so relieved to see the surfacing room, its familiar row of monocular microscopes, a new crab specimen trapped under plastic on the table. He’d never been so relieved to remove his diving suit either. His hands were trembling, and his body felt weak, as if he’d swum for miles and miles. He could hardly take off the heavy, armor-like suit.

The diver who’d led him back took off her suit much quicker. 

It was Lena, her face drawn.

“Lena,” he said, fumbling with the catches on his suit, “I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t have left.”

Lena helped take off his the top of his suit with a harsh yank, “Do you have any idea how scary that was for us?”

“I know,” he paused, “I saw something. Down below me.”

She stilled, “What do you mean?”

“It was this enormous eye. Attached to an enormous animal. I couldn’t get a clear look at its body. But it was bigger than anything I’d ever seen.”

“A giant squid?” through her drawn countenance, a glimmer of excitement rose. A giant squid would be an amazing find, especially if they could get photographs.”

Ford shook his head, “I don’t think so.”

Lena’s lips pursed, “Just--- Get inside, Pines.”

Ford couldn’t stop shivering, as embarrassing as it was when the crew gathered around him. They were even pushier than they had been with Mark. He hardly had a moment to put on his jacket before he was being swarmed.

“What’s the fuss?” he asked, bemused, when Amir shoved a cup of lukewarm coffee into his hands.

“We thought you were dead,” Amir searched his face as if trying to read a complicated map, “We were just barely holding out hope when you came back on the system.”

Ford did the math; Fiddleford said he’d been cut off from the through-water system for five hours, and before that he’d been diving for one and a half hours. That was very much on-nearing-over the limit of how much air his suit contained, especially because he’d been panicking quite a bit. He hadn’t thought to check his air levels since he saw the great eye, but he’d probably been just about to run out of air when he got to the facility. He was very, very lucky he found it when he had. It was unsettling to realize how close he was to death.

“What happened out there?” asked Jennifer. She was biting her nails---she hadn’t done that in a while.

“While we were diving, I saw a light, so I went to investigate,” Ford explained, “I assumed it was a jelly, or some other bioluminescent animal. It didn’t look like it was very far away, but I guess it was. I never found out what it was. When I tried turning back to meet up with Lena, I couldn’t see her anymore, and I couldn’t use the through-water system anymore.”

“How did you swim so far from Lena without noticing?” Jennifer asked.

“I’m not sure. It felt like something had…” Ford could hardly coalesce the idea which he’d only latently put together, “Something led me out there.”

The room was silent.

Ford went on with his story, “I tried to swim back to the facility after that, and on the way back I saw an eye below me. Bigger than anything I’d ever seen. Bigger than any living animal. Then it disappeared, and my through-water system connected again. Lucky me, I guess I got here right before I lost my air.”

“Not according to your suit,” piped up Brett from behind Ford. 

He turned to Brett. Fiddleford was by his side, his face white. He was looking at the output readings from Ford’s suit.

“Apparently, you ran out of air forty three minutes before you made it to the surfacing room,” Brett took the output from Fiddleford’s hands and turned it over to show Ford.

His heart raced, “I don’t…”

Ford had experienced trying to breathe from an empty tank before. It was one of the exercises they went through in their dive training, to prepare them to handle the situation calmly. The sensation of using a near-empty tank was like trying to breathe through a heavy fabric. It would slowly get more and more difficult to get in a breath, until there was nothing to suck in at all. At the point where Ford indicated he had no air, the instructor pulled him up from the water.

The swim he’d just taken had felt like swimming with a full tank, the whole time.

“This must be a mistake,” he said.

“You’re sure you weren’t having any trouble breathing at all?”

“I’m sure.”

Brett took back the output with a heavy sigh, “We’re going to be taking a week off of dives, until we do a full assessment and revamp of all of the equipment. I don’t like this.”

Fiddleford dawdled behind after Brett left the room. Fiddleford had a darting manner about him, like a spooked deer.

“Are you okay?” Ford asked softly, taking his cold hand.

“There’s nothing wrong---” Fiddleford cleared his throat, “There’s nothing wrong with the through-water system. Nothing I can find. It’d been working perfectly before your dive. It’s working perfectly now.”

“It’s quite mysterious, isn’t it?” Ford rested his chin in his hand. He was trying hard not to smile, “We’ve never come across something so unusual.”

Fiddleford’s eyebrows came together, “I don’t know if I can keep being curious about this, Stanford.”

“What do you mean?”

He shook his head, “This thing , whatever it is. Whatever was responsible for that eye you saw. Whatever made that whalesong. Whatever you’re trying to uncover. There’s a point at which it becomes necessary to prioritize safety over scientific discovery, and I think we’re near that point.”

“We are being safe. And we’re making discoveries!”

Fiddleford laughed mirthlessly, “You could have suffocated out there today! We have no idea what’s going on with the equipment, or with that thing you saw. I believe you that there’s something going on here, but we can’t just blindly pursue it. I’m going to be writing my weekly technical report soon and I’m thinking of making a recommendation that we withdraw everyone from this facility for the time being. Helen and Brett agreed to sign on, too.”

Ford recoiled, “You can’t be serious. Fiddleford---” he became aware of everyone in the room, pretending not to listen to them, and he lowered his voice, “If you care for me at all, you won’t do this.”

“Of course I care for you! I care for you more than anything. That’s why I’m doing this,” his voice cracked under strain. His face was red.

Ford shook his head, “You can’t. You don’t understand how important this is to me.”

Fiddleford’s face turned redder. His fists were bunched around the output.

“Hey, McGucket!” Brett called form the door, “We need you over here.”

Of course, the tech team was currently preparing to do a full examination and repair of every piece of diving and comms equipment they had. Fiddleford couldn’t waste time arguing with Ford.

Fiddleford sent a last frown in Ford’s direction, “Let’s talk later, alright?”

Ford did not answer. He turned and left, ignoring the weight of his coworkers’ eyes on him.

That night, tucked into one of the little bunks, conspicuously not looking at Fiddleford, Ford dreamed of walking the facility. He was all alone, and there were about three times as many porthole windows as usual, scattered in unusual places on slanted surfaces, the floor, or the ceiling.

He was a clear glass jar, and his hair stood on end. He was being watched.

Without losing the blankness of his mind, he spun in circles to see through those black windows. Nothing, nothing, nothing met him.

“I want to see you too,” he called muddily, to whatever was watching him, and his voice came out with a plaintive whine, like a child’s begging, “It’s only fair.”

A sound rattled the walls and the floor and the ceiling. A low wail, rising until it keened like a violin, until it shrieked. Ford doubled over with a cry, clutching his head as the sound seemed to bore through his eardrums into his brain.

Then there was abrupt silence. He took his hands off of his ears and looked up.

All of the windows were enormous, round eyes, their narrow pupils fixed singularly on him.

Chapter 4: The Turn of the Screw

Notes:

hey how was everyones valentines day. mine was terrible. hot girls only grind on me platonically :(
anyway this was supposed to be one chapter but now its two praise the lord and his miracles

“There was more weird whalesong last night,” Lena said sourly, shoving a tape into his arms, “Thought you’d like to have a copy.”

“Thank you, Lena,” he held the new tape reverently. He’d spent so much time memorizing every complexity of the first recording. An entirely new recording was like a fresh well of discovery to draw from, just dropped into his lap. 

“Have you been able to figure out anything about what the song is communicating?”

“Not yet,” Ford admitted, “I’ve been cross-referencing with whalesong from similar-sounding species---humpbacks, bowheads, blue whales…but even better-studied species songs aren’t fully understood. The meanings of different noises are unclear at the moment. All we can be sure of is that whatever makes these noises is trying to communicate with someone---possibly another of its kind.”

Lena seemed to deflate.

“What’s wrong?” Ford asked, reaching out a tentative hand for her shoulder.

“I don’t know. I guess I was just hoping you would have some explanation for this that would make me feel better,” she sighed, “I just feel so useless.”

“You’re not useless. You’re an invaluable member of our team.”

She laughed thickly, “Please don’t feed me that Deepex shit, Stanford. I know you’re spooked too, even if you try to hide it. We’re all spooked. I don’t know if I can ever feel safe diving far from the facility again.”

“ I made it out of there okay. Lena, malfunctions are going to happen. We just have to do our best to minimize them. We always knew this position be dangerous.”

“I know!” she threw up her hands, “I took the job knowing it would be dangerous. I did my research. This is different from anything we’ve come across before. I was happy to be down here before. It was manageable and fathomable, even if it was dangerous. I understood the dangers. But now we can’t trust our equipment, or any of our readings. You’re seeing big eyes in the middle of the ocean, Jen busted open her nicotine patches again, Helen and Brett are tearing apart the comms like wild animals, and Fiddleford is making Jen babysit him because he’s having paranoid delusions,” she paused, perhaps remembering that Ford was his friend, “I mean, not delusions , just…he’s been very paranoid recently.”

“Fiddleford has been having feelings of being watched for a while,” Ford said carefully. He felt a twinge of guilt for not being there to support his friend. Particularly since their argument, there had been some awkwardness between them. The only saving grace was that Fiddleford hadn’t ended up signing that recommendation.

“You know, that doesn’t make it better. Actually, that makes it worse.”

Ford didn’t think it would help if he confessed to also feeling watched, so he kept his mouth shut.

“God,” she muttered, turning to the doorway, “I need to go crunch some numbers. Maybe we’ll at least figure out where exactly the music is coming from.”

Stanford still had some work he’d set aside for the day, but if he got up early tomorrow, he could get it done then. That left him with the rest of the day to pore over the new tape.

Somehow, he ended up staying awake in an office until morning. By the time he alerted himself to how long he’d been there, his legs had fallen asleep, his mouth was dry, and his eyes stung. Parker strolled by his door in her workout clothes, and shot him a bemused glance. He wasn’t normally up this early.

He smiled feebly, “Just getting a good start on the day.”

Parker eyed his rumpled clothes critically---the same clothes he’d had on yesterday, “I can see that. Do you want some coffee?”

“Yes, that would be nice,” Ford lifted himself from the desk. His legs were still on pins and needles. He tried to walk normally, but his shoes came down too hard on the metal floor, and Parker kept watching him with a cocked head, as if anticipating laughing at him when he fell on his face.

Parker was one of the older researchers on the team. She’d been working for Deepex for nearly thirty years, and had been stationed on and off the Dexamene Facility for a cumulative amount of time much longer than any other crew member, including Helen, who was otherwise the most senior crew member on the Dexamene Facility. Since physical fitness was so important for the work, most researchers tended to be younger. Parker’s strength and dexterity never seemed to sap with her age, though. Ford could only imagine how powerful she had been in her prime.

The coffee in the break room wasn’t very good, but a caffeine addiction was a caffeine addiction, and Ford savored the bitter, grainy sensation. Even though he’d left the tapes in his bag, the squeal of the whalesong played on loop in his mind, the way he’d replayed it all night. The new song was different from the old one. Ford had never had perfect pitch or any sense of rhythm, but he could now recite each note of each song, and count out the rests between them. Fiddleford’s doubt and Lena’s desperation both only motivated Ford to uncover the mystery of the whalesong with greater urgency.

Parker set her mug down in front of him and sat. Her arms were shiny with sweat from her workout. Her lined face seemed to sink deeper as she sipped her coffee, as though relaxing. Quick logic helped Ford recognize it was the opposite; her face was wrinkling with disgust at the taste. Faces did not sink when they relaxed, they smoothed. 

Ford rubbed his eyes, digging crust from the corners. Whalesong gurgled in his ears, inaudible to Parker.

“You don’t have to go it alone,” Parker said after a moment, her voice dry. She cleared her throat.

“It’s a good thing I’m not alone,” Stanford said primly, his grip tightening around his coffee cup, “In case you’re not aware, we all work here.”

He regretted the sarcasm the moment it left his lips. Parker was a very respected member of the crew, and he truly had no ill will towards her. He’d been feeling defensive of his work recently.

Parker didn’t seem upset, though. She chuckled, “You’re alone in every way that matters.”

“I always have been. I managed just fine so far.”

“If you asked, anybody here would help you.”

Ford scoffed, “Please.”

She raised her eyebrows.

Chagrined, he admitted, “My closest friend is telling me to stop doing my research. This is the first time we’ve ever had a real disagreement, a disagreement that mattered. And I’ve never been close with anyone else in the facility. No offense. I can’t rely on other people. I have to figure this out by myself.”

“I used to teach a Biology 101 class full of non-majors just trying to get their gen ed done with,” Parker said, “And somehow what you just said is still the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard.”

Ford coughed. That hadn’t been the answer he expected.

“You are a young man, and I will give you some advice because I’ve been young before too. Go make up with your friend. In a few years time you’ll look back on this and realize how ridiculous it was.”

Ford looked down at his reflection in the metal table. He’d never been good at reconciling. When someone disappointed him, he usually just quietly left their life. What was the point in investing in exhausting relationships if you couldn’t even agree about the important things?

“Thank you, Parker,” he said eventually, “I’ll take your suggestions into consideration.”

“Hmm,” she sipped her coffee. 

Whenever Ford slept, which wasn’t very often, between his usual work and the whalesong, he continually dreamed of portholes with enormous eyes. That, or his floating dreams. Those seemed to happen less and less frequently, though, perhaps because his state of mind was not as tranquil as before.

On a night when Ford forced himself to step back from the whalesong---for the sake of refreshing his mind---he laid in the bunk above Mark and next to Fiddleford.

Ford turned his head to catalogue the curve of his friend’s face, his weak jaw and his frizzed hair. Fiddleford’s shadow flickered as he scratched his nose: he was awake.

“Fiddleford,” Stanford whispered, reaching a hand across the narrow space between bunks to tap Fiddleford’s arm.

Fiddleford didn’t push him away, but he didn’t respond either.

“I don’t want us to fight,” Stanford admitted, “I shouldn’t have blown up like that.”

Fiddleford sighed, his arm relaxed, “Wasn’t your fault. I shouldn’t have threatened to stop the research. I should’ve known how it would affect you.”

“I forgive you.”

Fiddleford was quiet for a moment. Then, he said, “I’m glad.”

Notes:

edit: Oh btw I was gonna say uh I've set the facility around bathyal waters, which is quite a few meters deeper than a human in an ADS suit can go. Don't take this fic to your bio test is all I'm saying.
The problem with deep sea atmospheric diving suits especially around this time period is that they're basically one-person submarines with like zero finger or leg articulation which is BORING and makes for less dynamic action/visuals. When it comes to diving I also love the stripped-down terror of being exposed to the ocean in a diving suit that you have to move around like a part of your body. The machine just feels a little too protective. So I decided Fiddleford is responsible for advancing ADS technology like 100 years into the future. Listen that man made a memory-wiping gun he can manage a fancy little diving suit

Chapter 5: The Bends

Notes:

hiiiii im back i just had a bunch of tasks going on but now im good although one of my face piercings is acting up and I had to get gross injections in my face which made me very unhappy. idk why im fine with piercing needles, but getting shots squicks me out so much. the dermatologist was like "it won't be painful I mean you got the initial piercing" and I was like girl pain is not the problem I just think its icky. And then my insurance wouldn't pay for the shots so now I got no money and my face hurt :(

Ford dreamed of floating again. Now, unlike previous times, he was encased in the tough armor of his atmospheric diving suit. The blackness all around him did not provide the resistance of water to his exploratory arm-waving. He moved quickly and easily, like he was in air. 

This idea was disproved by a little vampire squid swimming past him, it’s webbed tentacles flowing with movement. He chuckled, delighted, the noise coming back to him in echo. He tilted his body to catch a glimpse of the false squid’s spiny cirri, but it moved too quickly.

The glowing blue body of a fish zipped over his head. He craned his neck to watch it. Small, skinny, and bioluminescent, it had a gaping jaw with snaggled teeth. A bristlemouth, he realized. How unusual.

He was startled from his observation by a pull on his arm. He whirled around to see an enormous octopus, its bulbous head larger than his. Its tentacle was wrapped around arm. A giant pacific octopus, he realized. That also didn’t seem quite right for these depths. Gently, he tried to unravel the tentacle from his arm, popping powerful suckers from the hull of his suit.

“Could you set me free, my friend?” he asked into his helmet.

He was surprised when the octopus did let go, its arms swirling about behind it. He had always been impressed by the intelligence of octopi, but he doubted one would be intelligent enough to understand him, even if it could hear through his suit.

He floated over a long ribbon-like creature drifting from below him. It took him a moment to recognize it as a siphonophore, formed of a linked community of tiny zooids. The siphonophore rippled hypnotizingly, red haloed in blue.

A few feet away, what definitely looked like a great white shark swam through the black water. The sight was so ridiculous Ford wanted to laugh.

“What is this?” he wondered aloud.

Below him, an enormous eye opened.

He gazed down upon the great eye, its elongated pupil stretching over its round white surface. Ford was holding his breath.

His earpiece crackled, but none of the tech team’s voices came through the line. 

He cried out with pain as it squealed and groaned like an animal, deafening noise piercing his skull. He curled over, holding his helmeted head while white flashed through his vision.

Then the noise cleared. A voice came through the earpiece, dim and muted as if traveling through a metal tunnel.

The voice sounded strangely like a combination of Brett, Helen, and Fiddleford’s voices, mushed together into a high-pitched, warbly tone that lacked solid definition, “Look over to your right.”

Ford looked to his right. Of course, many feet away, the ridiculous great white from before pushed through the water, its dark, torpedo-shaped body sliding smoothly across the edge of his vision.

“That’s not a great white,” the voice said, thick with buzzing tone.

Ford looked closer. It was big, a lot bigger than a great white ought to be. Its face shape wasn’t quite right, either.

“That’s not a real shark,” he said, eventually, “There’s no shark like that.”

Suddenly, a long-necked beast with four fins dipped down from above. Ford barely had the time to say plesiosaurus! before the shark propelled itself forward with its powerful tail and snapped the dinosaur’s neck with its great jaws, large enough Ford could put his whole head in its mouth and not touch the sides. It shook like a dog, bright blood pluming in the water.

Cold with a mixture of fear and fascination, Ford was frozen. It was insanely fast, and strong. If he tried to swim away, it would outstrip him easily. He would be dead in one bite.

“Have you ever heard of Cretoxyrhina mantelli ?” the voice asked, “I’ve been told that’s the scientific name.”

Ford had too. An extinct species of mackerel shark, Ford had never spent much time imagining what they looked like. This specimen, lost to a cloud of blood, seemed real and alive before him. He didn’t doubt for a moment that this was the true appearance of the extinct shark.

“Who are you?” Ford asked, his voice uncertain. The shark disappeared into the blackness along with its prey, like puppets scooped up at the end of a show.

“Isn’t that the question?” the voice danced playfully from ear to ear, “You can call me a friend. Or, if you want a name, you can call me Bill.”

It was such a human name it sounded incongruous with the layered, ethereal voice feeding into his ear. Ford said, uncertainly, “You’re not a human.”

There was a faint buzzing, “Do I need to be? I’m more human than those other ants you call coworkers. I’m a thousand times the humans they are. I’m intelligent, and ancient, and I do whatever I want. I have no need for acceptance, and I have no need for help. I simply am. I’ve been around here forever. Inspiring artists, confusing sailors, sharing my secrets with scientists. No one’s ever come as close to me as you have, though.”

“Dexamene is the deepest underwater facility ever built,” Ford explained, “Though we don’t travel nearly as deep as some expeditions have. Like the Trieste, for one.”

It was only when he thought of the Trieste that it occurred to him that he likely wasn’t the only one who’d ever been physically closest to the bottom of the ocean. What did the voice mean by “close”, then?

“I remember that. What fun! It was so important to you, but hardly a speck in the trench for me. Just a little soda can, with two humans in it,” a rattling noise came from the headset, and then a pop and a fshhhh that Ford quickly realized was meant to mimic the sound of the fizz of carbonation when you broke the seal on a soda can.

“A bathyscaphe,” Ford corrected, discomfitted by the image of immense hands popping open a can filled with people.

Brett-Helen-Fiddleford laughed into his ear with the rhythm of a choir, “I love how you humans are always guessing, always digging around. Totally blind. I can see you all, in that little metal habitat of yours, taking your samples, trying to understand. I like watching them, but I like watching you best of all.”

For some bizarre reason, Ford blushed.

“Fascinating. I had experienced the feeling of being watched from the portholes. And when I got lost with Lena---was that you, down there? The eye?”

“Take a guess.”

That was as much as confirmation.

“And the whalesong. Is that you too?”

“You already know that, don’t you, smart guy?”

An ethereal feather star whirled over Ford’s head, its arms brushing the glass of the suit, right above his cheek. 

“How are you speaking to me?” Ford asked, “If you are speaking to me, and not just a figment of my imagination.”

“I can find you among those other scientists like a flamethrower in the silverware drawer. Your mind is easy to touch, when you open it up. You have a particular focus. No one else does.”

Was that why he felt that presence watching him more than---well, more than everyone else except Fiddleford.

“If you would like,” the choir said, “You can swim down to me. I’ll show you my arms.”

“You arms?” Ford was already orienting himself downwards.

“You scientist types like to count arms, don’t you?”

“We do,” Ford agreed, “It’s important information. How many arms do you have?”

“I told you you could count, didn’t I?”

Ford laughed, “Do you know how many arms you have?”

A buzz that gave a distinct sense of affront came through the earpiece, “Of course I do. But why would you believe me? Scientists observe with their own eyes. They figure things out for themselves. Can you figure this out?”

“Are you testing me?” the concept came with some excitement for Ford; he hadn’t been given an opportunity to really prove himself in a while.

“You could say that.”

Ford began to swim downwards, his blood in his head, spinning.

“How can I know that you are what you say you are?” Ford asked, through heavy breaths.

“I’m only telling you what you already know,” the voice responded, “This is just a dream, after all.”

It didn’t feel like any dream Ford had ever had before.

The suit started creaking.

Ford continued to descend. 

Only when the armor was pressing against his chest, a solid crumple present in the back of the helmet, did he pause.

“I think the pressure is too high down here,” he admitted to the great eye which seemed now to eclipse his vision. The blackness of the pupil swallowed up his outstretched gloves. The gloves weren’t very manueverable for anyone (use of more precise tools was generally preferred for sample collection), so it would have been little trouble to squeeze his hands into five-fingered ones, but Fiddleford had specially built gloves for him. Made of a dull water-protected material, they seemed to fade at the fingertips into the pitch black below.

“You can push through it,” the choir said, “You’re stronger than most humans.”

Ford continued swimming down, a headache blossoming in his skull. 

Alarmingly, his vision fuzzed out in one of his eyes.

“I-I can’t go anymore,” his voice felt brittle, like a clump of sand crumbling in a fist, squeezed too tightly to stay together anymore.

The choir chuckled again, the sound dizzying in his ears, straining. He felt nauseous. The elongated pupil of the eye got bigger, black swallowing up more of the surface.

“That’s okay,” the voice soothed, “You’ll get there. You’re the sharpest human I’ve come across in a long time.”

Warmth glowed in his chest, despite the cold press of the collapsing suit.

There was a sucking sound, and blackness surrounded him. 

Ford woke with a shout.

“Jesus Christ!” Fiddleford yelped. Ford, struggling with his bedsheet, saw Fiddleford pop up on the side of the bed, only half-dressed in his work clothes, “Ford, are you okay?”

Ford finally escaped his sheets. Laying in his pajamas, covered in sweat, with his concerned friend hovering over him, he felt kind of ridiculous.

“I’m fine,” he managed, “Just a weird dream.”

“Oh,” Fiddleford seemed to slump in relief, “I get those all the time. Have you tried meditation? It’s supposed to help with stress. I can teach you how to do it.”

“I’m quite alright,” Ford insisted, gently peeling Fiddleford’s hand off of his sweaty wrist.

“Oh, excuse me,” he chuckled awkwardly. After a moment, he climbed off of the bed, turning away to do up the buttons on his shirt with a distinct air of self-consciousness. 

Ford blinked up at the metal ceiling. He blinked once, then twice, very rapidly. 

He jumped upright in bed, his limbs flying to get out, “I’ve got it!”

Ignoring Fiddleford’s confusion, he bolted down the hall barefoot and in his pajamas to his office. He nearly overshot his doorway, and he sat down heavily at his desk. He pulled out the whalesong tapes, gently, like they were made of glass. Then he opened up his journal to a blank page and drew straight staves with a ruler.

He played the first tape and transcribed down each note onto the staff. His hand flew across the paper like a darting sparrow. Notes were not necessarily musical notes. Some would be clicks or other, more complicated tonal differences he would place onto the staff, denoted by different shapes. It was a code only he understood, made up on the spot. Beneath clusters of notes, he counted out beats and rests, until he had formed a sequence of letters.

He set his pen down, burying his hands in his hair. He laughed delightedly, “I’ve done it! I’ve really done it!”

Some impulse led him to turn his eyes to the nearest porthole. Round and dark, it offered no rejoinder.

He scrambled to his feet, “I have to tell everyone !”

Chapter 6: Are You My Muse?

Notes:

*I emerge from the primordial goop spitting and choking* what is up everypony

“This is insane,” Helen said, “This is more insane than your eye story.”

Ford flushed, “You don’t have to believe me. I know I’m right.”

Helen regarded him blandly over the top of his open journal, “Listen, Pines. If what you’re saying is true, there’s an animal out there that can understand English and is choosing to communicate exclusively through letter-number codes in whalesong .”

“When you say it like that, it sounds hard to believe,” Ford admitted.

“It is hard to believe,” Helen set the journal down on the table, “And the most unbelievable part of it is that you somehow figured it out by yourself in the span of a week.”

“It was simple insight---I woke up and everything just clicked,” Ford explained weakly. He hadn’t told anyone about his dream, fearing it would be too incongruous, on top of everything else.

“I mean, the letters are definitely consistent with the sounds, though,” Jennifer piped up, looking over Helen’s shoulder, “And the letters make words, with only one letter that doesn’t fit. That has to be one hell of a coincidence, if it is one.”

Ford had only translated the first tape before running to tell everyone. It read out HEY GENIUS IN THREE WEEKS GET READY FOR A BIG SURPRISE, then a pause, and then, I CAN HARDLY WAIT FOR IT MYSELF, another pause, and then THE SUSPENSE IS KRILLING ME.

“Not to take any side here, but there’s still that wrong letter,” Amir said, “How are we supposed to account for that?”

“Everyone makes mistakes. The rest fits so perfectly, how can you discount it?” Ford carefully pulled his translations from under Helen’s hand. An M had been smudged by her careless fingers.

Helen groaned, “Because it’s ridiculous, Pines. Because it doesn’t make sense. It’s not possible. End of story.”

“I still think we should have advised leave for the crew,” Fiddleford mumbled. Ford frowned at him.

“Something is going on in this facility that is influencing some of you in unusual ways. All of this is insane,” Helen said, with her eyes on Fiddleford. 

Fiddleford’s “imminent nervous breakdown”, as Mark so kindly referred to it, was an open secret amongst the rest of the crew. Ford hadn’t told Fiddleford ---he didn’t think Fiddleford needed to know everyone was gossiping about him behind his back on top of everything else--- but he deliberately misorganized the folders of anyone he heard saying bad things about his friend, even hiding important data sheets in the back of the kitchen cabinet when Mark and Amir made a particularly nasty joke about raccoons and IQ scores.

Ford held his journal to his chest, “If you can’t accept the facts when they’re sitting in front of your face, then I have nothing more to say to you.”

“Hey, let’s not jump the gun,” Fiddleford’s eyes shifted to Ford, then Helen, then back to Ford. Ford hoped his friend believed him, but Helen was the de facto head of the tech crew, so he understood that Fiddleford couldn’t take sides without it being awkward.

“McGucket’s right,” Parker said abruptly, “We can’t decide one or the other opinion is completely correct at the moment. All we know is the information we have. We know that there is whalesong being picked up by our sensors somewhere below us. We know that the whalesong can be translated into a somewhat coherent set of letters. We know that Pines saw an eye in the depths. We don’t know that the sensors are reliable, we don’t know that the song is truly a code for this sentence, and we don’t know that the eye was truly as Ford perceived it. So what? We’re scientists. We’ll figure it out.”

There was a murmur among the crew. People seemed to be nodding. Ford was impressed that just a few sentences had been so effective in changing the energy of the crew.

“I believe you about the whalesong,” contributed Lena with a shrug.

Ford blinked, surprised. If anyone was supporting him, he would not have expected it to be Lena. He supposed it made sense, though. After he got lost on the dive, Lena had become rather encouraging of his attempts to solve the code.

“If we interpret the message to be referring to three weeks from when we first caught it on the sensors, then whatever surprise it’s talking about should happen in four or five days,” Stanford proposed, “So, we’ll wait until then and if nothing happens, then my translation might be wrong. But if something happens…”

“Sure, let’s wait around for something to happen! Whatever that is,” Helen said, in a tone that made it clear exactly what she thought of it, “In the meantime, we should actually do our jobs. So if you’ll excuse me, I’ll be in the control room.”

She left, mussing her hair with one hand. The room began to clear with her---it was rarely a long-term situation to have nearly the entire crew in one room.

“Helen’s just been stressed out,” Fiddleford assured Ford quietly, “She doesn’t mean it personally.”

“All of the greatest minds were in their time derided,” Ford said, “I can accept the price of discovery.”

Lena snorted, “Right. Let me know what you get from the second tape.”

“I will, the moment I decode it,” Ford turned from her to find Fiddleford, biting on his knuckles, his brow deeply wrinkled.

He watched his friend for a moment.

“Fiddleford,” he said.

Fiddleford unfastened his teeth from his knuckles, “Yeah?”

“Do you believe me?”

Fiddleford hesitated, “Well, of course I do. I know you wouldn’t lie to us.”

Ford smiled and drew him into a tight hug. Fiddleford’s arms wrapped loosely around his back, and Ford felt his chest expand and then shrink as he sighed.

“Ford…”

“Yes?” Ford pulled back to regard his friend.

“You should probably go put on some pants.”

 

The second tape was a shorter message. It just said KEEP YOUR EYE ON THE PRIZE SMART GUY, with a very long pause, and then NUMBERS ARE THE REVERSE OF LETTERS.

Ford had no idea what the second statement meant, but at least there were no misspellings for his coworkers to pick at.

Five days passed. Six. Ford held out hope the entire day, constantly checking on Jennifer, Tom, and Lena in the sensor room, searching into the black void of the portholes. Then seven days. There was nothing of note.

Ford scoured his notes for anything he’d missed. He retraced his steps again and again, listened to the tapes again and again. There was nothing new.

On the eighth day, it just so happened that the tech team had cleared the crew for diving again. Amir and Parker were the first test divers, which made sense; Parker being the most experienced diver and Amir being the sharpest on his feet. Halfway through the dive, which was going great otherwise, Amir called in to tell Brett and Fiddleford that he’d found a dense concentration of life moving towards a point in the benthic northwards of the facility. 

Helen and Fiddleford fretted about any divers traveling far so recently to Ford’s encounter. Ford felt a little chill at the familiarity of following wildlife away from the facility.

Amir insisted that they would stick together and check in with tech every few minutes, and would turn back to the facility if they lost contact.

“This is a terrible idea,” Helen said.

“But they could discover something invaluable,” Ford piped up. Heads turned to him, as if in surprise. He looked down, clearing his throat awkwardly.

Eventually, the tech team agreed to having the divers go further, just for another hour. The divers reached the end of the hour and hadn’t found anything, so they came back to the facility. After some debate, they decided there would be another expedition focused on getting to that area. The divers would have extra oxygen, just in case, and would turn back within three hours if they didn’t find anything.

The next day, a burst of activity came from the tech room.

“Whalefall,” Fiddleford confirmed from Parker after a moment, and the scientists exploded into heated speculation. 

This was of great excitement for the crew. They all crowded over photos from the deep-sea camera and clamored to be the next to dive and take a look. The sight was fantastic from afar; in an effort not to interfere, the divers kept their distance. The massive carcass of the finback whale was mostly intact. The winding bodies of hagfish, the creeping of many-legged scavengers, and the fluttering of other bottom-feeding fish swarmed the structure to the point where it was difficult to tell what was dead whale and what was living scavenger. In the deep sea it was rare to receive large sources of nutrients. This whalefall was the most exciting thing to happen here in a long time, and an amazing convenience that it was so close to the facility. This would provide decades of activity for them to study. It was like a party, and everyone was invited. Stanford, despite how aggressively he advocated to get out there, ended up being the fifth one to see the whalefall, which he supposed spoke to how excited everyone else was.

After Stanford returned to the facility and shed his suit, a thought occurred to him.

“How long ago would you guess the whale carcass showed up?” he asked Amir and Parker, squeezing the hard surface of his special six-fingered gloves.

The two of them exchanged looks, and their eyes widened.

“Relatively recently,” Parker said, “Possibly…”

“Yesterday, right?” Stanford buzzed with excitement, “This must have been what the message was talking about!”

“Finback whales eat krill,” Amir brought up, suddenly.

“Amir, you’re a genius,” Ford shook him by the shoulders, “It wasn’t a misspelling at all! Krilling . It was clever wordplay!”

“A pun,” Parker said, “Someone left a pun in their whalesong code.”

“I’m not sure what is the purpose, or who or what it is,” Ford admitted, finally releasing Amir, who seemed uncomfortable with the contact, “But that is something , isn’t it?”

“It sure is something ,” Amir looked perturbed, “That’s what I don’t like about it.”

Every dream was now about being watched by portholes, or spoken to by the great eye, who Stanford had grown to think of as a muse---inspiring artists, confusing sailors, and sharing secrets with scientists indeed. His muse told him about the oceans of the past and challenged him with logic puzzles. He did not again attempt to swim down to his muse, though he thought of it often. Perhaps it was his imagination creating a personality for whatever strange being was communicating with them, but he found himself holding affection for the great eye, for its humor and intelligence. He liked that it though he was smart. And this he knew to be true, because even in the whalesong codes his muse called him a genius .

When Lena came to him with another tape in hand, he knew before she ever spoke that they’d picked up more whalesong.

“This is the longest one,” she turned it over in her hand, “Wonder what it has to say.”

“I’ll find out in due time,” Ford assured her with a broad smile.

She shook her head, “You are way too into this.”

The new whalesong code started out coherently: WHALE I DIDNT SEE THAT COMING, a pause, HAHA GET IT, a longer pause, and then it devolved into an unintelligible string of letters: I8W2O15U9A7S7G10J2K7F8A1A8S4…

Ford was befuddled, but he didn’t allow this setback to shake his faith. The letters had to mean something. It was most likely that the key was in the strange phrase his muse had said in the second message. NUMBERS ARE THE REVERSE OF LETTERS. 

He was still puzzling over the code when he noticed that he was being watched.

He looked out the dark porthole.

A familiar voice came from behind him, thick with pity, “Did you get stuck on my code?”

Ford whirled around. Fiddleford was standing in the doorway, except it wasn’t Fiddleford. The posture, casually leaning against the door, was very subtly unlike him. The voice was identical to his in timbre, pitch, and texture, but it lacked Fiddleford’s manner of speaking, his unique rhythm, his enunciation. It was all gone, written over by something else. 

Fiddleford’s pupils looked unusually long.

“Are you Bill?” Ford asked, his hand clenched tight around his pen.

“Are you my mother?” not-Fiddleford giggled. He stepped forward. Ford tensed, unintentionally sliding backwards.

“Oh, don’t be afraid,” not-Fiddleford cooed, “I was just joking. It’s me!”

Ford relaxed a little, though the appearance of his friend disguising what was obviously not his friend made him nervous. The tech team’s voices mashed together in his earpiece had been less perturbing, somehow.

Ford cleared his throat, and tried to regain his deliberation, “I don’t understand your new code. Why can’t you just speak to me, tell me what it is?”

Bill laughed, so flatly different from Fiddleford’s characteristic snigger, “I won’t tell you anything you don’t already know. I’m confident you can figure it out, IQ. You’re always underestimating yourself.”

Ford straightened, equal measures of flattered and afraid, “Of course. I’ll work tirelessly until I’ve discovered the code’s meaning. I would have done that anyway.”

“You’d better,” Bill tapped him on the cheek playfully with Fiddleford’s calloused finger, “Now step to it!”

There was a sucking noise as everything went black. 

Ford jolted awake at his desk, pen ink smudged on his cheek. 

He took a deep breath, adjusted his glasses, and got back to work.

“Stanford,” Fiddleford knocked gently on the outside of his office a few hours later. For the sake of space preservation, there weren’t any hinged doors in the facility except for the bathroom door, so it was just the open doorway.

Ford paused, setting down his pen, “Yes?”

It gave him a dizzy sense of familiarity to see Fiddleford coming to his office after his dream, quite normal and himself. 

“The crew’s settling down for a game of cards. Do you wanna join?”

Ford chuckled, “I appreciate the offer, but I’m far too busy.”

Fiddleford frowned, “Are you sure? The only thing I’ve seen you doing lately is work.”

“Yes, well,” Ford tapped his pen, “The only place success comes before work is in the dictionary.”

Fiddleford’s responding laugh sounded flat, for some reason, “If you change your mind, come down to the bunks and play a round.”

Ford agreed and returned to his work.

It seemed as if Fiddleford returned in only a few minutes, hovering at the door again.

Ford glanced at him from the corner of his eye, “Yes?”

Fiddleford’s mouth pulled down at the corners, “I got you something to eat.”

He held up a bowl of spaghetti. Ford was touched. They never normally bothered to place foods in the bowls, simply eating out of the plastic. Ford knew for a fact that Fiddleford always ate from the plastic---in fact, he was holding his own meal still in its container by his side.

Ford grunted, cracking his back as he got up from his seat. He pulled out another chair from under the pile of paraphernalia he’d stacked atop it, “Come sit down with me. I can hardly work while I eat anyhow.”

Fiddleford paused, looking at the cleared chair with hesitance.

“Oh, sorry,” Ford realized, “You were playing cards with the rest of the crew, weren’t you?”

Fiddleford’s brow creased, “We were playing cards two and a half hours ago.”

Ford’s eyes darted to his watch. It was nine, but it still felt like midday to him.

“Excuse me,” Ford cleared his throat, “I must have lost track of time.”

Fiddleford’s brow creased even deeper, but he did sit down.

They ate in silence.

“Tomorrow,” Ford said, “Could you ask the crew if they’d like to play cards again? I’ll set some time aside in the afternoon.”

Fiddleford smiled, “Sure I will.”

Notes:

sorry for dying I promise I'll post more frequently I just got sad and then a man did me wrong and then I became temporarily celibate and then I got a week long ear infection and then I felt guilty for abandoning this fic which made me not want to work on this fic for some god damn reason anyways

Chapter 7: Playing the Game

Notes:

I feel like its been years since i posted oopsy daisies ik its been like two months and i WAS going to be more consistent but then I forgot
Recently I haven't been able to eat lol so if someone has tips for motivating yourself to eat when food tastes disgusting for no reason pls drop that shit

Cards were, surprisingly enough, very fun. The crew was rowdy and excitable (Ford suspected at the very least that Parker, Amir, and Jennifer had consumed substances technically not allowed in the facility) and it was clear everyone really just wanted to blow off steam. 

Ford thought about the last person he consistently played cards with. They came up with cheating strategies together, and it was little surprise that they spent more time playing other people for money than playing each other. A game between two cheaters was a disaster. Stanley had never been able to turn his tricks inward. The way he played was no way to play against friends. Not that the crew was Ford’s friends.

The games slipped away from him, and he was leaning over on Fiddleford’s shoulder by the time they wrapped up.

“Do you want to get ready for bed?” Fiddleford asked him kindly, patting his arm. The feeling was soothing, and only deepened Ford’s desire to let his eyes slip shut.

“Mm---yes,” Ford straightened, with effort, “Excuse me.”

He gathered up his cards and added them to the pile. 

“I can put it away,” Fiddleford offered.

“No, no, I’m fine,” Ford left the bunk to head to the cabinet in the break room where they kept games. He pushed it into a little space between the cloth chessboard and the paperstock Monopoly board, and accidentally knocked over a stack of graphing paper on top of the pile which he and Fiddleford had been using for DD&MD a month ago.

Already wishing he just let Fiddleford put it away for him, he bent down to gather up the papers. His fingers traced over the intersections of the graphs absently. Memories of filling out dots on graphs sunk into his mind.

He jolted to his feet, “How obvious!”

Forgetting the mess, he snatched a handful of graphing paper and bolted to his office.

The letters from the whalesong took the x axis and the numbers the y. It took him a few minutes to graph out the string of letters and numbers. In the end, they formed a round shape---with an oval in its center. An eye. The eye. The one Ford saw nearly every night in his dreams now, the one he’d seen below him when he was separated from Lena. He hadn’t imagined it. The whalesong wasn’t unrelated or random. It was all connected. He’d been right all along! 

He jumped from his desk with the paper and ran back to the bunks, eager to tell Fiddleford what he’d discovered.

“Look at this!” he burst out as he entered the room.

Fiddleford, buttoning up his pajama shirt, jumped five feet in the air, and the other crew members looked over with alarm from where they were too, except for Mark, who slept like a log.

Fiddleford fumbled with his glasses, “What in the hay?”

“Look!” Ford pointed at the eye, “ This is what the code within the code meant! You’re supposed to graph it onto two axes. And it makes an eye like the one I saw.”

Fiddleford’s eyes widened, “That’s---that’s astounding, Stanford.”

He sounded genuine, but for some reason, he looked…worried.

“I’m just surprised it took me so long to figure it out,” Ford chuckled, aware and a bit ashamed of his own attempt at fishing.

To his credit, it worked.

“ I wouldn’t have figured it out,” Fiddleford said, “Probably ever. It’s real impressive.”

Warmth glowed in Ford’s chest.

“I wonder why it’s communicating with us, though.”

Fiddleford still looked worried, “I have no clue.”

Ford set a hand on his shoulder, “Don’t worry. We’ll figure it out eventually.”

“I’m sure we will,” he replied, but he didn’t sound especially happy about it. 

 

“Pines!” Mark emerged from the diving room brandishing a little piece of yellowish rock. He hadn’t even taken off his undersuit.

Ford scanned his stance alertly, a bit startled. Parker and Helen, the two others in the room, seemed nervous too. Parker sidled slightly in front of him, which was sweet.

“Look at this,” Mark thrust the stone at Ford, ignoring the two women.

Ford cocked his head. Engraved into the rough, yellowish stone was an eye with a long pupil, very much like the one Ford had seen in the deep, and the one he’d just graphed onto paper.

“Where did you find this?” Ford asked. The crew had been spending basically all of their time tracking the progression of feeding around the site of the whalefall, but there was no way Mark could have collected this from the site, considering they weren’t supposed to swim too close to the seabed at the whalefall site, for fear of disrupting the process and skewing their observations.

“Down on the ocean floor, just a few meters below Dexamene,” Mark set the stone down on the sample table, “I think it was a part of a bigger thing. There are some lines here that are just barely cut off.”

“This stone could be completely unrelated to Stanford’s discovery,” Parker pointed out reasonably. Ford’s chest glowed to hear it referred to as his discovery.

Helen pursed her lips tightly. Ford could tell she still didn’t buy his theory, but Helen wasn’t one to continue fights for no reason, so she kept her silence.

“Could I have it? Just to keep an eye on it,” Ford chuckled at his own joke, “Or maybe it’ll keep an eye on me.”

You could hear a pin drop. Nobody seemed to think it was funny. Oh well.

The rock found a home on his desk. Examination with a magnifying glass and a pocket knife showed it to be composed of sandstone. Without more sophisticated equipment and perhaps a geology textbook or two, he couldn’t uncover more about its origins. He supposed he’d have to wait until he got on land to get a better look at it, but it wasn’t at the top of his list of priorities.

In the afternoon, Lena came to him with another tape, “This one’s real long.”

“He must have a lot to say,” Ford smiled and traced his fingers over the tape, “Or a lot to draw.”

She gave him a look, “I still don’t know how you have the patience to sit around solving these damn things every day.”

“Think of everything we could discover. A little bit of extra work doesn’t seem so bad if you see it that way.”

She raised her eyebrow, “A little ? All I ever see you do now is hunch over at your desk working. Speaking of, where’s your report for this week? I haven’t seen it on the stack yet.”

He flushed. It was true that he was a little behind on his report, and his research in general, which was only exacerbated by the new work being done on the whalefall. So solving the songs put a few extra tasks on his plate. No big deal. Now that he understood the code, it was likely his new translations would be much smoother---as long as it didn’t keep throwing him curveballs.

The new message was another string of letters and numbers. Graphing it was short work. It created an odd shape, sharp and mechanical, like a piece of a machine. He wasn’t sure what it was supposed to mean, but he kept the paper with the others anyhow. 

Then, it was time to get caught up on his research. Ford had, of course, not slacked on collecting his information, but he’d left most of the raw data to sit, and now had to do a lot of sorting and organizing which would probably have taken less time if he hadn’t let it pile up.

He was surprised when Lena came to him the next day with another tape. Normally there was more of a break between whalesong messages. Then the next day she came with another tape, before he’d even graphed the old one. Then another, and another. Each of the messages were more strings of letters and numbers, which Ford graphed to make varieties of mechanical shapes. By the end of the week, there were ten new graphed images. Ford still had no idea what they meant, and they just kept coming.

Leaning over his desk one day to mess with his computer, which had gone on the fritz, Fiddleford shot a glance at the drawings and asked, “Oh, what’re you building?”

“I’m not building anything,” Ford sighed, “Those are the messages I’ve been getting from the whalesong.”

“Really?” he cocked his head, “Well, these are all engine parts for an air tank---or a gas tank? Or both.”

Ford straightened, “Really?” 

“Sure are. Look like a pretty sophisticated build.”

Ford’s hand flew to his mouth, “Say, Fiddleford, how hard would it be to get some of these parts down here?”

Fiddleford paused, frowning, but the prospect of a new, exciting opportunity to build something was clearly getting to him too. A flash of interest crossed his face.

“Well, we have some of these already,” he rubbed his chin, “I can ask for more parts from the next ship-in.”

“That would be excellent.”

“Are you sure this is a good idea? We don’t know who is telling us to collect these parts, or why.”

“That’s what I want to find out,” Ford clicked his pen excitedly.

Fiddleford shot him an affectionately exasperated look, “You know it’s probably not a sea monster, right?”

“I don’t think it’s a sea monster. Monster is a reductive term. Cryptid would be more appropriate.”

“Stanford, I’m no die-hard skeptic, but,” he gestured to the parts, “All of these pieces are modern models of electronics we make on the surface. How the hell would some big old kraken know what these look like?”

Ford didn’t want to tell him about his dreams, because he would sound insane. He still wasn’t sure how real they were himself. 

He couldn’t explain that he knew this was a voice higher than humans. There was no reason for him to know this; all of the basic processes of good science went against this kind of intuitive, knee-jerk belief. He could only describe it as similar to religious gnosis. He just knew . Ford had never understood why people had faith in a higher power before, why they simply accepted that faith was enough. Now he did. He felt all the more clever for not finding it in silly things like temples or books, but in something special---a real power.

“The world is an amazing and mysterious place,” he slung his arm over his friend’s shoulder, “There are all kinds of things we don’t know, and I’m going to find them. We’re going to find them, together.”

He gestured out through the narrow window into the depths, where the source of his passion awaited somewhere. 

Fiddleford looked out to the ocean too. The black of the porthole filled his glasses. When Fiddleford looked back to him, Ford’s own face smiled back at him in the lenses. 

The more parts that they collected, it seemed, the more messages Ford translated into even more diagrams. Still unsure how to put the machinery together, they’d started keeping them in a spare office once occupied by the last researcher who had a mental breakdown and was forced to leave (a common experience for researchers stuck thousands of meters below the surface in a tin can with no natural lighting). The former researcher used to study bioluminescence, apparently.

Through it all, Ford never stopped thinking of that mysterious force dictating their activities. He sketched the eye constantly, when he was not working or translating its messages. He watched the portholes dreamily when he wasn’t concentrating on something else. When Mark took out some sculpting clay for the crew to mess around with on their off time, Ford unintentionally created a round white eye with an elongated black pupil.

“How did you even get the clay to be that black?” Mark marveled, “I don’t even have brown clay.”

“Uhhh,” Ford recalled painstakingly mixing together colors bit by bit until they darkened to the proper pitch shade, “Artistic inspiration.”

Everyone else’s creations were placed around public areas like the galley or the bunks, but the sculpted eyeball sat by the side of the stone eye carving on Ford’s desk, to the relief of most of the crew. Mark joked that it looked like it was watching him, and Lena said it was creepy. Fiddleford anxiously whispered that the crew might find it a bit insensitive, considering everything that was going on. Ford figured that since he was the one who saw the eye, and he was the one translating the messages, he should be allowed to make as many clay sculptures of it as he wanted.

One day Ford found Fiddleford in the spare office, messing with parts.

“What are you doing?”

Fiddleford dropping the screwdriver he was using to piece together parts with a guilty look, “I’m so sorry! I was just thinking these things would fit---”

“That’s alright,” Ford retrieved his screwdriver for him, “I’m not upset. Any attempt to puzzle out the meaning of the messages is useful.”

Fiddleford relaxed, “Yes, well. I was just thinking that some of these could make an engine. Since it doesn’t seem like we get assembly instructions, I thought we might as well just see what works.”

“Yes, you’re probably right,” Ford brushed his fingers over what Fiddleford had built so far, “I admit I haven’t gotten the change to get more acquainted with our technology. I’ll have to defer to your superior mechanical knowledge.”

Fiddleford beamed and turned red, embarrassed by the praise, “Aw, it’s not so great as that, Stanford.”

“It is!” he insisted, “This is very impressive. If we figure this out---this might lead us to something big.”

“You think so?”

“I’m certain of it.”

Chapter 8: Empty

Notes:

almost fell off a cliff today hiking, terrifying experience, so if you see me writing a fic about my fear of heights that's why

Ford dreamed about being watched through the porthole in his office again. He quickly identified that he was dreaming, though, as Fiddleford, his pupils stretched low, waited for him by the side of his desk, a full porcelain plate of his favorite childhood dish sitting on the desk.

“Bill,” Ford breathed. He felt like he was underwater, breathing through the dive suit.

“That’s me,” Fiddleford’s face turned upwards in a big smile, “Are you having trouble with the pieces? Can’t figure it out?”

Ford pinkened, “Mechanics isn’t my expertise.”

His muse clucked his tongue sympathetically, “You want me to hold your hand? Want me to kiss it better?”

Ford’s face prickled. He’d never been so embarrassed. It was pathetic to use that excuse to avoid having to try. How could he have been so arrogant as to cheerfully accept his own incompetence?

“I don’t need help. I’ll put it together,” he promised.

“Good,” Bill petted his cheek carefully, if a bit clumsily, like a child trying to gently pet a small rodent, “I know you’re sharp enough to figure it out. Otherwise I wouldn’t have picked you out of everyone in the crew to reveal myself to.”

Ford’s heart rate increased noticeably. 

“I’m incredibly grateful for your consideration,” Ford said, eventually, “I promise I won’t let you down.”

Fiddleford’s face stretched into a wide smile, strange only in how perfect it was.

“Play a game with me,” his muse said abruptly.

Ford opened his mouth to ask what he was talking about, but before he could, the room transformed into black open ocean and a deck of cards laid on the desk in front of them. Ford could feel the pressure of water around his body, but when he breathed in it felt like air, and his arms moved unencumbered as he leaned forward to pick up the cards.

“What do you want to play?” he asked, shuffling the cards the way his Pa taught him.

“What do you want to play?”

“Uh…” Ford fiddled with the cards, feeling like he was taking a test, “Gin rummy is a good two-person game.”

His muse clapped, “Good choice. Let’s deal.”

They played. It was the most challenging game of gin rummy Ford had ever played---excusing when he played with his brother, which involved paying half of his attention to the game and the other half of his attention to stymieing his brother’s cheating.

Ford won, to his shock. He felt like he’d just emerged from a grueling physical battle, though nary an unkind look had been thrown his way.

Bill looked surprised too, Fiddleford’s eyebrows raised high on his head. He recovered quickly, though, leaning back in his chair, “You got me this time, genius. I’ll get you next time, though, don’t you doubt it.”

He mimed aiming a handgun at Ford’s head.

“You were a tough match,” Ford chuckled, running his hand through his hair. He felt nearly giddy, “How do you know these things? Card games, machine parts…”

His muse laughed shrilly, “I know lots of things. I told you. I’ve been watching. And I’ve been watching for a really long time.”

Ford wondered, how many other people had his muse spoken to? Had some other scientist taught him gin rummy? Some artist, or leader, or philosopher?

His muse seemed to somehow understand this, because his smile stretched even wider across Fiddleford’s face, “You’re one of a long line of special minds, Stanford Pines. Part of a legacy. Every chosen mind was significant in some way. The best choice to inspire. Some of them failed. You’ll have to be better than them.”

Ford looked down at his hands. Quietly, he admitted, “I don’t know if I can be. What if I fail? Then I will be nothing.”

A hand chucked him under the chin, forcing his head up again. Bill was much closer than before, standing over him.

“You won’t fail,” Bill said, not letting go of his jaw, “And you won’t be nothing. You’ll be singular.”

Ford looked at his closest friend’s face with a stranger’s eyes set into it and felt heat against cold water.

His next words came out in a tumble, like a child running down a hill, getting ahead of itself, “Why do you look like Fiddleford sometimes?”

His muse tapped the upperside of his throat with his index finger, “I can’t exactly play card games with no fingers, genius.”

Almost against his control, Ford leaned forward, just an inch or so. He wasn’t sure why he was doing it. It was like jerking off for the first time, stumbling over something self-gratifying by total accident, and it took Ford way too long to realize that the impulse he was feeding, what he wanted to do, was lean forward just a little more. 

For what? Touch him, be near him, press against him, kiss him---the heat sliding through his core was smacked with a layer of cold dread.

“You look like your brain’s sizzling,” his muse squeezed his jaw, amused, “What’s the matter with you?”

It flashed through him vividly, perhaps because he was dreaming, but all of a sudden he was slipping through realities made of skin and mouths and big eerie eyes, saliva and sweat and---the cool ocean. Lean forward, press his lips to the other man’s lips.

Ford choked on water, for the very first time in his dreams.

The next thing he knew, he fell off of his chair, very much awake, sending papers flying all over, and his journal crashing to the floor.

He breathed heavily, nearly hyperventilating. His entire body was hot, and his side hurt from where he fell on it. His eyes scanned frantically all over the room, over the books and papers and the empty porthole. There was nothing, no presence, no muse .

He ran his hands through his hair, frazzled. His dreams were---well, he had no idea if they were invented organically by his own mind as an amalgamation of the personality of his muse gleaned through messages, or if they constituted some sort of supernatural influence somehow exerted by powers he didn’t yet understand. Both situations were bad. 

Ford rarely harbored any physical desires for other people, and certainly not for Fiddleford, who he considered his closest friend. He would never do anything to violate the bounds of their platonic relationship, particularly because he knew his friend was already committed to a woman on dry land. Additionally, the idea of being attracted to what constituted merely a watching eye in the abyss, a whalesong voice over a recording, a humorous tone in translation, and a wealth of mechanical knowledge, was ridiculous! Ford enjoyed a good symmetrical womanly face and a well-proportioned womanly hip-to-waist ratio like any normal red-blooded man---and exclusively in magazines, where he would never have to interact with the subjects of his attraction or deal with the humiliation of making himself vulnerable to their scorn. There was no way that this dream could indicate any sort of latent attraction.

“Stanford, are you okay?” Fiddleford poked his head in the door, “I heard a crash.”

Ford let out an unmanly shriek. Fiddleford jumped, spooked.

“Excuse me,” Ford said measuredly, “You just surprised me.”

“What in the freezing hell just happened to you?”

Ford adjusted his glasses, and with great dignity, “I had a nightmare.”

Fiddleford didn’t seem impressed, “You ought to sleep in your actual bed sometime.”

“I am aware.”

There was a moment of silence.

“Do you want to get up off the floor, dear?” Fiddleford asked, with some sympathy, extending his hand. It was in his nature to cushion awkward situations with loving terms---Ford had seen him call strangers “darling” and “sweetheart”.

Ford bolted to his feet before Fiddleford’s ---skilled, calloused, clever--- hands could touch him, “I am not your dear!”

Fiddleford blinked, “Uh. I’m sorry. You never had a problem with that name before?”

“I need to go to the bathroom!” he dodged past Fiddleford, ignoring the traitorous spread of heat when his side brushed against him.

“What in the hell?” he heard from behind him, but he paid it no mind.

The bathroom wasn’t private enough. He instead locked himself inside of the abandoned office they were using to store parts.

It was only once he was sat down on the ground, his back against the wall, that he realized this was also a bad idea. In front of him, the engine parts that Fiddleford had pieced together sat. It felt like an extension of his friend and an extension of his muse, all wrapped up in one. Ford could see the particular neatness of the way Fiddleford soldered, those clean lines. Ford could see the sketch of each item, graphed onto paper under Ford’s own hands, following the will of his muse. He shivered.

He dropped his head against the wall with a metallic clunk.

There was no way he could ever tell Fiddleford about it. It would disgust him, for one. It was totally inappropriate, besides. There had been whole seminars just about keeping the Dexamene workplace professional. Matter of fact was, when you had a bunch of men and women working in close quarters, without an escape from coworkers, relationships could get messy. Ford had never had to worry about this before. He felt no romantic notions towards his female coworkers, though he of course respected their professional capabilities.

As for Bill…a tremble ran up his spine. He was working to uncover the great secrets of the ocean deep. There was no room for romance. How could he ever think himself worthy to push his lowly human desire onto such an ancient and immense being. How perverted could he be, dreaming of kissing his muse?

He was sure that no other person would ever be able to accept the strangeness of his desires, least of all Fiddleford, whose image he had violated in his mind.

He smoothed out his brow, brushed down his clothes, and took a breath. He just had to continue as normal, and everything would be fine. He would discover great things, his parents would rejoice, Bill would be pleased, and Fiddleford would have a friendly, professional place at his side. Everything was going to work out.

 

In his next dreams, Bill didn’t acknowledge what had happened. They played games, and they talked, and it seemed that Bill was unaware of just what he’d felt the last time they played cards.

The air in the Facility had become more relaxed, as time went on and nothing newly strange occurred. The messages from his muse still came in, but everyone was used to that now. Lena hardly seemed bothered when she passed him a tape now, and Jennifer had even jokingly drawn a round eyeball on the cleaning shift whiteboard.

“To watch over you and make sure you do your shift,” she explained, pointing a finger at Mark, who was known to skive off of cleaning duties when his turn came around. 

Mark shrugged, “Fair enough.”

So it was a day like any other when she went missing. 

In fact, it was a very good day for Ford. He’d gone to bed at a normal time for once, at Fiddleford’s insistence. It had turned out to be a smart move, because he woke feeling bright and rested. His every sense was heightened, like he’d emerged from a weeks-long sensory deprivation tank to a world alight with color. The green ceramic of a mug, the smell of coconut hair product, the scratching of a pen, all came to him as tiny art pieces to be framed in full detail by the processes of his sharpened mind.

He went into the galley and prepared himself breakfast: oatmeal with freeze-dried strawberries. There were more options than usual, since the shuttle from the surface had just come with supplies. Deepex shuttles were not like the shuttles of the surface. They were small, cramped transport drones controlled by a set program and deployed from the Deepex facility near the coast. Capable of fitting two or three people inside, that was how Stanford and his coworkers had come to Dexamene, and it was how supplies and parts were transported to them, as well as how crew reports and excess supplies were sent back to the surface. The shuttles were clunky, and had bad control, making them unsuitable for ocean floor exploration. While you could take control of one remotely, they responded so slowly and inconsistently it was better to simply code a path into them and have them follow it. Deepex was apparently working on a robot that could take pictures of the deep sea, even deeper than the Dexamene researchers could go, but Ford doubted that would pan out anytime soon. People got far too excited about robotics sometimes, in his opinion. Machines had their place, but there was little a robot could do that a clever human couldn’t.

Ford finished his breakfast and went to his office to get in some revising before he was to head out for his dive.

After a while, he noticed that neither Amir nor Lena had come for him to let him know the diving suits were free.

He got up from his desk and ventured to the surfacing room. Nobody was in there, though only one of the diving suits was present, haphazardly spilled across the floor. It was irregular for Amir or Lena not to put away the suits on the wall. It was also irregular for only one person to be diving. Ever since Ford’s incident, they’d gotten even stricter about sticking with partners during dives. 

If he listened, he could hear voices coming from the control room. 

He walked over and poked his head in the doorway. Everyone was there. Fiddleford, Helen, and Brett were at the controls, Brett frantically speaking into a comm in a constant line of jabber Ford could barely make out. Jennifer, Parker, Tom, Mark, and Amir were either sitting with their heads in their hands, pacing the floor, or hovering behind the techs.

“Stanford,” Fiddleford got up from his seat. His brow was shiny with sweat.

“Back at the board, McGucket,” Helen barked. She looked as nervous as him, her face tinged gray.

“What’s going on?” Ford asked.

Amir sunk his head into his hands, with a hoarse sound Ford realized was a sob. He was still in his undersuit, and his shoulders were shaking.

“Lena’s missing,” Parker said shortly.

“How long?”

Parker checked the time, “It’s been six hours, thirty-seven minutes, and nine seconds now.”

Amir curled over himself, as if he’d been punched in the stomach.

Six to seven hours was the limit for how long the air in the diving suit would last, usually. Lena was on the smaller side, and women generally used less air than men, but she was surely at the end of her tank by now.

Ford’s heart sunk low.

If they didn’t find her soon, Lena would drown.

“Someone---I could go out in the other diving suit to find her,” Ford said, “I’ve gotten back from being lost before.”

Amir blanched, “No!”

Jennifer put a hand on his shoulder, her voice urgent, “It’s not a bad idea.”

“Not a good idea, either,” Parker said, “We can’t afford to lose another person.”

“She’s not lost yet,” Ford said, “If we act quickly, we can save her.”

“I’ll keep tabs on you, if you go,” Helen said, suddenly. She was still at the board, but her hands weren’t moving. She just stared into the operating board of the through-water system. She turned to him, “Whatever you did last time, you need to do it again.”

“I’ll find her,” Ford was quick to the surfacing room. He didn’t bother to change into an undersuit. He just took off his jacket and stepped into the diving suit.

Parker helped him put on the helmet, and Amir watched him from the background like a ghost, shaking too much to provide any useful assistance.

The loss of sound and the descent into the water was mortifying. He had no partner by his side to draw comfort from as his body submerged itself into the black void. After a second of cold senselessness, the through-water system crackled in his ear.

“Pines, come in,” Helen’s voice came smoothly through the earpiece.

“I’m here,” he gasped in tank air.

The knowledge that he was not alone gave him the strength to go forward. He moved quick, as quick as the suits were capable of being (which was slow). He didn’t know what he was looking for, other than Lena’s suit lights, or a different light. He hadn’t seen the enormous eye in real life after that very first time. He wasn’t looking for that right now, though.

He kept moving, Helen checking in on him every two minutes, literally. This helped him keep track of time, know how long, approximately, Lena had left for him to find her. Once she lost air, which should happen in about twenty minutes, she would have only four minutes until she suffered permanent brain damage, and would surely die two minutes later, at the very best. Maybe sooner.

Ford kept these numbers in mind, even as he tried to keep his breath rate even, and his mind cool.

He found nothing, nothing. He paid no mind to ocean life, no mind to anything except looking for the shape of the dive suit.

Two minutes passed. Four minutes. Six minutes. Eight. Ten. Twelve. 

At the fourteen-minute mark, it occurred to him to head towards open ocean---that was where he had been when he disappeared, right? At least he thought it was open ocean.

This only seemed to make it worse. Now there was nothing to catch onto, nothing to see. Helen checked in again. Sixteen minutes. Then again. Eighteen. He was losing his chance.

He looked down below him, into the blackness.

He blocked the comm with a swift adjustment of his chin, so he wouldn’t be heard.

“Please,” he said, “If you’re out there, please help me.”

He hovered above the blackness, but got no response.

He recalled the tone of offense he received in his dream when he questioned his muse’s knowledge.

“If you can do anything at all,” he said, “If you know anything at all. Please help me find her.”

Nothing.

He moved forward again, cresting into hopeless fears, despite his best efforts to order his thinking.

The ocean was huge, his mind said, and how could he ever hope to find her? He had been saved, that day he got lost, entirely by fortune. How could he have deluded himself into believing his fantastical, self-aggrandizing dreams? How could he have believed it when Bill told him he’d been chosen? What a fool he was. And now Lena would die, because he couldn’t save her, because he was---

There.

There was a light below. Not like the bioluminescence of the local animals. Warm, weak, human-made light.

He sunk down like a rock, thrust by the weak power of the suit.

As he got closer, it became ever the more clear. A metal dive suit twin to his own, sunk into the ocean floor, among buried rocks with twisting exteriors.

He landed next to the suit, desperately quick, and he reached for its arms. It was a strain, and he paused from his efforts to assess whether Lena could get up on her own or if there was something wrong with her. He leaned forward to look through the murky glass. He brushed sand from her visor, and pressed his helmet against hers. 

His eyes searched, as human eyes do, for a pattern, a face. He thought he found it, for a second, and then it was gone. 

His eyes traveled over the seam at the back of the helmet. 

No eyes, no skin, no hair. 

Just rounded metal.

The signal jammed in his brain. It couldn’t compute.

The suit was empty.