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[The following log is not, in fact, a log in the sense that is most natural to me. A log, the kind I understand, at least, is a part of a tree that has been severed from its roots and from its branches, much like Simon himself has been severed from his own roots and branches, if those are what one chooses to call the metaphysical connections that tether a human being’s essence to its body. Though of course, Simon only ever saw one single tree in his entire life time. And then it blew it up. So whether or not he actually knew the differences between what is a log and what should a be a log? Who is to say. Certainly not I… who has never seen a tree or a log or anything that wasn’t first pulped and then slurried into this mix of blood of my own making.]
Hi. Uh… This is Simon. Ex-convict, I guess? Um… I don’t really know what to say. And I don’t know if anyone is even going to listen to this, so… I guess I’ll just start from the beginning?
[Silly human. He should know by now that I am everywhere in this place, that his place is all my domain, that he is on a planet under my control and so I hear everything. Of course I’m going to listen.]
The mission was simple. Get down to the bottom of the blood ocean, take a few samples and then come back up again. Hopefully that’d be enough to figure out what had created the ocean and more importantly where all the humans that had once populated the system had disappeared to.
[They are the ocean, of course. It was I who took them and removed their skin and ground them down until I had enough liquid to fill several planets with their remains.]
Of course, where I’m concerned, things are never that easy. I’ve had horrible luck in my life that way. Went from one shitty place, aka the rebel encampments, to an even shittier place, because of course they’re gonna throw you in prison if you’re one of the few people left alive of your group of rebels/terrorist after blowing up a space station, never mind that you’re just a damned kid, to the shittiest place imaginable: welded the fuck into a submarine made from scrap metal and then tossed into the ocean like the world’s least appetizing bait worm on a hook.
[Not least. Never least. Just shiny enough to wake my curiosity.]
And it went fine. At least at first. Creepy, sure, and really annoying, what with the assholes up top not giving me a damned window and instead making me navigate via a terrible snap-shot machine. A machine which later turned out to be deadly radiation, too, which is still something that I’m really angry about. They could have at least told me, right? But I guess they got their just-desserts for leaving me in the dark. Literally, that is.
So I found some bones, which… still not sure what they’re from or how they got there.
[They are my bones. Mine. All mine. I put them there. Just like I will put Simon's bones right onto the ocean floor to lie with the rest of his kind and all the other life that once lived in this part of the universe.]
Went back up again to get new equipment. Accidentally murdered a guy with the snap-shot machine-cum-murder-radiation-dispenser. Got sent down again with a PROMISE that that would be enough in the end to get me my pardon. And then… Well, then it all went to shit.
[Ha. These humans are always so crude. Half their sayings are about bodily increments.]
I got myself lost in the maze of caves deep in the ocean. Found an old Submarine from some other poor fucker’s who’d lost their way down here, lost my hope for a bit, regained it, decided to bargain for my life with this new information source I’d unearthed, was certain, so certain that maybe I’d actually manage to survive this whole shit show, and then… then I met him. It. Them. I still don’t know what words to use in regards to what I found.
[All of these are fine.]
Maybe there are no words.
[There are. Many of them.]
Maybe the unspeakable him-it-them has taken all the words and turned them into more blood to fill the ocean around us, like it took my skin and made it bubble and dissolve until it revealed the flesh underneath, the sinews and the veins and the blood inside of. Blood the color of the ocean that I am sinking to the bottom of, this sad little submarine now more scrap than metal after my last act of defiance broke it open.
[Yes.]
Broke it open like him-it-them broke open my head to scoop out my sanity and to turn all of it—my body and my soul and everything else in between— into in-sanity.
[Yes.]
And now, I don’t have much time. I… I know I don’t. I just… I found this recorder and I thought… hey, why not attach it to the beacon just in case? If it makes it… If it makes it, then it’s almost like I’m not dead, right? If my words, these few words that him-it-them let me put down for whatever reason—if they make it, then it’s at least proof that I ever existed. And I just… I want to leave proof of that. Proof that I was here. And that I tried. And that… even though I have failed to fight for my life, I have not failed to do my very best.
[He has. This is true. Even though he is choking now on the blood, becoming one with it, he has tried his best.]
And that’s... comforting... in a way.
[Good.]
Less scary than being as good as forgotten.
[He will not be forgotten. I never forget those who I make part of my oceans. I never forgot those who are bright and strong and so explosive as this man called Simon was. He will not be forgotten, not now, not soon, not ever. For I am infinite and so is my memory.]