He straps into his rubber pressure suit, a routine he’s performed countless times. The suits were specifically designed to protect the crew in the case of a breach in the submersible, although they had a mixed record of success. Hopping off the dock and onto the ladder, he descends into the cramped submersible, shutting the hatch behind him. Using hand signals, a universal language under the waves, he informs the boss that they’re ready to dispatch. The sub disengages from the dock, beginning its hundred meter descent.
The Fishing Hole, a five-hundred foot diameter hole in the middle of the floating city Branswain, gives submersibles access to the depths below, densely populated by whales.
The submersible is able to tow up to three carcasses behind it, depending on their size. After finding only a scrawny youngling, the sub dives deeper, eventually reaching 300 meters in depth. The submersible's headlights are barely able to penetrate the dark, the water growing thick and slow, reluctant to move.
Even at this depth, the crew is unable to find any semblance of life. That is, until they do. It’s massive, larger than any whale he’s seen before. The beast seems already dead, or close to it. A gaping wound decorates its stomach. Its eyes seem mournful, and they fill him with an intense sadness. Nonetheless, the crew secures it to the back of the sub.
It is not quite a whale.
When Branswain dredges the ocean each day, they drag hundreds of whales back to the surface with them. More often than not, these whales are still alive when they are hoisted out of the water, butchered into manageable pieces, and ground into oil. The slaughterhouses, overlooking the Fishing Hole, are no strangers to viscera.
That said, they do not quite know what to expect when a beast, larger than any they have ever seen, is heaved onto the kill floor. It has deep cuts all along its body, as well as a massive chunk out of its underside. It moans sadly as they dissect it. It’s hard to tell exactly how many fins it has, but it’s certainly more than it’s supposed to.
As the crew transports the smaller pieces of blubber to cauldrons for boiling, they weep.
The creature’s remains are siphoned out of the slaughterhouse in the form of whale oil, being sent to innumerable processing plants all over the city. The supply of oil from this particular beast would power the city for two weeks.
The oil more than fills the lead and steel veins of the city. A creature lost its life, but a city gained blood. Branswain takes a deep breath, and grieves.
It is dark as she trudges home, the stars and moon obscured by clouds. The rectangular cobbles of the street below her feet are slightly slippery. Of the multi-story houses surrounding her on each side, few still have lights on. To her right, a complex network of pipes hisses and shudders. Oil escapes slowly from their seams.
As she turns into the little court where her own home is located, her step is not met with the usual clack of heels on stone, but instead a wet squelch. She does not notice, thoughts far away. Shutting the door slowly behind her, she lets her shoes slip off and heads to the kitchen.
She turns on the faucet, and simply watches it pour. The water comes out at an irregular tempo, as though chunky. It sticks to the sink greasily.
It is dark by the time you leave the house, and most are already in bed. Now that you think about it, you can’t remember the last time you saw the sun. Nonetheless you walk onwards, your way illuminated by the ghostly yellow glow of wrought iron street lamps. The more you walk, the more you notice your shoes sticking to the pavement. You struggle to lift your feet, finally prying them free and tumbling to the ground.
You get up from the pavement, brushing your oily hands on your clothes. You stand in the middle of a plaza, although not one you recognize. Surrounding you are dozens and dozens of people, all talking among themselves. You look wildly around for a noticeable landmark or a directory of some sort, but to no avail. Could it be that you’re lost? That you have no clue on Earth where you are? My, how terrifying that must be.
Struggling to breathe, you sink to the ground. Lying on your back, you revel in the familiarity of the oil. It smells like home.
He wears boots, yet his pants are still damp up to the knee, slick and greasy. The oil rests at ankle height, with a thin skin forming on top of the liquid. As he progresses through the old streets on the long walk home, he passes many an alley. Out of all of these dimly lit crevices, you watch his steady march.
Your eyes line every wall. They reside under every broken street lamp and shaded corner. He never seems to notice, though. All he does is walk and walk and shiver as he goes… Shiver? Is it that cold out?
Eventually, just as he’s about to reach home, poor thing, he happens to glance down an alley. Down your alley. He stops, and stares in something resembling horror as all the eyes of the City stare back at him. You give a toothy grin.
The Branswain-Viedelich Clocktower, simply called “the Lighthouse'' by those who know its bells intimately, stands tall near the center of the old city. While its most obvious function is to regularly signal midnight, it also stands as a reminder to the inhabitants of Branswain. The Lighthouse, back when it actually was a lighthouse, was built on top of a single rock in the middle of the ocean, off the coast of nearby Viedelich. It would take hundreds of years for the Branswain we know to be built atop the sea.
The Lighthouse has always been a sign of stability. Knowing this, the Clockkeeper just about has a heart attack seeing the obelisk of Branswain freeze in place. Jumping to their feet, they climb countless ladders to reach the clock’s highest chambers. Emerging into a cathedral of gears and pistons, the Clockkeeper has to brace themself against the wall to keep from slipping. They gaze at the mechanical innards they know so well, now drenched in oil, and feel as if a friend they have known for decades has finally unmasked itself.
They smile faintly to themself as the clock once again moves its hands, albeit not in the usual direction. Tonight, the Lighthouse reminds the inhabitants of Branswain how fragile their city in the middle of the ocean really is.
Oil up to my chest, I sit on the curb under a broken streetlight, staring towards the night sky. The stars seem to stare in return. I take a deep breath, inhaling the pleasant stench of blood and oil. I glance down the street, left and right, spotting a few other citizens of the city doing the same, our actions mirroring each other.
Behind me, I hear a faint hissing, growing ever louder. I do not need to look to know that it comes from the corroded iron pipes that line every building on every street. I close my eyes and smile as the hiss grows into a scream. I take a deep breath, and the pipe bursts.
The oil begins to rise, rapidly, faster than it ever has before. Placing my arms across my chest, I lean back, and I am sinking. Surrounding me is a viscous ocean, and I fall evermore. I sink deeper and deeper, deeper than should be possible in the floating city. Listening carefully, I hear the calls of whales.
Running your hand along a bookshelf, you absentmindedly glance at the titles that line it. You are no stranger to the library, one of its only remaining visitors. You know it better than any librarian ever could, and its books stay dust free thanks only to you. The oil has not quite reached its halls yet, due in part to its elevated foundation, several feet above street level. Still, the tiles beneath your feet are faintly sticky.
High above you, beyond an ornate balcony on the second floor overlooking the first, the moon peers through a circular window, lined with iron and stained blue. You find no discomfort in being in the library past dark, but even so, the building seems more alive than usual, creaking and shifting unprompted. When you listen closely, you can hear a faint dripping.
Turning into another row, you scan the shelves, noticing several pieces you’ve never seen before. “Me and the Presence in the Deep, a Memoir.” “So You’ve Got Teeth in Your Hands.” You stop at one simply titled “Flesh.” It oozes oil, and after managing to pry it open, it reads:
“The flesh goes on and on and on and when it stops you know you’re soon to join it as the start of the bone is a dreadful thing marking the end of an era the end of a universe and do not go near the spine the spine holds the brain fluid and the brain fluid holds the brain and the brain is full of awful creatures used to devise horrific things and they’re behind you they’re behind you they’re-”
You snap it shut, but not before being filled with the sensation that they are, in fact, behind you. Glancing up and down the aisle, you feel silly after finding it empty. Of course there’s nothing there, you would have been able to hear it sloshing through the oil, after all.
Rough shingles beneath you, you lie on your back, gazing at the night sky. Rooftops like this are the only dry places left in the city. Where the bricks of Branswain end, a vast mirror reflecting trillions of stars takes their place. For anyone else, it would be weird to see the city abruptly end like this, but you’re used to it after a week of sleeping on rooftops. Usually, the rim of the city is surrounded by buildings too tall to see the ocean.
As you stare at the mirror, an extension of the sky above it, the stars on its calm surface begin to move, as if the water has been disturbed. Glancing at the heavens, you see them reflect the image of the ocean. The stars don’t move randomly, but in unison, in a single direction; down. Bleeding as if drawn with runny ink, the stars trickle towards the sea, where their reflections meet them halfway.
Turning your gaze even further upwards, you see the moon, directly above you. Its shape is no longer perfectly circular. Around you, you hear the sound of raindrops, though the sky is clear of clouds. You feel one fall on your hand, heavy and greasy. All you can do is watch as your only remaining sanctuary is coated in moonborne oil.
She lies in a dinghy, staring towards the night sky. There are no stars. The gentle rocking of the waves beneath her suddenly stops as her small craft pushes itself onto the gravelly coast of a small island. Above her looms an octagonal tower, crowned with a rapidly spinning light. Begrudgingly, she stumbles out of the dinghy and onto the rough shore. A set of old steps, slippery with algae, lead upwards to a pair of large wooden doors. They creak, dripping as they move.
She is met with a wood planked floor. In the center of the room, a square hole covered only by a metal grate reveals that the island is hollow, with a small cave beneath it. Within the cave, ocean water sits patiently. Carefully removing the grate, she climbs down an untrustworthy wooden ladder, until she is just above the water. Reaching down, she dips her hand in. It comes out red.
Climbing back up the ladder, she then turns to the spiral staircase set against the outer wall of the Lighthouse. Ascending to the highest point in the tower, she finds its rotating light overlooking a city of brick and lies. Canals of oil reach up to the third stories of some buildings, with streaks of blood staining their ghostly white surfaces.
She wakes up, cold and sweaty. Her hand, which has been hanging off her bed, rests calmly in a pool of liquid. Whale oil, dyed red, gently laps at her bedsheets.
They congregate at the edge east of the city. There are hundreds, thousands of them. They stand on rooftops, balconies, some even bring makeshift rafts down the canals to see the event. They don’t fully grasp why they’re there, only knowing that it will be important.
The several mile long bridge to Viedelich, Branswain’s only connection to the mainland, has been a rushing river of oil for a few days now. Finally, the rapids reach Viedelich proper, pouring into the streets. Having fulfilled its duty of spreading the good word, the bridge takes a bow, and resigns.
The residents of Branswain watch blankly as the city’s umbilical cord is finally cut, and a thundering crack can be heard around the continent as the bridge collapses. The bridge now resides comfortably at the bottom of the ocean, known only to the whales.
Branswain’s people begin to slowly disperse, satisfied at having seen their city’s rebirth.
“Good riddance,” they think. “Goodbye, world. We don’t need your industry, your religion and your brutality. The sea will be our chapel, harboring us and making us whole.”
Having started to peak over the flood wall surrounding the Fishing Hole several days prior, oil begins to drain from the city. As if in a great hurry, the canals which had made their home in Branswain suddenly turn into rivers, and then into rapids, flowing towards the heart of the city. I sit atop a small crane positioned over the Hole, watching the events unfold. The oil carries with it garbage, furniture, and sometimes people as it rushes to return to the ocean. There are a few other people in similar vantage spots to me all around the Hole, though not many.
The whole process takes a little over sixteen hours, through all of which my fellow spectators and I stay vigilant. The oil and its debris make their pilgrimage back to the ocean through a massive whirlpool, circling within the Fishing Hole. Soon, the city can see its cobbled streets once more. As time goes on, the vortex at the center of Branswain begins to run clearer and clearer, until there’s virtually no oil in it. Still, the water in the Fishing Hole drains away.
Old Branswain, the catacombs on which the New city is built, is seen by human eyes for the first time in hundreds of years, and shudders in the moonlight. I watch as, nearby, a small cave under a Lighthouse reveals itself once more.
You fasten a lengthy rope to a massive hook, which was previously used to lower submersibles into the water in the center of the Hole, back when there was water in the center of the Hole. Making sure it is tightly secured, you tie the other end around your waist, and begin to rappel down the precariously slippery walls of the Fishing Hole.
This goes on for about ten minutes, and in the end you barely have enough rope. You hover in front of a gaping cavern, about twenty feet tall and going all the way around the Hole. Untying yourself from the rope, you swing into the Old city. It vaguely resembles the Branswain that sits atop it, but every square inch is covered by barnacles and mussels and algae. Rusted wrought iron lamps act as miniature aquariums, still holding some water and living sea creatures.
Torch in hand, you trek down slimy gothic streets, stepping over the fairly recent remains of fish and cephalopods. Buildings, all taller than they are wide, line each street and pathway, reaching up to the cavern’s ceiling above you. Your path arcs outwards from the Hole, circling around Branswain. Eventually, you find yourself able to see moonlight, and glance up to see a metal grate above your head.
In front of you, roots, black and speckled with ethereal blue, stretch from below the Old city and towards the New. The largest of them are several feet in diameter, and they have begun to breach the surface.
We go about our lives in our floating city. The streets, still faintly sticky, are not lit by any lamps, but instead by the otherworldly blue glow which emits from the whole metropolis. In nearby Viedelich, where the oil has been cleaned away, the aurora of Branswain can be seen on the horizon.
Tendrils of an inky black wood, peppered with blue flakes, climb every building, reaching towards the sky where they bloom into countless ghostly sapphire flowers. Those of us that live in the undercity find our dimly lit way by following the tangling black bushes. The seawater in Old Branswain rests comfortably at ankle height, with no intent of moving anytime soon. Whether we lie in the dark or beneath the sky, we know we are protected by the city’s warming glow.
The stars above us spin gently, like a cosmic mobile. Occasionally, they swirl together in patterns, unknowable to us, but familiar to them. The moon, mostly spherical, reflects a yellow tint down on the city. Every now and then, a little something will drip down from it, but not often.
We bask in the glow of our city. The rest of the world gawks at our grotesque transformation, but we can’t blame them. If they were here, they would see the allure of it as well. We, the people of the sea, reside lovingly in Branswain, city of the Eternal Night.
Reggie isn't a big fan of the ocean.