My mother thought I was crazy to raise my children at the bottom of the Mariana Trench.
“It’s not like it was, Mom,” I said, over a video call. “Not even twenty years ago. There’s a whole community down here.”
I wasn’t one of the founders of the Mariana Trench Colony – now more commonly called Marianaville, a playful nickname that stuck – but I was among the first civilians to move there once it was established.
It really does function like a village or small town, igloo-shaped houses lighting up the bottom of the trench like sea anemones. Sometimes I have to remind myself that they didn’t grow there naturally. Our lighting system has been engineered to replicate natural cycles of the sun and moon, to keep us from subsisting in a constant state of seasonal depression.
The bigger buildings are shaped like squat cylinders. Right now, there are three of them. One of them contains stores and food marts, one is an entertainment and education center, and one is a grocery and warehouse store where supplies are sold in bulk.
I’m walking back towards home along one of the clear tunnels that connects the buildings. Plants hang from the ceiling, vines creeping along the support beams.
Women jog past me, chatting. A mother pushes a carriage. Seeing people with kids still assuages me, like I didn’t make such a stupid decision.
I adjust the bag of groceries on my hip, and look out the clear panel at what’s being built around us, and what’s been built already.
They’ve started construction of a new apartment complex on the rocky wall of the trench, semicircular structures that remind me of glowing blue toadstools. I watch the long arms of the robots they pilot for maintenance and construction. They remind me of mechanical giraffes.
Contrary to popular belief, it wasn’t quiet down here before we arrived. The trench is full of life. Right now, I can see a dumbo octopus billowing its cheerful way along, which is much more pleasant than the time I saw a stomiidae staring in at me. Let me tell you, sea monsters are no fiction. It’s strange my kids were never afraid of them, not in any conventional way.
The corridor ends with an octagon-shaped common area that doubles as a junction, a fountain and tables in the middle. Each of the neatly numbered doors lining the walls will take you to a private residence, or one of the community buildings.
As I approach my door, my neighbor opens hers. Dr. Nelson was one of the first people here – a marine biologist, who inhabited Marianaville when, according to her, it still felt like they were on the surface of Pluto. Barely inhabited, every day an adventure.
“Hi, Mel,” she greets me, putting her keys in the pocket of her black trenchcoat. She has sea gray hair, and her coke bottle glasses make her eyes owlish and scrutinizing.
“Hi, Doc,” I say. “Did you hear they’re thinking about putting chain restaurants down here?”
“I’m surprised they haven’t already.” We both look out of the impermeable glass portholes, picturing golden arches glowing back at us from out there. “I can’t get over it, how fast civilization moves. I never even thought there’d be families down here – not within my lifetime.”
“Like a boulder going down a hill.” I’m parroting something she said once.
She remembers, and smiles a bit. “Slow going at first, then you can’t stop it.” She continues on her way. “Say hi to the kids for me.”
I turn the key and let myself into the corridor that leads to my house. “You got it.”
My hallway extends about a hundred feet from the common area, to allow for some space between the structures. My wife has arranged flower pots on either side of our door, and a welcome mat.
What welcomes me is the sound of my wife and one of the kids fighting before I even reach the door.
“...It’s not fair, I only get to see her in person for one week a year, and I can’t even stay with her!?” my daughter, Mio, is shouting.
Her long black hair is in a wispy bun on top of her head, falling in glossy threads into her eyes. She’s wearing a huge black sweater that dwarfs her, the name of some ancient punk rock band on the front, but her leggings are pink and adorned with hearts. She has slippers shaped like piglets.
My wife, by contrast, is always neat, her hair pinned back in a slick black helmet. Her hands are interwoven in front of her and she’s looking at Mio calmly. “You’ll be able to see Amy for approximately eight hours each day. I don’t know her new stepfather, and I have no reason to entrust your safety to –”
My daughter stomps her pig slipper. “Steve is just a loser, he won’t bother me!”
“I’m sure Steve is perfectly nice, there’s no reason to denigrate strangers –”
“If he’s so nice, why can’t I –”
“Because I don’t know him, and I don’t –”
“UGH! I hate you!”
My daughter storms off, shoving past me even though I’m not in her way, and stomps up down the hall to her room.
My wife glances at me. “You don’t need to ask how my day’s been going.”
I set my bag of groceries down on the table. “Our vacation is the most work we do all year.”
My wife is, objectively, one of the best engineers in the world. Dr. Mina Uchiumi. Even now, I have a hard time thinking about her without her full name announcing itself in my head. She has so many awards, she could use them as bowling pins.
I came down here to write a book, but I stayed for her – and because I fell in love with it down here almost as much. Which makes sense, because so much of this place is a product of her genius.
“How’s Oki doing?” I ask, leaning over to kiss her cheek as she opens her holographic computer screen back up.
“He claims he’s going to be fine. But you should go talk to him.”
“Have you –”
“Yes. I’ve tried.” She clicks holographic icons, her fingers slender and nimble. “Now it’s your turn.”
I don’t want this to turn into a fight, so I groan inwardly and descend the hallway towards the dragon’s den. Oki is fifteen, a difficult age for just about everyone, but I know for a fact he has his mother’s genius and I can’t help but hold him to a higher standard because of that. He wasn’t supposed to be as fallible as I was at his age.
He has a long distance girlfriend in Montana – I went to great lengths to confirm she was real – and all he does during family meals is text her under the table. Sometimes I stand outside his door at night and try to make out what he’s saying over their video calls, but he mutters under his breath like he thinks I might be listening. I hear her giggling back like a siren.
I almost open his door, then remember to knock this time. “Come in,” he intones, somberly.
His Majesty is sprawled out on his bed with his dark hair fanned out on his pillow, long enough to look like a sort of halo. He looks like a sheepdog to me most of the time, but girls seem in the settlement to like it, and that’s all that matters when you’re that age.
He’s texting – and I know intuitively he’s texting her – but there’s an open book next to him, so it’s nice to see he’s been devoting his time to something other than hormone-driven puppy love.
“Hey. Looking forward to our vacation?” I ask, awkwardly.
“I guess,” he shrugs. He’s wearing shorts and black top with a flaming skull on it, and his limbs are coltlike.
He’s at that age where your kids start to feel like strangers. Worse than strangers – like the friends you had when you were twelve. You used to know them, but then you did something wrong, and things will never be the same again and you don’t know why.
I have to keep reminding myself that I’m not the same age as my son. I don’t have to fear him. I don’t need his approval. He needs me.
“You, uh – do you want to talk about what happened last time?”
My son pauses his typing. “Why would I want to talk about that?”
The last time we took a vacation on the surface, my son had a panic attack. I found him behind the rocks, where he’d been for God knows how long while we’d been having fun on the beach, hugging his knees and shaking.
“Oki? My God, what’s wrong?” I asked, feeling absolutely helpless.
“I don’t know.” He sounded like he was freezing. His eyes were wild. “I don’t know what’s happening.”
“I’m going to go get –”
“Don’t! Don’t tell anyone I’m back here.”
“Then what can I –”
“Can you just sit with me for a while?”
It was selfish, how much I needed to be asked that. I felt, for the first time in a while, like I wasn’t at a disadvantage with Oki.
After he’d calmed down and his breathing went back to normal, he explained to me that it was the sky. At least, he thought it was. “It’s endless,” he said. “Does that make sense?”
“No,” I said. “I grew up with the sky.” I paused. “You know – most people up here are afraid of the sea more than the sky.”
“I know that. I’ve seen movies and stuff.” He looked at the tops of his knees. “It’s just – the sea isn’t never-ending, you know? And it’s part of our world. You can’t say the same about the sky. I keep picturing falling into it.”
“You can’t fall into the sky, Oki.”
“I know! Do you think I’m stupid?”
“Of course not –”
He stood up. “Let’s just get back.” He walked back to the beach, and kept his eyes down for the rest of the day.
I felt like I failed. I still feel like I failed. He opened up to me – by necessity if nothing else – and I said all the wrong things. All I want is a chance at a redo, but my son isn’t giving me the time of day.
Oki is still staring at me. His eyelashes are dark swipes of ink, his gaze frank and cutting, like his mother’s.
I realize he asked me a question, and he’s waiting for an answer.
“Um. I just don’t want it to happen again,” I try, feeling absolutely helpless.
“It won’t. Don’t worry.” He returns to his phone. “I won’t look up too much.”
“Oki, that’s –”
“I’m fine, Dad.”
I’m about to leave – but, what am I doing? I can’t just leave him like this.
I scan his room for a way in. He has shelves full of books. His cat is sleeping on its bed in the blue light of his fish tank. A fish tank, in the Mariana Trench.
He still has the action figures we used to collect together. Posters of the old science fiction movies we watched together when he was little. The model airplane we put together hangs from the ceiling.
I still matter to him – my presence is still in this room. He wouldn’t have kept all those things if they didn’t matter to him.
“Oki,” I say. “Do you want to go to the surface tonight?”
He looks at me flatly.
“I’ll ask your sister too,” I add, quickly. “Like when you were little.”
“We’re going to the surface next month for our vacation anyway.”
“We should do it more. I want to look at the stars.”
“Are you a twelve-year-old girl?”
“Oki.” I think he knows why I want to do this. He needs to see the sky more. If I’d exposed it to him more as a kid, he wouldn’t be so afraid of it now. It was just never something I anticipated he’d be afraid of.
His eyes shift, thinking. “I was supposed to call Sally tonight.”
I’m really starting to hate Sally, but it’s not an outright no. “We’ll leave early. You can call her when you get back.” My heart is actually thumping. I shouldn’t be this nervous asking my kid to do something with me. “What do you say?”
“I’ll think about it.”
But when it comes time to go, he does.
His sister actually gives me a more difficult time about it, whining the whole time we get ready about how much she doesn’t want to go. Oki just stands there somberly, texting.
For some reason my daughter is dressed like she’s going on a date, and my son is dressed like he’s going to harass people on a street corner: mini skirt and kitten heels, torn jeans and Doc Martens.
“Are you sure you don’t want to come?” I ask my wife, who’s sitting at the kitchen table, probably waiting for us to leave so she can concentrate on work.
“No, thank you,” she says, her hands interlocked in front of her. “I’m waiting for you to leave so I can concentrate on work.”
I know she’s not sure why I’m doing this, and I appreciate that she doesn’t ask. I myself am not sure what I hope to accomplish here.
The shuttle is in – well, we civilians would call it a garage, and the more technically-minded would call it a shuttlebay. It’s connected directly to our living quarters by a small hallway. When we enter, the shuttlebay is dry, and swims in blue light like a fish bowl.
“Why do we have to do this?” my daughter asks, as I open the driver’s side of the little pod-shaped shuttlecraft.
I stiffen. She has that tone she gets when she’s about to put her foot down about something, and for a second I think she’ll change her mind about going with us. If she changes her mind, so will Oki, and then our little adventure will get snuffed out before it even begins.
“We used to do stuff like this all the time when you guys were little,” I say. “You’ll remember why it’s fun.”
I get into the driver’s seat, and hold my breath as the kids climb in, taking their godly time. I feel like they could call this off at any instant. Any adult who thinks they hold more power than their children is a fool. You can control your children, but you can’t control how your children view you. You can’t control if they like you.
Mio sits in the front next to me, and Oki gets in the back, sitting between us. I can’t decide if we’re a holy or unholy trinity.
“Everyone in?” I ask, just like I used to when they were younger. Oki kind of mutters. Mio scoffs. “I’ll take that as a yes.”
I punch in the code to open the garage door, and water comes pouring in around us, filling the garage like a tank. The vehicle thrums to life, and there’s a feeling of weightlessness as it detaches from the floor of the shuttlebay. I steer us out the open gate and into the dark water, a little heartbeat of life in this deep chasm of sea.
There was a time when it would have taken nearly five hours to get to the surface, but now it’s closer to two and a half. It’s still a long time to be in the shuttle with my kids, who are at the age where they’re most hostile to me.
What surprises me is how quickly that changes. We begin our ascent to the surface through the watery black void, and what always strikes me is how…un-void-like it is. I knew that already, but the abundance of life down here keeps surprising me.
“Look,” I say. “It’s a vampire squid.”
“It doesn’t look like it does in videos,” says Mio.
“It’s not parachuting, dumbass,” says Oki, without malice.
There are jellyfish, there are anglerfish, there’s a barreleye fish. The kids put away their phones, tucking them slowly and wordlessly into pockets.
“I used to think it was really weird that we colonized Mars before we colonized the trench,” remarks Mio, after a time. “But it really is…more alien down here, in a way.”
“We still haven’t explored the entire ocean,” says Oki. “Less than forty percent of it is explored, actually. When we first put satellites in space, it was, like, ninety-nine percent unexplored.”
The radio hums quietly in the dark. Deep in the midst of the ocean, there’s a buzzing human voice, the pluck of a guitar, the beat of a drum. The dashboard glows, Jolly Rancher colors.
As we get closer to the surface, there are more hubs of human settlement. Ocean stations and the communities that surround them, the glowing lights of fast food establishments. We stop for milkshakes, and drink them while steering through pods of low-singing whales.
It takes us a minute to register when we near the surface, because the sky above us looks so much like the sea. Black and blue, alight with bioluminescent life. So much life.
Stars are so much brighter over the sea. We’ve seen it before, but it’s been long enough that it feels new, long enough that I can’t believe we ever got used to this. The stars are splattered, layer over layer, the dropcloth of some divine painter.
Of course the gods live there. How could we have forgotten that?
I’m afraid for a second that I’m experiencing this moment alone, but then I look at my children’s faces, and see my own wonder reflected there. Their eyes are full of stars.
“What do you think?” I manage.
My son says, “It looks like home.”