Flip, catch, release. A hit.
Reel it in, take it off the hook.
He took aim again, making sure the fish was in his sights. He almost never missed, but it always paid to be careful.
Flip, catch, release.
That was his day, and much of his night as well. If he didn't fish, he would starve. There was not much else to do here, or think of, besides survival.
The waves grew unbroken on the shoreline, and he righted the boat slightly, making sure that none of the water spilled in. It would be dangerous if it did.
He had to be sure of each cast. He squinted slightly, making sure that his target was lined up clearly. There, he had it.
Flip, catch, release.
The past few days had been full of bad weather, and his stocks were running low. He had spent most of the time making sure the capacitor and rudder were in working condition. If they failed, he couldn't sail. If he couldn't sail he couldn't fish and if that happened he would die. So it made sense to maintain them as well as possible.
His stock of sonic disruptors was being steadily depleted, and there was a limit to how many he could scavenge. They were good for catching a lot of fish at once - just throw them into the water, watch them all be stunned by the emissions, and then sweep them up with the net afterwards. But they would run out. It was just him and his harpoon now.
At times like this he thought of going back to shore, to civilization. But something always stopped him. The people there couldn't be trusted. They would lie, cheat and steal from you without so much as a second thought. If he wanted to sell five fishes he knew someone would sneak behind him and take ten. Ask them for anything and they just sneered and shook their heads. He was better off without humanity, of that he was sure.
He would do the best he could out here, or die trying. It was just like in the war, except that this time it was him against the waves, instead of against the 'bots. Nothing much had changed. Harpoon instead of gun, boat instead of ship. Still a battle for survival, just like it always was.
In an hour he was out on the boat again and fishing as usual. The waves grew high and fast, but he simply adjusted for that. The maintenance work had paid off, and his control was better than it had ever been.
Flip, catch, release. Cast once and re-sight, and then cast again. Nothing to it. The same thing day after day.
He wiped the sweat from his brow and took aim again.
Flip, catch, release.
He never really liked the taste of the fish he caught. Too much oil, even after the refinement process. His teeth would slip away from the slick flesh and he would have to make sure he didn't end up biting himself.
But it was still an improvement from army rations. He remembered the days when they had to open up cans of stinking food after a march. The officers insisted it was nutritious - and it very well could have been - but anything was better than that.
He couldn't complain. He was still alive. He had fish to eat. It could be worse.
Sometimes, he remembered things. His life before the war, before the 'bots came. Army barracks and friends and stories shared around an open campfire. Green fields and open skies. But they were all distant memories, belonging to another world and another time, so far removed from the oily water and the fish and the boat that they may as well have been the recollections of someone else. Which they were, in a way.
He stood up. Thinking wouldn't feed him. He took hold of the harpoon again and sighted it.
Flip, catch, release.
It was the next day he saw her.
He had suspected that something was unusual before he had even started the day. It was something in the waves, in the water. He didn't know what it was exactly but he had spent enough time out on the open ocean to be able to read the tides to some degree. It bothered him for a while, but then he stopped thinking about it. There was no point trying to find out what you couldn't.
But then she appeared. First a silver fin broke the shimmering surface of the water, and then a slim shoulder, and then he saw her entire body clearly as she crested the waves. Black hair streamed down the upper torso of a human, but as she turned to the side he could see that her lower half was that of a fish. A mermaid.
He looked, but she was gone as fast as she had appeared. At first he thought that he was merely seeing an illusion, a hologram cast by one of the undersea vessels that even now - but no, the ripples in the water that she left were real. She was there one second and then gone the next.
He saw her again the next day.
She broke the water near to him, swimming first fast then slow, turning one way and then another. He saw her flukes shimmer in the sunlight and had to incline his head away from their blinding reflection.
"Hello." Her voice was high, almost musical.
He paid no attention. He had another catch in his sights. She could wait. Steady now.
Flip, catch, re - "Hey, I said hello!"
He missed. It was the first time he had missed in more than a hundred throws. He turned to look at her.
He could see her properly for the first time. Long black hair, eyes of silver-grey, and a face that before the war he might have called beautiful. She stared at him, treading water, an unreadable expression on her face. She turned away suddenly.
"You want fish? Fine."
She turned and sang.
A blast of pure sound ripped through the water next to him. It was far stronger than any sonic disruptor, a focused blast of reverberation that scythed through the sea and sent fish and water flying in a thunderous spray of liquid.
She was as good as her word. There were indeed plenty of fish floating in the wake of the eruption, enough for a week at least. He stood there for a while, struck dumb, uncertain as to what exactly he had witnessed.
When he came to his senses she had disappeared. He couldn't tell if she was angry or upset or both. He wasn't even sure what she was. This far out on the water, there should only have been the fish, the waves and maybe the odd patrol drone that had gone missing. She was none of those things.
He shrugged. It was no using wondering. Wondering didn't feed you. He hefted the harpoon again and went back to work.
She did not appear for the next week, or the next.
Despite himself his thoughts came back to her again and again. He was not sure what to make of her. He had encountered nothing similar in the war. Was she a cyborg? Most probably. There was no surviving in these waters without some kind of augmentation. She looked too human, too alive to be a robot, and he couldn't think of anyone or anything advanced enough to construct an android that could both swim and project sonic blasts.
He spent a few more minutes wondering before shaking himself out of it. The waves were getting rougher and he had to make sure that he brought in at least three more catches before the day was out.
In the end things remained the same. It didn't quite matter who she was or what he thought of her. He still had to eat. There were still fish to catch.
Flip, catch, release.
The skies were overcast for the next few days. It was dangerous to go out in such weather, and so he stayed in the small cabin near the rocks which he called home. There was always maintenance work to be done, and if there wasn't, he could always go to the shore and just sit and watch the waves. It calmed him to be able to do that - he didn't quite know why.
On day when he was doing just that, out of the corner of his eye he thought he saw a fin splash and go by, but it could just have been a trick of the light. Reflections on oil had a way of playing with your eyes, making you think something was there when it was not. You had to be careful. He had lost more than one fish that way.
Eventually the weather cleared and he set out on his boat once more.
Flip, catch, release. Another day on the ocean.
The squid appeared out of nowhere. One moment the ocean was calm and steady, and the next he could see a shapeless grey mass rushing beneath the oily water. He could barely make out tentacle after tentacle unwrapping themselves from the main bulk of the creature, seizing fish after fish and cramming them into its toothed maw.
He cursed his carelessness. He should have checked. It had been stormy before he set out, and he should have known that after inclement weather one of them might appear - relics of the war, designed for crippling enemy ships but now just aimlessly destroying anything they came into contact with. He should have been more alert, shouldn't have gone so far into deep water.
But it was too late for regrets. He leaned back to supercharge the capacitor so he could get away faster...or maybe he should try to fight, try to distract the thing with his harpoon? He was about to decide when a stray tentacle lashed out at him from the boat's side.
Just as suddenly, she appeared at his side as well. Before he could do anything she had already opened her mouth to sing. The same blast of sound that he had heard before echoed forth from her, splitting the water and striking the squid head-on. It recoiled in shock and she sang again, another keen note which sent the biomechanical lifeform reeling.
The squid thrashed about for a while, and then with a high-pitched whine its servos activated and it shot towards them, tentacles thrashing wildly.
He couldn't tell if it had been hunting her or if his fishing had attracted it, but this was not the time to ponder. He threw the harpoon long and high, and had the satisfaction of seeing it slam deep into the squid's rubbery hide. It didn't stop but it slowed, long enough for him to pull back the weapon for another throw.
But then another tentacle was snaking towards him. If he got to his spare, he could - but it was too fast! Maybe if he just -
Her scream cut off his train of thought. It was a sound even more powerful than her previous song, a resonant channel that he could almost see that cut cleanly through the squid's appendages. She kept it up, the sound slicing through tentacle after tentacle before finally tearing a hole in the main body of the squid itself. The creature thrashed, spraying water about in a futile attempt to remain alive.
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It was now or never. Memories of the war came flooding back, of winter nights spent hunting octopi at a superior’s command. The mermaid’s assault had opened up its underbelly – hidden under the mass of tentacles – and there was where he would strike. He took aim with his harpoon and sent it hurtling through the air. It sluiced through the water to rip through the octopus and the beast let out an anguished shriek before ceasing all motion and sinking beneath the waves.
It was over. He breathed heavily, exhausted from the battle. If not for her assistance, it could just as easily be him that was now drowning in the ocean’s depths. He turned to speak to her, but with a swish of her tail she was gone.
Days passed.
He found himself hoping that he would see her again. Hoping didn't feed you, he knew, but he hoped nonetheless.
The seas seemed different somehow. Restless. Maybe it was just how he felt, but he thought that the waters seemed rougher, choppier. He was used to the sea's moods by now – at times calm, sometimes steady, and often wild, but this wasn't the same.
Why did she matter to him now, when she didn't before? Because they fought the squid together? Because she had saved him, or him her?
He wasn't used to asking and answering questions like that. He was a man of the sea, and before that, a man of war. To him, life was simple. Kill or be killed, eat or be eaten. He obeyed laws that had existed ages before the earth was cool, before the wars had been fought, before the technology that had turned the sea into oil and its creatures into metal was even invented. Simple laws, primordial and eternal.
Was it those same laws that gave rise to his sudden yearning? He shook his head. Too many questions.
He took up his harpoon again, sighted, and threw.
Flip, catch, release.
A week later. Still no sign of her.
He gave up hoping, or wondering, or thinking. Ever practical, he turned his mind back to fishing and his tools. Only three sonic disruptors left. Capacitor would have to be changed soon. The rudder needed fixing again. He might even need to go back to - no, not that. He would make do on his own. He could scavenge enough, he was sure.
He couldn't eat any of the squid, but he was able to salvage some servos from it which he could possibly use as spare parts. There was that, at least.
He wondered what power source she ran on. Did she need to eat? Surely she didn't eat the same fish that he ate. Maybe deeper down where she could swim there were other fish, other things within the deep sea that she could live on. Could it be solar power? But that was something the scientists were only working on before the war had started...he didn't even know of anything back in his unit that even utilized solar power - once again, there was no way to tell.
He went back to sea, and the hours grew into days which grew into weeks and then after a while it was like he had never even seen her before. Things settled back into a familiar rhythm. Maintain the boat. Sail into shallow water. Fish as many fish as he could. Keep surviving.
Flip, catch, release. But it didn't seem enough now, somehow.
Another day on the water. Flip, catch, release. And then -
"Hello." He turned to see her at his side, treading water effortlessly again.
"Where have you been?" The words were out of his mouth before he could think.
She smiled. "Somewhere."
"Where did you go? I haven't seen you for weeks."
"You're talkative today."
He grew quiet. He had spoken more in those few minutes that he had in years. She seemed to know that and stopped speaking. He sent the boat out further and she followed wordlessly.
Together, they sailed on for a while. She stopped here and there to dive for...her food, maybe, whatever it was. He didn't ask and she didn't tell.
He envied her grace in the water. His boat seemed so clunky, slow and unwieldy compared to her fluid movements. But then again, she was clearly designed for the sea, her flukes and tail cutting through the murky surface cleanly and easily.
She swam around his boat once, and then dove, then came out seconds later, tossing her hair back with a laugh. Another round, another dive.
"Do you eat the fish?" He found himself asking, after she broke the surface for the third time.
"No." She looked at him and shook her head.
"What do you eat, then?"
She looked at him strangely, head cocked to the side. "Why do you want to know?"
He didn't answer. He couldn't - he didn't even know why he asked. So he simply stared at her.
"I'll be seeing you." Without answering his question, she swung her hair carelessly and disappeared under the waves. He found himself wondering how and why the oil slid off it so easily. Then he shook his head again. Back to fishing.
There was much he didn't know about her. Where she came from. What she ate. Who she was. What she was.
From that day on she appeared to talk to him every day. Sometimes in the morning, when the sun's rays made the glistening water shine brightly, sometimes in the afternoon, where the waves grew slow and calm. Almost never in the evening. He didn't ask her why.
She always talked more than him. Not a hard thing to do, considering that he rarely spoke, if at all. She told him about how far the sea stretched on - farther than he knew. About how many squid there actually were in the deepest parts of the ocean. Where there fish went when they weren't near the surface.
He listened quietly and never said anything. He was learning more about the world in which he lived everyday than he had ever imagined, but still he set out on his boat each day to fish, to bring his catch back to be refined and then to eat it. It was still about survival, but now there was something else. The mermaid and her stories.
One day she began to ask him questions about the war. At first he didn't want to speak about it at all, but there was something in her voice that made him start to hesitantly recount what he remembered. The long marches from base to base. The lasers from assault carriers above which split the sky and burnt base after base to ash. The 'bots swarming one after another, how they would cut down a hundred only to have a thousand appear.
"Why do you want to know?" he asked her back one day. He couldn't understand why she would want to know about the war. She had obviously been created after it.
"No reason." She shook her head, sending oil drops flying.
He left it at that, content to continue fishing with her by his side. She never fished for him by singing again, and he was glad of it. It meant that he could be with her longer.
Weeks passed.
They fell into a steady rhythm. He would go out to sea, and at a certain point in the day she would join him. He would fish, and she would talk to him while he sighted and cast. Then she would ask a single question, and he would answer, and then she would disappear swiftly into the water.
Then one day, he asked her to sing.
Silver-grey eyes looked at him quizzically. "To get fish? But you already come out here to do that."
He didn't know how to put it. He just knew that he wanted to hear her voice. Not the deadly blast of sound that killed, but another kind, meant for another purpose. But he didn't say any of that. He wasn't sure of what he meant himself.
She closed her eyes and nodded. "Alright." She opened her mouth and sang and the world changed.
It was eerie, haunting and beautiful, an ululation both pure and distorted at the same time. It reminded him of the past, of things long since forgotten, things that had existed before the war and feelings and emotions he had thought gone. Images swam in front of him - family, children (whose? his?) comrades cut down like so much fallen wheat (what was wheat? A kind of grass? grass...that grew on land?) and words he had lost the meaning of mixed together in a whirlpool of thought and memory.
He saw the sea, but this time it was blue instead of brown. He saw the sky and it was white instead of cast-iron grey. He saw...he couldn't even begin to name the things that he saw.
And then it was over. He found himself staring at the water as it rippled, lost in thought. He wasn't sure what he thought or felt. The song...the song had opened him up somehow, to things both new and old. He wasn't the same person that he was before he had heard it.
He turned to face her, but a wave swept over her and turning, she was gone.
It was a while since she sang for him until she appeared again. He didn't worry because he knew she would come back. They fell into the same patterns as before. Fish, talk, ask and then leave. But one day there were no more things to talk about or questions to be asked or answered.
But she still came every day, though, and they spent time together in much the same way as before. He sighted and cast - catch, flip and release - and she swam circles around the boat, appearing on its left and then its right, smiling at him as she glided through the water.
One day she asked him. "Are you happy here?"
"What do you mean?"
"You seem...lonely. Even with me around. Wouldn't you like to go where" she gestured to the horizon, where the ports lay "they are?"
"I'm not their kind." And he wasn't.
"But you are. You're not like me." She pirouetted in the water, showing her flukes. Yes, he didn't know what she was, but he was not like her, that was certain.
He suddenly realized that if he left, she would not be able to follow. Land seemed more and more distant every day. It was here he belonged, on the open sea, with his boat and the harpoon and the fishes and her.
"What's wrong?" He hadn't realized he was staring.
"Nothing." He turned back to cast again and when he looked back, she had disappeared.
Then one day she wasn't there. There was nothing in the sea that told him of her departure. The tides had been different when she appeared, but this time there was no sign to mark her absence.
Nothing had changed. Everything had changed.
He went out to sea as usual. He still had to survive, still had to fish and to eat his catch. But she wasn't there.
A hole had opened up inside of him; a void to a space that he didn't even know existed. He felt hollow, lost...alone. It had been the song. He was sure of it. It had changed him in ways that he couldn't even begin to know. He remembered her singing, eyes closed and head raised, and thought of the sky and the sea and her.
The waves lapped insistently against the side of the boat and he shook his head. Thinking didn't feed you. It didn't do much of anything. He hefted his harpoon again.
Something welled up inside him but he put it away.
Flip, catch, release.
The next week she was back.
He yearned to ask where she had gone but he didn't. She didn't say anything and simply swam up to the side of his boat, peering at him intently. He said nothing and continued fishing as usual.
"You're different." she said.
He was. He had noticed it himself. But he didn't know how to reply, and so he didn't. For a while there was silence on the open sea, only broken by the lapping of the waves and the splash of his harpoon as it hit the water.
She began to make a round past his boat as usual but suddenly tilted to her side, letting the waves carry her. She began to hum wordlessly...not a song, but not speaking either. For a while things continued in this vein - she floated on the surface and he sighted and cast again and again.
Then without warning she laughed, a high, strong note that sang out across the open ocean. He started in surprise and before he knew it she was so close to him that he could almost touch her.
"You're strange." she said. She pushed off the boat and fell back into the water, treading it lightly as she looked at him. "Not like the others at all."
What others, he wanted to ask. Have you spoken to other humans? What were they like? Where did you talk to them, when you can't go to the shore? But as usual he didn't say anything. After so many years at sea speaking was still largely unknown to him.
She smiled, closed her eyes, and dove. He was left standing there, looking at where the waves marked her passing.
She was gone for a few days but this time he didn't worry. He knew she would be back...how, he wasn't sure, but he knew all the same. And so when her head broke the waters near to him he didn't even react and simply sighted and cast again. Flip, catch, release.
How much time passed he didn't know.
"I have to go now." she said simply.
"Where?" He wasn't aware that there was somewhere to go to. There was the land, of course, but she couldn't go there. And the sea...which meant somewhere else on the water, far away even beyond the deep waters where he had never dared to go.
"My sisters are waiting for me." Sisters? There was more than one of her?
Questions swam through his head and he felt like he too was one of the fish he speared, caught in a sea of confusion and bewilderment. There were still so many things he had yet to ask her, mysteries that were yet unsolved. And here she was ready to leave.
"Can I go with you? When will you come back?" He couldn't believe what he was asking.
She looked and him and gave a single sad shake of her head. Then she threw it back and sang.
It wasn't the same song from before. This was a cry of such unearthly beauty that he fell back in shock, almost hitting his head on the boat's stern.
He saw blue skies and bombs, flaming wreckage and people crying out in pain. Machines that he couldn't name - not the 'bots that he had nightmares about - things far worse. Beams of light that tore through smoke and flame. The earth split open and broken apart.
He saw other things as well. Towns and cities, prosperous and bustling. Children and youths on flying vehicles that flitted easily from one place to another. Men bent over computer displays, reading letters that he found vaguely familiar. And green...so much brilliant green all around them, in trees, bushes, and leaves. It was like the war had never happened.
When he came out of the haze of memory, she was gone.
Flip, catch, release. A hit.
Reel it in, take it off the hook.
The skies had been clear lately, and his dreams (he had begun to dream again) were filled with things that he couldn't even begin to name or know. Some were from before the war, some came from the songs that she had sung. He didn't know which was which anymore.
But in front of him stretched the same russet expanse of ocean that he knew so well. There were fish to be fished and boats and tools to be maintained. That was his life, much as it had always been.
He sighed and took up the harpoon again. Where had she gone? Would she ever come back? He knew deep inside - in a place deeper than even beyond the waters where her sisters waited - that he would never know the answer to those questions.
He sighted and cast. Flip, catch, release.
His eyes were drawn to the horizon, to dry land and where the rest of his people were...except that they weren't his people.
Were they?
Where did he belong? Here, on the open waters? Where she was...but she would never come back. Where should he go?
Here. Anywhere but here.
He reeled in his catch and found himself looking up at the sky. A glimpse of white shone out among the grey. Had it been here all the time? Maybe he had simply never noticed it before.
Thinking didn't feed you, hoping didn't either. But he needed more than food, now.
He reached back to touch the capacitor and adjust the rudder. He remembered her song, and images swam before him once again. A blue sky. Green fields. And her, a sleek shape among the waves, laughing, singing, looking at him.
The boat cut out over the open sea, the man at its prow. His brow was furrowed in thought and as he made his way out along the ocean, he allowed himself to, for once in his life, to not know where he was going.