Winged Migration of the Flightless Bird

Three.

It has been an hour since the umbrella left me where it found me: on the rocky cliff, overlooking the darkest sea I can imagine. 

I decide not to go home. I don't want my children to fear me. Perhaps, though, if I were to walk into the house like this, they would first assume that my mechanical appearance was a costume to make them laugh. That sounds like something I would do. This is no trick, however. And my appearance is not the scariest thing about me.  I need time to think about my next move.

Without emotion, I don't feel the same need to find the Time Dingus, so a dip in this deep gloomy pool is not necessary, but still somewhat inviting. What I once feared with everything in me, I am now curious about. Oh, sweet panic-eliminating apathy!

I could track down a ship, but that would really slow down the chapter. I step off the edge.

At first I inattentively gauge the water as cold, and the weight of the metal that courses through my body enables me to sink like an old iron girder. The water is deep and it takes some time to hit the bottom. I sink past the first layer of pretty fish and gentle whales. I sink past the layer of sharks, eels and sea snakes that want to gobble up the pretty and gentle. Tiny bubbles shoot up from me like I'm a madly effervescing Alka-Seltzer robot. 

I am heading into the layer of gelatinous monsters.

On my way I wrestle with a bull shark, and I am swallowed and then spit out by a colossal squid, largest of the cephalopods. Largest of almost everything not cephalapod. It jets away to have its portrait painted sparring with a sperm whale.

My "Imagination of Fear" was wrong. The gelatinous layer that I found so terrifying doesn't seem to exist, but instead is filled with curious angler and lantern fish (which are much, much smaller than their pictures in books had me believe.) It is dark, but it seems that Mel Million Max had given me a bit of the ol' night vision. Handy. Bully for him.

Finally my feet hit the ground and I walk on the ocean floor as if walking down a neighbourhood sidewalk on the moon. But there is no Overview Effect. Nor is there even an Underview Effect. 

I can make out rocky reefs, slithery creatures that have no interest in me, and a wrecked submarine on a ledge overlooking a great bottomless chasm. I assume it's bottomless, realizing that nothing on Earth is truly "bottomless" (perhaps topless). I make my way towards it. It takes ages. I assume it takes ages, realizing that "ages" is hardly a clear measurement of time.

The submarine is very old and very large. It looks as if it has been down here from a time before submarines were even invented, just waiting to show itself once they were so no one would think it strange and out of place. However, at some point in the wait it fell asleep and failed to wake up again.

When I get to the hatch, I knock. I actually knock. As if some large Lurch-type butler is waiting on the other side to greet me and offer a beverage. I'd probably have laughed at myself if I still had a sense of humour. It is no surprise then that no one should answer.

A sea cucumber at my feet turns itself inside out because it can.

I fiddle with the hatch wheel, realizing that the chances of opening the hatch while the submarine is submerged would only serve to flood the whole damn thing. The hatch wheel simply breaks off when I attempt to turn it. It would seem that the only thing holding it together is a memory of once being a hatch wheel. 

I travel down the body of the sub until I reach another, an emergency escape hatch, perhaps. The same thing happens. Including the sea cucumber.

Suddenly I hear a knocking coming from inside, echoing through the water like mumbly hiccups. Perhaps Lurch isn't so ridiculous after all. I follow the sound to the back half and find a second aft escape hatch. The hatch wheel turns on its own. This would be terrifying if I felt such silly things. It opens and water rushes in, as I do I. It closes again as water rushes back out through one hell of a sump pump.