Chapter 25

Twenty-Five

Mira

Mira watched him disappear into the water again, and she felt all the energy in her body simply drain out. It wasn’t possible for her to keep up this charade any longer. She’d been trying so hard to feel like she was healthy and normal, but... she wasn’t.

She knew she wouldn’t last very long. Byte was right. She didn’t have unending time here while her body slowly deteriorated, because she needed more from every part of what kept her alive. Food. Water. Shelter. Light. All the things that humans had given up to live underneath the sea.

Down here? She would die all too quickly.

Byte shuffled a little closer to her, those metal arms pinging against the stone as it dragged itself a little closer with every movement. “You know, there are better ways to prove that you’re strong.”

“I don’t need a lecture.”

“Well, it seems like you might.” Byte settled beside her, watching her with those unblinking eyes as she put her feet into the yellow glow of the water and swished her toes there. “If you keep doing that, your toes will rot off.”

“No, they won’t,” she replied with a chuckle, surprised it could make her smile so easily. “They’ll be fine. I know everything has been a little damp lately, but at least I can dry out in this cave.”

“Where all the other undines know you are. It’s a risk for us to stay here too long. You’ll be wet again soon enough.”

“I don’t really mind it,” she said quietly. “I like the ocean. Swimming is something that I’ve always enjoyed, even though we were only allowed to do so in the moon pool where there were a hundred cameras underneath to make sure nothing would come close to us. Even the engineering wing had a small section of the ocean we could dip our toes into.”

She swished her feet in the water, watching delicate foam rise from her movements, and it captivated her. Just as it had when she was a little girl.

Byte made a little clunking noise that sounded rather like a huff. “Humans have always been so interested in the ocean. Even when I was made, lifetimes ago for you, you all had a fascination with the sea. It’s always the depths that you couldn’t understand and the creatures far beneath it.”

“You remember?” She turned to look at Byte, noticing the rust gathering on its edges. “How much do you remember?”

“Everything.” Byte picked at one of those rusty pieces. “I told you, I was meant to be a record keeper. I remember everything that happened in those old days. The beginning of our journey underneath the sea. The first construction of Alpha and the secondary constructions of others.”

“How?” She pulled her feet out of the water and gently picked Byte up. “How do you remember all that if you were mapping the sea floor?”

“Transmissions. Even underwater, there are ways for droids to keep in touch with each other. I have many memories of those early times.” It tapped the side of its box, and the little projector appeared off the top of it. “Would you like to see?”

A glimpse into a world long gone? She would be honored to see what the droid had archived, but even more than that, she just wanted to see how people used to live.

“Why don’t you show me while I clean off some of this rust? There were a few chemicals in the back that haven’t degraded yet. I think I should be able to get you shining so the rust doesn’t get any worse.”

She placed Byte on top of the computer console and gathered her things to clean it while the droid settled in. She watched as it flicked through memories, speeding through some and then dismissing others. But eventually, it settled on images to project that immediately captivated her.

Memories from above.

Together, they watched a beautiful landscape unfold before them. A young woman with blonde sparkling hair and a smile that showed far too large teeth. She was so full of life, though, bubbling with laughter as she raced after an older gentleman. They were running on bright green grass, endless blades weaving around their knees. Not inside a pod or inside the cities, but above ground.

“What is that?” Mira asked, pointing at the bottom of the memory as the image suddenly left the grassy plain.

“That was a rock formation that was found often above the surface. They called it lava flow, and it was cooled lava from the volcanoes up above. The land there was difficult to live on. That’s why humans turned their attention to beneath the surface. It’s very warm. And sometimes the lava would get into homes and towns, and kill people.” Byte zoomed in on the background of the memory, showing what looked like a tall peak of land. “That’s one of the volcanoes.”

“It looks very tall.”

“They all were. Are. Likely, there are plenty of them out there, but the drones that humans built to fly above us were long ago destroyed. Unfortunately, all the robots they left on land stopped broadcasting one by one.”

A wave of sadness rushed through her as she started polishing Byte’s sides. “Do you miss them?”

“The humans?”

“The robots that were left on land.”

“Ah.” A few gears whirred and clicked before Byte sighed again. “I have not heard from them in one hundred and sixteen years. It has been a long time, and I know they are gone. But some part of me hopes that perhaps they are simply waiting for someone to find them. As I was.”

Oh, if that didn’t break her heart. Mira winced before continuing to clean Byte’s sides, picking off rust with her nails as she worked. “Who were the people in the memory, then?”

“Ah! Miss Alys Fairweather and her father, Professor Norbert Fairweather. They were two of the most intriguing adventurers I ever met in my life.” Byte flicked to another memory, one of the two people getting into what looked like a submarine, though the model was clearly old. It was little more than a round ball that floated in the ocean.

Professor Fairweather got in first. His white hair waved in the sea breeze, and there was a faint sheen of sweat on his face. Perhaps because it was so warm above the water. He lifted a hand and waved, the older style clothing he wore billowing with his movement. He likely should have been wearing a suit jacket, but then again, she didn’t expect to see him wearing that, considering the heat.

His daughter stepped in after him, standing on top of the round submarine with her eyes cast out to sea. She wore a pretty yellow dress with a wide leather belt around her waist. And as the breeze moved her dress, Mira could see that she was also wearing a pair of immaculate knee-high boots beneath.

“He brought his daughter on adventures with him?”

“Oh yes.” Byte zoomed in on Alys’s face, and she could see how tenderly the droid had taken care of the memory.

There was so much detail in the projection. She could see how blue Alys’s eyes were, and how she had the faintest abrasion on her chin, like she’d scraped it on something. Her lips were chapped, and her brows had a few flyaways that gave her a rather roguish expression. How strange to look at a woman like this and see so much, when she had most certainly passed away years ago.

“What were they doing in this memory?” she asked.

“Scouting out the first location for Alpha. Professor Fairweather was the lead architect on the project. He led many people to the location after this, but the first exploration was first and foremost, him and his daughter. They traveled the entire planet together once. Or at least, that’s what they claimed.” The projection blinked in and out of life before showing yet another memory.

This time, it was an image from inside of the submarine. There were so many wires and ports and strange buttons that Mira couldn’t even hazard a guess at what they did. But the professor and his daughter sat in matching chairs, looking out into the ocean with matching expressions of awe.

Alys leaned forward in her chair, pressing closer to the glass as she stared at the magical world they had revealed. It was stunning. Beyond stunning. So many kelp forests and fish and turtles and fluttering creatures she couldn’t even name.

“That doesn’t look like Alpha.” She pointed at the forest and all the other creatures around it. “Alpha is set on a barren rock. Nothing can get near it for miles out to sea without someone seeing it.”

The memory blinked out of existence. “That is because Alpha was built on what was once a thriving biome of sea creatures and plants. It was all destroyed to build Alpha.”

“I...” She didn’t know what to say.

Instead, she thought about it. Silence descended between them as Byte instead played images from above. Even those weren’t enough to distract her from what it had said. There used to be so much more where their cities were built. She’d assumed, of course. But why go through all the trouble of clearing out an area of the ocean when there were plenty of blank spaces?

“The professor and his daughter...” She cleared her throat, licking her lips before asking her question. “They didn’t seem like the kind of people who would be happy with others destroying the ocean. I saw the expressions on their faces. They were captivated by how beautiful it all was.”

In a sense, she’d be disappointed if they were proud of themselves. She was so in love with the sea, and she’d seen a kinship in the way Alys had looked at the ocean as well. There was a bit of love in her gaze.

“Alys wasn’t happy with proceeding the way they built the city. She fought against them, quite hard, and then her father eventually understood why she was so angry. It took him a while to understand. He was...” Byte paused before continuing with a harder edge to its tone. “The professor wanted to build something great. He would have done anything to see the city built the way it was, even destroy the surrounding landscape to satisfy his need to be remembered after he died.”

How horrible. It was hard to even imagine the rift between this young woman and her father. It was even harder to imagine seeing the ocean she loved so much, the one she was so fascinated with, slowly disappear before her eyes.

Clearing her throat, Mira picked at a few more of the rust pieces before turning Byte so she could reach the rest. There wasn’t much left anymore. Just a few flakes, so she had something to fidget with. “So Alys fought back. She didn’t want them to build Alpha?”

“Not at all. She still thought there were other places for them to scope out. She pushed for them to build at higher levels. Though the volcanoes would still affect people who lived in the levels above the sea, it wouldn’t affect them anywhere near as much. She even worked on a design that would have been protected from any projectiles thrown out by the volcanoes.” Byte sighed a little dreamily. “She was an impressive woman.”

“It sounds like.”

It also seemed if the humans had actually listened to her, then they would have still lived above the ocean. People could have smelled fresh air, not recycled air that hummed out of a box for their entire lives. They would have felt a real breeze, not one from standing in front of a fan. Her world would have been so different if Alys had gotten her way.

“What happened to them?” she asked, even though she feared she didn’t want to know the answer. “The professor and his bright daughter?”

The projection disappeared. Byte even shuddered in her hands before it finally clicked its hands against the sides of the box. “Professor Fairweather became a rather renowned individual. He was the first person to introduce filtration systems, so humans no longer needed to pump air into the cities. That’s why Beta is so much deeper under the sea than the others. He was an inventor for most of his life, and a majority of the objects that you use even to this day were first started by him.”

“Why does this feel like the story ends in sadness?”

“Alys disappeared.” Byte’s head retreated almost entirely into the box as it looked at her with those strange eyes, blinking. “She went off in the submarine, certain that there were more discoveries for her. And she refused to be anywhere near the people who would so willingly destroy so much. I was supposed to go with her on that day.”

“What happened instead?”

“Her father was already commissioning me to be one of the deep sea trawlers. He wanted a personal droid to be on the ground floor of the sea so that he could get direct reports rather than waiting for anyone else.” Byte’s hands tapped against its side again before retreating into the darkness of its box. “She never came back. And they never found her.”

“Surely she found land somewhere else. It would make sense for someone like her to have found another home, perhaps another group of people who had similar thoughts as her.” Hope bloomed in her chest for the woman she had never known. Then, that hope was crushed.

“They never found her, Miss Mira. They found the submarine, though. It returned as expected to the city. Empty. The top was torn off and all the equipment was ruined.”

“Torn off? What kind of creature could do that?”

Byte glanced toward the water and then back to her. “There were claw marks on the sides of the submarine. Not teeth, Miss Mira. Claws.”

“Oh,” she breathed.

Alys Fairweather had found the undines as well, it seemed. Glancing around, Mira could only hope that Alys had found herself in a similar situation. Perhaps there was a history of undines having human pets. Or perhaps Arges wasn’t the first undine to find himself intrigued with the thought of another creature with two tails who didn’t have gills to help it survive. Pity or intrigue, it didn’t matter.

“Maybe she survived,” Mira murmured. “Maybe there is hope for us yet, Byte.”

But the little robot had already ducked back into its box. If she listened very carefully, Mira could hear the projector was still going. This time inside the box, playing memories that Byte wished to watch alone.

Setting it down gently on the computer console, she gave the droid a little privacy to mourn someone who had been so dear.