Roll with it

The hydrovette puttered forth at a greatly reduced speed, demonstrating once and for all that it possessed a gear located between stand-still and oh-shit. Gren sighed, and held on, and wondered, not for the first time, what would happen if he just let go and let the hydrovette complete this little adventure alone. Probably nothing. Probably she would hover nearby, and wait for him to get with the program. Probably little lights would flash inside his helmet detailing all the ways he had fucked up. He was getting to be all kinds of familiar with the little flashing lights.

Gren opted to stay on board. The hydrovette hummed happily beneath him and motored towards the land mass. Gren took in the sights. They were watery and blue. Nothing new there. He turned his attention to the hydrovette’s latest course. The land mass was approaching rather quickly now, considering the hydrovette’s new intermediate speed, but still she did not slow down. She was taking them towards a particularly rocky portion of the land mass’s base. It was not until Gren began to grow worried that the terrain might have somehow changed between the hydrovette’s programming and the present moment that he figured out where they were going. The hydrovette was taking him towards an opening in the rockface beneath the ocean surface. It was a cave.

He ducked when they entered, even though he didn’t need to – old habits and all that, he assumed, if he could remember any of his old habits. The cave was very dark, dark enough to give Gren pause, even though he had no alternative at this point but roll with it, or swim, or whatever the case may be. “Roll with it,” he thought, and for a moment, a peculiar image criss-crossed his short-circuited brain, a large, sleek vehicle, with three wheels and black paneling. He was standing next to it, on a long, narrow street. “I won’t mind rolling in this,” he said, and a woman, somewhere behind him, answered, “I knew you wouldn’t. Don’t forget who owns it.” And then he and the hydrovette rounded a corner, and the lights, brilliant and artificial and somewhere above him drove the thought from his mind, like a cloud from the sky.

The hydrovette rose like a helicopter flies, straight up, in a much more civilized manner than she had when making her break from ocean floor to ocean surface. By the time the water broke around his helmet, revealing a well lit, subterranean room, Gren already knew the score. This was a landing pad, and the hydrovette’s last hurrah. At least for the moment.

Gren looked behind him, the view was decidedly different from the one in front. He decided he was, in fact, facing land.

Gren looked up, the sky was mostly blue, except for the solitary cloud that was raining down upon him.

Gren looked at the Screen on the hydrovette. “Nav Check Complete” was flashing in green. He touched the OK button. And the text changed to “Primary Target Confirmed: Initiate Protocal C” with an OK flashing below. Aversion to introspection aside, Gren figured he better figure out what the hell all this meant before initiating Protocol C. He also figured he better do quick too, because the gentle rocking of the hydrovette was making him nauseous.

“Alright Bitch, you wanna tell me what the hell is going on?”

Nothing. Gren wasn’t disappointed. He hadn’t expected it to be easy, but he figured it was worth a shot. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. Steeling himself for the intellectual effort he was about to expend. But before he could get his mental macheniery up and running, he noticed he was producing a large amount of saliva and a familiar but unpleasant sensation in the pit of his stomach.

He got the helmet off just in time. It turned out to be a pointless act, he hadn’t had anything to eat in seventeen years, there was nothing to come up. The helmet was whining again, but he wasn’t going to put it on right away. The wind and rain were clearing his head. In a flash he realized he was a lab rat. Everything had gone to plan, he had found the primary target and was about to initiate protocol C. He hadn’t had a fucking clue what he was supposed to do since he woke up, yet here he was. Someone really idiot proofed this little outing. It was decided then, he was going to push OK. He would figure this shit out when he figured this shit out, but this battle wasn’t worth fighting while floating in the ocean off god-knows where.

Gren put the helmet back on, and pressed OK. The went blank and the flashed to life again, “Submerging in 30 seconds” and the numbers began counting down. Gren arched his back and looked at the cloud above him. He was tracking raindrops as they fell towards him, when he noticed a red glow coming from the cloud. The glow intensified, and looked like the whole damn cloud was smoking. His eyes remained focused upwards as the hydrovette lurched forward, and just before he submerged he swore the whole cloud had exploded.

More about the suit, and Land-Ho!

Gren touched the handles ever so slightly with one suited finger of each hand. Nothing. Ok. Carefully, gently, he brought the rest of his hands down, feather lite. A slight hum. Ok, careful now. He brought his thumbs around the bottom of the handles -- Holy Shit! He quickly gripped completely to keep from being bucked. And they were off. Apparently it was Holy Shit or nothing.

The helmet was miraculously staying put where he had carelessly set it down. Gren allowed part of his brain to idly contemplate the helmet, shivering in time with the hydrovettes roar, while the rest of his brain contended with the problem of breathing while rain was pelting into eyes, nose, and mouth at an unnatural speed. He concluded that the helmet must be magnetized. That part of his brain was now free to contemplate other important matters such as when he would need to void himself again. Bad idea. Thats what you get for allowing your brain to contemplate. Thats why Gren usually avoided such activity, as a matter of principle and of natural proclivity. The moment his thoughts turned to the subject, his body responded with a resounding roar "NOW!" and he almost let go of the hydrovette handles to clutch impotently at the general area of his bladder through the thick suit. He couldn't let go without losing his seat and being lost at sea, and he couldn't hold back anymore so . . he did the thing he thought he would never do. And Gren didn't rule out a lot. He only had a moment to experience complete self-disgust before he was distracted by an interesting noise. A sort of whirring business inside his suit. For the second time, he was almost lost at sea. He looked down in surprise and couldn't see much, but he was very certain that his face and hair and neck were completely soaking wet, but that nothing inside his suit was. huh. Cool.

Just as Gren was losing interest, several other things happened at once: land came into sight, the hydrovette slowed to a stately pace (oh, NOW you do, you &#*&ing perky little beast) and his helmet started screaming again. Gren picked up the helmet to find that it was screaming "Suit must be entire! Warning! Suit must be entire!" Wincing, he put it on, and it immediately stopped screaming and started flashing incomprehensible readings at him in blue, red, and green. Discovering that he could actually see much better with the helmet on that with it off, he ignored the flashing symbols and turned his eyes towards the land. Or was it land?

The helmet was emitting a faint humming, and Gren peered into its depths curiously, which drew his attention to two things. First, the helmet was not so much humming faintly as it was shrieking loudly, save that it was aiming the sound very precisely at a head which it no longer contained. (Gren's head, in principle.) Second, in addition to the sound, there were several pretty lights blinking on the helmet visor. Frowning, Gren pulled the helmet back into place to examine the situation more closely. He immediately regretted the decision. As the helmet dropped into place he realized just how loud and precise the shrieking actually was. He also realized, in striking contrast with the smell of fresh rain over a clear ocean, that his decidedly funky head had been in the helmet for quite some time now, and lord knows when he even brushed his teeth last.

Gren ground his teeth and rolled his eyes to the lights and read "Atmosphere scan uncomplete: 65%" in emphatic blinking blue letters. Gren watched the number advance slowly upwards to 100%, at which point the visor display lost its red tinge and faded to a shade of warm turquoise. A new message blinked onto the visor reading "Atmosphere breathable. 17 C -- Some Precipitation". The shrieking stopped. The funk remained.

"Yes, but what you might not know", observed Gren to the helmet, "is that it is also raining." Wrinkling his nose and deciding he would rather be wet than smell his head any longer, Gren removed the helmet again, more deliberately and carefully this time. Yep. Still raining. Gren inhaled deeply. A faint breeze carried the rain at a fractional angle from straight down and shifted the surface of the water in gentle waves among the raindrop ripples. After enjoying the fresh air a bit longer, Gren pursed his lips thoughtfully and looked down at the Hydrovette. It was vibrating faintly, but otherwise gave every indication of being off. The rise from the water had knocked him partly out of his seat, and he resettled himself while he though, resettling his knees in the cradles. He reached up and gripped the handles --

-- Gren let go of one handle, trying desperately to cling to the rocketing Hydrovette with the other, and the vehicle's deep bass rumble faded to that faint vibration again, the vehicle gradually falling off to a quiet idle, once again still in the water. "Okay, but seriously?" Gren asked plaintively. Surely this thing had a speed other than "Holy Shit"?

The Hydrovette

Gren waited. Nothing. For one dismal moment, Gren’s otherwise non-contemplative brain allowed itself to consider. It considered the combined effects of salt water and seventeen years. It considered the possibility that it, and the body that housed it, would spend the remainder of its limited days at the bottom of the ocean. It was temporarily displeased. But while Gren’s brain conducted such unprecedented processes, it seemed that the hydrovette was doing some thinking of its own. It had, completely without Gren quite noticing, ignited all necessary operating systems. About the time Gren was contemplating the nitty gritty of everyday life beneath the ocean, the hydrovette began to rise. It wasn’t until the vehicle’s silent engine kicked into full gear that Gren bothered to take stock of the situation. He would have been a fool not to. The force of the hydrovette’s propulsion nearly knocked him off the vehicle. Gren was no fool. He grabbed hold of anything he could reach.

The hydrovette quickly opted for the direct approach. It turned its cutely perky nose towards the surface and motored. Gren felt pressured release of lifting water as they rushed the surface. A pretty big rush if anyone asked Gren. No one asked, of course, as far as Gren knew he was the only guy lucky enough to have one of these things for his very own, but still, not an everyday sort of experience, if he had to guess. The light thickened and the water warmed. He could see now, a little. There wasn’t much to see. He didn’t know what he was hoping for – fish, maybe, or a dolphin or two – but nothing, nothing but a whole lot of water.

The surface was getting close. He could finally see it, a gray and greasy sky undulating in the distance. The hydrovette didn’t slow down, but seemed to press harder, liberated from the chains of deap sea water pressure. “Ease up,” he said to the machine. “Give it a rest, you overachieving piece of scrap,” but the hydrovette ignored him, its perky nose resolutely splitting the sea. He kicked her side. She proved non-responsive. She was gaining speed now, shedding poundage with each breached foot. Almost there. He held on. The hydrovette broke free. She soared above the surface. Water rolled down the front of his helmet. The hydrovette spun queasily. It righted itself just in time for triumphant rise to submit to inevitable descent. They hit the ocean surface hard. Gren’s teeth clattered together, as one bicuspid chipped another. He felt the hydrovette’s silent propulsion shut down. He waited. The hydrovette rocked peacefully, a multitude of lights flashing on her screen. Gren removed the helmet, and almost immediately wished he hadn’t. It was raining.

Over the next hour and a half Gren had a lot of time to contemplate relativity. Not that he had anything against Einstein, but when your walking a kilometer in a pressure suit on the bottom of the ocean with only a flash light to beat back the abyssal darkness, it’s pretty obvious that not all kilometers are created equal. Or all hour and a half’s for that matter.

Gren was keeping his light in motion. Making sure there was no more ship to knock him up side the head, and nothing on the ground to trip him up. After taking fifteen minutes to go the first hundred meters he stopped paying attention to the distance marker. He did not check his distance again until his flash light lit up a large metal tube in front of him, and the 2.4 meters confirmed his journey had come to an end.

When he finally reached his destination Gren collapsed in a heap and lay still for several moments. He was incredibly thirsty and sweating like a pig. He entertained the thought of not moving ever again, but he didn’t need that chick who kept popping into his head to tell him that wasn’t much of a solution. Eventually, he climbed up onto his hands and knees and then got to his feet and shone the light over this object he had just wasted all his energy walking to.

Gren was relieved to see it didn’t take much to figure out what this was. He was even more relieved to see that this was his ticket topside. The tube was just a casing for a personal water jet, and a nice one at that. He had heard about the models that could submerge as well, but this was the first time he had seen one. At least he thought it was the first time he’d seen one, just like he thought he knew what a personal water jet was.

Again, lucky to not be introspective, Gren just hopped on. He pressed the one button on the consol and the water jet powered up. The HUD blinked to life and ran through some diagnostics. Power Plant … OK. Thrusters … OK. Remote Sensing … OK. Nav Computer … Error. Followed by “Hydrovette must surface to confirm coordinates, press yes to surface now.”

“It’s about fucking time.” And Gren pressed yes.

warmer

Gren looked around him again. Yup, still complete blackness. He looked up. The hatch was floating about 10 feet above him, its 8 foot opening marked with eerily glowing green lights. What's it doing way up there? Gren wondered, and looked around again. Oh yeah, still complete blackness. "Well?" he asked the woman in his head, but she declined to respond. He shrugged, or lifted his shoulders clumsily inside his bulky suit, and took a step forward with his arms in front of his face.

He noticed that the kPa and K readings on his helmet were gone - the flashing red "- ppm O2" was still there, but he had quickly adjusted to ignoring it - and a new reading in green read "3.6 m" and was accompanied by a little arrow pointing to 11 o'clock. 11 o'clock? His mind obediently conjured up a vague image of a circle with numbers around the outside, and an 11 where the arrow was pointing. Did this have anything to do with lefty-loosy righty-tighty? He shook his head and turned slightly left until the arrow was pointing straight up, and then took a step.

"3.2 m" Huh.

Another, more confident step.

"2.7 m" He was getting better at this. A few more steps and . . WHAM! Gren's helmet had hit something large and metallic and unforgiving, sending him reeling backwards. He sat up, smacking himself in the helmet and then cursing at the helmet's inconvenient placement between his hand and his head. He glared up at nothing in particular and thought, defensively, "Well, at least I didn't pass out this time!"

His helmet was now helpfully blinking in red "42 MPa" (hadn't it been kPa before? he'd have to figure that out) and, in green, "0.2 m". Gren got laboriously to his feet and cautiously reached out his hands until he made contact with the mean metal thing. He moved them around until he made contact with what seemed to be a handle. He pulled. Rather too hard. The thing came away easily and bonked Gren in the helmet while simultaneously coming to life and shining a strong beam of light into the blackness. for his part, Gren fell backwards again, whiplashing against the back of his helmet and promptly passing out. The flashlight shone up at the curve of the metal column where it connected to the massive underbelly of the ship. Gren's helmet, unbeknownst to him, flashed an encouraging "!!!" before displaying, in green "1,021 m".

Gren shook his head he wondered how long he’d been staring at that damn hatch. It was time to get out of here. There was still a thick fog swirling I his head but an idea floated into his consciousness that made a whole lot of sense: you didn’t come all this way to sit in a damn ship.

“Fucking-A right I didn’t.” to no one in particular, and Gren started to laugh. He cleared completely around the hatch, looking for a way to get it open. The hatch was huge, at least eight feet across, smooth and flush with the floor. There was a smaller hatch in the center which he could just barely lift open with his suited finger. When he did, it revealed a small wheel. Another thought swirled, “righty tighy lefty loosey” and Gren started to spin the wheel counter-clockwise. He spun and spun and spun, and the instant he felt a click he and the entire hatch were propelled upwards and came to a jarring stop just before his head smashed into the ceiling.

He felt the whole ship trembling; a tremendous roaring noise filled his ears, and a deep cold started attacking his suit. He peered over the edge of the hatch, which had now become an island in the growing sea of water that was rapidly rushing into the ship, and lacking a better option, passed out again.

When he came to, he wasn’t quite sure he was still alive. He could move, but it had this weird sensation, like he was floating under water. Shit, he was floating under water. He peered down to the bottom of his helmet, the light was still green but there was more information now: “50,000 kPa” in red, “274 K” in green, and a flashing red “— ppm O₂” Gren was pretty sure that given enough time he could figure out what that all meant, but he was very sure he wasn’t going to be taking off his helmet until while there was any red numbers.

He rolled over and fell off the side of the hatch, which was fastened to the floor by four metal tubes. Gren got to his feet and without really thinking, jumped into the hole, gently floating until his feet landed on something solid. He looked out into complete blackness. Though he couldn’t be sure, he had a pretty good idea he was standing on the bottom of the ocean.

“You said it was going to be hot, you bitch!” And in the far recesses of his mind he could hear a woman’s voice laughing.

All signs point to Go

Helmet – check. Suit – check. Well then. This much of the mission was an unqualified success. Now that the specter of a mission was raised, Gren stopped to ponder. God, he hoped he had a mission. He chewed on that thought for a minute, rolled it about a bit, and let it go. Letting it go, he was coming to realize, was something of a character strength. Seventeen years ago, Gren had known things, lots of things, things like the name of the family dog, and the street he lived on in the second grade. It was all very secure. He didn’t let little existential concerns like, “What is my purpose?” or “Do I have a mission?” slow him down. Seventeen years spent in a bubble found Gren much as he ever was. Gren might have taken some consolation in the knowledge, if his memory extended beyond the previous half hour. Then again, Gren’s character didn’t require much consolation to begin with.

Mission or no mission, Gren already knew his next action involved leaving this place, exploring the great outdoors, going…home, or maybe to a nice padded room where they helped him remember where home was. And why wouldn’t he leave? Gren was awake. He’d taken a piss. He was in his suit. All signs pointed towards go.

He paced the length of the circular room. It looked like a war zone. A figure of speech. Still, it implied he had slept through a war. Gren filed this thought away for a later date – he’d have a lot of time to think things through in the comfort of his padded room – and walked the room’s perimeter. The room was not so much circular as octagonal, no, probably more than octagonal, but Gren couldn’t think of any greater polyhedron at the moment than one with eight sides. Many long, narrow, synthetic strips joined together at even intervals, forming a nearly-smooth surface. Working his way around the room, Gren felt each joint. Nothing gave way to his touch. Pretty slick construction, considering what a mess the room was in.

Shuffling his way through the technological debris, Gren worked his way back into the center of the room. He tried to take the helmet off, but it wouldn’t budge. Of course, it wouldn’t budge. Gren made to drop to the floor in an appropriately dejected heap, saw the glass, thought the better of it. He might not know much, but he had a pretty good idea that glass shards in his ass could prove one insult too many. Gren scuffed his foot around, clearing a place for his dejection. A few sweeps of the foot later stopped Gren short. Beneath his foot, dead center of the room, was something large and round, like a manhole cover, and copper, like the previous door. A little more dusting revealed lettering etched into the copper surface. “Northern Hatch,” said the manhole cover. “All signs point to Go.”

Double Jeopardy

Fine. Gren felt like he'd lost a battle, but denial was no path to winning the war. He frowned down at the bodysuit wobbling flaccidly at his waist. He looked at the suit in the open shell. He frowned down at the bodysuit again.

Gren sighed, and pulled the bodysuit back up to it's intended configuration. He glared petulantly at the shell as if faulting it for introducing this new conundrum to his heretofore simple new existence. Redirecting his glare to the faceplate of the unoccupied helmet, he paused for a bit, and finally reached out and grabbed the metal framing his decidedly petulant reflection. Wrenching the helmet from it's holding pin, he pushed it down over his head. A small red symbol began blinking in the lower half of the viewscreen. He pulled the helmet back off and glared at it with the expression of a peevish man who's just discovered that he accidentally put on his socks and shoes but still isn't wearing any sort of pants.

He set the helmet on top of the shell, where it rattled unsteadily for a bit. The room had a faint smell of vaporized metal and battery acid to it, like a factory floor, and Gren savored the air for a moment before returning his attention to the suit inside the shell. He pulled at the suit body, and it slid out from the shell along some kind of support, remaining vertical and generally person-shaped. The front flap flapped open helpfully, and Gren experimentally probed at it with his foot, which slipped neatly into the leg. Then he cursed a bit as he realized that the body of the suit was actually facing away from him, and that consequently he had carefully slid his toes down to the heel of this particular leg, which wasn't really going to work.

Extracting his right leg from the structure while hopping around on his left was challenging enough, and as his shaking jostled the helmet enough to dislodge it from its precarious perch he nearly killed himself in his lurch to rescue it from a fall. Righting himself with another colorful cadence of expletives, he finally managed to free the leg, which he immediately moved to the other side and reseated. Gren lifted his left leg into place, and fumbled awkwardly behind his back for the open flap until it occurred to him to put the helmet back on his head.

Blinking red light in the corner again, but he ignored that and used his new bonus hand to pass the flap along his back to his groping left hand, pulled the flap into place, and heard a decisive click, hiss, and the electric whine of the computer spinning up. The light turned from red to green, blinked in three steady pulses, and then vanished.

Gren thought back on his recent adventure in the WC, and hoped desperately that he didn't feel so called upon for quite some time.