Page 66 of Whispers of the Deep

“He brought his daughter on adventures with him?”

“Oh yes.” Byte zoomed in on Alys’s face, and she could see how tenderly the droid had taken care of the memory.

There was so much detail in the projection. She could see how blue Alys’s eyes were, and how she had the faintest abrasion on her chin, like she’d scraped it on something. Her lips were chapped, and her brows had a few flyaways that gave her a rather roguish expression. How strange to look at a woman like this and see so much, when she had most certainly passed away years ago.

“What were they doing in this memory?” she asked.

“Scouting out the first location for Alpha. Professor Fairweather was the lead architect on the project. He led many people to the location after this, but the first exploration was first and foremost, him and his daughter. They traveled the entire planet together once. Or at least, that’s what they claimed.” The projection blinked in and out of life before showing yet another memory.

This time, it was an image from inside of the submarine. There were so many wires and ports and strange buttons that Mira couldn’t even hazard a guess at what they did. But the professor and his daughter sat in matching chairs, looking out into the ocean with matching expressions of awe.

Alys leaned forward in her chair, pressing closer to the glass as she stared at the magical world they had revealed. It was stunning. Beyond stunning. So many kelp forests and fish and turtles and fluttering creatures she couldn’t even name.

“That doesn’t look like Alpha.” She pointed at the forest and all the other creatures around it. “Alpha is set on a barren rock. Nothing can get near it for miles out to sea without someone seeing it.”

The memory blinked out of existence. “That is because Alpha was built on what was once a thriving biome of sea creatures and plants. It was all destroyed to build Alpha.”

“I...” She didn’t know what to say.

Instead, she thought about it. Silence descended between them as Byte instead played images from above. Even those weren’t enough to distract her from what it had said. There used to be so much more where their cities were built. She’d assumed, of course. But why go through all the trouble of clearing out an area of the ocean when there were plenty of blank spaces?

“The professor and his daughter...” She cleared her throat, licking her lips before asking her question. “They didn’t seem like the kind of people who would be happy with others destroying the ocean. I saw the expressions on their faces. They were captivated by how beautiful it all was.”

In a sense, she’d be disappointed if they were proud of themselves. She was so in love with the sea, and she’d seen a kinship in the way Alys had looked at the ocean as well. There was a bit of love in her gaze.

“Alys wasn’t happy with proceeding the way they built the city. She fought against them, quite hard, and then her father eventually understood why she was so angry. It took him a while to understand. He was...” Byte paused before continuing with a harder edge to its tone. “The professor wanted to build something great. He would have done anything to see the city built the way it was, even destroy the surrounding landscape to satisfy his need to be remembered after he died.”

How horrible. It was hard to even imagine the rift between this young woman and her father. It was even harder to imagine seeing the ocean she loved so much, the one she was so fascinated with, slowly disappear before her eyes.

Clearing her throat, Mira picked at a few more of the rust pieces before turning Byte so she could reach the rest. There wasn’t much left anymore. Just a few flakes, so she had something to fidget with. “So Alys fought back. She didn’t want them to build Alpha?”

“Not at all. She still thought there were other places for them to scope out. She pushed for them to build at higher levels. Though the volcanoes would still affect people who lived in the levels above the sea, it wouldn’t affect them anywhere near as much. She even worked on a design that would have been protected from any projectiles thrown out by the volcanoes.” Byte sighed a little dreamily. “She was an impressive woman.”

“It sounds like.”

It also seemed if the humans had actually listened to her, then they would have still lived above the ocean. People could have smelled fresh air, not recycled air that hummed out of a box for their entire lives. They would have felt a real breeze, not one from standing in front of a fan. Her world would have been so different if Alys had gotten her way.

“What happened to them?” she asked, even though she feared she didn’t want to know the answer. “The professor and his bright daughter?”

The projection disappeared. Byte even shuddered in her hands before it finally clicked its hands against the sides of the box. “Professor Fairweather became a rather renowned individual. He was the first person to introduce filtration systems, so humans no longer needed to pump air into the cities. That’s why Beta is so much deeper under the sea than the others. He was an inventor for most of his life, and a majority of the objects that you use even to this day were first started by him.”

“Why does this feel like the story ends in sadness?”

“Alys disappeared.” Byte’s head retreated almost entirely into the box as it looked at her with those strange eyes, blinking. “She went off in the submarine, certain that there were more discoveries for her. And she refused to be anywhere near the people who would so willingly destroy so much. I was supposed to go with her on that day.”

“What happened instead?”

“Her father was already commissioning me to be one of the deep sea trawlers. He wanted a personal droid to be on the ground floor of the sea so that he could get direct reports rather than waiting for anyone else.” Byte’s hands tapped against its side again before retreating into the darkness of its box. “She never came back. And they never found her.”

“Surely she found land somewhere else. It would make sense for someone like her to have found another home, perhaps another group of people who had similar thoughts as her.” Hope bloomed in her chest for the woman she had never known. Then, that hope was crushed.

“They never found her, Miss Mira. They found the submarine, though. It returned as expected to the city. Empty. The top was torn off and all the equipment was ruined.”

“Torn off? What kind of creature could do that?”

Byte glanced toward the water and then back to her. “There were claw marks on the sides of the submarine. Not teeth, Miss Mira. Claws.”

“Oh,” she breathed.

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