Sink

1

Sink I’m not as alive as I thought I’d be. I can’t lean back and be taken by gravity. My physical comfort is an ever-changing heptacontagon. A puzzle where, if you spend too long on one piece, the others are sure to have shifted in the meanwhile. That’s what happened. Start over.

I’m not as alive as I thought I’d be. I want to lean back and see where gravity takes me. I am a stone—denser than water. I can sink to the bottom of whatever ocean you throw me into. You are a child skipping rocks, and I am a deep sea vessel thankful for the head start. The ground below our feet is one of those oceans. I’ll fall through like an unfortunate miner, deep into hidden caverns, until I’m breaking solid ground.

Eating away earth like a termite, like how Galeleo explored our brutal world in the name of science. I’m venturing through stratification like the man who invented E minor. I am a genius, but also, how the hell did no one else think of this? I’m not saying we shouldn’t go to Mars. I’m just saying maybe we’re getting a little distracted. There’s a lot down here. As my archaeological submarine, a tightly packed system of organs contained in a vulnerable bag of skin, descends, I am spritzed with something denser than the mist of seawater. It is earthdirt, in my eyes, making me blind, instantaneously.

I go blind in the name of science. Each year of condensed earthly activity has such force that it unfolds in my mind like a shining star, brighter than anything eyes could ever withstand. It is a slaughter of history, I don’t stand a chance. I kick down and wonder how much further I have to go until I uncover the secrets of the universe.

The ice age sits on the tip of my tongue for a moment, like a snowflake. They sit huddled in a cave around a feeble campfire, and wonder if the sun will ever warm them like this fire is. “The sun is a campfire”, says the storyteller in a confusing series of grunts and thumps on his chest, “but someone has forgotten it is their shift to tend to it.” Polyamorous parents punch themselves in the face in agreement. The children stare at the fire with gaping mouths. I think they see me. The puddle the snowflake had made on my tongue evaporates into nothing.

I am breaking new barriers. Every violent shake is a new concussion. This one has me comfortably numb. Start over, come up with your own ideas.

2

I am breaking new barriers. With every violent shake comes a new concussion.

I’m wrapped in a lullaby, and the branch I rest upon has me caressed like a newborn.

My hands are unbelievable tools, I think as I stare at them in admiration, grinning cheek to cheek. Some day, someone like me will have hands like these and do profound things with them. My neck weakens and I have no choice but to glance to the side. Through immaculate sunshine, I see my whole family—everyone is family here—interrogate their hands with the same amusement. I don’t remember what I was doing five minutes ago, only that this tree is my home and the sunshine is warm, and I see no reason to leave. Urine dribbles out of me like a tap not properly turned off, unplanned. An oversight. What are you gonna do? When I’m done, I reach into my cupboard—a convenient little hole that came with the place—and grab another handful. They grow in the ground, and we take turns going down to gather more. Life is good as long as you aren’t gathering. There is no enemy that can reach us up here. Komodo dragons can scale the barrier between our homes and the dangerous ground, but only when they are young and harmless. In their unadulterated youth, they will devour many magic ground sprouts in tandem with a homo sapien host of their choosing, and a formative bond will establish. It is a ceremony of profound importance for both involved. This is because the first time one is approached by a young dragon, you are wedded for the rest of days. The two, homo sapien and dragon, will share as many subsequent bonding ceremonies as they like; oftentimes, the dragon will return daily. They will get to know the crevices in one another's earthly forms, the other’s involuntary, guttural sound of hunger. They will share the same warm sunlight by day and, sometimes, keep one another warm through nights where cold winds endure in the absence of the sky’s furnace. Inevitably, the dragon will become too large to complete the journey up the trunk. It happens incrementally. At first, the climb up becomes a nuisance. Then, a death-defying stunt. Eventually, the dragon, with an aching, knowing sadness in its eyes, will start falling from stunning heights. The dragon will try again and again until the ground has pounded in this tragic new reality. Invariably, the attempts in vain foster bitterness. The dragon will never reach its partner again. The dragon has become infuriated. The homo sapien will try its best to calm its partner down. It never works.

The dragon pleads for the homo sapien to join it on the dependable ground, through a faithful dance of solicitude. But the answer must be no. They have both now lost a best friend, a partner. But only the dragon cannot find the magic bonding sustenance without its partner. The homo sapien may try to enact directions to abundant pockets of

3

sprouts for the dragon, but the elders frown upon this acquiescence. The dragon cannot understand, anyway. It would take thousands more years of magic evolution to change that. The dragon is left just a dragon, once again. From that day forth, it will wait in tow, hidden in bushes most likely, dedicating the rest of its life to murdering its former partner for their betrayal. That’s why gathering is so dangerous. Terrance from rubber tree 72 was bested six days ago. Terrance was somewhat of a coward, it didn’t come as a surprise. But it felt premonitory to see his former partner end his life with such ruthlessness. I spectated upon many afternoons where Terrance and his partner shared serendipity up upon his perch in his tree. Terrance, like the others who met such an ending, will lie in a pool of his own blood, the uneaten bones left to break down. His ruined form a lengthy reminder of what can happen when you gather. I don’t know how many days and nights I have been in this tree, but I know I am too young to gather. My turn has yet to come. I still haven’t been approached by a partner, either. I watch from the sidelines as my brothers and sisters slowly get found by theirs. I pop another sprout in my mouth and chew and swallow, the chalky all-knowing fungi traveling down with its beneficial poison. The edges of everything—trees, clouds, leaves, my beautiful hands—contain everything that ever was and ever will be. The spectrum of my emotions contained in the infinite gradient of visible and invisible colors.

I soar evermore like a red blood cell through a body that has survived far longer than any body should. My thoughts are loopy. I’m not involved in the process of making them, directing them. There’s something radioactive about being this close to the earth’s core. I can feel it dry me out, like I’ve just lived hundreds of thousands of years in two minutes. Like I went millenia without water, as if anyone has ever gone millenia with or without anything.

As things slip away they become clearer. Like where once was an orchestra, now the conductor stands alone onstage. Easier to concentrate with less going on. All that was green, beautiful, is whittled down to nothing. The opposite of growth happening right inside of me. The horizon burns, brighter and brighter with each passing year.

Each passing year an additional new screen of dirt in my blinded eyes as I travel deeper. The air clogs to a fever pitch with thick, black fumes. The planet focusing in on itself before it can commit to anyone else.

4

I can feel only despair for this endless, forgotten, voiceless stretch of time. An unsculpted landscape. A yet-to-be-sculpted landscape. A lone tree growing out of the dead ground, without the network of the forest, wondering if there will ever be a day when it isn’t completely alone. An abandoned post office in a deserted town. And just when I think it must all be over—how could anything come before or after this—the evil rock island lifts itself out from the coast of the Yucatan, like a giant tomb awakening in a fiery explosion of destruction, and torpedoes back into the sky.

As quickly as they were looking up, they looked right back down. Grazing and grunting.

There will always be more below the sea, in the water, where you cannot see. The squawk of babies not ready to join us on our hunts wakes me each morning. Those useless little voids, expecting a never ending stream of nourishment. Of what I catch, as it is understood among us, nearly a quarter must be returned to the nest for the young. I cannot even look at them.

Instead of saying good morning to my family, I launch into the sky like a missile.

The warm air is like a bath. Our neighbors have begun their long day of grazing—greedy with hunger, without a care in the world for supply. There’s more than enough to go around, I suppose.

The air is warm and I launch into the sky like a missile. It is a sobering fifteen minute journey by air to reach the sea. I am the nest prodigy, the best hunter in the family. My mother maintains, just days out-of-egg, I fell out-of-nest. She thought I was dead. But I glided down like a leaf, and landed with grace. It was an accident, but every day after, I’d do it again, until I was really flying. Something remarkable must happen to make any life remarkable, which makes every life unremarkable. And there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that, says Brother in my head, because being special to the people you care about is far more important than being admired by strangers.

As I near the ocean, a significant length below my wings, the waves crash traumatically against the bluffs. I am incomprehensible, a monolith in the sky. A small cousin makes a show a ways down. I hiss with small effort, not deeming the situation worth more. He responds by careening down to the ground and crash-landing into a tree, likely now shaking in fear, second-guessing his power for the first time. I seem to have that effect.

5

My older brother was a land hunter. Brother was taken by the sprawling green of the land, like how I am taken by the churning blue of the ocean. When each member of the family would return from our respective tiring day, guided by the setting sun, we’d regale each other with the tales of our adventure. I’d come back with one sentence and corroborating evidence: “I caught a giant squid.” And then deposit the large cephalopod on a nearby branch. Brother, meanwhile, always came back with stories of a new friend, in addition to his daily catch of mountainous piles of small mammals and lizards. Mind you, pterodactyls don’t really have friends… especially not the gargantuan kind like us. Being within a ten-mile radius of someone that looks like me is an existential threat.

But it wasn’t like that with Brother. He was such a natural at gathering food, it would only take him a few hours each morning. He’d store his day’s supply in a large net he’d woven himself out of large palms, a skill he’d picked up from some friends, and just leave it out in the open field. He was trustworthy and trusting. No one was going to touch his food because he wasn’t going to touch anyone.

He’d fly around the valley, received by a procession of “good mornings” and friendly nods. He would find a friend in need and help them for the rest of his day.

Teach the young of some other kind of dinosaur the secrets to an efficient hunt.

Demonstrate gathering techniques for nesting to the smaller animals. Animals outside of Brother’s territory live in ramshackle assortments of twigs and leaves… but inside his territory, Brother taught his friends how to build palaces.

Brother and I did not see eye-to-eye. Even as an apex predator with a whole kingdom of animals below your feet, it’s hard to believe in an altruistic society. The thoughtful intentions of one-hundred Brother’s would never matter when there remained beings like me. I don’t know if it was jealousy or pity, or some contemptuous combination, but I couldn’t buy into his fantasies of a better world. Like helping others could right the karma of society, at large. Once, in a more heated discussion, I yelled at him. “You can’t change anything! Stop trying!”

On his final day, Brother was excited by a hunt he was to go on with a Brachiosaurus he’d met at one of the watering holes. They’d instantly hit it off, as everyone did with Brother, over discussion about the humidity. His life was a revolving door of friendship with every kind of animal imaginable. But becoming friends with another large dinosaur is rare, even for Brother. Rivalry and jealousy often gets the best of peers. He’d told me that morning, in earnest, that this relationship could be the start

6

of real progress for the valley. I’d turned on my wing and flown, starting my day at the Ocean without a word.

The rest we heard from word of mouth that evening. A brave little friend of Brother, some sort of protosuchus, came to our nest, somber and wide-eyed. Brother had been ambushed. Ambushed. I felt my heart in my throat, instantly regretting my dismissal of his noble intentions.

Brother and his friend had met at the watering hole, but when Brother arrived, the Brachiosaurus’ whole family crept out from the trees and surrounded Brother. They pelted him with stones and boulders, aiming for the wings, blocking any possibility of an escape by air. Once it was certain he wasn’t going anywhere, they mocked his magnanimous actions—ridiculed the idea of a large pterodactyl guiding the lesser beings of the valley through this rough life. Then they ate his huge body and discarded the bones in the watering hole like trash. It was everyone’s turn to drink his broth.

I careen down from my perch among the clouds and crash into the water like an eruption. A large turtle comes up with me in each talon, and one in my beak. Three in total. I soar into the sky and pass over the valley where Brother died as I fly home. The sun is setting as I’ve lost another day to anger and contemplation.

The turtles are long since suffocated by the time I offer one to Brother’s children.

I do not know when I will be able to look at them again, if ever. They look too much like him. As the days following his death began to stack up, they grew more and more to look like their father, so I had to stop looking. It was too much to bear.

I have dreams at night where I show up at that watering hole. As numerous packs drink, I spot the Brachiosaurus family. I approach and they surround me, looking for more. But as they close in, my family closes in around them, silently. We create a target if you were to look from above. As the Brachiosaurus’ think they have another endless meal, they see Sister and Mother and Father, Brother’s widowed Wife and Sister’s Husband, and they try to run. We are much bigger—they only got Brother because of surprise and numbers. But now they are the ones who are outsized and outnumbered. They could feed Brother’s children for a year, at least. Only then will I ever be able to look at them again.

Jarred back to surreality. The late Jurrassic warmth shows itself as scolding hot lava. But it’s okay. I’m hyperventilating a bit, but only in the way a really scary movie would make you hyperventilate. Lava parts for me passively, like water, and I’m

7

immersed completely. The air I’m breathing is other-worldly, even though I’ve never breathed in anything as earthly as this. Swimming like a bird flies—intrinsic, effortless.

The strength of gravity doing it for me at this point, my trail closing itself behind me.

Enveloping, deeper.

And now I’m serene, in a vast, ruthless pit of briny water. My limbs expand, contract. Too many to count. Shoals of terrified fish flee further with my every motion, in tune, fixed on me.

It’s a lonely life. Whatever I do, it seems I can’t do it right. What possible use could there be for a thing like me. I assure myself that every fish in the sea has felt this way at one point or another. But then I wonder if they always feel this way, like I do. It seems unlikely. The other squid I happen upon want nothing to do with me. As if twenty minutes around Sadsack Steven the Squid is going to corrupt their ability to produce serotonin. They don’t call me Sadsack Steven the Squid, they don’t call me anything. Not worth the engagement.

Being a squid isn’t the worst thing in the world. For one, I never have to worry about being eaten. I can pretty much do whatever I want—eat what I want, go where I want, ink where I please. Not many aquatic animals, including most other cephalopods, can swim up to a great white shark and suffocate it into a meal.

The thing I don’t understand is that everyone is scared of me. Starfish camouflage into the ocean floor when they see me. Imagine if you made eye contact with the ground and it instantly goes from pink to gray. It sticks out like a sore thumb. They think they’re protecting themselves, but really they’re just bringing themselves to my attention.

I eat the predators who eat the predators who eat them. They should be thanking me. Just imagine the level of protection one would receive from befriending a giant squid. Like the barnacles of a whale.

I go around in circles everyday, physically enacting the way my mind works. At a certain point in our evolution, my kind became so large that hunting in packs was no longer necessary. That’s what my Father told me when I was young, even though he has been getting high off puffers everyday with the same old pack of squids for years. I go in circles so I don’t lose my territory. The ocean is vast, and once you get lost, it’s not like you can just take a bird’s eye view and relocate your home. I don’t know what I’m waiting for—my parents, maybe. Or maybe just for the terrain to look like it used to look. Not that anything has changed. But I’ve changed, and what once was home is now

8

a reminder of how I used to see the world. Even so, I figure, staying here, at least there’s some chance of finding it again. Whatever it is. It’s definitely not happening in the open ocean.

In some respects, it cannot be possible to do wrong. If you believe this is all planned, by someone or something, deliberate, then you cannot do wrong. Because whatever you do is you doing your part.

At night, as the ceiling dims, those falling ribbons of sunshine make way for phosphorescence. Green and glowing, it calms me. I don’t sleep, really. I just shut my mind off and look at the colors on the ground. And tomorrow, I’ll figure it all out.

The heat is unbearable now. Scalding, shocking, foundational. Out of a faucet, sourced by God only knows what, comes everything. Matter, pushing itself outward from the inside. Life in its infancy.

Float and split. The directive is built-in to my code. I am one, and then I am two.

And then four, eight, sixteen, thirty-two.

What is there to do when you don’t need to worry about growing? When everything you need is contained within a single wall? I don’t think I’ll ever quite figure it out. It’s something that outlasts me, that is all I know.

But as my children thrive, I must die. Procedurally, switching off a series of lights until it is dark. Just another directive, built-in to my code. Bit-by-bit, I block off little arenas until the complex is defunct. Ready for reclamation.

Light is pouring in from every angle in beams. The gurgle of Earthly activity at this depth is deafening. Every atom with billions of years of experience working the system of stratigraphy, sinking lower and lower until it is here, with me, and there is nowhere else to go. The final checkpoint—a terrifying hodgepodge of planetary guts, commiserating in the center of the oven. A death-dance with the superlative of all the senses. A phantom warmth coating me, protecting me. The goopy, charry lava is muddy and makes me feel childish to the touch. Rolling around in it, knowing I’ll be reprimanded, made to take a bath before dinner. An overwhelming, pungent cloud of metal is all I’ve smelt for hours now, convincing me I’m filling up with lead and aluminum.

At least at this dance, there is no cotillion partner to ignore me all night. There’s nothing to see beyond light, and what I imagine the core of the Earth looks like. The

9

light, in all likelihood, is in my head. I’ve never been further away from sunlight. But no, heat is light, right? There must be light, then. More of it than I could possibly synthesize.

As I sink through everything that ever was and ever will be, my vision comes back in the most immaculate blue I’ve ever seen. An unadulterated, breathtaking cyan.

Finally, I hit the core, sturdy and impenetrable, and I’m funneled through even more light, more than I thought possible.

Poof.

It feels like I’ve landed in bed. I want to cry like a baby who just went through birth.

My vision comes back slowly. I’m shielding my eyes with my forearm. Slowly, I find my bearings. I’m kneeling on a… cloud? Yes, a cloud. Press into it with my hand, it shoots back up with a breath, strands going this way and that. Jump on it, it squeaks.

My robe dangles behind me, disturbing a trail of mist. I start to look for an edge.

Now I am running and I’m getting nowhere. More of the same, in every direction. Squeaky, soft, warm cloud, and cyan sky so clear you could drink it. I decide the only way to get anywhere is to pick a direction and stick to it, so I do that. But it’s an endless field and I only have two legs.

I’m running so long I’ve zoned out. The rhythm of my feet lull me until, suddenly, I’ve reached it. I nearly topple over, it came so unexpectedly. I pull myself from the edge and scramble back to safety. Once I’ve caught my breath, a few moments later, I re-approach on my stomach, sliding up with deliberation.

Below me is an endless drop of nothing. And then beautiful Earth, twinkling like a star on a clear day. I can make out clusters of light on the shores. New York City.

London. The incomprehensible Atlantic Ocean. Little ripples of movement in the water that might as well be tsunamis. Lower clouds, much lower, shifting impassively, impulsively. I’m mesmerized. The wonder of scale, everything is beautiful far away.

The End