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“Studying the ocean forces you to be poetic, because we haven’t worn all those ideas and concepts soft around the edges yet,” said Luis. “The language is still mired in the maritime, and I don’t know that it’s going to catch up anytime soon.”
Nothing that reminded them, as a family, of Anne was allowed to be forgotten; she was the ghost at every table, and they’d keep her with them forever if they could.
“But baby, if it’s not an answer, if it’s not the piece you’ve been looking for, don’t let it break you.” “It’s okay, Mom,” said Tory. She deftly extricated her wrist, bending to press a kiss against her mother’s temple before she said, “I’m already broken,” and followed Luis to the door.
Luis’s car was a first-generation Tesla, inefficient compared to more recent models, some of which could run on solar power for a week between charges.
this notion is very 2017
The seas of the world were a vast and interconnected graveyard, every inch riddled with bones and haunted by the ghosts of the lost. Every mile of every ocean could be marked as the site of some “surprising” or “unexpected” death; humanity sailed, and the sea punished it for its hubris.
“The ocean is the last great mystery in the world. We may as well pursue every clue it contains. We’ll have all the questions answered soon enough, and things are going to get very boring after that happens.”
It was hard for the audience to see her with the lights as low as they were; she was a shadow, a silhouette, a conversation that began and ended in comfortable darkness.
In the light, she was a tall, strongly built woman of mixed English and Hawaiian descent who managed to seem angular and rounded at the same time. From her father she had inherited strong legs, brown skin, dark hair that required little more than regular brushing, and an absolute conviction that those who challenged the sea would eventually get what was coming to them. From her mother she had inherited a tendency to freckle a darker shade of brown, a certain emotional distance from the people around her, and pale green eyes, like chips of sea glass that had somehow missed the shore and washed
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The best predators always learned how to masquerade as things that wouldn’t seem threatening. That was how they got close enough to strike.
Each new wave of humanity found itself crashing onto a beach that was a little more cluttered from what had come before, a little more damaged from the carelessness of others. If these students seemed motivated and determined, it was because they’d seen the writing on the wall. Earth would survive whatever humanity did to it. Humanity might not. These children, and their children, were making the last-ditch effort to bring the planet back from the brink.
Sometimes loving each other isn’t enough to make up for all the things you know about another person.”
Her accent was Australian, thick enough to smear on toast.
“What do you think that was about?” asked Luis. “I think this is going to be an interesting voyage, that’s what,” said Tory. “Come on. We don’t want to miss orientation.”
has anyone ever talked like this outside of a disney chamnel original movie?
Mermaids were one thing. Norovirus was something entirely different, and far more believably dangerous.
The first active shutter drill began at midnight. It ended two minutes later, in failure. The Melusine sailed on.
The lack of women on the security team seemed like one more clear indication that they had been chosen on the basis of their looks, and not for anything related to their qualifications.
I took this job because people scare the hell out of me.” Tory lifted an eyebrow. “How does that work?” “I’m scared of you, but there’s a camera between us. That makes you safe. I talk to you, and the camera catches everything you say, and I can review it later, at my leisure, when there’s no pressure to say the right thing or react immediately.” “But don’t you have to do that while we’re talking for the camera?” Olivia shrugged. “Sure. It’s just that you’re not talking to for-real Olivia when that’s happening. You’re talking to camera-Olivia, who is essentially fake and exists only so
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We should have gone to floating science camp years ago. You know what gets oceanographers horny? Being in the middle of the ocean. It’s amazing.”
Children of islands and the coast went one of two ways: they learned to fear and respect the water, or they learned to live for it.
“You know what I like about the ocean we do have?” asked Dr. Toth. “The part where we’ve dumped so much crap into it that it would be justified in becoming something out of a horror movie, and yet the horror movie it’s giving us isn’t related to any of those things. Not really.” “What do you mean?” asked Tory. “I mean if the mermaids are real—and they are—and if the mermaids are smart enough to be watching us—which they also are—they don’t have anything to do with humans. They evolved on their own. They stayed in their own environment until we started sending ships into their living room. To
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Asking scientists not to look into an open box was like asking cats not to saunter through an open door. It simply wasn’t practical.
The seas did not forgive, and they did not welcome their wayward children home.
Maybe if she translated her sister’s grief, she’d find a way to handle her own.
Sometimes science was the closest thing to the sword of an avenging angel humanity was ever going to get.
Every person on this vessel was a story in the process of telling itself, and all of them were fascinating, and all of them deserved to be heard.
How far back do we follow the consequences of free will?” “Until the guilt goes away.” “Then we’re going all the way back to the apple every single time. Do you really want that kind of responsibility?”
As long as there were bellies, they would need to be fed. As long as there was life in the sea, there would be teeth.
Humanity was cruel, and if you were prepared to try to find a bottom to that cruelty, you had best be prepared for a long, long fall.
It was easier to observe the niceties than it was to spurn them. It always had been.
The trouble with having a bear sharing your bed was that one day, the bear was going to notice that you were there; one day, the maimings would begin in earnest.
If you don’t like it, feel free to leave.” “We’re on a ship in the middle of the ocean,” said Hallie. “I know,” said Theo. “Good luck finding somewhere to go.”
was convinced that the word for a group of scientists ought to be a blackout, because that was what the fuckers seemed determined to cause.
He was a calm man because he was a simple one, and he was able to remain a simple man because he refused to contemplate things that would have required him to be complex.
Any hint of “pervert” literature would have earned her a smack from her father, followed by a lecture from her mother about how she was special, delicate, and shouldn’t worry about such things, since it wasn’t like she was ever going to have sex anyway. Little autistic girls should learn to masturbate, or better yet, to abstain, because anyone who was deviant enough to want her would be deviant enough to hurt her.
“Everyone I’ve ever dated has made the first move. They say, ‘I’m interested,’ and I go along with it. Sometimes even when I don’t really want to, just because I’m impressed that they can be so brave.
That was how you found things, in the sea. Be delicious. That was all you ever had to do.
The smarter you are, the more likely you are to want to eat the world.
Mermaids were real. Mermaids had killed her sister. These things were facts, grains of traumatic sand she had long since embedded in her psyche. Every aspect of her life was built on the scar tissue of those two statements.
The human race had always created dreamers whose seemingly frivolous dreams forced the creation of infrastructures and innovations that benefited everyone around them. He was just the latest in a long line of people who, by wanting something they could never have, dragged the rest of the world kicking and screaming into a new phase of the future.
The whole world changed when you found things.
There were probably people in the world who found carrying a gun to be comforting, even necessary to their peace of mind. He wasn’t sure he wanted to meet any of them.
“Did anyone ever tell you that you have the social skills of a hyena?” asked Luis. “I love my husband; you insult the hyena,”
For most of them, signing began and ended with an extended middle finger. Anything else was too hard for them to bother with.
“Knowledge that can be imparted loudly and with passion always lasts longer than knowledge that has to be whispered.
the human body was a predictable playground, one line leading into the next.
“It’ll be okay,” she said, and it was a lie, but it was the right lie, and that made it okay. They lay there, tangled up and warm in the dark room, and neither of them said anything, and that was okay too. Sometimes silence was the only correct thing to say.
Tory admired how smooth her voice was, and how careful she was to say “I think” and “I believe,” rather than making definitive statements. She didn’t know she was about to reveal the heart. She might be slicing into a ball of fat, or a nesting site for some symbiotic parasite. Everything about this creature was a mystery, and by never claiming anything for certain, Dr. Toth made sure she would never be caught in a lie.
Why? I don’t know. Why not might be the better question, evolution being what it is.”
I’ve spent my life looking for mermaids. And I’ve found them. Oh yes, I’ve found them. I’ve found them in the spaces between stories, in the breaks in the fossil record, and in the oral histories of a hundred civilizations. I don’t think we forgot them on purpose. I think we did it because we had to. These were monsters we could neither fight nor flee. Our only choice, if we wanted to claim the seas and hence the world, was to learn to pretend that they weren’t there. We ignored them out of our daily existence. Only now, when airplanes have freed us from the seas, do we have the luxury of
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His injury hadn’t shattered them. The healing that came after had. One day she had looked at her husband and realized everything about her life and career had become a shameful secret, something she had to hide when she was home, lest she break his heart all over again.
