From the Deep

Environmental Message

If Ian had had some time to think about it, perhaps he wouldn't have told his friends about what Andersen's song had meant to him. It was silly -- or, rather,it sounded rather silly when he tried to describe it; actually remembering what happened still gave him shivers. But suggesting that Andersen's song had actually translated into a solid, clear image for him was unsurprisingly met with several raised eyebrows.

"Well, what did you hear?" he asked the rest of the team.

"I heard the same thing I'd been hearing," said Sara. "That same feeling of being confused and scared. Nothing so specific."

"I didn't even hear that much in it," said Nigel. "I just felt sad stuff from her."

"I'm really wondering what it is that's different for you, Ian," said Monica, who was givng him a steady appraising stare. "If she's telling you more, or if you're just more able to read in to what she's already telling all of us. Or if you're just crazy and making things up at this point."

"Why would I do that?"

"I don't know," Monica answered, "but it sure seems like the crazy option by this point."

Ian scoffed, trying not to reveal how extremely worrying Monica's words actually were, and turned away.

"I don't think it's really that weird, though," he insisted. "We already knew that Andersen is capable of somehow transmitting emotions and even physical feelings through her singing. We've all felt that. So... if it was intense enough... why couldn't she be able to communicate something as detailed as this?"

"For a very large number of reasons, Ian," said Nigel in a voice that implied he couldn't believe Ian actually was being stupid enough to ask this question. "Feeling an emotion is something very different from experiencing a hallucination. And did this happen to anyone else? No -- we only have your word for it, only your word."

"Why," said Ian, "did you put a negative emphasis on the word 'your?'"

"I didn't," said Nigel.

"Okay."

Monica was looking back and forth between the two of them with shrewd eyes.

Sara put a hand on her forehead. "Okay, okay, just stop this," she said. "Ian. Tell us again what you said Andersen... showed you."

"It's really hard to be sure," said Ian, "but what I think is that she showed me the last piece of time that she spent in the water. First her home, wherever it was, and then climbing up through the water, and being caputured by our research boat. And she showed me how scared she was through it all, how difficult it was surviving. Not just trying to swim all that distance, but also not being able to find any clean safe place once at the surface, and then having to deal with humans... with us."

"But I thought she liked us," said Nigel.

"Well, maybe she forgave us. She didn't like our boat."

"Animals never like our boat," said Charles. "It's really not that surprising."

"So what was her problem with us at the surface, again?" asked Sara.

"Dirt. Trash. Oil, maybe. It... it was all a bit confusing." Ian paused to think. "But I guess that makes some kind of sense, actually. Because to her, it would all be confusing -- she wouldn't know what to think, and she wouldn't know what it is that she's showing me."

"So basically, she's complaining about the environment," said Nigel.

Ian smiled. "Yeah," he said.

"Finally, a cause me and the mermaid can agree on."

"It wouldn't be the first case of this," said Charles thoughtfully. "Not by a long shot. The five of us have seen firsthand how much damage our own pollution can do. Andersen wouldn't be the first animal to be scared and confused by it. The only difference is that in this case..."

"In this case, the animal has a voice," said Ian.

Sara cleared her throat. "Okay. Can you go back to the beginning of your story? You said something... something about where she lived?"

"Yes," said Ian. "It was cold, but there also seemed to be fire there."

"At least that's something I can kinda believe," said Monica. "I remember hearing something about that too."

"But fire, under water?" Charles asked skeptically. "Do you suppose she could be talking -- I mean, singing -- or rather, telling us about magma?"

"Yes, I think so," said Ian excitedly. "Think about it. When she dives, she swims down the the level she's most comfortable at, about twenty thousand meters below the surface. And that's more or less how deep the mid - Atlantic ridge is. And we know that environment is capable of sustaining life, a lot of life, but there's so little that we know about it, so it's feasable that a population of mermaids has survived there without us knowing anything about it."

"It is very likely," Nigel agreed. "At least, more likely than some of the other solutions we've been coming up with."

"And when you take other things into account -- for example, Andersen likes her water cold, but not as cold as most water would be at other points at that depth. And we've been confused about why that would be, but of course she would have a source of heat from all the magma that comes up there. Just like all the other organisms that live around there."

"Yeah," said Nigel. "Primitive organisms, none as complex as a mermaid. Extremophiles. Things happy to be living in boiling water. Not like Andersen."

"There's a zone where the boiling water and the freezing water mixes, though," said Ian. "They could survive at the fringes. And for a complex organism, Andersen's shown herself to be incredibly well adapted to all sorts of tough situations. She even gave birth up here!"

"And it's not for us to doubt these things any more," said Sara. "Every time we learn something new about Andersen, it just serves to highlight how much we don't know about her. Nothing is certain. Everything is possible."

"Yeah, right," Nigel agreed sarcastically. "Everything, including Ian having a magical telepathic link to singing mermaids."

"Shut it, Nigel," someone snapped, and to everyone's surprose it wasn't Ian. It was Monica. 

She met their surprised stares with her arms folded toughly. 

"It happened, all right?" she said. "It happened. Now can we all accept it and move on please?"

A current of mumbling and shamefaced nods indicated that they could. 

AN: I kinda want to apologize for bits of this chapter... Because on the one hand, I'm a super green freak and pollution is disgusting and seriously people stop using the ocean as your own personal toilet. STUFF LIVES THERE, you know. 

On the other hand... I rather dislike political messages and things of that sort in literature. I'm not fond of being preachy in my stories. I'd rather save it for full - on accusatory rants. 

But this time it was necessary for plot. SO THERE. 

Also, science stuff: the mid - Atlantic ridge is kinda twenty five thousand meters deep, which is a number off Wikipedia, and of course parts of it are deeper and parts are shallower. I am not being specific about anything and I do not know what I am talking about.

There are organisms that get enough heat to live from the boiling water that comes from spots where lava comes in contact with ocean water. I really don't know anything more about those zones or how big they are. It probably would be impossible for a large and complex organism like a mermaid to survive there, as Nigel points out. So.... yaay NaNoisms!