“-ou’rrrrk makhhhhg g-ate iiime shhhow- there, skust two more pa–- go. How ——- feeling?” The new tender asked. 280 feet below, in the North Sea and nestled only a football field or so between a nearby cave system and the massive structure I am repairing, his voice comes through like a chipmunk squeezed out a straw. With trainees, it’s hit or miss, them knowing or retaining the idea that the water pressure ruins any hope of conversation back and forth. I can only make out his words with great effort. Great time two more panels. I’d say something back but every time I do he asks over and over again for me to repeat myself. Instead, I holster the welder and put my raised thumb in front of the camera, articulating the gloves like a sheet of clay wrapped around my hand.

“-ood, g-”

With a chipping hammer I begin removing the slag from the most recent line I’ve finished, the impact dulled to a numb rhythm in my hands. Two more doesn’t sound too bad. That’s like one episode. Half the time of a morning run. It’s a good line, but not as good as the last one. The work is tiring and we started a lot later than we had anticipated when planning this out in the first place.

Issues are rare for underwater data servers, and so when a large enough issue for repairs to be necessary occurred, I was at the top of the list of potential contractors. Well, not top of the list, probably someone local. Someone a little more skilled than me just below that. Then maybe me. I was in the top five for sure.

Three days ago, Friday, I had landed in Dundee to repair a fissure that had opened up on the side of the Hive data server deep within the North Sea. Prior to that I had no idea one even existed there. Progress.

The server, from my understanding of the brief, knew an unfair amount about me though and everyone else in the world. Hive only dealt with other larger companies to provide them with enough information to zig when we zig and zag when we zag, eventually mapping out the whole criss-crossing path of our society. The server demanded a tremendous amount of energy to generate an ongoing simulation of our potential actions. Then compare them with the actual results once enough time passes. Then revise the simulation based on those results for the next decision, over and over ad infinitum, becoming more in tune with us at each passing second. 

One of those malevolent capitalist landmarks you suspect exists, and when you learn it does you become overwhelmed by the violation just long enough to realize you can’t do anything to stop it from happening and concede.

The repair required 14 panels to be welded in place on the outside to hold the seams together and give enough stability to them for more thorough repairs to be completed from the inside. We brought extras, but as we were making our way to the dive location the fissure had grown, requiring not only all the additional panels we brought but also a second set of pumps to clear the water out faster once the seal was complete. 

Only two more left though. I disconnect the ground clamp, “Surface, weld complete, moving to the next, over,” and push myself up at a crawl to the next weld spot. As I do more squirrel talk comes through, “A, uhhh shmrmgmin is ning up —-. A —–t’up.” I can’t make any of it out, but I put my thumb to the camera again, just to stop the piercing noise grating my ear drums any further. I place the ground clamp on another panel from my pouch and begin forming the weld between it and the electrode.

Through safety glasses and a helmet the electric arc looks like dancing shatter marks on a windshield, lighting up the yellow surface all around in dull nicotine stains. My arms tense up in a held distance between the weld and the arc to give just enough space for a bubble to form. It feels like the weld is going well, and even perfect until a series of tugs on the umbilical screw up my focus. “What the fuck!” I exclaim, as much at the weld itself, dancing out of my control, as to the person responsible for tugging the line unexpectedly, “What’s going on up there?”

“Shhhgo- NO—-W NO— —W NOW!” they yell back in staccato and static, just clear enough to get me moving. I hustle because of the loudness of it, the urgency. I holster everything, check my safety equipment and start the long climb back to the platform. Hopefully not too long. The dive panel says 218 feet. 217. Then it flickers. Or maybe I’m flickering. Something rumbles, impossibly deep, as if the ocean itself is groaning. The pressure shifts, subtle at first, then all at once—a tremor I don’t feel, but somehow know is there, stretching out across the abyss. I suddenly feel like I’ve hit the dip on a roller coaster. The display drops from 217 to 112 and then flickers again, so does my light. Before they have the opportunity to stabilize they both go out entirely. I can’t know, but I do, everything goes out in a combined level of silence and eerie absence I’ve never experienced before.

Then I am struck by a wave of force and pressure that feels strong enough to rip all the equipment off me like it were tissue paper. The whole structure I’m still clinging to slams into me, but stops short of breaking every bone in my body. Like the data server is pulling its punch, as ridiculous as that sounds. I lose my grip and get cast out into the black so fast my head is pinned painfully against the back of my helmet.

Vision gone, panel gone, comms probably gone, and with a massive underwater structure potentially boxing me to death while I try to repair it, I could argue sanity also gone. It must have been an earthquake, volcano maybe, or a gas field explosion. As I recognize the futility of guessing, I can’t stop myself from doing it. In the panic the process is like hyperventilating thoughts. The tragedy is that at this speed, heading into the gnarled structure of the cave system behind me, I’ll never have enough time to figure it out. I’ve never been so afraid in my life, and the confusion makes me disproportionately resentful. Like the world in this moment bamboozled me. 

Bracing for a violent death, I stop moving. Abruptly and painfully, without hitting anything but being tugged hard by the umbilical, smashing the safety glasses between the bridge of my nose and the diving helmet. Just as quickly I’m dragged back towards the waiting fist like wall of a facility I have no real qualms with. I have no idea where the fuck it is but I’ll know soon. Still, between being crushed by rocks or beaten bloody by a data server, I’ll always choose the latter.

When I hit my right side erupts, pain covering me like molten rock. The padding of my diving suit does nothing it seems, and the data server claims the broken bones it failed to earlier. How it feels, is that all of me is in pieces. But as the adrenaline escalates and the desperation takes over I can sense the difference between break pain and just pain-pain. My right arm for sure, a few ribs, maybe my collar bone.

“Surface, emergency, respond! Over.” I demand, fruitlessly.

I am a good problem solver, I have to be working in these conditions. Not that it is necessary every time, but when it is, it’s absolutely necessary. Part of good problem solving though is recognizing when a problem is unsolvable, and having the good sense not to try and solve it. Like when your whole right side is out of commission and you have no working systems to get you through 200 or so feet of water.

…

I can do this without them. Not because I actually can mind you, but because I have to. And someone up there might be waiting for me.

If my comms were working, they would have said something by now, but as I suspected they seem to have gone the way of everything else. Still, I can’t help but try once more, “Emergency, surface! Over.”

…

…

I tug on the umbilical while the copper tasting blood from my nose pools in my mouth, but there’s no give. No way of contact at all then. And, now that I notice it, no oxygen is coming in from the surface anymore. Great. I would prefer it if the growing lightheadedness was just a concussion. Using the only good hand I have left I switch my regulator out with the bailout supply, “Surface, no primary gas, switching to bailout. over,” I add, for no reason. Hopefully I can fix the issue on the way up, but regardless I need to get back beneath the sky soon. But not too soon.

The climb is agonizing both physically and mentally. Without any equipment I have to navigate the route at my best guess as to a decompression rate. With all the damage I already feel strange, and take a few breaks here or there not sure what the cause might be. Every stop I repeat my estimated depth over and over to myself, sometimes out loud sometimes not.

205, 205, 205, 205…

180 maybe? 180, 180, 180…

140, 140, 140, 140…

The longest ball drop countdown in history, and I’m just guessing. Glancing at the panel every few seconds, with unfounded hope. Waiting for anything encouraging.

At 127 feet (I think) I pass whatever it is that ruined this whole project. The umbilical is pinned somewhere to my left, probably the roof of the cave system on that side stopped the facility when it lunged at me, and pinched the cord there. I have no choice but to sever the umbilical to continue. They must be losing their shit up there, if they’re still there at all. If not, I vow to haunt them til the end of time.

At 120 I am free of the structure and pull out the Bourbon Tube from my emergency kit, holding the kit gingerly between my broken arm and broken ribs. Fumbling around for the tube, I lose my grip and have to let the rest of the kit sink but grasp the depth gauge before it goes. At least I’ll be a little lighter for this part. That in mind, I start dropping the welding gear that I can remove easily. There is still a long way to go and currents to work through.

I hold it to my helmet and see nothing. 115, 115, 115, 115.

Waiting.

90, 90, 90, 90…

And so on. Almost there but maybe already dead as much as it matters down here, with no gauges, and cut off from everything I would use to argue my existence, the idea seems reasonable. Only the pain in my face and body makes any protest otherwise. The thought that I may have already died and spent the last moments torturing myself in darkness is surprisingly embarrassing. I keep going in spite of this, comforted by the rationale that whether you are dead but feel (agonizingly) alive, or alive feeling dead, the next best action is still the same. Ascend, and hope someone else is up there less confused than you.

Somewhere close enough (hopefully) to thirty feet I stop and count out 3 minutes before proceeding. Bobbing in the current, rattling off numbers, I start to notice a glimpse of light above me. The stars, but absurdly so. I can just barely make them out, even so there are so many it seems impossible that I am returning to the same sky. I climb a little further and try to count out the minutes again, forcing myself with great effort to adhere to the decompression routine. While looking around for the platform, unsure of how far off course the currents and my own injuries had carried me from my original destination.

It’s too dark to make anything out in the water, and I am still too deep to see much of anything above without straining, just the hint of all those twinkling lights and their sirens song drawing me out gently.

I force myself to wait and listen with eager eyes, the pain slowly being drowned out. It’s harder to do than I expect, a feeling of weightlessness I hadn’t perceived before making it more difficult to stay still. Maybe I ascended too fast.

…

Hoping enough time has passed, I climb again cautiously. The stars now overwhelming the sky behind the distortion of water, like a mouth full of milk laughed over a carpet of night. I reach up and wave my hand through it, making sure that it’s real and begin counting again. The water follows my hand in translucent cords like a school of fish. I have no idea what to make of it, other than giving it more time before surfacing.

15 minutes later, I finally breach the surface. The sea clings to me affectionately and I have to wipe it off like jello. I’ve surfaced into a surreal landscape where gravity seems to be just a suggestion and massive globs of water bounce playfully over the surface of the sea in slow, lumbering arcs, not in a hurry to get anywhere. Some rise, then pause mid-air, as if reconsidering their trajectory before falling again while other errant globes drift towards the stars, as I had been doing all evening. They shine bright enough for me to look for the boat, or the dive platform or any place to pull myself out, but there is nothing. The sea is empty and alien to me, and the sky above is a chaotic love child of Dali and Pollock.

Looking up through the fractured sea I notice a single diamond shaped patch of darkness cut from the pattern of the night sky. It moves slowly against the backdrop of the galaxy, the starlight bending around it in slivers, barely perceptible otherwise. I wave and begin to remove my helmet carefully to get a better view, but to my horror I am struck immediately by the lack of oxygen and scramble to get the helmet back on.

I don’t live long. The dark shape stays with me only briefly and then disappears before I can make out whatever it is. When I can’t breathe anymore I take the helmet off anyway. By that time, it makes sense, and the stars are waiting.