Challenger Deep: Chapters 130–161

With all the visitors engaged in playtime pursuits, however, Apples to Apples is the only game left on the shelf, and Mackenzie grabs it, not knowing the sordid history.

The captain barks orders to scrambling crewmen, who disgorge from the main hatch like ants from a flooding anthill.

“You must dispatch the captain.”
“What? In the middle of this?”
“Kill him,” insists the bird.

The thing has a pointed equine face with flaring nostrils and angry red eyes.

It has no legs at all, just a prehensile tail coiled around the boom.

She is more than a part of the ship; she has her own legs, but they’re badly corroded from being so long in this dank place.

I look out through the hole to see that she has not sunk—but neither does she swim. Instead, she runs, her spirit lighter than air, lighter than the copper of her flesh, more willful than gravity.

Now the heavens are unpredictable and the sea fickle.

The navigator’s charts are more convoluted than ever, and yet he is adamant that they are the key to getting us where we’re going.

The time of action is upon us, but I remain ambivalent as to what action I should take.

It thrashes back and forth, biting a tentacle the girth of a redwood.

The distance between the foremast and the mainmast is too far for me to jump, and if I climb down, I’ll be climbing right into the gaping maw of the squid.

Even his voice now has the semblance of rustling paper.

Down below, the squid’s passion for destruction is suddenly quelled.

I give voice to my tumultuous fury by pulling the pistol from my belt.

I think his weight should buckle the flimsy cot, but it doesn’t. It’s as if he’s weightless. Insubstantial, like a ghost.

No one sits at the bar, because there is a chill to her demeanor.

I know I don’t want to share anything with Gladys. Ever. Then someone subtly begins calling her GLaDOS, which is the name of the evil computer in the classic Portal games—and if this session wasn’t a travesty before, now it definitely is. A bunch of us take turns making game references that fly under her radar—like the kid who asks if there’ll be cake when we’re done.

The routine is supposed to be comforting. We have a genetic predisposition for same old-same old that dates back to the earliest vertebrates.

Then she added, “But don’t quote me on that.” Noncommittal is rampant among the committed.

Then she added, “But don’t quote me on that.” Noncommittal is rampant among the committed.

I know there’s nothing I can do about the dissolving tablet, but maybe, with practice, I can squirrel away both the capsule and the green pill.

Morning mist burns away, leaving a myriad of cotton-white clouds from horizon to horizon.

Below that dramatic vista, the sea is as glass—a perfectly reflective surface, mirroring the sky.

Without the cocktail to dull me, there’s a clarity to my senses as sharp as a butcher’s blade. It cleaves through flesh and bone, revealing places within that were never meant to be exposed to the light of day.

Its arms are stretched wide, its eyes are tilted toward the cloud-spotted sky in eternal supplication—and it occurs to me that all scarecrows look as if they’ve been crucified.

He does not smile back. Instead he chastises me.

It is a heady and frightening prospect to be the king of all destinies.

I climb into the dinghy, a copper rowboat so small, it doesn’t seem to be able to hold its own weight above the waterline, much less mine.

The look on his canvas face is pensive.

Sharp metallic scales. An undulating, vermiform body. I know this beast intimately. The Abyssal Serpent circles us, and I am terrified.

As it increases its pace, the sea itself seems to resonate with its movement, beginning to revolve in a slow eddy, but quickly picking up speed.

It is the culmination of every eye that has witnessed my life and passed judgment.

That’s when I turn and see a man sitting in the arched entrance to the old building next door. The vestibule. It’s a word Dad taught me when we passed through Grand Central Station. “When a building is so grand,” Dad had told me, “its entry needs its own special name.”

Our hotel is in Queens. This is not Queens. It may be the Bronx. That’s what Mom thinks. I don’t say so, but I secretly think that maybe we’re in a borough that doesn’t exist on any map.

I can feel the acceleration in every joint of my body, so much faster than when I had fallen. Faster than the paltry pull of gravity.

Faster than the serpent, still trying to flood my mind with its requiem of hopelessness.

I consider serving him up a nice big platter of dumb, but what’s the use? “Yeah,” I tell him, without mincing words, “I was cheeking my meds.”

An hour later, after an insanely decadent ice-cream fest, we arrive home and I see Mackenzie’s balloon right away as we pull onto the street.

I turn and walk back up the gangway to the pier. It’s narrow and precarious, but I’ve done precarious before, so it’s nothing new.