An Account of Recent Underwater Events

The steamer became the link between the continents. Its steel connectors screwed into place above the sea water, which submerged Mosques and Cathedrals that once sheltered hundreds of worshipers. The owner of the steamer Leviathan, whose length counted a half a mile, was the world renowned industrialist Clement Ramerez, the same man who had brought the might of cybernetic production to the Latin world. The last true cosmopolitan, whose citizenship included every dying empire, alongside his native Texas. He was a recurring character in the financial press, and in the conspiracy fringe, for his connections to the Catholic Church, not to mention intelligence services of the United States of Mexico. It was a not so well-kept secret that he would frequently edit his own Wikipedia page to include long paragraphs about his love of fishing, 20th century animation, and nude painting. These entries would be quickly deleted by editors.

The children of New Istanbul, perched on rafts and piers, clambered over each other to get a glimpse at the well-fed giant in a tuxedo. His entourage of secretaries, advisors and body guards were close behind as he strode forward, greeted by the Prime Minister and provincial governor. Pleasantries were exchanged, but such meetings in front of the press were a mere smokescreen for the last great master of Capital, whose eye was instead set on something beneath their feet.

For me, there was nothing special about the whore swimming in the radioactive waste of the ruined hospital. Nothing so possessed as my boss’s boss’s boss’s world-historical drive. My interest was purely passing–academic even. I had pitched the story to the Free Lance Internationale after interviewing a young, smitten, homosexual couple enjoying a date by the beach. Both boys confessed they were on the autism spectrum and requested my forgiveness if their affection was borderline inappropriate (indeed, it was). In between their frequent touchy-feely “I love you’s” to one another, however, I was told a rumor, a true urban legend.

There was a woman-creature, that lived in the desolation of old Istanbul, whom the blood-pearl divers would barter with for sex, so the legend went. She was the victim of a curious mutation in the last years of the old city, and had to be confined to a pressurized fish tank immediately after her birth. Surely, that tank would have been her whole life, if it hadn’t been for the flood. Her birth certificate and name had been lost, along with many other records from that period. When the boys told me the word given for her in their own language, I was embarrassed to admit it was unpronounceable in my own tongue. Instead I took to calling her Awg, an approximation of  the noise she makes when she opens her mouth in the water.

Armed with a water-proof camera and directions from a local diver, I offered cans of tuna salad and some costume jewelry in exchange for an interview. Luckily, she was fluent in the writing of at least four languages, including English and Mandarin, and we would go back and forth scrawling out symbols in the layer of silt covering the hospital’s tile floor.

Her life was simple, she explained. When she was young, she had been quickly forced to learn how to handle predators. Small sharks and large eels, mostly. She fashioned spears from odd pieces of rusty metal, careful to keep her little nook nice and clean. Didn’t want to make hiding spots for things that nibble in the night. Eventually she observed the divers using their  nets to keep certain areas clear of Jellyfish, her number one nuisance that would leave her with sore welts day after day. So, one day, after much time working up the courage, she approached one of them.

The boy, an Arab named Yaqoob, pissed his swim trunks and nearly drowned. Awg, equally startled, kept just enough wits about her to prevent tragedy. So began a weary friendship.

In the beginning the balance of trade was in her favor. She could gather pearls much easier than the divers could, and exchanged them for their nets and many other finery. It was then that Yaqoob had taught her how to write and do arithmetic. He had taught her Arabic and English; she would learn more from the other divers, most of whom were resettled immigrants from far off lands.

With the extra money that he made trading with Awg, Yaqoob was able to start laminating newspapers, magazines and even small books. Awg’s favorite was 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. To make these cultural exchanges easier, they pumped water from one of the rooms on the hospital’s top floors to make a small breathing space. Yaqoob and the others went from only being able to spend several minutes at a time with her to several hours.

She confessed to me that Yaqoob had been her mate, a fact which seemed to embarrass her a great deal. He had disappeared soon after consummating their relationship.

I would later learn that Yaqoob’s disappearance was the result of imprisonment for tax evasion, and that he had died in prison in one of the more recent mass-famines among the incarcerated population. Awg was unaware of this fact. When I returned to inform her of this, her body and face contorted spasmodically in the water. I think she must have been weeping.

In the years after Yaqoob’s disappearance, the blood-pearl divers started getting large national government subsidies, thanks to their harvest’s international market value. You see, 9 years ago the government began issuing Peso-denominated bonds, then 2 years ago it experienced a dire shortage of those same Pesos. This rapidly led to a deep financial crisis and major devaluation. Subsidizing export-oriented industries with local currency was one way to make up for the gap. Suddenly, the divers could afford miniature rebreathers, and there was little need to contract Awg for her services.

Seasonal storms would eventually shred the nets she had, and when she approached the divers for more, they suggested that flesh would be a fair offer.

It was such humiliations which brought her closer to God, she said. I, being a lifelong atheist, had no such pretenses about the creature in the ruined chapel which she called a demon. Yet, if there be demons like Maxwell, she reasoned there must be a God. Our world is a world of fearful symmetry, she claimed. I did not have the heart to contradict her.

Yes, there could be little doubt that Maxwell was, indeed, a demon. She took me to the door of the chapel. She would consecrate the threshold as a part of her daily rituals to keep him at bay. In the darkness there was a kind of presence and a cacophony of blinking eyes.

He whispered, speaking questions to my answers.

When I was 11, and already a stubborn unbeliever, I lied in my first confession. My sins are unabsolved to this day. Whether or not God will judge me, Maxwell unmoves the truth. I forget Awg’s true name. I wish to say it in this moment, but I fear I never knew it, that it was never known, that it never even existed.

What is my relationship to this creature? What so drew me here to a mere rumor? I am a rational being. Or is my rationality merely the finely tailored dress for what my mind projects outward?

She’s holding my hand now. Out of fear, or affection, I do not understand. She tells me Maxwell is her enemy. He will provide her Martyrdom. One day he will unmake her. Her breath will leave her gills, and the electrons in her Occipital Lobe will reverse their paths and be transformed into photons, light pouring from her retina, and she will forget, her body unlearning the impurity of this world.

I say nothing. I do nothing. I fear for us both.

Mr Ramerez fears nothing but God, however. He has asked for forgiveness, shedding his old guilts, unlike me. His enterprise is a vast production of guilt which a man’s body cannot withstand if it was perpetually accumulated. The periodic destruction of evil, just as the periodic destruction of capital and value in war and crisis, was a necessary purge. A purge for our way of industry to continue itself. A purge for one Mr Ramerez to continue himself.

After hiking the coast in a Pith helmet and suit, he disrobes, and dives into the water. He sinks, cherub-like into the depths, towards the humble home of Awg. Immersed in the soup of crustaceans and jelly-fish, his eyes hidden behind bug-eyed goggles, he doggy-paddles into the hospital. This was not the season for blood-pearl diving. He seemed all alone in the depths.

To the likes of Ramerez, the existence of Maxwell and Awg was prophesied by folk-mystics some 200 years ago, and confirmed by meteorologists and anthropologists working for the CIA. He had reports on such phenomena placed on his desk every morning, along with his copy of The Wall Street Journal. This was the great game of great men, one of the few worthwhile pursuits after becoming the richest thing on the face of the earth. Other games had been space travel, making a sapient computer, and hunting sapient animals. Ramerez had done all these things, even creating a human-level general artificial intelligence office assistant. Unfortunately it could not be monetized. Some defect in the programming made the intelligence a Trotskyist.

But this sphere of phenomena encompassed the anomalies which gave us glimpses into the unknown truth of this world, was the most precious of all to him. Neither the most brilliant scientists nor the most wise philosophers could hope to swim in the nude into the glory of creation withheld from man.

How disappointed he must have been to see me there, having arrived first. But it was nothing compared to the disillusionment one encounters when seeing the penis of the richest man on earth.

Never one to pass up a good story, however, I pressed Ramerez for his purpose here. His intentions were to commune with the demon Maxwell. The truth of this desire I could not ascertain. But he was forceful about it; demanded we show him the way.

Who were we to deny him?

I swam behind him, where I was treated to a perfect view of a large birthmark on his back. It was shaped like a long, diagonal scar, and he scratched at it several times. As we descended to his fate, it grew more and more irritated and red. On the last flight of stairs at last it burst, and blood dirtied the water. He looked to be in extreme pain. Awg frantically scrawled the symbols for predator smell. But Ramerez paid her no heed, edging closer and closer to the threshold, scooping red-tinged water like an algae-drenched sloth.

Half-formed words escaped his rebreather. A prayer, maybe, or a simple apology for making a mess in Awg’s home. He stumbled into the chapel and was embraced by Maxwell’s tendrils. A spade-ended tail circled his wide circumference. Its pointy end dipped into his wound and emerged from it, leaving him whole.

I could not truly tell you what became of Clement Ramerez after that. I can only say that I wish that I averted my eyes.

There was a missing persons investigation by the local authorities, naming me the prime suspect – Awg had the luxury of not officially being a person. Eventually they were forced to let me go on lack of evidence. I left to find that the great steaming Leviathan remained parked in the intercontinental harbor. It stays there now, persisting as a tourist attraction.

The interrogations turned out to be nothing compared to the audit of my travel expenses when I could finally come home. Many of my receipts were so waterlogged that reimbursement was inadmissible, and for some God-forsaken reason the final total was one cent greater than my budget, forcing me to fill out several pages of paperwork.

I made plans on my calendar to visit Awg sometime in the summer, when the waters were warmer. This time, I resolved, if I did not become her mate, I would at least tell her there was no such thing as permanent symmetry so long as a single thinking creature lived.