The Will of Blackwater

The anticipated message lit up Genna's screen at exactly 8 o'clock am, on the seventh day of her isolation. Genna had spent the previous hours staring at the dome ceiling above her, contemplating the black circle at the peak of the dome and the weight of the entire ocean on top of it. She wondered at how everything seemed so calm. How could the unimaginable pressure of the Atlantic above her seem so still and unmovable while it seethed with a force so great that if not for the perfectly designed bubble, her body would collapse like a tin can, folding in on itself, twisting and distorting.

Genna's morbid thoughts were accompanied with rib breaking coughs and whole body convulsions as she dry heaved, rolling waves of nausea always followed after a bout of coughs. And if she had been able to eat, she would surely be vomiting it up now. Cold sweat plastered strings of hair around her forehead and face. Every night spent in the bubble had been just as sleepless and just as torturous as the last had been. Her spasms left half of Genna's body hanging off the side of her wall mounted cot. Slowly, she gained back her breath and slumped the rest of herself onto the cold, hard floor of her bubble. The effort it would take to get back up was more than she could exert in her present state. The cold ground soothed the sore joints and bones that ached from fever. She dared not move her body but she did tilt her head and peered at the dashboard across the small,circular room. The dim glow of her screen was the only source of light inside the capsule. But just outside the complex multi layered glasslike dome, a huge glowing spiral rose from the sea bed. Even from a distance of about two kilometers away Its light was a shield against the dense black water.

Genna's dry tongue attempted to wet cracked lips and she stared longingly at the thick tower that stood in the middle of the spiral, a thin rod at the base that turned into a large sphere nestled in the top ring of the spiral. As far away as she was she couldn't make out The finer details, but she knew that somewhere down the center of the great spiral was her home. And she had never felt longing of this magnitude before. Genna sat in nostalgia, thinking of obvious things like her parents and siblings. But also she thought of the smell of her bed sheets when she laid down to sleep. And the cool rush of air that met her at the front door. Her thoughts triggered another bout of coughing and heaving.

When it was over she rolled over on her back trying to breathe normally again. She felt as if a Boulder had been placed on her chest, every breath she took felt constrained, and every intake of air wasnt enough.

She lay on the floor looking up at the black sea above her when the notification renewed and the a sharp ding!, was heard over the speakers embedded in the skeleton of her bubble. Genna heaved herself up into a slouching sit against the cot base. She had almost given up on living past her quarantine the moment it began. The sickness was supposed to last seven days. Come day seven and the fever is broken and the cough begins to clear up, then you go home. If the seventh day approaches and fever and coughing is still present, like Genna, a slow death awaits. For whatever reason there is only seven days to break the fever or else the body succumbs to the illness, shutting down organs one at a time and filling your lungs with holes and liquid that will patiently drown the victim.

She continued to stare at the unblinking screen mounted in the middle of a desk like console that had speakers, a keyboard, and a touch pad for the cursor. There was also a circular door that led to a short hall that ended with another round door.

More coughing, and more choking gags rip up her stomach to her chest, the sides of Genna's throat stuck together and ripped apart as she dry heaved. Her abdominal muscles burned from the continuous force exerted from her attacks. She knew what the message would say. She knew what fate beheld her. She was going to die today, and not from sickness, from a self administered cocktail of drugs that killed you. The notification was to ask if Genna was ready to administer. So the choice is Gennas, but the hope of recovery is slim to none after day seven. One, middle aged man did make it past day seven but the man that went into quarantine wasn't the same as the man that came out. It may seem like a blessing to be able to trade the enviable fate of a slow agonizing painful death, with a sleepy surrender to nothingness but she felt dread colder than the floor creeping up her spine.

Genna had imagined her death many times laying in her cot looking up at that black disk as she started to fall into unconsciousness, she imagined it would be black and crushing, a wave slamming down onto of you, and you can't help but give way to the will of the black water, and her soul is swept away, drown out in the darkness.

Some ancient mythological texts refer to colossal and omniscient Gods that held the power to create and destroy universes And the power to heal any sickness and mend morbid injuries. But that was before the remnants of mankind had to flee to the bottom of the ocean to avoid the harsh environment Gennas ancestors had set in place for the rest of human kind. No shining figures descended from space, or erupted from the ground when the earth slowly fell to ruin. Whatever forces that govern the universe, could care less, about the blue spec called Earth. In the midst of a decaying universe, What happened to humanity is what happens to everything eventually. Everything was meant to end.

Tears began to well and spill over, leaving streaks from her eyes into her sweat soaked hair line. The pain she felt at the thought of leaving everything behind was so much greater than that of the illness that plagued her body. She was arriving on the precipice of death, and all she could think of was how much she wanted to live. The grief built into a hard ball in her throat and she let out a deep sob that was consumed by desperate coughing. Again, her position shifted and after countless minutes spent catching her breath, she found herself looking out into the blackness of the ocean. She had avoided looking directly out into the shaded deep for it reminded her of how close she was to mortality. The black water seemed to pull at her now yawning open,, beckoning her to a still and lonely death, her soul floating away, lost forever in the dense inky depths.

Two spots of a faint green color deep in the darkness caught Gennas eye. The spots didn't seem to move but slowly they grew from a barely visible glow into a ghostly reflective green. She leaned her pounding head against the glass in a confused daze, and squinted at the lights as they grew even stronger and brighter. Genna had begun to wonder if she could have started hallucinating at some point. The two specs genna had originally seen had become bright glowing orbs slowly growing bigger, when Genna finally saw the rest of what produced such luminescent spots. A long pale body drifted out of the darkness and glided into the weak light that leaked from Genna's bubble.

Genna stared in amazement at the creature, and saw the two green glowing eyes were above a mouth with columns of pink backward facing teeth. The shark sank and rose gently, hardly moving its serpentine-like body and its long frilled fins drifted behind it lazily. As it encountered the bubble, Genna watched in awe at the animal's grace in the dense, deep-ocean water.

Sharks hadent been sighted in decades. But Genna remembered seeing the huge gaping jaws of the ancient predators that stalked through the warmed surface waters of the world before in her school's museum. There had been a vast collection of high quality photos of all sorts of strange and unique creatures that used to dominate the aquatic world, as well as fossils and preserved specimens. But as the Earth warmed then cooled and kept cooling creatures from the land air and sea started to disappear. Humans were thought to be one of the few remaining species, but shark sightings had been consistent. Every few years, someone would claim they had seen a ghost of the old world lurking in the dark.

The great beast moved along the side of the bubble until one of its green eyes rested on her and halted, it's long fins spread out like thin strips of silk bellowing in the wind. Genna looked into the shining green eye and knew it could see her through the thick translucent barrier between them. The long meaty body of the shark was a murky color and its wide mouth, that curved slightly upward like a sinister smile, and the strange arrangement of teeth, was such a sickly sight, that a normal person would have been horrified and probably petrified in terror. But Gennas mind was still like the black veil of sea beyond the green eyed gaze. Slowly the creature moved on floating with the slightest effort. Genna's eyes followed the shark as it rose above her bubble and its long ruffled finns on its sheer white belly before it descended elegantly, and let itself sink into the gaping blackness.

Genna sat with her forehead pressed against the bubble's edge for a long time. Her thoughts were of the green eye and the brightness behind and in them, as if lit from within. Despite everything that had happened to the world, despite every odd, that horribly, wonderful, creature had made its way to Genna.

Something rose in her chest, not a fit of coughing or a heavy wave of nausea, but something lighter. It tickled her heart and fluttered up into her throat and bust from her mouth as a laugh. It was weak and strained but she laughed anyway, even though her body was so weak it trembled from the effort. Genna used the glass like surface of the bubble to hold herself up, as she inched her way to the dashboard. She flopped into the docked chair at the dash and opened the message. Starting and the thick black letters, it read:

“YOU HAVE REACHED THE SEVENTH DAY OF YOUR ISOLATED QUARANTINE. AT THIS TIME THERE ARE NO TREATMENT OPTIONS AND THE DEATH RATE IS 98% AFTER DAY SEVEN. PLEASE CONSIDER A COCKTAIL OF DRUGS THAT WILL SLOW THE HEART RATE UNTIL IT STOPS.

And the options below

“Accept Recommended treatment" and "Decline recommended treatment."

The wording made it seem like such an educated decision to accept the “treatment”. But Genna had made her mind up long before she had reached the consol. She declined the recommended treatment without hesitation. Took a long drink of cold clear water, and went black to her cot. This time instead of facing the dashboard and the spiral, Genna faced looking into the dark ocean,and she let herself slip into a deep, calm, sleep.