Interstellar travel—the Guāngguànhuán Drive enables Solar System escape.
The Galactive Interactive is founded. The number of planets with a population exceeding one billion (Gigas) increases to twelve. Industrial Secretary of the Pan-planetary Minister Assembly, Xīng Zhúlóng, declares that the Astro Duodenum calendar is to replace the Anno Domini calendar. (Rumor has it he stuttered as he attempted to say ‘Astro Duodecimal.’ Every planetary representative denies that was the case.)
The Galactive Interactive massively expands. The number of Gigas increases to 15. The total human population is 40,000,000,000.
The Gendo emigration fleet arrives at a new solar system. They name themselves the Circs. The Circ calendar begins.
The tensiometer graph monitoring the 8000-meter fishing line suddenly spiked.
“Hit!”
The young gunner's voice nervously rang out on the gloomy command deck of the Insidious, a spacecraft littered with various retrofitted devices. The captain calmly responded, “Is it a stationary tornado?”
“Not a match.”
"Is it accreted bake particles in suspension? Or maybe we're reeling in our own trash?”
“They don’t match, those sorts a’ false positives got a completely different tension pattern,” The gunner, Itar, responded as he briefly paused to search and compare previously recorded graphs. “The tension undulates periodically in tornados, an’ dust clouds give a long, soft tug. But this ‘un shot right up, and then kept oscillating weakly. If I had to guess, it's debris or somethin’ from an ejector, but whatever this is has got a weird pattern...”
Smiling, he then turned around.
“No data—but that much was already obvious.”
“Quiet!” A voice asserted before the ten or so crewmembers could grow any more excited. "It’s obvious that we’ve already started fishing. Time for our real work to start. We're landing that catch no matter what!”
The voice belonged to Gendo Magiri, the soon-to-be 40-year-old captain. Her red lips moved as she toyed with wavy black hair hanging on her forehead. She looked over her trusted subordinates, her eyes glistening with excitement.
“All crew! Prepare to fish!”
For the first time ever, that order echoed from one wing of the ship to the other as it sliced through the vast brick-colored sky on four powerful rockets.
“Let’s do this!” “This one's ours!” “Don’t mess this up.”
The crew members all faced back to their consoles at Captain Magiri’s order. Her subordinate, Officer Sivi Endeavour, watched over her from the back corner of the captain's seat. She felt conflicted. Magiri was at her best when getting the crew amped up, so seeing her rein them in felt incredibly wrong—especially when long ago, there had been someone else who was a perfect fit for the job of maintaining order and silence. The hole that person left never seemed to have been filled, even though it had already been ten years...
She had that thought in mind as she looked at the window-shaped screen that displayed the ship’s exterior. Of course, there was nothing to remember them by out there, much less evoke them.
Not a single mountain or tower jutted from that sea of clouds. There were no forests, rivers, islands, not even an ocean. Only ammonia clouds, pure white and crystalline, graced the vast skies of hydrogen; below those, a drifting layer of ash-like bake enveloped a yawning abyss of mixed acetylene, hydrazine, sulfide and phosphine more than 20,000 kilometers deep.
Fat Beach Ball was a gas giant, and its horizontal stripes and enormous vortices were reminiscent of Jupiter, another planet from another time. The ship traversed its northern hemisphere, staying 30 kilometers above the 1 ATM level. However, referencing sea level to that was only for the sake of convenience—it wasn't the ship's point of departure. It hadn’t ascended from below but descended from space.
The Insidious had been remodeled for that purpose. The many dual-function ships constructed in orbit had scooped bake, the raw material for so many essentials, with purpose-made equipment for the last 15 years. However, the once plentiful particles of suspended bake had thinned out substantially, and the fleet now often found itself in the red.
There hadn't been a single glimmer of hope until two years ago, when a ‘fish’ was sighted swimming in FBB's atmosphere. That sight was unprecedented for a gas giant, but it hadn't been a strange cloud or trick of the eye—it was most certainly a solid body. With that certainty came the determination to hunt the fish down and discover what it really was.
The sighting led the hundreds of ships orbiting the planet to join forces, as everyone desired the resources which would allow the population of Circs—500,000—to survive.
The fleet made a grave miscalculation while it was still en route to the planet eighteen years earlier. Gas giants in a star system usually have many satellites, but it certainly hadn't been the case with FBB—there wasn’t a single metallic or rocky moon in orbit. That left the fleet stranded with only a limited supply of the most essential materials needed for its maintenance.
Their recycling efforts, alongside developments following the discovery of bake, a burnt-looking powdery substance, had kept them afloat. Still, it was impossible to halt wear and tear. Their ships and equipment had continued to deteriorate over time and, if things continued in their present direction, their supplies would only sustain the population for another year or two before they reached crisis levels.
It was then, when doom seemed inevitable, that the fish was sighted. If they managed to catch that fish, it would supply far more raw materials, far more efficiently, than dozens of hours of scooping bake could ever provide. So, the best way to go about it...?
Fishing. A hook and line on a reel. Despite 6500 years away from Earth, human cultures continued to pass down fishing.
The Insidious was not a remodeled bake-collecting ship. It was a battleship, a crucial centerpiece of the fleet. Still, equipped with four high-thrust engines and massive collapsible wings, it made for a powerful dual-use ship. Its rear cargo bay housed a hopper to hold their catch, a purpose-built drum for their carbon fishing line, and a hook forged from their limited reserves of precious titanium.
There had been some debate over what to use as bait but they ultimately settled on making a boilie from bake. The self-proclaimed (and formerly wealthy) fishing enthusiast Xīnxīng argued it was proper practice to use live bait while in fishing grounds. Not that the point mattered much when, without a shadow of doubt, there were neither earthworms nor ragworms at FBB. It hadn't caused much of an issue.
Then the last question: who would cast the reel?
“The tension massively increased! It's at 65 kilonewtons!”
Itar, the gunner of the former battleship Insidious, was the one seated at the reel's operation panel. The panel now showed various fishing tools in lieu of the main gun, but while his tools had changed the shared sentiment that his job of vanquishing their foes had not. He was putting his reel operation skills to the test in front of the full bridge crew.
“67, 68, 73, 69...!”
“So, our target must weigh 'round 7 tonnes. Big, innit? Did it figure out what's happening and start struggling?”
“Yeah, seems like it.”
“This one's a bit slow to react, eh?”
“That's to be expected, y'know. I doubt any fish on this planet has ever been caught like this before.”
“Aha, does this mean that we’re this planet's first fishermen?”
“Are we going down in history...?”
“We only make history if we come back alive—now focus! Verify the status of all mechanisms!” Magiri's voice sounded in the bridge, then reverberated through speakers across the ship. “Rear bay, how's the tension on the rod?! Reel temperature?! Hopper preparations?!”
“Rod suspension stress is at 40% of design.”
“Reel motor temperature is 349K, within nominal limits. 7981 meters of dragline unspooled; remaining margin of 2000 meters is expected.”
“All clear, the hopper is on stand-by!”
“Reel! Hopper! Worst-case, you have the option to dump our catch. Main engine! Wings!”
“Wing 1, 2 and 4 thrusters are nominal. Wing 3 bake filter is in its flush cycle… Flush complete, no abnormalities!”
“No airfoil abnormalities.”
“Bulge Dome! Do you have eyes on it?”
“Negative, the bake is too thick.” Unlike the lively voices of the rear, port and starboard workers, the voice from the worker in the aft port observation dome was subdued. “We’ll continue pointing the 150mm scope at the line, but we don't have visuals beyond the 5000 mark. As soon as we sight it, we'll report back immediately.”
“All right, got i–”
Not even a second later, another report from the Bulge Dome interrupted Magiri. “Wait, we've got something! The bake's cleared, it’s finally visible! Set range to 7800 and turn to channel 3,” the worker said hurriedly, and almost as an afterthought added, “Woah, it's ugly!”
The real-time transmission from the 150mm refractor pointing out below the dome on Insidious' lower decks incited the same reaction from the bridge crew.
“Ew, gross” “Fugly.” “That's an interesting shape.” “What is that...”
Displayed on the screen was a long and thin torso with multiple thin spiky protrusions spread across its surface, zigzagging clumsily. Whatever it was looked like a black fish no less than 4 meters long.
“Eda, do you think that this is an alien li–” Magiri, noticing her mistake, quickly cut her sentence short and covered her mouth. The others averted their gaze, as if to overlook her mistake. “I mean, Papa Henri. Could this possibly be an alien life form? The real deal?”
At Magiri's prompting, the elder Black scientist hacked a cough and looked at the display, unfazed. “If that's the case, then it’s great news! Its symmetry is quite broken, but creatures like that aren’t unheard of out there. Many species of crab and shellfish have pincers very different in size from one other, and there are also the eji from the north of Solma System, which are well-known for being completely asymmetric animals. I can identify what seem to be a tail and torso—ah, a head too! Those little dents on the sides of its head might be sensory organs, and since it was capable of taking our bait, we can assume it has a mouth. So, if it's capable of excreting... that would make it an animal, one surprisingly similar to something from Earth. But of course, we can only be sure after we catch it—until then, it's only a possibility.”
“Mhm, understood, thank you. Let's give it a name! What should it be, everyone?”
Magiri looked around as her team stared up absently. Then they all began shouting.
“Twisty rascal! It's like a bratty kid twisting and flailing around!" “It's got fins, it's got spikes...thin stickleback?” “How about jīwǔkōng?” “Besshu.” “Arête brûlée is perfect, isn't it? Don't you think it looks like a failed attempt at roasting a fish?”
“Wait, what did you just say? Radenvijaya.” Magiri called on the shipwright, a young boy whose stare was fixed on the display. He was quiet and soft-spoken, the type to silently carry out his duties until prompted, even at critical moments. The others, aware of his taciturn personality, fell quiet.
"Besshu." Repeating himself, the boy turned around wearing a thoughtful expression. "Because it's a fish, and because it's vague. Shadows, inscrutability, nebulous, a faint existence. Those are all vague. So, if we combine the two, vague... vei... bei... and fish... fisshu... we get besshu."
“Besshu, huh? Rolls right off the tongue. 'Vague fish' also kinda sounds like 'bake fish'...good, isn't it? Everyone?” Magiri looked around and everyone nodded as if to say ‘not bad’. Someone repeated “Arête brûlée...”, but before the disagreement could take root, the bridge violently shook with a loud thud. Magiri tumbled from her captain's chair, but Sivi, lurking behind her, quickly caught the older woman's body with the help of her high-g suit's actuator before she could get hurt.
“What?”
“The tension's at 350 kilonewtons!”
The bridge fell dead silent. Then, Papa Henri shouted, “35 tonnes? What happened?!”
“If you've got the time to name it, then you’ve also got the time to look down!!” Itar shouted, and the team turned their eyes back to the display without a reply. To their surprise, something else was pulling at the body of the hooked besshu, whose lower half was engulfed by another solid body five times larger. The besshu wasn't alone. Below it, multiple shadows could be seen swarming in the bake.
“Are they eating each other?!” “This is bad, one of them is 20 meters long!” “That couldn't possibly fit in the rear bay, could it?” “No, the catcher is absolutely going to break if we attempt to bring it–”
The big besshu turned and violently yanked the reel line, rocking the entire ship. Itar, breaking out in a cold sweat, shouted, “400 kilonewtons! The reel's near its limit! It’ll go flying if it gets over 500 kilonewtons! Captain, what should we do?”
"Shall we offload it?” asked Papa Henri, arm positioned and ready to press the two emergency disposal buttons. Before he could do so, Magiri shook her head.
“Itar, how many kilonewtons can the bay structure handle?”
“If we're talkin' the main frame, then... probably 1200 kilonewtons of static load. We enforce a 60-tonne maximum limit, but our safety factor’s at least double.”
“Hmm. So we can trust the fishing line of a large-scale ship like this to handle 200 tonnes. Alright, pilot, line us up with our prey! Rear bay! Use two—no, six of the main hull support wires to reinforce the line!”
“Won't fixing the line in place tangle it?” Itar shouted in surprise.
In response, Magiri flashed a confident smile. “Mhm, but it's not going to break, yeah? We're dragging it with us.”
“You want to drag it to exhaustion?! For how long?!”
Gendo Magiri later became a mythical early Circ leader, and her incredible response a saying. “Until we're down to the last ship, of course. Do we have a reason to give up and die at this planet without a fight?”
Holding a lunch basket on one arm, a woman in plain clothes—tunic, culotte and boots for ease of movement, hair in a loose braid—entered the thicket with confident steps on leaf-littered undergrowth.
Sivi Endeavour stopped at a small sunny spot. Ivy wrapped the crumbling ruins of a tall, almost elegant, stone rampart that formed a dead end in front and left of her. It radiated the mood of a bygone era. Parked just in front of that dead end was a decaying covered wagon, its frame canted on broken spoke wheels. A single horse grazed on the many wildflowers growing around the wagon.
Sivi called out to the little corner that resembled a secret spot on the outskirts of a forest. “Magiri, have you already taken a look at our initial report?”
Silence responded, as though the place was empty. Sivi walked to the back of the covered wagon and gave the horse a gentle pat on the back as she passed, which caused it to quickly trot away. Peeking inside, she found the woman she was searching for looking out through the wagon's opening, wrapped in an old blanket.
The task of visiting Magiri here was always a bit hard on Sivi's heart. Not that Magiri’s behavior was unreasonable or unearned, which was why Sivi tried not to pay much mind to it. She set the lunch basket on the wagon bed, turned around, and before waiting simply asked, “Would you like some?”
A small bird perched on a branch of an elm tree chirped. It was real, not a hologram or robot, and so was the tree it perched on. Horseflies loudly buzzed around canola flowers. The horse running to the nearby spring was artificial though, and so too were the glowing rays of light. The system's G star, Mother Beach Ball, was 680,000,000 km away, and its distant light didn't carry much warmth. However, it was undeniable that this ship’s space was a splendid recreation of Earth's surface.
The Circ ships orbiting the gas giant were generally poor, so they couldn't gift their leaders with an official residence. The freight ship Idaho, which used centrifugal force to simulate gravity, contained the little garden as a gift instead. Only the leaders of the 24 codenamed Circ ships were permitted entry, along with Magiri's trusted bridge crew—Sivi and the others.
Magiri wasn't just the captain of her own ship, she was Great Chief Magiri, admiral of the entire Circ fleet. Recently, she was strangely eager to captain a fishing boat again. She'd been vetoed, but not because she wasn't capable. Quite the opposite—she was too capable.
In the earliest days of the Circ Calendar (CC), mistakes by the people in charge caused ships to sink into cloudy hell left and right. Many believed the Circs would have already met their certain demise had two talented and charismatic women allowed things to run their course instead of replacing the leadership.
In CC 3 the two, Gendo Magiri and Prof. Lucid—known as The Vesperian Sailor and The Exceptional Eda—were colleagues. Although they worked on bake collection, their innovation of coverting bake into raw materials made them massively popular. It allowed them, spontaneously and unconstitutionally, to overthrow the old leadership. They had been responsible for bringing progress and order to the Circ fleet.
In the 15 years since, Magiri had not only been the type of leader to govern kindly and cheerfully, but she’d also been strong. She was unwavering in times of suffering and always pulled the 500,000 Circs through those times with her. She continued to display leadership and advance their civilization even after Prof. Lucid's passing in CC 8, save for a short mourning period. Her charisma was unmatched.
That was why even the few surviving leaders of the old guard didn't just agree it was best for her to remain somewhere safe, they insisted on it. Somewhere safe, exactly like this little corner and its wagon. However, while she quietly kept put for the moment, she hadn't forgotten those boundless brick-colored skies. No one knew if she'd force her way out and once again descend to the planet's atmosphere if she recognized the opportunity when it presented itself.
Sivi Endeavour worked for Magiri, someone she not only deeply admired—but someone she admired. That was why she had both personal and professional reasons to stop Magiri from venturing out, but more than anyone else, she knew how essential it was to Magiri. That was why, no matter how painful she found it, there was nothing Sivi could do to stop her.
Maintaining her calm, Sivi began pouring liquid from a bottle. The noise caught Magiri's attention, who curiously asked what it was. Back still turned, Sivi replied, “Just some coffee-like.”
“‘Like’? It's fake?”
“Produced with a molecular printer. Compositionally, there shouldn’t be any difference from the real thing. It's a prototype developed by Moshi clan's cultivation crafters.”
“The real thing's not this bitter! Wait, is this bitter because it’s real? Hmm... if that's how it is then I want some printed sugar and milk too.”
“I’ll be sure to pass on your high praise, Magiri.”
Magiri then sat on the corner of the wagon frame. She was only dressed in a bra and panties, and her hair was a mess. She brought the coffee cup to her sleepy face to take a sip, then picked up a sandwich from the basket and stuffed her cheeks. Every now and then she'd say, “Sorry about this” and Sivi would respond with “It's okay.” A distance of 15 centimeters separated the two.
“Y'know, Vi, I keep telling you that you don't have to stick around a gloomy auntie like me. You’re quite popular, and I'm sure you've got so many better options out there.”
“I'm here on my own accord.”
“Hmm.”
“I'm not trying to replace the professor.”
“That's a lie, and you know it.”
“Sorry.”
“Hm, well.” Magiri exhaled, the smell of coffe on her breath. “Honestly, you've been a great help. Who knows if I'll stumble!”
“Glad to be of service. I'll look forward to catching you.”
Ten years like this. The two feeling every one of the 15 centimeters between them.
“My bad, I've only been giving off mixed signals. I'm just tired. I thought I’d try to depend on others more, but it's no use. Everyone coming to me all at once is too much to handle.”
“Yeah, I get you.”
“I think you're the only one who does, hah.” She wiped her right eye with the back of her hand and stretched, straightening her back. Then turning around, she asked “So, putting this slightly too sincere conversation aside, what were you asking about?”
“I asked if you had already taken a look at our initial report. Papa Henri and Radenvijaya finished their autopsy and compositional analysis of the besshu we captured. So, we need to discuss what comes next–” Sivi eagerly answered Magiri, as if that conversation hadn’t happened. The two were accustomed to this sudden shift in the mood between them.
It was afternoon, two days after the four hour and thirty-minute besshu fishing operation in FBB's atmosphere. “Aah, okay, okay, I'll take a look at the draft now.” she said, pulling on a shirt and pants inside the covered wagon before returning with a scale in hand. Sivi similarly produced an information board from her sleeve and began reading the report.
“The besshu's body is primarily composed of carbon, silicon, germanium—so elements in the carbon family—and a previously unknown lithium isotope, which together account for 80% of the body–”
“What do you mean an unknown lithium isotope?!”
“Well, it's unknown, so we can't really explain it yet... The besshu was capable of flight thanks to its light composition. We also identified nitrogen, oxygen, chlorine, sulfur, phosphorus, iron, zinc and, of course, atmospheric components—hydrogen and helium. In other words, it's not edible, but it can be used as an ore. A very good one at that.”
“I'm gonna cry. We finally discover an alien life form and instead of learning its eating habits or mating dances or whatever, our only choice is first figuring out how to put it to use. Makes me feel too much like a groundskeeper...”
Sivi gave an in-depth lecture about the creatures they’d named besshu. She explained their very unusual composition, along with a structural comparison between fish on Earth and FBB. She also went into more detail about the previously mentioned unknown isotope and how its unique properties might totally diverge from the known alkali metals. Finally, she answered the questions Magiri—who had skipped the briefing to sleep—had with regard to the report, from the crucial to the abysmally stupid. By the end, Magiri was fully up to speed on the state of knowledge regarding besshu.
They also noticed common points in composition between the besshu they’d fished up, the bake collected thus far, observations made of the planet's atmosphere, and rocks they referred to as 'ejectors' that were spewed up from a lower layer in the atmosphere. It had led them to the theory that a solid structure lurked in FBB’s depths, something a gas giant wasn’t supposed to have. Chances were that another celestial body had sunk into its depths...
“Another body? There's no way to prove that, right? It's quite romantic.”
“We do have a mountain's worth of records of icy comet impacts, though.”
“That may be, but that's basically saying that those comets carried life with them, yeah? It's so romantic.”
“Please save the romance for later, I already have another mountain’s worth of stuff to think about...”
Since the fishing trip hadn’t turned a profit, Radenvijaya had suggested they try trawling with a large tunnel net next time. They'd greatly improve their take while reducing resource expenditure if they managed to catch a full school of fish with it, but managing the gigantic net meant they’d need a ship with an incredibly powerful engine. Needless to say, there was an argument over who would provide the necessary equipment.
Although Sivi tried to keep their conversation moving along, Magiri hung up on this point. She started by asking, “A powerful engine? Have they tried using besshu powder as fuel?” Further disconnecting from the matter at hand, she started musing that besshu could support a new industry and ordered an investigation so as not to let the opportunity pass. At any rate, she had clearly lost focus.
Sivi had no other choice but to continue the conversation with Magiri in that state. “Oh yeah, it was Papa Henri who said this, but apparently the besshu have strange properties.”
“I mean, at this point, is there anything about them that isn’t strange?”
“Well, yeah, but this time it was really strange. After they finished dissecting the besshu, Papa decided to study why it had taken that particular shape. He started an analysis to compare besshu to Earth's fish. He put the besshu's fin on his desk display and was looking through photos of various Earth fish so he could compare their silhouettes and skeletons.”
“Uh huh.”
“So, when he came back from a short trip to the bathroom, there was a goldfish on his desk.”
“...What?” Magiri clearly hadn't been paying much attention before, but that left her mouth hanging open in surprise. “A goldfish? The one from the Anno Domini era?”
“It survived well past the Anno Domini era—it still thrives in the lakes of a planet in Pollux-4. It's the same kind of goldfish you see in fishtanks.”
“Why?”
“I don't know, but it was most definitely a goldfish on his desk.”
“...The besshu's corpse turned into a goldfish?!”
“Seems like it. And also, I guess it didn't really die.” Sivi shrugged. “As far as we can tell, they aren't really like any living organism we know of. They might have an indeterminate form. It does have an identifiable head, torso and tail. Segments and sensory organs, too. Although Papa Henri's assessment back on the ship seemed plausible, he might have been wrong. His words, not mine.”
“Indeterminate form...?”
“It's exactly what it sounds like: there's no fixed form. It's something that can take any shape it wants. There were organisms with indeterminate forms back on Earth, like amoebas or even legendary animals like the cat. There also were others that changed shape significantly over their life cycle—eels, slime molds, rhinoceros beetles— those changed as necessary for a growth stage. So besshu might be doing the same...”
“Huuuh...” Magiri nodded, absently stared into the air, and then asked, “The forms changed as necessary...?”
“Mhm.”
“Then, why did the besshu back at the lab choose that form... What made it think it needed to become a goldfish?”
“Eh? That's...” Sivi was perplexed. “I don't know, but I also don't think they can know what form is best for them. But... the need to change into a goldfish...”
“There wasn’t one, was there?” Magiri's eyes turned to her only for a moment, but Sivi glimpsed a spark in them she thought she would never see again. “The same goes for the atmosphere of a gas giant. There's no advantage to being a fish there. It would have been way more practical to take the shape of something more apt for it... like a condor, a glider, or if it had to be big, a pteranodon. Those all would have been much better choices, no?”
“Well, you're probably right.”
Sivi nodded, and Magiri suddenly hopped off the wagon. “Yeah, this was a really interesting chat. Thanks for telling me, Sivi.”
“Magiri? Where are you going?”
“Just over there for a bit.”
With that, Magiri left the room. Shortly afterwards, Sivi learned she had disembarked without permission for the first time in ten years.
Sivi Endeavour had a clear memory of her first solo descent ten years earlier. Shuttles routinely descended from the ships orbiting FBB to collect hydrogen from its atmosphere, and Sivi, then 19, was undergoing shuttle pilot training. It was a process that would have normally taken 700 days had an emergency not caused her to graduate much sooner. That emergency marked her first solo descent.
Her job had been to retrieve a runaway Captain Gendo Magiri. The search was kept under wraps, but she'd been the first of the 30 search pilots to find Magiri. Now, just as she had back then, Sivi was flying along the very edge of Left Eyeball, a massive anticyclonic storm located on the fringes of Fat Beach Ball's north tropics.
“Magiri, do you hear me?!” Sivi shouted into her rescue radio. “Endeavour speaking. There are another 300 ships coming. I can see you clearly on radar, and 10% of the fleet is fully equipped for capture. You know those ships can endure up to 50 atm. There's no way out! You’re definitely getting caught! Please just come back!”
She wasn't lying about the 300 spacecraft. It was an emergency for the Circs as a whole, and they were treating it as such. They still needed Magiri to lead them, especially now that they were arguing over how to catch more besshu.
Still, Sivi had a feeling that persuasion was the only thing that would work. The only thing that could reasonably be called a threat, the ships equipped for capture, had pilots who hadn't flunked out as civilians. They were perfectly capable of reliably catching besshu... but they couldn't catch Great Chief Magiri, and Sivi knew it.
No, if Magiri's reason for doing this is the same as back then, we should focus on appealing to—An unexpected reply interrupted Sivi's thoughts as she rushed to Magiri. “Why do you think the besshu take the form of fish?”
“Eh?”
Sivi reacted almost in the same dumbfounded way that Magiri had when she first heard about the besshu changing shape, but after a short pause, she gave a proper response. “And what does that have to do with what you're doing now?”
“Don't you think someone might be making them take that form?”
“And who would that be?”
“Someone who loved the fish from Earth. Someone who knew more about them than anyone else, who always had a fish fact ready, who carried around fish charms and reference books. Someone who, out of the blue, suffered an accident and fell deep into the lower layers–”
“Magiri!” Sivi Endeavour shouted. “It's pointless! Please stop! You don't have a single picogram of need to consider those things!”
“Eda.”
Sivi suddenly had a clear picture of Magiri's reaction, or rather, the unbalanced nature of it.
Professor Dryeda de la Lucid had been an obsessive researcher, a first-rate xenobiologist. She carried herself like she had the most pride in the universe. Eda's figure was on the smaller side, and her layered pixie cut, glasses, and white labcoat lent her appearance a dashing quality. She was practically the embodiment of class and devotion. Eda had been on observation duty in the planet's middle layer when their pressure-resistant ship malfunctioned. The resulting situation was like something out of a Philippa Foot trolley problem.
There hadn't been much time to make a choice, so she chose to sacrifice herself and allow the two male crew members, who had a girlfriend, wife, and children waiting for them, to return safely. Alone inside the malfunctioning hull, she detached it and sank into the depths. All the while, she maintained a perfectly calm demeanor.
The 27-year-old woman's parting words were, “Ah...it's fine, it's fine. I really wanted to see what's down there anyway!”
For Magiri, it had been the loss of her perfect partner.
Nobody (not Sivi, not any other woman)—nothing (not the 10 years since, not the providence of outer space) could ever possibly replace that loss, and the 500,000 living there knew it. They knew it, because in the absence of a miracle they had gambled everything on the continued sanity of a captain who, other than her loss, was flawless. The result of that gamble was being dealt, and the outcome was a bottomless pit of despair.
“If that's the case, so what?”
Magiri plunged directly into a whirling crimson cloud of red phosphorus and methane.
“What if 10 years ago, Eda instructed them to take that form?” Her voice was scarily clear, and Sivi was stabbed with a pang of self-condemnation. “That was the only time she could have done that, right?”
Sivi then upped the booster's throttle with a hand that was shivering feverishly. Now going full bore and scraping the limits of where one could return, the very least she might accomplish was a double suicide.
“Don’t you get it? Don’t you see it? Just imagine. Eda might have been alive. For a few minutes, a few hours, a few days—or maybe even…?”
“Impossible! Magiri, that can’t...!”
“What if she just didn't come back?”
Beyond the point where FBB's atmospheric pressure exceeds 100 bars, past the thousand-kilometer depth mark, humanity has yet to succeed at any of their attempts at retrieval, manned or unmanned. The Circs lived right above a realm of the dead. Within that giant, tempestuous planet was a shore the dead departed from, never to return.
But what if that's not entirely true?
“Then me... and her... after 10 years–”
Screaming with frustration and envy, Sivi Endeavour pushed on the throttle again, but at the same time–
The radar's screen flickered and the line of communication cut out.
On the horizon of that fathomless sea of clouds, deep blue shadows breached.