I.

It’s all around us. It’s all within us. We came from this, didn’t we? The sea. Eldest and
timeless, deathless, lifeless—a flatline. The sea calls us home. Seashells and sea-cells, the
quantum foam of space-time and a thousand lonely suicides foaming at the mouth:
everything crawls back here eventually, just as everything once tried to crawl out. The sea
calls us back into itself. We were wrong to abandon it. We were naive to think that we ever
did.

It’s calling me.

my cells are screaming

I can hear myself calling.

//

The viewport gazed into pitch black. Mir cupped his hands onto the glass and squinted: the
transluscent face of a graying, middle-aged man filled his vision, but somewhere in the murk,
at an almost microscopic distance, a row of blurry red lights blinked back at him.

He breathed a small sigh of relief.

Mir knew those to be the Facility’s perimeter warning lights, designed to warn approaching
vessels of the outermost border. For as long as he could remember, those were the only lights
out there that he ever saw. For the past twenty-seven years, every day after work, he would
head over to the northwestern viewport closest to his station, cup his hands, and squint.

When you’re this far down, everyone has their own private religion; this was his daily prayer.
For a long time, Mir wasn’t exactly sure what he was praying to, but after the tenth year or so
he realized that he was simply addressing “the Outside.”

Every day for twenty-seven years the lights blinked back, until one day they didn’t.

//

there is no outside

Can you hear me?

II.

“Oooh, would you look at those jellyfishes? And-and-those little tiny crabs thingies,
Mommy, what are they?”

The Queen Mother’s eyes crinkled to half-moons at her daughter’s antics. Sweet, sweet little
girl. She couldn’t believe how much her daughter had grown, it felt like only yesterday her
tummy was swollen with the babe, and it certainly felt like just hours ago she saw her
daughter for the first time. Time did fly, even if they were at the bottom of the ocean.
Chubby tiny hands pulled the Queen back to where she was: with her daughter, at the
southernmost viewport of the Palace, all lights killed and the only thing illuminating the
small viewport was the ghostly glow of the Lightbearer jellyfish swarm. The Queen squatted
down and took her daughter into her arm, pushing the tiny body of the four-year-old into her
older, sicker one. The warmth of her body never failed to comfort her.

“Do you know what people call them?” The Queen pointed at the swarm floating lazily all
around them.

The child shook her head. “What do you call them, Mommy?”

“Long time ago, our ancestors thought the bottom of the ocean was pitch black and devoid of
life. They thought only humans generated light and nothing else could. When they finally got
down here, they saw that they were wrong. The bottom of the ocean is beautiful and full of
life. They saw these animals--these jellyfish. Their bright beings brought inspiration to our
ancestors and since then, they called them the Lightbearer.”

“Lightbah-”

“Bearer. Repeat after me, baby, bea-” the child followed, “-rer.”

“What is that, Mommy?”

“It means they bring light to us, they have light within them. Like you do.” The Queen smiled
as she poked her daughter’s chest.

The little girl kept her hands on the place where her mother just touched. She frowned.

“But Mommy,” she all but whined, “I don’t glow.”

The Queen’s laughter rang across the empty room. She hugged her daughter tighter, kissing
the top of her riotous curls. “No, you don’t glow like the jellyfish, baby. It’s different. What I
meant was--”

The time between the mother and daughter was abruptly interrupted by the door sliding open.
A guard passed through and planted himself next to the door. His sharp eyes swept through
the room and upon landing on the child, he said, “Forgive me, my Queen, the Princess is
needed.”

She didn’t want to let go.

“Now?”

The guard nodded. “Yes, Your Highness. Apologies for interrupting what I’m sure must be a
lovely time.”

The Queen sighed and turned her daughter around, keeping an uneasy smile plastered on her
face. The child looked at her mother with big, bright eyes and the Queen’s smile faltered.
“Baby, Mommy is so sorry but you need to go with him, okay? Mommy will see you for
dinner.”
She took her hand and passed her to the guard, who crouched a little bit so he could hold her
hand. Giving one last gap-toothed smile to her mother, the child turned to the guard and
nodded.

“Please follow me, Raden Ajeng Kadita, we are going to see your father.”

III.

Mir stood naked in front of his wardrobe’s mirror. His dark brown skin glistened with
slithering petals courtesy of the lava lamp ceiling, magma constellations cast on every corner
of the spherical room. The mirror image beckoned Mir onwards with its hand. Mir nodded
back and walked right into the glass, disappearing into its surface.

“Thank you, Mir, for attending at such short notice.”

Mir found himself in a medium-sized conference chamber. The bubble-shaped room’s lava
lamp was set to a soft violet, a color code for non-urgent daily meetings and administrative
processions. In front of him, a graying woman sat at a round metallic table. The table was
sparse, as was her rainment: a maroon lab coat covered her small form like an overlarge robe.
On her forehead was a tattoo of a simple black circle.