Narrator M: Fishing is a patient sport. [An unfamiliar melody.] It requires a methodicalness, a series of preparations, each linking together through time, 

Narrator S: through space. 

M: This enables you to create a scenario by which you might ensnare your prey – the fish, in this example. Even then, patience is required. 

S: One must achieve that state of readiness, but then carry that readiness with them as they are inevitably subject to the ponderous progression of time, waiting for the moment to suddenly seize the intent and possibility of another living thing for your own.

M: As a farmer might tend their crop or a shepherd care for its flock, there is an end that has been set – 

S: a point when the tables are turned and the fertilized plant or the fatted calf becomes, itself, consumed. 

M: So fishing is a kind of hunting in a similar sense, just as the way a spider spins its web is not unlike the way a bear might study a stream. It is a predation. 

S: To fish is to exert one’s will in a very thoughtful, 

M: deliberate,

S: intentional,

M: patient,

S: self-serving

M: way.

Narrator X: For Steve, the day starts like any other. He parts the reed curtains to let in the morning light, that same dreadful dark honey-orange burnt color, as always. 

S: Then he immediately redirects his thoughts to more simple, practical matters – getting up,

M: pulling on some rough plant-fiber clothing,

S: having breakfast. 

X: Ah, what a day. 

S: Steve ambles out to his current favorite fishing spot and checks on the traps from yesterday. 

M: Ugh, there’s a cluster of those flavorless little gummy things that he hates. 

S: Eugh.

M: But it’s better than nothing!

X: One of the nets here has a little hole in it, and Steve squats down comfortably, easily, to mend it, watching the dappled light glimmer and twinkle on the surface of the… lake.

S: That was a weird pause. 

X: It was a little, wasn’t it? 

S: You might be wondering why we paused like that, in that weird way. 

M: We’re getting there. We’re “setting the scene.” 

X: Steve empties and resets his traps gently, with precision, sending a quiver across the lake’s domed surface. 

M: Good, he thinks to himself. 

S: He’s had the luxury of time to develop this particular skill.

X: Nostalgically and with a flutter of happiness, he recalls his first few ill-fated attempts at fishing:

M: poorly-woven nets that quickly ripped to shreds, 

S: knots that unfurled themselves at the worst possible moments. 

M: None, though, can compete with this method, this method that he’s iterated upon, innovated through trial and error, success and failure. 

S: Like we said, fishing is a patient sport. He wasn’t always good at fishing, but he’s always been good at patience. 

X: And he’s pretty good at fishing now, which is good for him, because if he weren’t, he might be dead. 

S: Oh, that is good for him! Good for you, Steve.

X: Hey Steve! Nice going, Steve!

S: We’re Team Steve here. 

M: Steve hums to himself quietly. Anticipatorily, though – there is an eagerness to the tune. 

S: And he focuses intently, his attention like a beam of light tracing the shadows of potential fish just beneath the surface. 

M: He knows the traps can only ensnare so much. Other kinds of prey require a more, um, direct approach. So he shucks off his clothing and picks up his lightweight reed spear. Sunlight and shadow play across the sculptural smoothness of his body, highlighting muscles that Steve stretches in anticipation. 

X: Action. Steve leaps into the dark lagoon, spear at the ready. 

S: He’s a strong swimmer.

M: You can see as he kicks after the squirming shiny-scaled troutbanana just there, speeding toward it, and he hurls the glistening spear into its side!

S: The troutbanana flails and screams, its vital juices leaking from the wound. 

X: Heck yeah, Steve. Steve is the victor, and to the victor go the spoils: a tasty troutbanana!

M: With another firm kick, he returns to the surface of the lake, heaving the troutbanana up and out of it. 

S: The lake’s surface quivers, bounces, slowly returning to equilibrium after Steve’s disruption, reforming into a smooth, dark, convex mirror.

M: Steve is aware of himself in that mirror, 

S: but he’s trying not to have any complicated thoughts about what he detects. 

M: It’s better that way. 

X: And, helpfully, to distract him further from his own reflection, there is now something else of interest reflected there. 

S: Ooh, is it another fish? What could be more interesting than another fish in this fishing podcast?

M: No, that’s not it at all, though, is it? 

X: What is that?

M: Steve perceives an iridescent twinkle there, a sharp image on the dewy surface of the lake. 

S: Steve turns to get a better look at it. 

X: A vast darkly iridescent prism of some otherworldly material is inexplicably floating by above him. 

S: Huh. He’s, uh, pretty certain it wasn’t there before.

M: Steve gasps in inexpressible incredulity.

S: The troutbanana, which as it turns out wasn’t completely dead after all, senses his grip gone slack, and thrashes, flinging itself back into the depths from which it came with a sudden muscular wriggle. Doesn’t matter to Steve. 

X: No, his attention is fixed on this new thing.

M: It drifts, directionless, slow.

S: The sunlight glimmers and twinkles across its planes like a kaleidoscope. 

M: And barely, just barely, through its dark reflective walls, Steve discerns movement within.

[A change of scene.]

X: Inside the Ship: chaos. Woah!

[Indistinct shouting.] 

S: Where to start?

M: Well, first and most jarringly, they are weightless.

S: The universal gravity to which they are all accustomed is completely gone. All kinds of junk is floating around through the control deck – navigational charts of the Delta, pencils, punch-discs – 

M: And the frantically flailing crew all drift gently with a zero-gravity weightlessness.

X: In no book of science, in no essay of cosmological conjecture, has it ever been posited that gravity was a thing that could simply stop being. 

S: There’s people who can fly, sure. That’s normal, that’s always been a thing, but that’s different from gravity not existing. 

X: This is super weird. 

S: A bluish emergency light is blinking.

M: Actually, that’s just Merlin’s bocular eyes. There is no emergency light, though this situation could certainly qualify as an emergency.

X: Things are bad, things are weird. The Ship is without power. 

S: The Foldlight sits uselessly in its metal cradle, inoperative, dark. 

M: The fold inside the bulb floats like a sphere of weightless ink.

S: Cleo was screaming at the top of her lungs a moment ago, an awful raw animal sound of shock and horror and grief, but it was the kind of screaming that’s kind of impossible to maintain for very long. It’s breaking down already into shaky inarticulate sob-gasps, blending into all the slowly crescendoing murmurs and noises of the rest of the crew stirring to awareness.

X: Outside of the Ship, all around it, in darkness, there drift many, many blobs of what looks very much like Fold, undulating gently, occasionally occluding the strange golden-orange glare of that bright glowing THING – 

M: that sun – 

X: in the dark distance as the Ship floats adrift in inconceivable void space. 

M: Just moments ago, the crew all experienced something that none of them can understand or explain.

S: All they really know is that something – a lot of things, really –

M: have gone very, very, very, very, very wrong.

X: And the one person who might be able to help them best of all is… 

M: (Merlin) “What happened? Where are we?”

X: Rawfield is floating, drifting, spinning slowly in zero-gravity. (Rawfield) “Is anyone hurt? Where’s Artifice?” 

S: The Granddaughter is casting about, trying to grab hold of something, anything.

X: (Dot) “Artifice… He…” 

S: Poor Cleo is just hyperventilating at this point, unable to get words out. She’s fixated on her lights, or rather, the lack thereof.

X: Everett is trying to grapple against the navigation table, her bocnoculars floating in the air loose on a cord around her neck. (Everett) “Fucking what?!”

M: Merlin grabs hold of a table corner, barely righting himself.  (Merlin) “B-Biological Man, are you all right?” 

(Biological Man) “I’m… floating! I’m upside down, Merlin. My… my stomach contents is traveling up my–”

(Merlin) “No, no, no, don’t! No, stop, don’t! It’ll float all over the place. Please, Biological Man.” 

S: The Biological Man is certainly not the only one experiencing sudden stomach upset in this strange weightless environment.

X: Felix is looking a little green around the edges. 

S: (Felix) “Bleugh…. I think I’m gonna be sick…” 

X: Rawfield pushes off of a control surface, drifting slowly towards Cleo. (Rawfield) “Your lights, your bioluminescence. Are you injured? How are you–” 

S: (Cleo) “I– I don’t– I don’t think so, but this has never happened before. I– I– I didn’t know it could!” 

X: Tzila is rotating in space as well, trying to get a look at everyone. (Tzila) “I, I think we’re okay, Ripley? Uh, physically.” 

(Hambing) “Where’s Artifice? What did he do to us?!”

S: The crew tries to take stock of their weird-ass situation. 

X: Rawfield is entreating everyone to take deep breaths, take stock of themselves, check themselves for injuries. Everyone’s pretty fucked up and freaked out, but so far, no apparent significant harm. 

S: Except for the total absence of Mother Artifice. 

M: And, besides Cleophee’s lights, no injuries to speak of – no abrasions, no scratches, no strange or unusual reality-bending symptoms of whatever occurred.

S: No, everyone’s totally fine.

M: (Merlin) “Well, whatever just happened, it’s taken the Foldlight offline. We should find out if it’s broken or just off, because that will determine… everything that needs to happen next.” 

X: Micky is attempting to float herself over toward the punch-disc controls. 

S: She holds out her hand urgently towards Merlin, signaling him to wait. (Micky) “Before we try to turn it on again– It might not work normally in this environment. Who knows what might happen?” 

X: Everett floats in next to Micky. (Everett) “Right, in case it’s damaged or it breaks again–” 

M: (Merlin) “To be on the safe side, we should treat this as our only chance to affect the Ship. What are our priorities?” 

S: For better or for worse, the crew has, at this point, learned a thing or two, particularly from their experience in the depths. 

X: First and foremost, they know by now that they do not want to be trapped inside their Ship, 

S: or on any one particular deck, or in an elevator, just to pull a random example. Micky grabs one of the floating punch-discs. (Micky) “Yeah, let’s definitely open the hangar door so the Stagecoach can come and go.” 

X: (Tzila) “Maybe we should switch the elevators out, too?” Tzila suggests. “Swap it out with ladders so we can just move freely between decks, in case…” She examines the dark Foldlight nervously. 

S: (Rawfield) “In case,” Rawfield agrees.

M: The strange honey sunlight continues to glare oppressively upon the crew floating in zero-gravity. 

X: (Everett) “Okay,” says Everett. “Let’s try it.” And the crew begin to float, to navigate carefully into position around the Foldlight, manning the controls. 

S: It is so hard to move under these conditions. 

X: It is nauseating, bewildering, disorienting. This is– well, actually, it would be kind of fun under normal circumstances, but right now they’re a little busy. 

M: While in this disorienting situation, Merlin tries some disc-orienting. Merlin loads the punch-discs up, almost like a queue in a jukebox or a stack on a multi-record player. 

X: The crew exchange glances.

M: Terse nods exchanged. And with a profound “clunk,” Merlin flicks the Foldlight on. 

S: And… it activates just fine. 

X: Oh, good.

S: Oh, whew! 

M: Oh, thank goodness. 

S: That’s a relief.

M: There’s a communal sigh as the filaments twinkle to life and the fold starts quivering and sluicing around just as it normally would.

S: The hangar hangars and the elevator shaft ladders just fine, as both discs trigger successfully. The spine of the Ship becomes a hollow shaft studded with dark mica ladder rungs. 

M: And as it does so, a whoosh of strange-smelling warm air gusts into the Ship from the outside,

X: coming in through the open hangar. This space that they are in is, like most space our crew is familiar with, not a vacuum. 

S: They would have no reason to even think that. What a weird concept. 

X: A vacuum in space? Impossible. Unheard of. 

S: Well, and it IS. It’s not here. 

X: It’s still unheard of, because this space has air. 

M: Everything is working just as it should. 

X: Everything is fine. 

S: …Are you getting nervous?

[An abrupt and menacing sound.]

X: Like a huge pupil contracting, the sun irises down into a single point of light, a targeted Eye of Sauron spotlight beam aimed directly and solely at the Ship. 

M: Fierce flaming heat surges inside of the control deck, and instantly, before anyone can react, there is a flash of giant movement. A huge shadowy something, vast, moving with incredible decisiveness and power, impacts the outside of the Ship, sending the entire dark mica vessel into a spin, knocking the charts, pencils, discs, and crew into the wall just opposite this massive thing.

S: Everyone is screaming. Omelet, frantically swimming all his little legs, manages to push off the nearest surface and launch himself into the now-open ladder shaft, where he scrambles up out of sight, running towards Cleo’s stateroom, presumably.

X: A huge form moves with grace and speed astonishing for its size, easily half as large as the Ship, 

S: and yet, like an octopus squeezing through a tiny crevice, it dives straight into the hangar – the hangar that they just opened.

M: From the crew’s vantage in Control, all that they can see is the vast form swimming down and out of sight, straight towards the open hangar door. 

X: And a heartbeat later, an explosion of appendages erupts out of the laddershaft in Control, fast as fuck, and surges directly for the Foldlight. 

S: Dr. Rawfield hurls herself in front of the Foldlight. (Rawfield) “No you don’t!” 

X: And it grabs her, innumerable spidering black digits grappling her body, heat flaring through the room. 

M: The singular sunbeam targets in, focusing on Rawfield like sunlight through a magnifying glass. 

S: She smokes. She screams.

M: There’s the smell of burning hair.

S: (Rawfield) [screaming]

X: And with a blinding flash and a deadly wave of raw heat, Rawfield is gone.

S: Everything we’re describing to you is happening within seconds. The crew barely has time to react. 

M: Simultaneously to all of this, something else entirely collides with the forward windows of Control, 

S: a rhinoceros-sized shape leaping out of nowhere and splatting onto the glassy dark mica exterior. 

X: They can hear muffled shouting from outside. (???) “Turn it off! Turn it off! Turn off the light! Turn off the light!”

S: With Rawfield out of the way, huge hurtling appendages seize the Foldlight bulb now, eyelash filaments whipping around it, clutching it, holding it tight. 

M: The sun flashes again, irising, zeroing in, targeting now the Foldlight itself with that narrowing beam of heat,  

X: brightening, intensifying–

M: (Merlin) “NOOOO!”

S: Merlin slams the Foldlight lever, cutting power. 

M: The bulb goes dark, deactivating.

X: And the thing instantly loses interest. And with a flash and another explosion of shadowy movement, a radiating shockwave of fiery heat, 

S: it is instantly gone, simply no longer there. And the sun abruptly de-irises back to normal, de-spotlighting.

M: Once again, the dark expanse shines warmly with strange, ambient, honey-colored sunshine in all directions.

X: Stillness. Eerie silence.

M: In the control deck of the slowingly-spinning Ship, everyone is shaking, gasping, speechless,

X: floating in zero-gravity shock and awe in the weird sudden quiet, eyes wide. 

S: Decks below, the hangar door is still open. The elevator shafts are still ladder shafts. 

M: The Foldlight is off, 

X: a shimmer of rapidly-dissipating heat in the space Rawfield once occupied, the smell of scorched flesh now mingling with strange warm air. 

S: And that other not-quite-as-large shadow – the shouting one, the rhino-sized one outside – starts to move, slowly. 

M: It clings, cautiously, non-threateningly. As it moves, it leaves moist sticky prints on the outside of the Ship. Its advice certainly did seem to have been helpful. 

S: As everyone’s vision recovers from the blinding flash of the sunbeam, they wordlessly, weightlessly observe a slouchy purple-skinned frog-legged sort of rotund amphibian gel-sack thing about the size of a rhinoceros. 

M: Sprouting from what could perhaps be the top of its body, a pendulous bulb swings from the end of a slender arching stalk-like appendage, 

S: like a potato hanging from a root, 

X: a pulsating, translucent, fleshy satchel full of twinkling Christmas-tree-like bioluminescent flickers, 

S: and a ferrofluid-like swirl of dark, inky liquid. 

M: What the fuck. 

S: This dark liquid now coalesces into an almost iris-like or pupil-like shape, looking back at the crew. 

X: (???) “Uh, hello. I’m really sorry we have to meet like this,”

M: says the alien, pinpricks of light twinkling liquidly inside of its headsack, 

S: an oddly semi-human voice phonating from a fluttering cluster of pudgy pedipalps at the bottom of the pendulum. 

X: (???) “Ha ha… Woah! This is off to an awkward start. Uh, hi! I’m Steve!”