1033. About memories, 4
(Rose)
We sailed rather easily across the strait of Makran or Oman.
Then following the shores, so long the winds allow us and we don’t run too short in provisions. We make a few stops along the dusty shores of the Arabian peninsula.
We don’t find much on the shore ruins unfortunately. It’s like the southern beaches of the Mediterranean sea. What has not sunk as the sea level rose is crumbling into complex sand.
There used to be people, civilisation and an abundance of life on these beaches. Now time, dust and sand erode everything deeper than salt and rust. It looks far more grim than the toxic valleys or the Carolina coastline. At least these had a lush line or more. The northern jungles of India are flourishing akin to the Amazon ones.
Ruins there are new nests and food for the sprawling life.
Here, there’s only wind and rocks.
Nothing grows on sight. It’s just ruins of another antic nation lost to the ages.
We dig for some water and food, foraging, not finding much. Some wild goat along the heights is fleeing our approach and that’s all there is.
Underwater however, it’s another story.
The waters can be clear and the deep muds, and submerged ruins, they are teeming with life.
Most of which has the look of the past. Small fishes, crabs, seashells multiplying. Kelps, worms and more are dancing between the varied algae and other water flora I don’t know the names of.
There still are weird spots and the occasional new animal or species. But overall underwater, things look normal and familiar.
I dive to collect and bag numerous urchins. Tilke wasn’t familiar with the globular and ominous looking animal. It looks like a gigantic microbe to her eyes.
I put some on the ground near her and she had the childish creep, noticing these things can move and walk along their needles. It was making its way back to the sea.
I had noticed a growing layer of their skeletons and needles along the ebbing waters when we anchored here. And they are doing well in the shallow waters. There are thousands of them along the sunk ruins, for miles along the shore on this stop, just beneath the surface.
I break a few messily, before getting a hand in opening them properly.
We’re not very fond of their roe, but it is reasonably tasty and easy to harvest. It just takes some delicacy with a knife.
I rarely swam and dove under water so much. I can’t imagine what the pearl hunter of the Persian gulf had been through in their lives.
A fish notices me diving around. An eel I think.
It flees rapidly and causes a bigger cloud of dust to flow toward me. It began burying itself, digging and collapsing some pile of wreck and rubbish.
Something heavier collapses behind or under, causing a shock I can feel.
While still underwater, I see bright colours appearing in the rising dust. Too vivid. I get spooked and hurry to resurface.
~
I wring my hair and clothing. I’m not too shy. Tilke is a little more prude than I.
Before us, we see the waters of the bay gradually changing. It’s bubbling?
R - An eel down there caused something to react. Something colourful I couldn’t identify and buried below. Now it’s reacting.
The sea is turning brown, then red, and then a vivid opaque orange, almost yellow. I think some free bacteria or archaea in the water are gorging on the released resource lying in silt and digging everything out for more.
The waters are hotter. It looks toxic.
R - Let’s wait till it settles before we leave.
T - Agreed.
We then see the thousands of sea urchins that were happy below an hour before, now floating dead in this water that turned awfully deadly. There was something accumulated in the shallow layers of rubbles down there.
We’ll live with what I had already gathered above the shoreline.
Tilke grabs the last urchin that was trotting slowly its oblivious way toward the water.
~
We dine as night has fallen. We checked the maps we have.
When we reach the southward heading horn, we can head straight south.
We’ll reach Socotra in a few days I reckon. After the sea’s opaque colours have settled. If they don’t eat our ship.
R - I wonder what kind of elements could have steadily accumulated there and waited for such a thing to occur. It must happen often.
T - Well, there are all kinds of bacteria. Some can precipitate cadmium even, in sulphite. Or...
She saw my face getting closer, my eyes gleaming.
R - Tell me more!
T - Well, some memories tell me that there are proteobacteria which are chemoautotrophs. Like the strains from the rusticles we’ve seen in the valley. So metals could turn to... pigments.
R - Fascinating... And here I thought only cyanobacteria could do that. Everything is possible when you start gathering the right collection and chain of bacteria, right?
T - I think... That used to be my job? I don’t know for sure, but it sounds familiar.
R - Was your name back then Beatrice by any chance?
I make light of her being alive on so partial memories. At least that makes her smile, but that would have been harsh on anyone else probably. She’s strong enough to take it.
R - Turning food chains into chemical engineering processing, from raw materials to finished goods, using only bacteria, that sounds fascinating a duty.
T - Not just bacteria. You should know.
I think. Blume takes the stage.
R - You modified flora, following from the bacteria at the tips of the roots, and all the way up, to grow your polymers slowly. Did you... Also designed artificial trees? To grow trunks of plastics or alloys, even organometallic ones, to ceramic structured levels?
Growing mother of pearl into lignin, growing duralumin along linen?
T - Not that I recall personally, but these high technology industries existed yes. It takes an immense level of science to develop, but it’s worth it on the long term. And it takes the patience to grow your resources then.
R - Slow is steady. Steady is fast.
T - In the very long term eventually. But it takes stable and intelligent societies.
We keep chatting.
There is too much to learn and share. If only there were still schools and libraries.
Maybe that’s what I will do in my old age. Build a library in the kingdom.
Perhaps that is the right thing to do in my twilight.
Life finds its ways to renewal very naturally. But externalised knowledge continues to fade without maintenance. Mushio somewhere possibly could help. If he isn’t dead, he might be doing so already. The man who shared the discovery of T.I. with the world...
R - I wonder what will happen next...
T - We’ll sleep. We’ll go to Socotra.
R - I mean on a much longer scale. Beyond the horizon of chaos. In ten years. In twenty. In fifty...
I recall meeting Annie, Aïsshean, a long time ago.
I was not sure I would have a chance to return to talk to her in a decade or so. Ten years... Who can ever say?
It’s too far away in the uncertainties of the sea. I chuckle.
R - Time is a funny thing.
T - It is the great randomizer.
I laugh at the poor joke.
Outside, the sea doesn’t shine under the stars. It could have. It will, somewhere else, with different life.
R - Whatever we end up building, there will be a place for you. I am confident with that.
T - Thank you.
R - Although you will need to be aware of Nokarlık’s sex drive, before she comes onto you.
T - Uh... Thank you?
R - Ultimately it will be for you to decide.
I embarrass her and I chuckle about it. But it’s true.
It’s a cheerful night. A peaceful dead sea on the morrow.
And soon, the mythical island in sight.
~
