Why does the wireless operator still tap out distress signals though his hands were lost to the nets? Which catch fills the hold with fish that swim in air? What depths did the anchor drag up that the crew refuses to discuss? And why does the compass point to coordinates that don't exist on any chart?
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He liked fishing and seemed to take pride in being able to like such a stupid occupation.
― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
The Cassandra’s Dream had been pulling nets from the Mendocino Deep for three generations, but Captain Torres had never seen the water behave like this. Where the ocean should have been its familiar blue-black, it now shimmered with an oily iridescence that seemed to move independently of the current, forming patterns that hurt to look at directly.
First mate Rodriguez crossed himself as he watched the sonar display. “Capitán, the bottom… it’s moving.” The seafloor, which should have been solid bedrock at this depth, pulsed with a rhythm that matched no known geological phenomenon. Each pulse sent waves of vertigo through the crew, as if the very motion of the sea had become wrong.
The nets came up heavy that morning, but instead of the expected rockfish and crab, they held something that defied classification. Translucent organisms with geometries that seemed to fold in on themselves, their surfaces reflecting light from angles that shouldn’t exist. Touch them, and they dissolved into phosphorescent mist that left the crew members blinking away visions of vast underwater cities.
As the day progressed, the crew began to change. Their movements became synchronized without conscious thought, their eyes reflecting the same impossible angles as the creatures they’d hauled from the deep. Torres found himself plotting a course toward coordinates that existed on no chart, following a call that resonated not through his ears, but through the marrow of his bones.
The Cassandra’s Dream was found two weeks later, drifting empty twenty miles from shore. The nets were gone, the radio destroyed from within, and carved into the wheelhouse wall was a map marking depths that oceanographers insist cannot exist. The Coast Guard reported no survivors, though locals claim to sometimes see lights moving in formation beneath the waves, following patterns that mirror the boat’s final, impossible route.
