I can feel a slight burn in my lungs, a warning that the Hydropnea is wearing off. I look at Adnan next to me, his scythe cuts through the thick rubbery stalks of seaweed with an ease that came from years of seniority. “Hey,” I sign with my hands to get his attention. I can speak, but I lost my mouthguard a week earlier. Our mouthguards form a clear, nearly imperceptible helmet around our heads. This design allows for unrestricted movement, visibility, and communication in the murky sea. Since we won’t get to the Marina for another couple days, I had to deal without it. “I need some fuel. You good here?”
Adnan nods, barely glancing my way. His voice crackles in my ear, “Take your break while you dose up.” Adnan nods, barely glancing my way. His voice crackles in my ear, “Take your break while you dose up.” Technically, our breaks were supposed to be separate from a Hydropnea dosage because it takes seven minutes out of our fifteen minute break. Most really don’t want to do anything in those last few minutes after the dosage, but we are short staffed and time around here is sparse.
A bundle of seaweed floats next to me in a net tethered to my waist. Right now, it’s basically weightless, but it will easily surpass a hundred pounds once it’s out of the water. I secure the net and unhook my own tether from the fence and I immediately begin to kick my way up.
As I get nearer to the glinting surface where the sunlight moves like a fluid membrane, I feel the pressure on my body begin to ease. The wetsuit protects us from a lot of the pain that comes from being at these depths, but it is still an uncomfortable shift as if moving under different gravity. The weightlessness of the water relaxes my sore joints and I take a moment to look around. The murky green water filled with phytoplankton and zooplankton erases Adnan and the other divers from my view. There’s nothing around me. From what I’ve learned through the grapevine, never assume you’re alone in the water. I’ve heard horror stories of people getting killed by sharks or grumpy whales who appear from nowhere. But I’ve never seen it. It’s what the seniors tell the newbies to keep them alert.
Still, I start to swim a little bit faster at the thought of a lurking beast and aim for the shadow that looms at the surface where the station waits. I breach finally and the quick, suffocating shock that comes from the Hydropnea expelling from the body hits like a blow to the abdomen. I have never quite gotten over this feeling since I’ve been employed at HydroCorp for the last five years. The Retrievers, a group of athletic individuals who help with preparing dives and offloading equipment, rush quickly to the side of the “seal hole” where I’ve appeared. It’s actually called the Dry Dock, but its resemblance to the breathing holes seals used to form in the ice is how it received its nickname. I hoist the seaweed up to the metal platform, and two Retrievers grab it while another helps pull me up.
“Big haul!” one of them, a perpetually sunburnt man named Mason, shouts at me. He has the thick accent of a traveler, a little bit of everywhere all jumbled together. They appear sometimes, working for a few months at each colony before setting off to the next. Mason calls his travels his ‘spice of life’ or whatever. “Done for the day?”
“No, I have a few more hours. I just need an extra dose to get through.” Mason screws up his face, it probably hurts to do that with how red his skin looks. He purposely chooses to get a sunburn despite the fact that HydroCorp developed a long-lasting, semi-permanent sunscreen to keep workers safe. He doesn’t use it, or any HydroCorp products. He thinks they’re ‘unnatural’.
“Be careful with that stuff man. I don’t use any products from the big guy,” he says this as he points his finger up at the sky ominously.
I shrug at him and chuckle, “I’ll be fine.”
Mason moves on and I make my way to the HydroPod, where the Hydronauts like me can refuel in privacy. My wetsuit only has a few beads of water dripping in tiny meandering streams down the sleek waterproof material, but I grab a small hand towel from a heated chest beside the pod to dry my face. I step inside and flip the lock on the door to ‘occupied’. The interior is enveloped in a soft, yellow light and on the left there is one singular cot with a thick cushion covered in shiny plastic and a small black bin next to it. There is a wall to the right filled with row after row of refrigerated Hydropnea bottles in their small, stainless steel containers behind a glass door.
I open the door, feeling the slight chill of the cool air on my damp face, and grab a random bottle. It doesn’t matter. They were all the same. I open the lid with a snap and nearly gag at the metallic stench. The liquid is cherry-flavored, but it really tastes like I’m drinking pennies. I squeeze my eyes shut, preparing myself for the next part. I down the fluid in one go, sitting quickly on the mattress.
It begins like a sharp stab in the side, like the skin got caught between my ribs. I grip the plastic, grinding my teeth together. Then it feels like fire, like someone lit a match, dropped it down my throat, and everything inside me went ablaze. I rear back, choking on the pain but no sound could emerge. I shake on the cot as the liquid slowly forms the gelatinous protective layer inside my lungs. It activates in water to allow for long periods of diving. Then, suddenly, without warning, it’s over. No pain, it’s just done.
I haven’t really gotten over that either.
I sit up again, and wipe the sweat from my face with the rag from earlier before exiting the pod. The weirdest thing about this shit is that you don’t have to breathe. No inhale or exhale, it’s like holding your breath without the pain. I grab my net, now emptied by the Retrievers and tie it back around my waist. “Dropping in!” I shout, waiting for the light above me to flash green. When it does, I jump and begin my descent to pick up the rest of my shift.
As I float slowly to the bottom, I adjust my gear and make sure that my blade is secured tightly. It’ll take a few minutes for full descent. From the corner of my eye, something forms in the water below me. I tense up, my hand ready to grab the knife if I need to defend myself from a hungry predator or even a curious fish. As I get lower, the figure becomes more clear.
I blink, but when I open my eyes it’s still there. A woman stares at me, her heels planted firmly in the sand. Her dress billows and swirls with the current like a jellyfish. As she moves, the fabric undulates around her enchantingly. She smiles, beckoning me closer.
I look around me, but I’ve lost sight of the station’s shadow and I can’t find the glowing red light that signaled where the farm is. This can’t be real. She’d be dead.
It’s not possible to be at this depth without our suit, yet when I look back, there she is—smiling at me and pinning laundry on a line between two stalks of seaweed. I swim closer, pushing myself through the water hurriedly, curiosity pulling me towards the woman. I can’t make out her features well enough, but everything about her seems so real. I’m so close to her, I can see the yellows in her eyes and the pink apples of her cheeks.
I feel a hand land on my shoulder and whirl around, fear striking my heart. Adnan looks at me, his grey eyebrows pulled in, but his eyes are soft with understanding. “It’s okay. Whatever you saw, it wasn’t real.” I furrow my eyebrows in confusion.
“Do you see—” I start to sign, but when I turn to point back at the woman, she is no longer there. My eyes search the water for any sign of her presence, but there’s nothing except sand and seaweed. She had looked too real to have been a hallucination, I could almost touch her.
Adnan shrugs and squeezes his hand tighter on my shoulder, “You’ll get used to it, kid.”
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