[Issue 2024.71]

‘Deep Sea Baby’, Faith Allington

Art © 2024 Sebastian Timpe

---

The sea is glassy and lustrous with moonlight when Johanna arrives. The vacation town of Fairhaven’s only hotel crouches on the shore, bold lines blurring to ghostlike in the dark. The air is pure salt, corroding her skin and etching her lungs as she watches the indigo horizon.

The air is warming to the touch now and eventually she must pull herself away from the view, into the pitiless fluorescent light of the hotel. It is square and boxlike, pale as bone inside. Damp and salt-crusted as the sea. Behind the desk, a concierge smiles faintly. Masses of dark hair frame their high cheekbones and violet-tinted eyes.

“Hi. I have a reservation under Carson, but I was wondering, uh, if you have any records of visitors? My sister Ellie came here a few months ago.” Johanna doesn’t add that her sister probably doesn’t want to see her again, judging by dozens of unanswered messages.

“I’m afraid we can’t disclose information about other guests.” The concierge’s face tilts apologetically. They flick through reservations in the computer, then frown. “Unfortunately, your room’s not quite ready. Would you care for a complimentary meal in the dining dome while you wait?”

Johanna’s bones ache with the hours of being squeezed into a second-class tram seat. She has government-issued meal cakes in her bag. But there might be people in the dining room who’ve seen her sister.

She nods and the concierge gestures towards a domed room filled with tables. Night presses in at every window, but already, she can see that the sky is getting lighter. Dawn is coming.

The iced buffet is filled with decidedly unusual cuisine, unlike anything she’d get in the capital. Mounds of green moss, bowls of little yellow flowers, and fried strips of brownish seaweed.

“Hello! I’m Todd, he/him.” A young man rises and waves, his lips rimmed in oily black fluid. His eyes are enormous, the violet of his irises too vivid. He lifts a plate of what appear to be quivering blue mushrooms made out of gelatin. “The sea fungi are delicious here, but you have to order ahead. Want some?”

“No, thank you,” Johanna says, wondering if this violet eye tint is a vacation trend only found in Fairhaven. She loads a plate with seaweed and sits down opposite him. “I’m Johanna. She/her.”

He leans toward her. “What brings you to Fairhaven, Johanna?”

Johanna wonders how Ellie would answer this question. “I’m looking for someone. How long have you been here?”

“A few days,” he says, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.

Disappointment bleeds through the curated mask of her face and she looks away before he can read it. She knows she shouldn’t be disappointed. Ellie vanished so completely, it will take time to find her. Time and patience.

Johanna’s teeth catch awkwardly as she chews wet strands of seaweed, unused to consuming anything besides spongy meal cakes. She takes her time with briny bites of seaweed, letting the slightly bitter flavor linger.

There’s nothing else to do but sleep until sunfall.

---

—You are not authorized. Evacuate these premises immediately.—

ouRS NoW. Go eLSeWHeRe.

—Unacceptable. We do not recognize your authority.—

THiS iS YouR FiRST aND oNLY CHaNCe.

---

Johanna wakes to the automatic whir of curtains sliding open. A flicker of dream vanishes as she blinks. The room, like the hotel, is simple but breathtakingly clean. Far removed from the cluttered demands of her life, almost austere. A silk cocoon she can slip into, forever.

The glass windows are filtered, of course, revealing a late afternoon sky bleached to bone white. In the daylight, the sea writhes in emerald-green peaks, foaming hungrily. Spitting its fury as it boils. Full of wanting, just like her.

When the night arrives, the concierge provides a mask to protect her lungs against the harsh sea air. Her entire body hurts, as if she’s starting to catch a fever.

Masked couples walk along the shore, expressions indecipherable, but gestures painfully unmistakable. Johanna almost remembers being in love, a lifetime ago. Before Ellie vanished and Johanna found herself slicing people out of her life, anything to stop feeling.

Todd stumbles on the uneven shore and smiles at her awkwardly, as though he’s forgotten how this works. His forehead is filmy with sweat but his violet eyes are kind. “You said you were looking for someone.”

“My sister, Ellie. She invited me here with her, but I was too busy to join her.” It’s true, in the way that things ripped into pieces are still true. Something in Todd’s sympathetic face urges the story out of her. “She’s a botanist. She’s been studying the growth patterns of flora and fauna after Fallout. I just work in the fields. I—I should’ve come with her.”

“And now you want to see this place for yourself. Why?”

The question hangs in the air between them, the hushed whisper of the sea filling the silence. Should she admit that the grey hours of routine choke her, hour by blank hour? It sounds ungrateful to say it aloud. How many people died before humanity righted the ship and found a way to survive?

“I guess I was a little bored,” she admits, the words reckless on her tongue. What if Todd reports what she’s said?

“It’s more than that.” He stares at her hard, trying to dig inside her head. “People like us are called here.”

Her heart speeds up with a sudden fear that he will report her. “People like us?”

“People who long for something more besides the ennui of Restoration.” His lips twitch into a half-smile, voice threaded with amusement.

“The Restoration is paramount,” she whispers. The same words she said whenever Ellie admitted to wanting more. The same words that did nothing to keep Ellie in the capital. “We’ve managed to salvage more than half the planet since Fallout.”

“Of course.” He bends down and scoops up a handful of sand, letting it fall from his fingers. It catches the moonlight, the flecks swirling like a cosmos. “Beautiful, isn’t it? Did you know that this planet used to be covered in oceans?”

Johanna nods, suddenly exhausted. She has stopped being good at the kind of small talk it takes to turn strangers into friends. She doesn’t have time to relearn it now. She glances at the crumbling cliffs behind the hotel, bear-like in the dark. If she were a younger, more reckless version of herself, would she go up there to explore?

No. Ellie would have chosen water. She was always brave, so much braver than Johanna. The sea, tamed by the cooler temperatures of nightfall, swells and ripples in songs of longing. There are quicksilver things under the waves that could be jellyfish.

Her sister might still be here if she looks hard enough.

Come with me, Jo-bear. Let’s go see the world.

Whatever had been so important to Johanna, tethering her to the capital, seemed to come apart in her hands now. Scraps of paper caught by the wind, dissolving into the endless water. And then gone.

“Stop!” Todd’s hand scrapes her arm, eyes wide with alarm. “The water’s too acidic for you.”

She jerks away from him, surprised to find she has walked almost to the waves. A part of her wants to keep walking until she is up to her neck, until she can see underwater. She understands now how it could have happened—how Ellie could have left her.

---

—Stop this immediately.—

You WeRe WaRNeD. YouR iNDiFFeReNCe iS PRooF oF iNFeRioRiTY.

—Such aggression is banned by the convention.—

You aND We KNoW WaR aNSWeRS To No CoNVeNTioN.

---

Something is crawling down her spine. She wakes from nightmares into the daylight hours, sweat dripping down her face. Her stomach is on fire, pain radiating through her body from that cramped center. It must be a side effect of missing nutrients that her body craves.

She reaches for the meal cakes in their leaf wrappings, round and moist and white. They smell as sweet as the asphonite flowers they are made from. After Fallout, they were one of the few living things that would still grow, providing precious sustenance to what was left of humanity.

A humanity that went from the brink of extinction to flourishing. They are thriving now, everybody says so. Everybody is happy, pleased with the Restoration. And yet, none of this made Ellie happy.

And if Ellie had not left, would Johanna still be in the capital? Would she be happy?

A bolt of pain twists behind Johanna’s eyes and she shivers. She stares at the meal cakes, wondering why they seem so strange now. A wave of revulsion wracks her body, and she flings them onto the floor. No good. She must make herself follow the complete experience, immerse herself fully in Fairhaven.

The way Ellie would have done.

---

—You have no hope of success; you know that, do you not?—

a QueSTioN oF STRaTeGY.

—Strategy implies intelligence. We do not recognize your intelligence.—

ReCoGNiTioN iS NoT ReQuiReD.

—What is required?—

NoTHiNG.

---

It is against regulations to stay away from the capital for so long, but she cannot help being sick. Just as she cannot help dreaming of white flowers, of vines twining through her lungs. She struggles out of bed and stumbles to the windows. She yanks the curtains aside with trembling fingers. Even though it’s day and she should be asleep. It’s just that the writhing sea is so bright, so perfect, she wants to swallow it.

Where she lives everything is concrete and plastic, whatever could be recovered, but surrounded by field and forest. Tranquil and lush. Nothing like the raw surging waters of the sea—so green, so jewel-like. So powerful they could wash the pain away.

The light burns her eyes but she presses her forehead against the glass and tries to push through it. “Ellie, is this what you saw?”

The concierge lays a cool, damp hand on her shoulder. “Shhh.”

“Outside?” Johanna whispers, turning away from the glass.

“Not yet,” the concierge says, smiling proof that everything will be okay. “Just a little longer.”

---

—We have reported you to the authorities. We are sending our best to eradicate you.—

THaNK You. YouR SPeCieS iS aLMoST aS GuLiLLiBLe aS HuMaNiTY.

—You cannot do this. This is our home; we’ve worked hard not to be seen or suspected.—

YouR MoMeNT iS eNDiNG. We aRe THe FuTuRe.

—You will draw notice if you continue to consume hosts so recklessly.—

iRReLeVaNT.

—You must want something?—

ReSToRaTioN. FoR THe oCeaNS To DRoWN THiS WoRLD aGaiN.

---

Johanna stumbles outside, her feet shaky as a lamb. Red sweat glistens on her arms, drips down her spine. Ellie is calling from the sea, her voice keening in every purling wave, but Johanna can’t go in yet. She falls to her knees.

Ellie.

---

—Please, a treaty must be possible. We are both intelligent species.—

Too LaTe. THiS PLaNeT iS ouRS.

—We agree to surrender. We can survive better by working together.—

ouRS FoReVeR.

—Wait!—

GooDBYe.

---

She rips the mask off her face and retches, her entire body shuddering. A sticky mass of white lands on the sand, leaving a rotted taste in the back of her mouth. It is a tangle of long roots, hissing and writhing in the sand.

Squinting at it, she can make out a swollen seed pod in that center. There’s a noise ringing in her ears. Without knowing why, she crushes it between her fingers, feeling the surface split under the pressure.

It collapses, oozing and stinking of death. She feels better than she has in years, scoured clean as a cloud. The night air tastes like euphoria and the moonlight slides across her bare skin like silk.

Ellie is waiting for her.

She crawls towards the sea, drawn by that certainty. Nothing has felt so right as it does now, the indigo-pitch night sky with its eternity of stars. The swelling waves nudge at her fingertips with water-tongues.

She lays her hand in the water. It’s so warm and soothing, not acid at all. She shivers, watching the dark sea for any sign of her sister. A fluttering bioluminescence drifts towards her, glowing under the water.

Something skitters onto her fingers with the lightest of pinpricks. It’s so fast that it looks like a ghost or a memory. She can barely make out a pale carapace flickering over her wrist and up her forearm, scaling the cliff of her shoulder. Coming home.

“Ellie?”

YeS.

© 2024 Faith Allington

[Issue 2024.71]

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