Day 810 of the Drift - I Feel It In My Teeth

I have decided to keep this journal properly this time. I have said that before, of course, but today I have a story to tell, things that need to be shared. My previous journal lasted only eleven days. I had filled its early pages with half-hearted observations before using the rest to press a delicate lanteric sample flat between its covers. Eventually it disappeared with the forgotten things under my bed. 

But that was all before Room 77.

***

A week ago at the city assembly, Councillor Penne stood on the raised platform in the central atrium and reminded us all that we are approaching the nine-hundredth day of this drift. His voice echoed through the entire chamber, carried by the brass speaking tubes that wind through every deck. Something about that number unsettled me a little as it always did when we neared the end of a new drift. Nearly nine hundred days of jumping across the endless oceans of the Glistening, never staying in one place for long. It made me want to write things down more carefully, to pin my days in place before they become disorganised in my memory.

My name is Yoona Day. I had my sixteenth birthday two weeks ago, in a small gathering on the third deck where my grandmother baked salt-bloom cakes and the lanterns were decorated with a few glow vines for the occasion. I have lived aboard VIA my entire life, and unless something extraordinary happens, I will most likely die here too, somewhere among these hundreds of stacked decks that make up our endless city. I know that is not the most ambitious way a journal can begin, but at the moment it's all I've got.

VIA is colossal. From the lowest undercarriage walkways where the deep cleaners work, to the highest canopy that cuts through the upper currents, the city stretches like a metal mountain with it’s tallest spires disappearing in the mist. I live and attend school on the third deck, one of the quieter residential layers. The corridors here are lined with rusting riveted steel plates that pulse softly when VIA’s engines fire up. Rows of giant portholes look out into the water, and the air always carries that familiar smell of machine oil that gets stuck in your throat when you least expect it. There are so many decks I have never visited though. I heard stories once of glowing fungal gardens and singing forests on deck three hundred.

After school I often sit with my Grandmother in the archive office on the fourth deck. She has worked there longer than I’ve been alive. The room is narrow and peaceful, filled with rows of metal shelves holding carefully labelled cylinders that contain maps and surveys. My Grandmother receives reports that are sent up from the Laboratory of Light. Today she let me read five new ghost-data reports from the lab. Dr Olwen’s handwriting is so bad. It’s thin and jagged like cracks spreading across shattered glass. I told him once, during one of his rare visits to the office.

“Listen kid”, he replied with a wink, leaning against the doorframe in his salt-stained coat, “when you’re seven hundred meters below the hull line in a cage with the cold scratching at your knuckles and the dark closing in from every side, then we’ll compare notes”.  

I like Dr Olwen. He loves to embellish his stories of the deep with a cheeky self styled heroism, but they keep me inspired to one day join the field survey team and do my part for VIA.

The city jumped twice today. Once in midmorning while I was in mathematics class, and again just after dinner. I don’t notice the jumps much anymore. You grow up in VIA and the fold becomes almost invisible, the way I usually feel in the crowded corridors. You feel weightless for a brief moment, the lanterns flicker, and then everything settles again. My mother used to say she could always feel an ache in her back teeth. I used to think she was being dramatic. Lately, though, I feel it there too.

I wish you were here, Mum. You would know how to explain these things better than I ever could.

***

We are back in the northern reaches tonight, I think. . . There's an emerald light spilling through my porthole that feels soft but a little sad too.

Nine hundred days. I should sleep. The city is quiet, apart from that familiar, distant buzz of the engines and the occasional far away call of something enormous moving through the dark water on the other side of the glass.

Day 822 of Drift - Drinking Polyp Squash

I ran into Vandu this morning on the lower promenade, just as he was coming off a twelve-hour shift on the undercarriage. The lower promenade is one of my favourite places in VIA — a wide, curving walkway lined with reinforced viewing panels that look directly out into the ocean. Brass lanterns hang at regular intervals, casting a soft amber light that reflects off the metal walls and the polished floor plates have been worn smooth in places by generations of footsteps.

Vandu had that familiar look the deep cleaners wear after long shifts. Their work keeps them in sustained dimness, crawling along the outer hull and pipe networks where light barely reaches. After hours in that darkness, they emerge into the brighter levels with folded faces, squinting as if someone had shoved a torch directly into their eyes. Vandu was no different today. His shoulders were hunched and his uniform streaked as always with mineral residue.

We found a small table at the promenade café, one of the smaller stalls tucked against the inner wall. The café is little more than a cluster of bolted down stools and a counter where they serve warm drinks and simple refreshments to those coming off shift. I ordered two polyp squashes — a sweet, slightly fizzy drink made from crushed deep-water polyps that taste of brine and honey. The vendor handed them over in dented metal cups still warm from the heating coils. Vandu and I sat quietly together for a time, as we always do, adjusting to each other's company. Beyond the viewing panels, pale shapes drifted slowly in the blue-grey water. Curious scavengers drawn near by the city’s lights.

“Are you going to the bell ceremony this year?” Vandu asked, his voice rough from hours of shouting instructions over the noise of the undercarriage tools.
“I haven’t decided yet”, I answered. Vandu raised his eyebrows at me. He knows me too well. I say the same thing every year and always end up going anyway. He took a long sip from his cup before continuing.“Donway is planning to finish his shift early so we can go together. Please tell me you’ll be there?”
“Maybe”, I said, trying to sound playful mysterious. I think it only made Vandu feel impatient. He’s never had much time for games.

Just say what you mean Yoona, it’s better for everyone if you do.

Vandu offered me a weary smile. “Yoona”, he said, setting his cup down. “Just make sure you are there, I might have something interesting to show you”.
“Like what?”
“I can’t say here. Promise me you’ll come ok?”
“Alright, alright. I’ll be there. But you know I'm not good with surprises”.
“I have a feeling you’ll be ineterested in this one”.
I had no idea what Vandu was trying to tell me. He looked more tired than usual. He seemed to have the weight of the city on his shoulders. I didn’t press him on it. He is only a couple of years older than me, yet he already carries one of the most demanding jobs in the entire city — crawling through the underbelly of VIA, maintaining the pipes and hull plates that keep us all alive. The responsibility of it always shows in the shadows under his eyes and the slow way he moves his hands. I paid for the polyp squashes today. Usually Vandu insists on paying. Not today. He must have been exhausted. As we sat there, I wished I could have spent more time with him. The lower promenade continued its quiet rhythm around us — workers passing by in small groups, the occasional child pressing their face to the glass to watch the drifting creatures outside, and the steady, unsettling groan of the city adjusting to the currents.

We finished our drinks mostly in silence. I watched Vandu stare into nothing, like a man waiting for something to happen. Long after we stood up to go our separate ways, the aftertaste of polyp lingered on my tongue as I walked home through the back streets and it was not nearly as sweet as it should have been.

Day 830 of the Drift - Film Night

Wednesday.

It was a good screening tonight. The Finemathé Finema was showing something new. One of those rare reels that always draws a quiet crowd. I don’t know where they find these films? Rumour says the captain of The Glory sends them back with the supply runners. She definitely seems the type to collect strange things from unknown places most of us will never get to see.

The lower observation deck is one of the largest open spaces in the middle levels of VIA. Its wide, curved viewing panels stretch from floor to ceiling, reinforced with thick glass etched by years of salt crystals. Faded brass rails run along the edges for safety, and the deck itself is sticky under your feet. On Wednesday nights, the crew sets up the Finema projector on a raised platform. I always wait eagerly for its lanteric bulb to cough into life. By the time the film began, the water was alive with movement. Great pale shapes drifted in from the deepest passages of the Northern Ocean, creatures I had never seen in all my years of Wednesday screenings. They gathered in a loose, quiet audience just beyond the glass, drawn by the silvery glow and the low vibrations of the projector. I sat near the front with my blanket wrapped around my shoulders and my flask of tea tucked beside me. This is the only place in VIA where you can lose yourself in the warm aroma of dried salt fruits. A Wednesday Finema speciality. Vendors set up small stalls along the back wall, and the sweet scent drifts across the deck. I pulled the blanket closer and watched the creatures watching the film. They have no concept of Wednesdays. Or films. Or me.

I desperately want to swim among them, to move through those cold currents without the safety of the hull. To understand even a small part of what they know about this world.

Only two years to go. I’ll get my chance.

Petra from the cartography office sat down beside me for a while. Her coat still smelt faintly of ink and parchment. She had spent her afternoon in one of the upper archives playing Lichen Chess with an Asanine, one of the slow, rock-like creatures that sometimes visit the city’s outer platforms.

“It kept moving the same piece”, she told me, laughing softly. “The same piece, Yoona. For forty minutes!”. “If you must play with an asanine, then it’s an essential part of the Lichen Chess experience”, I reminded her. Petra should really have known better. Asanines are not known for their chess skills, but they find deep comfort in repetition. The familiar motions and patterns seem to steady and comfort them. Petra laughed again and borrowed my flask, taking a long sip of tea as we settled back to watch. We stayed together until the cold drove us both toward the warmer upper decks. The creatures stayed. 

Day 837 of the Drift - Water Angels

An engineering team completed their rotation on the Vermillion Pipe today. We call them the Water Angels as the propulsion systems they carry on their backs look like wings. My grandmother processed their maintenance reports this afternoon, spreading the thin sheets across her wide wooden desk in the archive office. The papers were still a little damp at the edges.

The Vermillion Pipe is one of the most important structures in all of VIA. It runs along the city’s underside, fanning out to five giant funnels. Each funnel sucks in countless litres of raw seawater, filtering it, and providing clean pressurised water to every deck. The pipe, scarred by countless welding plates is painted a deep unmistakable crimson so that repair crews can spot it even in the poorest visibility. Three Water Angels had been out there for fourteen days straight, working on the exterior of the pipe in a full current. They spent those long days recording flow settings by hand and making delicate adjustments to valves and regulators. No fractures and no incidents. Only Captain Newsong and his dedicated team manage the system that keeps every person in the city alive. Without the Vermillion Pipe, there would be no drinking water, no steam for the heating coils, no pressure or electricity. The angels carry that knowledge with them every time they step outside the hull.

I watched my grandmother carefully stamp each report with the archive seal, her fingers moving with the same precise care the Angels must apply on their valves. The office felt especially peaceful this afternoon. It is easy to forget, surrounded by the constant presence of VIA’s engines and the everyday rhythms of deck life, just how fragile our existence seems to be. We float through an endless ocean in a metal shell, held together by pipes and people who choose to work where the dark presses hardest against the glass. The Water Angels remind me of that every time they return. They ask for little praise and receive even less. They simply do the work that lets the rest of us keep living. VIA’s heroes. I finished my water slowly, letting the taste linger. It tasted clean and faintly sweet, the way it always does when it has just come through the Vermillion system. I held the metal cup in both hands and felt a deeper gratitude than usual. 

Outside, a small school of silver fish darted past the porthole, flashing briefly in the city’s light before vanishing back into the deep. The water had taken on a soft violet tint, suggesting we had drifted into a new stretch of ocean during the night. Another quiet day aboard VIA, held safe by invisible hands working far below us in the current.

Day 844 of the Drift - The Churn And The Lost

We left in the early hours of the morning, not long after VIA jumped here.

There were perhaps over than two hundred of us this time, more than last year, moving together in a long, quiet procession. We made our way through the south tunnels and out across the open beds in the early light. The tunnels themselves are ancient, their walls lined with thick layers of encrusted minerals and reinforced with heavy iron bracing, aged from rust. Dim lanteric strips run along the ceiling, casting a pale, steady glow that barely holds back the shadows. No one spoke. The only sounds were the soft shuffle of boots on the metal grating and the distant, constant drones of the city’s systems fading behind us. I felt a quiet determination in the crowd, a shared focus on treating the journey with the respect it deserved.

I wore my mother’s hat, as I always do on this pilgrimage. It is made of thick blue felted wool with a wide brim and a simple cord tie. Each time I put it on I tell myself it is only because it is practical, warm, and well made for the colder outer passages. But that is not why. Wearing it makes the distance between us feel a little smaller.

The open beds beyond the tunnels are a strange and shifting landscape. Vandu once told me that the constant movement of the water restructures the bedscape every time we leave and return. It shifts towering crystal spires, churns up new layers of sediment, and carves fresh channels through the rock. Yet no matter how different the site looks each time, it always feels the same when you arrive. I remember my mother once describing a kind of turbulence in the water that no instrument could detect. Something that’s felt rather than recorded. She called it the water remembering. Like the ocean itself held onto echoes of everyone it had taken. This was a day for remembering. The research team was already there when we reached the site. I could see their lanteric cameras set up in careful formations along the edge of the disrupted water, each device mounted on sturdy tripods, ready to capture the moment as they do every year. We watched the scientists from behind the old clouded, salt-stained glass as they moved around each other without speaking. Their gestures were precise and economical. 

I stood at the edge and observed the water for a long time. Small shards of luminous blue coral swirled gently, disturbed by hidden currents and unseen forces. I thought about my mother. I thought about all the others who had been lost to these waters over the time we have drifted. Another girl who looked about my age came to stand beside me. She gave me a solemn smile, then reached into her coat and pulled out a small rusty bell. With a slow exhale, she struck it once. The sound was small and delicate, a clear note that barely travelled beyond where we stood. Yet it felt exactly right. It cut through the quiet in a way that no louder noise ever would. The bell spoke for everyone there. After some time, I slid my hands into my jacket pockets and began the walk back through the tunnels toward VIA. The journey felt longer on the return and the weight of the day slowed my steps. The pilgrimage to The Churn always leaves me quieter than I expect. As I climbed the stairs back to the third deck, I could still hear that single note of the bell echoing somewhere inside me.

***

The city had moved again. We emerged into the eastern interior, where the light filtering through the portholes and observation panels had changed completely. It was warmer here, softer, carrying hints of gold instead of the sharp northern emerald. I was glad of it. The new light felt like a welcome distraction after the heaviness of today. But the remembering stayed with me for days. It always does and it always should.

Day 851 of the Drift - Twybo Big Eyes

Twybo appeared in the lower quadrant today during a deep cleaning rotation, an event that always draws a small but steady crowd of residents to the lower observation deck. This was only the second time I have ever seen him. There is something about the creature that holds people’s attention, even if they have seen him a hundred times before. It is mostly his size, but also those eyes.

The lower observation deck is a long, curved gallery in the mid section of VIA, lined with the thickest viewing glass in the entire city. Heavy support beams arch overhead like ribs, and the floor plates are textured to prevent slipping when the decks grow damp. On days like today they are lined with people standing shoulder to shoulder, speaking in hushed voices. Twybo moved slowly through the water in front of the cleaning crew, his enormous bulging body glided in silence. He is easily the length of three city transit carts, with a broad armoured exterior that seems part living flesh and part ancient machinery. His most striking feature is the pair of enormous curved lenses that serve as eyes, glowing with a soft inner light as they sweep across the hull. The cleaning crew worked in his shadow, their lanterns looked tiny against his scale while he drifted just ahead of them like a gentle overseer. A few observers near me murmured that this might be the closest Twybo Big Eyes had ever come to the observation glass. I could see why they thought so. His massive form passed so near that I could make out the fine details of the barnacle-like growths on his body plates and the faint pulse of veins beneath his skin.

I didn’t stay long with the crowd. Instead, I ran up the stairs to my grandmother’s office on the fourth deck, arriving breathless and hoping the viewing angle from her windows would be better. She didn’t say anything when I burst in, only nodded toward the large reinforced porthole that overlooked the lower quadrant. I pressed myself close to the glass and watched Twybo for nearly an hour.

The office was quiet as always, filled with the familiar smell of old documents and lantern oil. Ticker tapes clicked steadily from the receiver on the wall. Outside, Twybo continued his slow patrol. At one point he paused. Those enormous eyes shifted with a smooth, mechanical grace, scanning the water around him. Then the golden lights on his chest panel flickered into life, glowing bright and steady. The cleaning crew behind him stopped their work immediately, holding their tools as they waited. After a few tense moments the gold lights softened and turned to green. The crew relaxed and returned to their duties. Whatever had concerned Twybo had passed. Whatever was coming had not arrived. Three minutes later, Twybo began to sink, descending gracefully back into the dark depths beyond the reach of the city’s lights. His great form grew dimmer until only the faint glow of his eyes remained visible, and then even that disappeared.

“Always lucky to see him, aren’t we”, my Grandmother said quietly, ripping a fresh length of ticker tape from the receiver on the wall. She used her matter-of-fact voice when she is trying not to show how much something moves her. I pinched my lips, smiled, and nodded without breaking my gaze out of the window. I still couldn’t work out where the creature ended and the machine began. The lines between living being and mechanical machine seemed blurred in him. I thought of Vandu and Donway working somewhere down there on the undercarriage, and felt a deep wave of thankfulness that they come home every night. Seeing Twybo always reminds me how dangerous the waters around VIA can be, and how much we rely on both the constructions and the people who maintain them just to keep drifting safely through the Glistening.

The northern currents beyond the glass seemed especially dark after Twybo left. I stayed at the window a while longer, watching the cleaning crew continue their work under the lonely glow of their lanterns, small but determined against the endless dark surrounding our strange city.

Day 880 of the Drift - When Past, Present & Future Collide

While my Grandmother and I were sharing lunch in her office, a message from Captain Rhamnossius’s vessel came through the archive today. The delivery drone arrived with its usual soft chime, docking at the external port before sliding a sealed cylinder across the counter. Inside were fresh lanteric photographs. A new series captured from the deep interior, featuring creatures that, according to my Grandmother, had never been named or classified. I have always been fascinated by lanteric photography. Lanteric images capture not just the present moment, but layers of the past and future of any living thing. The result is a single frame that holds time itself — echoes of where a creature has been. Faint traces of what it once was, and hints of what it may yet become. No one takes lanteric photographs quite like Captain Rhamnossius. She is a true master of her craft, known across the city for venturing into regions most vessels avoid. Her pictures make me dream.

My grandmother carefully spread the new photographs across the table in the centre of the archive office. The room was quiet as always, except for the gentle rhythmic clicking of cataloguing devices. There was one creature in the fourth image that my eyes could not stop returning to. It was small and delicate, a transparent pulsing form no larger than my two hands held together. In the photograph, its future appeared long. It’s past trailed behind it in faint silver outlines, suggesting it has already existed for a very long time. Longer than our city has been drifting, I suspect. It will almost certainly outlive all of us. The words Sub-section C, Unnamed Species blinked steadily on one of the nearby monitors. The green text reflected off the glass surface of the photograph.

I need to get out there.

The thought rose up so strongly it surprised me. Not just to the outer decks or the undercarriage, but out there, into the deep currents, where these nameless creatures drift through their old, undisturbed lives. Two more years until I am old enough to enter the water. And it feels like an eternity.

While I waited for my grandmother to finish logging the new arrivals, I killed time by spinning slowly on my favourite chair, an old swivel seat beside her desk with the worn leather cushion and slightly crooked base.

***

Tonight was tongul weed pancake night. I’m not that keen. The pancakes are always bitter, no matter how much honey you add, and the smell of frying tongul turns my stomach if I’m honest. I hope Grandma, if you’re reading this some time in the future, then please forgive me. I know it’s your favourite meal. But it will never be mine!

Day 888 of the Drift - Secrets Everywhere

Saturday. I wasn’t ready for what I saw today.

Saturday is market day on the mid-level terminal, one of the busiest and most vibrant places in the entire city. The terminal is a huge open chamber on the sixth deck. Stalls line the centre in neat rows, selling everything from fresh cakes and spiced brine weed to salvaged machine parts and small vials of rare coral dyes. Voices echoed off the riveted walls as people bargained, laughed, and called out to one another.

I love this chaos.

I usually try to arrive early to beat the crowds and pick the freshest groceries for my Grandmother, but this morning I was late. By the time I reached the terminal it was heaving with people. I weaved and side-stepped through clusters of chatting neighbours, and bumped into more than my fair share of shoppers. Some smiled apologetically, others tutted with mild annoyance. The floor felt slightly sticky under my boots from spilled syrup and crushed seeds. As I turned the corner toward the vegetable stalls, I was met by an enormous crowd gathered in front of the mid-observation platform. The entire massive viewing window was filled with something red, something rippling. I knew instantly what I was looking at.

It was the Capalax.

One of the giant catalogued beasts of the deep. It rarely ventures this close to the city, but when it does, it always causes a commotion. The creature’s luminous arms, edged with delicate, glowing membranes, drifted and pulsed against the glass. My eyes followed their slow movements until they met with its own single giant eye. It stared back through the fascinated crowd. Suddenly the entire creature shook. A blinding wave of light burst outward, flooding the observation deck. I shielded my eyes. When my vision cleared, I saw hundreds of people pressing forward with their arms raised toward the glass. They held photographs of family images, and personal portraits up to the Capalax and it responded. Its massive body shimmered and shifted. I had never seen anything like it.

What is happening here?

I acted on impulse and reached into my school bag, pulling out the small photograph I always carried with me. In it, I am five years old, laughing as I’m being carried on my mother’s shoulders beneath a vibrant pink coral archway. I held it up to the glass. I felt shocked the way my hands trembled. The Capalax appeared to react immediately. The whole creature shimmered from tentacle to tail. For one brief, breathtaking moment, I felt as though it was looking directly at me.

These creatures hold secrets…

The Capalax let out a gentle, muffled siren and scuttled backward, retreating into the blackness of the ocean beyond the city’s lights. My attention was broken by a rising disturbance behind me. I spun around to see a full company of deck wardens fanning out through the crowd. They moved with unfamiliar force, breaking up clusters of people and ushering everyone away from the observation deck. I had never seen them so heavy-handed before. There were scuffles, raised voices, and one woman was even knocked to the floor in the confusion. I hurried through the side corridors, shaking and scowling at anyone who stood between me and the safety of home.

***

That night I went to bed with my mind full of the creature and the strange event at the market terminal. I remembered this wasn’t the only visit from a deep sea creature this month. There were reports of a Crimson Wunderpus sighting. These creatures seem to be edging closer to the city and they are becoming more frequent.

Why?

There was an uneasy feeling taking hold of me. That feeling that grows when someone is hiding something important from you. And I didn’t like it one bit. I closed my eyes and wrestled with hour upon hour of broken sleep.

Day 893 of the Drift - The Chaos Net Worries Me

My Grandmother’s department held a meeting with Dr Bennick and his team today. I noticed it the moment I arrived at the archive office after school. The usual quiet rhythm of the room had been replaced by a heavier silence. Several senior cataloguers were missing from their desks, and the heavy oak doors to the conference chamber remained firmly shut. Low voices occasionally drifted through the gaps, too muffled to make out any words. Dr Bennick is in charge of researching the Chaos Net, an ancient, mysterious structure about which the archive holds little information. For the past eleven months, he and his small team have been meticulously recording its fibre tensions, the subtle shifts in its luminosity, and the strange frequency changes that ripple through the net at irregular intervals. Whatever the Chaos Net actually is, it seems to exist somewhere far below the city, in the deepest and least explored regions of the Glistening. I have asked my grandmother about it on many occasions. Each time, her response is the same. Her face tightens, her eyes grow distant, and she brushes the question aside with a vague comment about “classified matters” or “things not meant for young ears.” It is the only time where I feel strangely invisible to her. It’s like all the brightness she usually sees in me suddenly vanishes.

There are so many things I don’t understand about this world we live in. Where did we come from? How long has VIA been drifting? Why does our city make these sudden jumps across the oceans, folding space and time as easily as turning a page in a book? And the thing I find most frustrating — why does it seem that no one knows the answers? Or if they do, why do they refuse to speak about them? Of all the unanswered questions that circle through my mind during quiet moments in the archive, the Chaos Net is the one that scares me. There is something about it that unsettles even the calmest adults. I have noticed how conversations stutter and shoulders stiffen whenever the name is mentioned.

***

I spent the rest of the afternoon pretending to read survey logs while secretly watching the conference door. When the meeting finally ended, Dr Bennick and his team emerged looking tired and drawn. My grandmother returned to her desk with new stacks of sealed reports, her expression carefully composed but her hands moving with unusual stiffness as she sorted them.

***

We ate dinner mostly in silence tonight. We had a simple meal of steamed root vegetables, cured fish, and a small loaf of deck-bread still warm from the communal ovens. The atmosphere felt heavier than usual. I could tell there were heavy things pressing down on my Grandmother’s mind. Every so often she would pause with her fork halfway to her mouth, staring at nothing in particular. I wanted to ask her again. I wanted to push past the wall she always raises. But I could also tell that she wouldn’t be sharing any of it tonight. Maybe not for a long time. So I stayed quiet, listening instead to the low, distant creaks of the hull adjusting to new pressures. I finished my meal slowly, the questions swirling inside me. The Chaos Net feels like more than just an old structure. It feels like a mystery at the centre of everything we are. Something ancient, powerful, and deliberately kept from us.

Day 896 of the Drift - The Guardian Of The Glistening

In VIA, school starts at 8.00am and finishes at 12.00am. The mornings are filled with the usual rhythm of metal desks scraping against floor plates, the murmur of voices in narrow classrooms, and the faint smell of chalk dust mixed with brine, finding its way into every single room. Once the final bell rings, most of my afternoons are spent in my Grandmother’s office at the archives. It has always been favourite part of the day. People at school make fun of me for it. They call me boring and nerdy, whispering behind their hands as I head down the corridors toward the archive level instead of joining them at the recreation decks or the viewing lounges. I mostly ignore them. What they don’t understand is that while they play games and chase one another through the back passages, I get to learn about the real secrets of the Glistening. That knowledge comforts me in a way nothing else seems to.

I like to know things.

On my way to the archives today, I passed a group of workers from the water processing division. One of them, an older woman with salt-crusted sleeves, mentioned that a fresh message had come in from Gaston The Massive. It had been relayed through one of the life pod network stations in the South Wets. He sounded like he was doing well. He moved slowly but steadily, watching and mapping the currents in his own patient way, and eating things that would surely kill everyone I know. I have never met Gaston, yet I feel as though I know him like an old friend. He is more than a person; he is a legend woven into the history of every family aboard VIA. Every child learns his story in school. They say he was once one of the surface folk. Those rare explorers who venture to the upper boundary. One day he swallowed a salt polyp during a desperate moment and began to change. He grew gills and transformed into something the people of VIA needed him to become.

Our guardian.

The crew of The Glory keep trying to study him, sending out probes and survey teams whenever they catch his signal. But Gaston always outs wims them. He slips away into the kelp forests where even the most advanced equipment loses him. I think he loves playing games.

I think about Gaston sometimes when VIA jumps. There is that strange, weightless moment when none of us truly exist, suspended between places as the fold carries the entire city across huge distances without the burden of travelling through them. One second we are here, the next we are somewhere entirely new. The fold makes distance meaningless. But Gaston doesn’t jump or fold. He swims every league, every day, through every drift. With no metal hull to protect him. Only his transformed body moving through the endless cold currents, keeping watch over us. I hope the South Wets are treating Gaston well tonight. Somewhere out there in the dark, our guardian continues his lonely, eternal swim.

Day 898 of the Drift - The Surface

The 571 came into range today.

The signal passed through the archive’s monitoring system with a soft, melodic chime that echoed across the quiet room. I was sitting with my grandmother when the cartographic displays flickered to life across the far wall. A cluster of glowing amber lines and symbols unfolded across the map, and there it was; the distinct signature of the 571 which appeared as a golden pulse moving slowly across the northern reach. We both leaned forward at the same moment and watched as the ship’s projected path traced its careful route through the upper currents. They had been up at the surface for most of this season. Seven hundred and fifty two days, my grandmother confirmed quietly. More than two full years away from the safety of the city, braving the unstable boundary between our world and the open sky. The thought alone made my chest tighten with a mixture of awe and envy. I once met a member of the 571. His name was Henry Crellin. He came to the archive office nearly a year ago while his ship was docked for new navigation equipment. He was a tall, weathered man with pale eyes and hands that looked like they had been permanently crippled by the cold. I’ve never met anyone who could talk for so long about the infinite nature of ice crystal formations. I liked him immediately. He told me what it was like to stand on the crest of a crystal at the molecular boundary, where the surface of the Glistening meets the sky.
“The cold is absolute”, he said, his voice low and steady. “It enters every part of your bones, your thoughts, even your dreams. But the light up there… that lanteric light the surface traps and holds. There is nothing in the entire ocean that can match it”.

As I am not yet old enough to enter the water, visiting the surface feels about as far way to me as a forgotten dream. I have lived my entire life inside VIA, moved through it’s corridors, breathed it’s filtered air and watched the ocean through layers of dirtied glass. This world feels old, driven by routine, and survival… but somehow incomplete. My Grandmother must have sensed my thoughts. She reached over and gently rested her hand on my shoulder as we continued to watch the 571’s progress across the northern map. The golden point pulsed steadily.

My turn will come.

One day I will leave these safer decks behind. I will be presented with my own proper survey suit, feel the real pressure of the Glistening against my body, and rise toward that light Henry Crellin spoke of. Until then, I will keep collecting stories, study the lanteric reports, and be as ready as I can for when that day comes.

Day 900 of the Drift - The Remembrance Bell

The 900th day of the drift was marked this morning by the chimes of The Remembrance Bell. The sound rolled up through the floor plates, passed through the metal walls, and travelled up the legs of the kitchen table. I paused from eating my breakfast. I sat there for a while after the chime finally faded, staring at a pepper pot on the shelf. Somewhere far below, on the outer hull, I knew Vandu and Donway were signalling each other. Three short flashes. One long. I know their code well. Vandu told me about it years ago, the day they invented it, sitting together in the same small café where we shared polyp squash last month. I wrote the pattern down on the back of a receipt and kept it tucked in my journal. Three short flashes, one long. For everyone lost to the water.

We remember.

I thought once more about my mother. I thought about the scientists working at the Churn site, and whether their lanteric cameras had managed to capture anything new this year. I wondered if any image, no matter how beautifully layered with past and future, could ever truly be enough to capture what that place means to us.

***

In the afternoon I went down to the lower observation deck. The Finemathé Finema was not running. It is Wednesday, so the screen would normally be alive, but there is an old tradition of keeping the screens dark on Bell day out of respect. Creatures from the deep, drawn by the lingering vibrations of the bell, had gathered below the blank screen. They drifted there in silence. Great pale shapes, ribbon-like forms, and clusters of soft glowing orbs all present in the dark with no film to watch and no bright lights to illuminate them.

***

After a while I made my way back through the corridors to the archive offices. The walk felt longer than usual. This city is very old, but nobody seems to know exactly how old. I always find myself thinking about this on bell days, when the chime is still caught in my teeth and my mother’s hat rests on the stand by the door at home. I thought about the creatures in the dark water below, moving through depths we have yet to survey. Maybe they come for the salt fruits scattered during film nights. Then again, maybe they are showing up for something else entirely. We are very small. We are also somehow here. Three short flashes. One long.

I remember.

I gathered my things and threw my school bag over my shoulder. I left my Grandmother’s office and headed toward the bell ceremony. My walk was overshadowed by questions swimming through my head. They had grown heavier during this past month. 

We can’t be the only city drifting through the Glistening… Can we? What really happened to our city in the past? And what was it that the wardens were so desperate to hide from us at the market terminal that day?

I couldn’t wait any longer. It was time for answers. And there was one person in this city who I knew would be able to help me.

Vandu.

The Lights of VIA