In Principio erat Vermis, et Vermis erat apud Deum, et Deus erat Vermis. Evangelium secundum Iogsotot, 1:1.He woke in a hospital bed, spine shattered like a stick of Blackpool rock, but for a moment he was still on his bike half-an-hour into his leave, accelerating at dusk towards Orion ascendens on the eastern horizon, seeing Betelgeuse stare back at him, a bloodfilled eye blind with distance. Then he opened his own eyes, seeing blank ceiling, and the hospital smell rushed into his nostrils, and he knew where he was and what must have happened even before he realized that his mouth was full of plastic and rubber. A low alarm began to beep to his left, excreting the sudden change in his EEG through the hum of the life-support, but he couldn’t turn his head to look at it. After three or four seconds he heard the shoes of the nurse rapping OOOOOO crescendo over the floor towards him. Her head rose over his fixed horizon like a moon and she looked down on him, her skin pale and oddly translucent, almost jelly-like, her lips opening.Wollust ward dem Wurm gegeben, und der Cherub steht vor Gott. Ode an die Freude (1787), Friedrich von Schiller.
But all that came out was a buzzing, thick insect wings warming on a winter morning, the sound skewered and skewered by the beeping of the alarm. She buzzed at him again, and he blinked slowly, eclipsing the moon, uneclipsing it. It turned from him, sinking over his horizon and the alarm cut off and her feet went OOOOOO diminuendo over the floor. They returned with the feet of doctors, more moons rising above his horizon, more pale, oddly translucent skin, more insect wings buzzing and trembling at him, but he only blinked and breathed. A moon bent close, stiff hairs sprouting in the craters of the nostrils, and a hair-thin beam of light lanced at his left eye, then at his right.
They buzzed at him again, obviously asking questions, but he only blinked and breathed, so they tried him with a handwritten note, holding it up for him, CAN YOU READ THIS? BLINK 2x YES. He closed his eyes carefully and opened them, closed them, opened them, and the pen rustled on paper again and he read MORSE? and twice he closed his eyes, held them shut, opened them. Insect wings buzzed and the feet of the nurse went OOOOOO diminuendo over the floor, OOOOOO crescendo, and stiff plastic flapped like a wing and a chart swung on a steel arm to fill his southern horizon. The Morse alphabet, so they could tell what he was saying.
They began to ask him questions, simple ones at first, and he carefully transmitted the answers to them with his eyelids, hearing insect wings buzz each letter as he finished it. They asked him if there was anything he wanted and he slowly blinked –– •• •–• •–• ––– •–•. They had one ready for him, swinging the chart down, turning the mirror so that he could finally see where he was, the room of the hospital, the machines clustered around his bed, breathing for him, bleeding fluids into him, draining off his wastes. Then, seeing how his eyes were beginning to shine, they held up a final note and swung the mirror away from him when he blinked Y.
The needle stang his skin like ice, seeming to leave its tip snapped off, melting into him. When he slept he dreamed again. Ocean. He was floating above an endless plain riddled with the burrows of giant harlequin worms that writhed themselves over and over at the clear warm water, sloping at the same angle, their black-white segments rippling in all directions, each to its own rhythm. Its own sinusoidal rhythm. The plain was jelly-like and he realized he could see into it, see the worms sitting in the burrows that bored through it, some soon ending, some sinking to unguessable depths, maybe sinking for ever.
When he woke and opened his eyes again insect wings buzzed and three moons rose above his horizon, two to the east, one to the west, hanging above him. The change in the skin was stronger now, the heads well into their metamorphosis, and it took him a moment to read the uncertain smiles and recognize his parents and wife. Wings buzzed at him and he blinked twice. They swung the Morse chart up and began to write him notes, their handwriting as individual as their voices and faces had once been, but it took a long time to ask and answer the simplest things and he started to get tired, answering more and more in monosyllables.
When his stepmother and wife kissed him goodbye their lips felt like proboscises probing at his skin, sticky as jelly. Their feet retreated over the floor OOOOOO and he closed his eyes and slept, finding himself back over the endless plain of jelly, watching the giant harlequin worms. He turned in the water, finding that he was able to move in whatever direction he wanted, somehow knowing which was north, which south, which east and west. He moved east, seeing worms whose segments were black or white as far into the jelly as he could see and other worms whose segments had every kind of pattern in between, beginning black-black-white or black-white-white or black-white-black or white-white-black or white-black-black or white-black-white.
He began to feel the pulse of their writhing in the water around him, to hear it as a low bass mutter, and slowly realized that each worm was moving to the rhythm set by the pattern on its segments. There was a hidden message here for him, a hidden significance in the pattern of their segments. Black-white, like dot-dash. He tried to read them as Morse, trying to break the undifferentiated stream into meaning, but however he divided it he found only nonsense, strings of jumbled vowels and consonants, obviously random except for occasional worms who carried a single repeated phrase endlessly into the jelly of the plain.
When he woke and opened his eyes again there was a wide liquid plasma screen tilted above him. The alarm began to beep and the feet of the nurse came OOOOOO over the floor towards him. Her head swung above him, nearly fully metamorphosed now, green and angular, with wide vitreous eyes and shining yellow mandibles. Grasshopper, he thought. Her mandibles writhed at him and her wings buzzed. Then she moved back and a keyboard rattled. Words crawled left to right on the screen like worms. GOOD MORNING PHILIP. He blinked his eyes ––• ––– ––– –•• –– ––– •–• –• •• –• ––• back, not knowing whether she was watching, not caring. WEVE GOT IT READY FOR YOU, she typed. IT WILL FIT OVER YOUR EYELID SO YOU CAN CONTROL THE SCREEN. DO YOU WANT TO TRY IT? As he started to reply the door of the room swung open and confident masculine feet came striding across the floor towards his bed. She must have paged a doctor. He listened to their wings buzzing, then watched another head loom above him, black and shining, its predatory mandibles opening and closing hungrily. Dragonfly. Then it turned from him and the keyboard rattled and the question was repeated on the screen. DO YOU WANT TO TRY IT? He blinked yes, and then felt the forefeet of the nurse on his face, setting a metal band on his forehead, adjusting it.
The feet left his face and he heard the keyboard rattle. WHICH EYE DO YOU WANT TO USE? He held his right eye shut for a second, opened it. OK PLEASE KEEP IT SHUT. He held his right eye shut and felt the feet working around it. A spot of moisture touched the eyelid and he felt something touched into it. A whisker or hair. He felt the skin of the eyelid tighten under the spot of moisture and realized that the whisker had been glued into place.
The feet left him again and he watched the screen with his left eye, hearing the keyboard rattle, reading OK YOU CAN OPEN IT NOW. He opened his right eye and the whisker rode with it. The doctor’s wings buzzed, giving an order, and then the nurse had swung the mirror directly above him, letting him see what she had put there. He blinked ––– –•– •– –•–– and his heart was suddenly beating faster in his chest, because letters had started moving on the screen even though the keyboard wasn’t rattling. KK it said in red, and the nurse had typed in black. The first letter of the word shivered after he had stopped blinking, rewritten by some automatic mechanism as O.
The nurse must have seen his eyes widen with surprise and pleasure, because she worked her mandibles, lifting the mirror away from him and turning back to the keyboard. It rattled again. SEE? she typed in black NOW YOU CAN TYPE WHATEVER YOU WANT. He blinked –– •••• •– –• –•– –•–– ––– ••– –– •••• •• ••• •• ••• •– –– •– ––•• •• –• ––• and saw THAMKY OU THIS SS AMAZIND appear on the screen. The line shivered when he had stopped, metamorphosing, rewritten as THANK YOU THIS IS AMAZING. The doctor’s wings buzzed, full of pleasure, and he realized this must be something experimental, something that was going to advance an career. He felt the pleasure filling him shrink and suddenly started to blink into what the nurse was now typing, invading her black worms with his red. ••– ••• • •–•• • ••• ••• –– • •– –– he blinked and USELTSS MEIT appeared on the screen. I FIL LIKE USIDESS MUT. He stopped typing and watched the line shiver, metamorphosing into USELESS MEAT I FEEL LIKE USELESS MEAT.
The door pushed open again and more masculine feet came across the floor towards him, a pair of them, more wings buzzing, more heads rising above his horizon, mandibles working and proboscis jerking down at him, wasp and mosquito. Then they turned away, reading what had been typed on the screen, and he could hear the way the notes of their wings changed when they spoke again. They’d read what he’d typed. The nurse started typing again, carefully responding to what he’d said, obviously following a script.
He wondered whether to tell them what he was seeing, the insect heads that looked down on him, the wings that buzzed, but it didn’t seem strange, as though it was something he had long been expecting, had long suspected lay beneath the surface, ready to emerge. And he had control over something now. He could make a mark on the world, he didn’t just have to lie here and breathe and blink, not even having the power to kill himself if he chose. –•–– • •– •••• he blinked in reply •––• •–• • –– – –•–– –••• •– –•• –••• ••– –– •• –•– –• ––– •–– •• –– •–•• ••– –•–• –•– –•–– –– ––– ––– and YEASE PRETTY BMD BUT I KNOU IML UCKY TMMM appeared on the screen. He stopped and watched it shiver into English.
After five minutes one of doctors who had come late left the room, looming over him for a moment, buzzing at him, working his mandibles. He talked with the nurse and other doctors for half-an-hour more, his typing rapidly improving, growing excited again as she told him what he could learn to do with the screen: watch TV, surf the internet with it, just by flickering his eyelids — there was another whisker ready for his left eye, when he wanted it. He told her he wanted it now and she fitted it, and when they left him he spent another half-hour playing with the screen, surfing TV channels, filling his head with colour and sound, watching part of an episode of Coleopteran Street. Then he switched it off (three firm blinks with his right eye) and fell asleep, wanting to see the jelly and the worms again.
They were waiting for him when he dreamed. He drifted amongst them, trying to turn himself so that he could see what kind of body he had, but he couldn’t. It was as though he was just an eyeball floating in the water, an eyeball covered in cilia, able to see and move, not able to do anything more. He tried to blink but the worms rippled endlessly in all directions, uninterrupted. What were they? What did they mean? When he woke up he switched the screen on (three firm blinks with his left eye) and unscrolled the menu, moving the cursor down to INTERNET, triggering it. After the simplicities of operating the TV the internet felt a little like the first time he rode his bike on a motorway (he pushed the thought away) but he managed to find his way to Google and blink out •••• •– •–• •–•• • ––•– ••– •• –• •–– ––– •–• –– ••• into the search-box. He triggered the search and it returned:
Your search — “harlequin worms” — did not match any documents.He tried •••• •– •–• •–•• • ––•– ••– •• –• •–– ––– •–• –– and it brought up a single page called “Some British Isles Country Dances of the Eighteenth Century”. He looked at the page, scrolling down through a long list of names and codes he didn’t understand to find “Harlequin Worm Doctor” and “WCAL3 69”. Dances and codes. Harlequin worms dancing over an endless plain of jelly, encoding some hidden message. What message? He logged off the internet and used the wordprocessor to start looking through the documents the nurse had told him about, the information on spinal injuries, on current research, on the way he might be walking again within the decade. When he had finished he switched the screen off and slept again.Suggestions: – Make sure all words are spelled correctly. – Try different keywords. – Try more general keywords.
When he appeared over the plain for the third time, he realized what the worms represented. It was suddenly obvious. Numbers. Numbers in binary, each white segment a 1, each black segment an O. The worms whose segments repeated the same pattern endlessly were rational numbers, like 1/7 or 1/17, the worms whose segments didn’t repeat or didn’t repeat soon were irrational numbers like √2 or e or π or the reciprocals of much larger numbers. He found a worm that repeated endlessly, black-black-black-white-white-black-black-white-white-black-black, and tried to work out what it was. It would be 2-3 + 2-4 + 2-7 + 2-8... He started to add them up in his head, finding that they rapidly converged on... 0·2? Yes, that looked right, so he tried it the other way. 5 into 1 was 0; 5 into 2, 0; 5 into 4, 0; 5 into 8, 1; 5 into 6, 1...
He realized the worm was rising higher out of the jelly, beginning to bend towards him, its blind head spiralling through the water as though searching for him. Then he thought “5 into 1, 0” and was flung suddenly back into his hospital bed, his body filled with a sun of pain as something white-hot entered the base of his spine, rushing up it, riding the pale nerves, electrifying the steel pins that held his vertebra together, reaching the top of his spine and spooling endlessly through the foramen magnum into the dark jelly that filled his skull.
He had invoked the worm. The worm of 1/101. German had a word for it. A worm for it. Earworm. Ohrwurm. The tune that fills your head and won’t leave. But this wasn’t a tune, just an endlessly repeated phrase, colour and sound, black-black-white-white-black-black-white-white, dot-dot-dash-dash-dot-dot-dash-dash, I’m I’m I’m. He was infected with a headworm. Ein Kopfwurm. And if he had invoked it by beginning to calculate 1/5 in base 2... He thought “1 x 0 = 0” and his head was dark and silent again, his spine filled with the fading glow of the energy that had invaded it.
He had a bed-bath that night, two grasshoppers working on him from either side of his bed, buzzing reassuringly at him over the hum of the life-support, passing warm wet sponges over his skin with their narrow, spiked forefeet. His genitals hung like fruit between his thighs, shaking as the sponges passed over them, lax and unresponsive. When they had finished he went surfing the internet again, searching for a page on how to calculate pi. He could invoke the pi-worm if he started to calculate it, and the pattern that rushed up his spine (his spne) and spooled endlessly into the jelly of his brain would be endlessly varying, not endlessly repeating. He found a recursive formula: a=x=1; b=1/√2; c=¼ LOOP: y=a; a = (a + b) / 2; b = √(by); c = c — x(a-y)2; x = 2x; p = (a + b)2 / 4c; goto LOOP.
No, it was too hard to hold in his head. Far too hard. But he could try √2. He thought back, dredging the formula from some of his revision the previous year. Yes. a=b=1; LOOP: a/b = (a+2b)/(a+b); goto LOOP. He closed his eyes and slept. Worm-plain. 1/1 he began, wondering whether just holding the fraction in his head would be enough. 3/2. 7/5. 17/12. Yes, it was, he could feel a rhythm strengthening in the water around him, pulsing out at him from the north, and he turned towards it, drifting through the water. There. A worm was rising out of the jelly ahead of him, just beginning to bend towards him, its upper segments reading white-black-white-white-black-white-black-white-black-black...
41/29, he thought. 99/70. 239/169. 577/408. There. He was back in his bed, filled with sun-pain as the worm of √2 rushed up his spine and spooled endlessly through the foramen magnum into the dark jelly of his brain. He rode the pain, letting it radiate out through his flesh, and began to read the endless rush of the worm’s segments as Morse. Began to gobble them. Morsels. Faster and faster. Searching for full meaning, learning the codes that were waiting for him. Gradually his eyes rolled back in their sockets, and he was found like that by a nurse towards midday, eyelids flickering in half-regular patterns over blank white eyeball. If she could have read Morse being transmitted at that speed she would have seen word fragments, torn phrases, because he was light-kalpa along the worm’s length, reading one of the millions of stories he had found there.
There. I would wager that even in his wildest brandy-fuelled transports ACS never guessed that his words would be written — or read — in so strange a place. But his words, I would wager, are more lasting than bronze; I do not know whether mine will be seen again by human eyes, or whether my private shorthand could ever be deciphered. Perhaps this ms. will lie in its steel container for millennia in the sunless depths of the ocean, & be brought at last into a world utterly changed from that which I have known. I cannot tell.
I was born on the Atlantic coast of Ireland — faraor don iathglas agus saifir m’óige! — within constant sound of the sea, twenty-seven years ago. My mother died when I was three, & my father, an oneiroleptic student of elder mystery, left me in the care of a maiden aunt during his long absences abroad, from the last of which he did not return, having been crushed to pulp by a rock-fall in a pre-Christian tomb in Asia Minor. His house and its fittings were sold to pay off his many debts, but I inherited his library, a vast collection of antique texts in which, kept from the society of my peers by a endless series of psychosomatic disorders, I read daily until I became as familiar with tongues whose last speakers have long since crumbled to dust as with any tongue of the modern world. My aunt, a weak, ineffectual woman, placed no restrictions on me & I took to keeping strange hours, sleeping away the sunlight & rising at nightfall to wander on the beach near her house, searching the debris cast up by the sea-scouring Atlantic waves, exploring the tidal pools which darkness & the rays of the moon turned to miniature worlds of mystery & enchantment, & listening all the while to the cold unending voice of the sea. These were the two great influences on my early childhood & youth: the books which had been my father’s, & the Sea.
When I came of age my father’s lawyer opened a yellowing envelope, lodged with him many years previously, & handed me a letter in my father’s crabbed, archaic hand. The letter told me that if I had on my coming of age absorbed my father’s own interest in antiquities, I could find employment with an old friend of his, one William Danesdyke of Bristol. The letter gave both an address & a curious warning: that I should never accompany Danesdyke beneath the surface of the ocean. My father concluded the letter with these words: “William is a good man, I believe, but he is interested in unearthly things, & I do not believe he is fully cognisant of the true nature of what he has long searched for.”
I had indeed absorbed my father’s interest in antiquities, & I wrote to the address he had given me. Before the year was out I was in the employ of William Theophilus Danesdyke. At first I worked merely as his secretary, dealing with his correspondence & cataloguing the objets d’art he received occasionally from his far-flung circle of correspondents. Some of these were of an antiquity impossible to match with the cunning & skill of their manufacture, for they seemed to predate by very far the birth of any civilization with which I was familiar. Indeed, they soon began to upset me in strange ways & as I found my dreams invaded by the eldritch theriomorphic shapes they depicted I wondered at what horrors of form & fashioning were to be found in the occasional heavy parcels Danesdyke opened in the privacy of his own chambers. Thus it was I came to realize that my father was mistaken in his belief that Danesdyke was a good man. Why I did not at once leave his employ I cannot truly say, but tho’ his interests repulsed me, I was also curiously fascinated by them. He took my continuance in his employ for acquiescence, & one day granted me access to a certain Latin text, bound in a curiously smooth leather, which he kept in a sturdy safe in his study. The text spoke of things which were better lost to all knowledge, & I believe it drove me at least half mad. How else can I explain how I come to be where now I am?
I began to assist Danesdyke in other matters, accompanying him on long journeys to Europe, Asia, & the Americas, to the islands of the Pacific and the wastelands of the Poles, and often we returned with things which fit into no sane conception of reality. Man has not always ruled the Earth, & many of the artefacts to be found in her secret places far predate his transitory and incomplete dominion. But Danesdyke’s chief interest, & mine too, once I had been drawn into his nefandous activities, was the ancient sunken continent of Atlantis. He had long purposed to probe its mysteries at first hand, & my coming to his side enabled him to obtain, far more quickly than he had anticipated, certain — what shall I call them? — certain texts, texts which detailed the position of the continent when its tall pyramids & elegant temples of white marble still stood in the light of the sun & moon, in those Ogygian days before the frightful violence of the cataclysm which hurled it beneath the grey waves of the Atlantic.
Once he had assimilated these texts and the information therein, Danesdyke commissioned the outfitting of an ocean-going vessel with the most modern submarine equipment. He was — is still, I suppose I must write if I am to be strictly veracious — an immensely wealthy man, & the ship was prepared with all the speed his wealth could command. In a year it was ready, but shortly before we sailed Danesdyke received a letter from a correspondent of his near the ancient German municipality of Stuttgart, to whom he had written of our plans. He gave it to me to read when he had finished and I was disquieted more than a little by its contents and tone. The correspondent’s interests were similar to our own, and we had often lodged with him when our researches took us to those history-haunted glades of the Schwarzwald amidst which his castle reared its vast & century-gnawed form. He was a hardened student of unclean sciences, & yet in the letter he begged us not to do what we purposed. He would not give his reasons openly, but hinted that the ancient texts speaking of Atlantis were mistaken in their belief that the continent had ever existed, tho’ their tales of Elder Mysteries associated with the Atlantic Ocean were not entirely without foundation.
Despite my disquiet, I took my cue from my mentor, & laughed the warning to scorn. We sailed from the port of Liverpool in the spring, hoping thereby to avoid the gales of the autumnal equinox. Our crew was handpicked, criminals mostly, & all ready to keep their mouths shut in return for a fat pay-packet at the end of the voyage. We commenced our submarine explorations when we reached those regions of ocean which our researches informed us covered the most thickly inhabited portions of the Atlantaean continent, descending to enormous depths in a bathysphere, a hollow steel ball equipped with powerful floodlights & set with clear glass windows of an extraordinary thickness. In this we hung many times over wide plains of featureless abyssal ooze or between precipitous submarine peaks, bringing light into regions formerly of an absolute Stygian darkness, but never seeing anything more than this mindless architecture of Nature or the creatures set by her blind hand in the freezing waters at the ocean floor: fishes with huge vitreous eyes & pale luminous patches on their skin, perverted reminders of the more wholesome ichthyic life which swims in the sunlit levels far, far above.
At last, as autumn came near, we guided our vessel over a submarine trench which we had till then avoided: not because we thought it least likely to reward our explorations, but because its depth was such that we did not care to descend into it until we had tested the bathysphere thoroughly in less demanding regions of the ocean. We have descended twice into this trench; from the second descent we shall not return.
Yet it began exactly as the first, exactly as the previous three-&-seventy. The sea grew steadily darker, progressing by imperceptible degrees from a blue-tinged transparency to a glaucous twilight into which, at the touch of a switch, Danesdyke threw the strong yellow beams of our floodlights. Floating specks of microscopic life crowded the water around us at first, scintillating in the beams, but they thinned and disappeared as we descended, entering regions which were mostly dead. Occasionally dots & bars of light were faintly visible in the water beyond the beams; & once the creatures from which these sprang came clearly into view, nightmare shapes from a madman’s imagination. But at last we passed too deep, it seemed, for even these creatures to dwell, adapted tho’ they be to the most enormous pressures of water. I do not know what instinct caused Danesdyke to order our descent slowed over the telephone wire which, with the steel cables on which the bathysphere hung, ran to the ship far above us. As the rush of water over the steel skin of the bathysphere quieted, he said to me with a curious light in his eyes: “Listen.”
I thought he was mad. He was not. As my ear attuned itself to the silence of the ocean I realized that it was not absolute. From an unguessable depth below us there was sound. Absurd, mad, blasphemous as it was, the sound, immensely distant, yet perfectly distinct, was that of submarine chanting in an unknown tongue — tho’ “tongues”, or any other wholesome organ, were plainly quite uninvolved in its production. Danesdyke spoke over the telephone link again & our descent continued at a quickened rate. At time went by the chanting, full of obscene cadences, wholly abhuman, rose above even the rush of water on the skin of the bathysphere. I listened & a huge & nameless fear grew in my mind.
“For God’s sake, Danesdyke,” I said. “Return us to the surface. At once, man!”
Even as I spoke the chanting died away. I fell to my knees & gazed down thro’ the window set into the floor of the bathysphere. There was still a great depth of water separating us from the ocean floor, it seemed, for the beams of the floodlights set around the window’s rim, illuminating fathoms of water beneath us, revealed only a deeper darkness beyond. & then, as I gazed, I shrieked aloud. Something had come up out of the darkness of the abyss into the floodlit water. It was shaped after the fashion of a starfish, but some fifteen or twenty feet across, with nine slim, quasi-triangular arms surrounding a central disk, & even at distance I could see that it glowed with strange colours, that its skin was alive with slender flagella, beating loathsomely. At once I knew it was nothing ever born of this earth or even, perhaps, of this sphere of reality.
At my shriek Danesdyke bent to see what had so startled me, and as I pushed past him and tore at the receiver of the telephone link I heard him cry out in what, in another context, I might almost have diagnosed as exultation or salute. Half-hysterical with fear, I gabbled an order to the ship thousands of feet above, distractedly noting that Danesdyke had begun to croon to himself behind me, as though beginning an apotropaic disinvocation. The winch-operator must have caught the note of urgency in my voice, for the bathysphere slowed almost at once, shuddering wildly as the powerful motors which controlled its descent were thrown into reverse, & began to return towards the distant surface. Yet when I returned to the window set into the floor of the bathysphere, I saw how the thing pursuing us swam with a horrible agility, & remained well within the ambit of the floodlights as we rose towards the blessed sunlight far, far above. It had a circular and oddly patterned patch of skin in the centre of the flattened disk which served it for a body, & as I watched, crouched at Danesdyke’s shoulder, which shook like my own with fear and disgust, this circular patch began to dance & throb, & the thing chanted as it rose after us! The steel skin of the bathysphere sang to the notes of its voice & I believe I fainted as its song was answered... FROM ABOVE US!
If so, I was unconscious for only a few merciful seconds, for the next thing I knew the bathysphere was rocked by an immense blow, again from above us, & darkness swallowed us whole as the floodlights & the bathysphere’s internal lighting failed. I knew, with a mind-wrenching certainty, that the steel cables connecting us with the ship had been parted, & that we were being carried back into the abyss. I believe that if I had been truly sane at that moment my mind would have snapped.
I do not know how long we travelled towards the evilly phosphorescent city which awaited us on the ocean floor. I came out of a nightmarish pit of despair, lightened by not the faintest glimmer of hope, to realize that my eyes were focusing on gargantuan submarine structures rearing out of the darkness below us. They glowed with a sepulchral light & were heavy with blasphemous carvings & inscriptions in scripts which I knew were ancient when the earth was young.
“Danesdyke,” I croaked. “We have found it, even if it means the death of our souls. Ecce Atlantis!”
For answer there came only a peal of insane laughter. Then realization came upon me. There were openings set into the walls of this submarine metropolis which would have been useless to inhabitants who had not the constant support of water to protect them from the heavy tug of gravity, & certain other features, glimpsed one by one in a mounting rush of horror, told me that this place had never, even a day, sat in the wholesome light & warmth of the sun, that its turrets & portals had never moaned to the rush of the wind, that it had never sunk beneath the all-consuming waves of the sea — no, it had been built & inhabited always at this nightmare depth. Atlantis had never existed, tho’ the tales of Elder Mysteries associated with the Atlantic Ocean were not wholly without foundation.
The bathysphere was carried between the buildings, whose angles were such as to defeat the eye, for they seemed to hint at further, untraceable dimensions beyond those three with which we are familiar, & was set down on the summit of a broad, squat ziggurat, deep in this phosphorescent city’s nightmare heart. Danesdyke by now seemed wholly insane. He babbled & shrieked as his bulging eyes traced the dim outlines of the englyphed surfaces which surrounded us, & I knew that I must soon follow him into madness if I looked out as he did. Instead, I picked up a pen & began to write these words on the pages of the sketch-pad which has always accompanied me into the depths. Have ever words been written in a stranger place?
The last was written some time ago. It has grown deathly cold within the bathysphere & the air grows steadily fouler, despite the chemical apparatus which absorbs our exhaled carbon dioxide & the bottles of compressed oxygen which replenish the exhausted air. The creatures which carried us into the depths, & which disappeared shortly after they deposited us here (I struggle constantly to silence the voice which whispers in my brain that we sit atop an ALTAR), have returned with many of their kind. They now spin & spiral in the water around us, seeming to perform the passes of a blasphemous, transdimensional dance, and I wonder whether I too am sliding into madness, for the odd patternings on the centre of their disks seem to resolve into distorted faces, amongst which I recognize that of my own f No, it cannot be. Cannot. Danesdyke crouches by a window gazing upon the nefandously spiralling Atlanteans in silence, his face twitching with an unholy joy. As I write, the patches of skin which serve them for vocal organs have begun to throb & oscillate, & the notes of their monstrous song boom thunderously in my ears. The bathysphere shudders. Danesdyke is shrieking a response in a language I do not recognize and gesturing madly through the window at which he crouches. The notes of the chant rise in pitch & I know that the creatures, guided by a wholly abhuman intelligence (I cannot, must not, allow myself to believe that Danesdyke has instructed them), are trying to shatter the glass of the bathysphere’s windows. There is a steel thermos in the bathysphere, long since drained of the whisky-laced coffee it contained when we began our descent all those hours, or better say centuries, ago. I shall insert my ms. within it & replace the cap. Perhaps when the final moment comes the thermos will float free &, retrieved someday by those at the surface, warn the world of the evil which broods at the ocean’s dark heart. My ears are bleeding from the violence of the chant. I have nothing left to write.
He invoked them that night, riding √2 easily now, ignoring the messages that muttered at him as it fled endlessly into his skull-jelly, imagining it as the spine of the phi-worm that would be the spine of his own spine. The sφne of his spine. Sφneworm. Schweinwurm. 1/1 he began. 2/1. 3/2. 5/3. 8/5. 13/8. This time the worm responded much more slowly, the rhythm in the water barely tangible at first, trembling on the brink of full being, strangely distorted by its interweaving with the rhythm of √2 and the pulse of his own blood. He persevered, hearing the distorted rhythm grow stronger, sounding more and more like a tune. 21/13. 34/21. 55/34. 89/55. 144/89. And yes, it was coming, coming, the tune growing louder and clearer. 233/144. 377/610. 987/610...
There. Invoked. It was rushing up his spine, his sφneworm, his Schweinwurm, galloping like the golden-bristled boar of Freyr, like Brahma-boar Varāha, galloping endlessly into his skull, the rhythm of its hooves telling him all things, all stories, all literature, all songs in all languages spoken and unspoken, known and unknown, in saecula saeculorum, Amen. Light-kalpa in, back before the beginning of the universe, he found a story and began to read.
On the following day it snowed again and there óóh-was another blanket of snow on the roof-áág of her car when she went down in the morning. This time the ridge was óóh-was immediately obvious to nghàgéàj hand-áág-her-òíj, and she could even áìhydóò it beneath the snow-áág. She turned where she stood, her hand still extended, and looked at her neighbours’ cars, each with its neat white blanket of rhkàláág. In the near horizontal light-áág of early morning the ngà-shadows-ýóg of the ngà-ridges-áág that úìh-rose ngà-there-áág were suddenly obvious. She drove to work-áág, áìh-taking her time, letting the ngà-streets-íýr become busy around her. Ngà-cars-ýóg with ngúqhúgáág in ngà-roof-áág. Was she going mad?
But it was on the news when she got home and áìh-switched on thrìbéígìn. An epidemic-ýóg of ridges rising érr the ngà-roofs-áág of ngà-cars-áág all over the country-áág, rrà wò first in ngà-islands-áág and along the ngà-coasts-áág, but now óóhówýú to roll inland. Týwýóg-the òts TV-áág-the flickered as áìh-watched she-áòbá, áìh-putting out momentary ngà-rays-íýr of purple and qý ngà-that-ýóg óóh-seemed to writhe in the moment-áág óóh-dissolved ngýýáýóg, like ngìstsìgýóg. Tò screen-ýóg-the óóh-tilted rrò fractionally, cò óóhógè to ceiling-áág-the? Óóh-slept she-áòbá uneasily and sometime-áág early jtàjìéàj-the óóh-woke she-áòbá tò óóhúdè to window-áág-the, áìh-looking yq jírréàj-the. A man-ýóg was óóh-standing by one of parked ngà-cars-áág-the, áìh-staring car-íýrún, his breath-ýóg óóh-steaming érr rrú street-áág-light-áág-the, and for a moment-áág áìh-thought she-áòbá that had áìh-spotted she-áòbá a thief-íýr. Then áìh-recognized she-áòbá man-íýrún, one of ngáphágáág-her-òíj, a lecturer-áág in a local pógáág, tò óóh-realized that áìh-wearing óàýóg pyjamas-íýr and qšìrréíg gown-íýr. Man’s-óúgà-the breath-ýóg-the suddenly óóhìzáà wide and áìh-reached óàýóg door-íýr-ón of car-áág-the, a key-ýóg óóh-glinting mhídáág in hand-áág-óàóúgà, áìh-opened door-íýr-the, tò áìhádé car-íýr. Rnóráòbá-the óóh-slammed, sound-ýógón óóh-travelling lì in cold air-áág-the, and after twenty or thirty ngìngìgáág light-ýóg óóh-began to shine in row-áág-the òts ngà-window-áág áìh-facing her-íýr yò óóh-stood she-áòbá áìhúrrà down street-áág-the. Later, óóh-lying in bed-áág, áìh-heard she-áòbá lhìròéíg-the òts car-óúgà rnóréàj ázéú twice more, clear lí distant.
Jtàjìéàj-the, áìh-glanced she-áòbá ìrr lecturer’s-óúgàìn car-áág as óóhájýú she-áòbá to car-áág-her-òíj and áìh-saw nghpédzíýr-the íjà in front seat-áág-the, one tsúdzýóg hooked òl ízó-wheel-áág-the, tò two ngúmúráág along sà other áìh-wearing pyjamas-íýr was lying érr front šngázéàj-the of car-áág-óàóúgà, tsúdzýóg hooked in almost the same way-áág òl steering-wheel-áágòn. Áìh-got yíáòbá múríýr-her-òíj, qhúgýógún érr roof-áág-the qhýðáòbá šú šé more šú Kí, and óóhýzò to work-áág. Ngà-head-ýóg úìhyrráó behind windscreen-áág érr company-áágén car-park-áág rrý óóh-walked she-áòbá to office-áág-her-òíj, and èú óóh-returned she-áòbá in evening-áág-the, ywýó àq filling in for five no-ájà, ngà-head-ýóg-the úìh-were still óóhérá and there úìh-were ngà-splash-ýóg of rrú in snow-áágún underneath the drivers’-óúgà ngà-window-áág.
Ngà-ridge-ýóg-the in these ngúmúráág úìh-were có high, as though óóh-lifting on intensity-áág-the òts occupation, and narrow-ýn òts ngúmúráágún, apparent all-ngà-place-áág now, was stronger. Óóh-got she-áòbá to car-áág-her-òíj and óóh-paused ègóó ngìnìdíýr-its-óúgà and roof-íýr mhídáág, ngà-finger-ýóg úìh-sliding easy front to back, less easy back to tà, then áìh-got in múríýr tò óóh-drove nláléàj, áìh-having to take long ngà-detour-íýr àgóà ngà-jam-íýr. Tilt-àn érr TV-áág-her-òíj óóh-was definite when óóh-got she-áòbá home-áág tò áìhágáò, óóh-seeming find ágáòán érr facia-áág-én rì jelly-áág beneath finger-áág-tip-áág-yíòíj, and ngà-ray-ýóg-the of nà and qý jtsòrráág from screen-áágòn úìh-were có last, óóh-writhing through air-áág-the òts flat-áág-yíòíj, áìh-stroking over rhúgéàj-the rrý óóh-faded it-ýóg. Kí reports-the, ýdý with harassed ábáà ngà-reporters-áág in àwó ngà-clothes-áág, lè yl ngà-car-áág-ngóóàóúgà, óóh-was not òm mysterious ngúqhúgáág-the, mysterious èbíèn òts ngà-car-áág rí country-áág-the, but about an epidemic-áág of ngà-car-áág squatting. Ngà-people-ýóg were èòh-refusing àrrá ngúmúríýr-ngà-their-óúgà, úìh-sleeping in them, úìháðyà and úìhágý òl ngà-window-áág-the, unable to emerge even for mrìðáág and rhwérráág, áìhérá parking érr àjòà ngà-parks-áág šé ýp ngíjírréàj šé óóh-drive tsé-purpose-ýóg until petrol-ýóg-ngà-their-óúgà was óóh-exhausted. Half òl khýráág-the áìh-heard she-áòbá sound-íýr-ýn of crash yl jírréàjín òk tò óóh-stood ydóò úúýóg óóhádzòú. Two ngúmúrýóg had úìh-collided head-áág thmúbáág šà underneath window-áág-yíòíj, and a body-ýóg óóhúdú òl splintered ngàbáág-glass-áág, lí èú ambulance-ýóg-ún óóh-arrived no-sà áìhàrrá attend ìjèìn ngèèíóúgà ngà-moans-íýr óóh-heard above krryjáágyn of érý šýgáág-ýáóúgà. Jtsòrrýógòn óóh-revolved érr jhàbáág-it-óúgà, ší of àgú purple wó white light-áág which-ýóg áìhèlá against ridge-áág ngà-shadow-áág-the in ngàjhàbáágàn òts ngúmúráágún ngà-which-ýóg áìh-lined jírréígín.
Óóh-returned yíáòbá TV-áág-yn, but image-ýóg-yn érr týwáág-ýn óóhébà, óóh-rippling wmúréàj àq ngúnúðéàjún from roof-áág-the of ambulance-áág-the as female ézú-kúgýóg áìhèrú íó ngàtràgýóg-the, called éwá múríýr-ngíjírréíg, èòhýdèú àrrá ngúmúríýr-ngóóàóúgà. Šmúrráág-ún òts report-òn óóhyrráó she-áòbá and áìhádé múríýr-her-òíj, áìh-follow mhpírrýóg kúgýóg-the, and rnóráòbá-ón óóh-slammed àq tsé-áìhálí force-áág, as though áìhyrryú yíáòbá érr, áìh-wait ngšágíýr-the. Óóhúdè she-áòbá ìrr bed-áág-room-áág-her-òíj, áìhýló thrìbéíg-ìn kú, tò áìhàrrá carry ngýtýdzíýr wó wógíýr, áìhýló flat-íýr-her-òíj áìh-descend to múráág-her-òíj. Air-ýógún úàýóg áìhòdzì face-íýr-yíòíj when áìhýló yíáòbá pódéíg-ón óóh-be pà tó, though óóhábáà snow, qý ngà-crystal-ýóg úìh-dropping rró wó pì in motionless cháréàj àgú šíwéàj. Óóhízí yíáòbá tò áìhújí yíáòbá óm, áìhydóò ngúnúðéíg of àgú purple and rrú wó qý light-áág érr ngàrhàrráágàn òts tsý of ngópódéàj, coordinated íp jtsòrráágòn érr jhàbáágàn of ambulance-áág-the, úàýóg óóh-move ál, yl jó ngšòláág qhúgáág-the. Wràrýóg of rhkàláág óóh-landed érr sà òts swàgáág-yíòíj, óóhúgé ngó moment-áág rrý óóhàbó it-ýóg. Áìhèlàó yíáòbá free qhýðéíg-her-òíj, áìhújý sà of crystal-áág-àn, áìhýwé múgíýr-yíòíj íp mouth-áág-her-òíj tò áìhèlá. Óóhájà salt-ýóg. Salt-ýóg óóhèróú yl sky-áágyn.
Óóhájýú yíáòbá ýp jírréàjín íp múráág-yíòíj, áìhújáú rnóréígón of ngópódéàjón óóházéú behind yíéàj, áìhìgá that qé rí ngúmúríýr óóhírrí, that near rí írrí-ngúkúgýóg úìh-splayed óš tà ngà-seat-áág-the, úìh-kneeling on jì ngášngázéàján, èòhébú ngúthmúbíýr-ngà-his-óúgà forward ngúššúrráág-the. Óóhégí yíáòbá car-íýr-yíòíj and áìhúzàú rear rnóréíg-ón, tsé áìh-need myzíýr-yíòíj, šy áìhýló yíáòbá múríýrún tsé-újýú qè rrí ngà-night-áág-the, tò áìh-enter, áìhògìò ngà-blanket-íýr-òn and wógíýrón rrý áìhóráú yíáòbá. Óóh-knelt she-áòbá érr rear seat-áág-the, áìhújáú nì jhèzíýrèn of salt-áág érr jhàbáágàn, tò óóhìdé óš back-áág òts tà šngázéàján íp dashboard-áágín, áìhúgà rjúdzíýr-yíòíj úr sèwáágèn úàýóg óóhówýú úzàú khòléàj, áìh-feel tsé-tì ngènèðéíg óóh-begin ýzá against thègéàj-yíòíj, py ngàngàríýràn òts skull-áág-yíòíj. Jtàjìéàj, when ngýnglýwýógýn òts rrárréàj-the úìhàgó, áìhygýú rrkýgíýrýn which-ýóg jó áìhérà ýáíýr, óóhélé yíéíg, qhsýzýóg-yíòíj wó spine-ýóg-yíòíj úìhóðí nèðáòbá círýóg-the òts pí míwáág úàýóg óóhýwé àq ngàctàwéàj òts tsò from ngíjírréàjín tò óóh-swim tsé-šmúrráág áts coral-áág ngà-canyon-áág-án òts ìbò city-áág-the.
APPENDIX 1
The Morse Alphabet
| a •– | b –••• | |
| c –•–• | d –•• | |
| e • | f ••–• | |
| g ––• | h •••• | |
| i •• | j •––– | |
| k –•– | l •–•• | |
| m –– | n –• | |
| o ––– | p •––• | |
| q ––•– | r •–• | |
| s ••• | t – | |
| u ••– | v •••– | |
| w •–– | x –••– | |
| y –•–– | z ––•• |
APPENDIX 2
The Thalassine Language
Pronunciation
1. Except for “ng”, which is a single sound, all letters are sounded separately: “ph”, “sh”, “th” etc are as English “sheep-herding”, “glasshouse”, “goatherd” etc, not as English “photograph”, “sheep”, “think”, etc.
2. J/j are as the English consonant “Y/y” (young, you, etc); ý/y are as German ü or French u.
3. C/c represents a sound intermediate between English “t” and “k”; Q/q is as Arabic (a “k” made at the back of the mouth).
4. R/r is a single flap of the tongue, as d in American “riding”; Rr/rr is a trill.
5. A vowel has one of two tones: a high, represented by an acute (áéíóúý), or a low, represented by a grave or zero (àèìòày). Tonal samdhi is not marked.
Grammar
Nouns
Masculine
stsìg — “tentacle”
stsìg-ýóg : nominative
stsìg-óúgà : genitive
stsìg-íýr : accusative
stsìg-áág : prepositional
Feminine
rrárr — “sea”
rrárr-áòbá : nominative
rrárr-òíj : genitive
rrárr-éíg : accusative
rrárr-éàj : prepositional
Definite article marker = -n
stsìg-ýóg-ìn — “the tentacle”
rrárr-áòbá-án — “the sea”
Plural marker = ng-
ngì-stsìg-ýóg-ìn — “the tentacles”
ngý-nglýw-áòbá-ýn — “the waves”
Verbs
élé — “absorb”
àgú — “writhe”
Singular
áìh-élé (transitive) — “(I/you/he/she/it) absorb(s)/absorbed”
óóh-àgú (intransitive) — “(I/you/he/she/it) writhe(s)/writhed”
Plural
èòh-élé (transitive) — “(We/you/they) absorb”
úìh-àgú (intransitive) — “(We/you/they) writhe”
Notes on grammar
1. Tense is determined by context and is not explicitly marked: for example, stsìgýógìn óóhàgú = “the tentacle writhes/writhed/will writhe/is writhing/has writhed...”.
2. A transitive verb used with an intransitive suffix has a passive meaning: for example, óóhélé yíáòbá = “she is absorbed”.
3. Verbs used without a suffix are infinitival, participal, adjectival, etc: for example, ázéú = “slam”; áìhújáú yíýóg lhìròéíg-ìn òts múróúgà rnóréàj ázéú = “she heard the sound of a car-door (car’s door) slamming”.
Glossary
Nouns
chár : colour (f)
cír : system (m)
ctàw : million (f)
jhàb : roof (m)
jhèz : patter (m)
jírr : street (f)
jtsòrr : light (m)
jtàjì : morning (f)
khòl : there (f)
khýr : bulletin (m)
krryj : bubble (m)
kúg : man (m)
lhìrò : sound (f)
mhíd : moment (m)
mhpírr : camera (m)
míw : fish (m)
mrìð : food (m)
múg : palm (m)
múr : car (m)
myz : key (m)
nèð : nerve (f)
ngàr : bone (m)
nghpédz : lecturer (m)
nghàg : glove (f)
ngìg : second (m)
nglýw : wave (m)
ngšág : epiphany (m)
ngšòl : curve (m)
ngàb : wind (m)
nìd : side (m)
nlál : home (f)
núð : ray (f)
phág : neighbour (m)
pód : flat (f)
póg : college (m)
qhsýz : brain (m)
qhúg : ridge (m)
qhýð : hand (f)
qšìrr : bed (f)
rhàrr : window (m)
rhkàl : snow (m)
rhúg : ceiling (f)
rhwérr : water (m)
rjúdz : forehead (m)
rnór : door (f)
rrárr : sea (f)
rrkýg : land (m)
sèw : cavity (m)
šíw : air (f)
šmúrr : end (m)
šngáz : seat (f)
ššúrr : dashboard (m)
stsìg : tentacle (m)
swàg : eye (m)
šýg : engine (m)
thèg : skin (f)
thmúb : head (m)
thrìb : TV (f)
tràg : police (m)
tsúdz : arm (m)
týdz : blanket (m)
týw : screen (m)
wmúr : time (f)
wóg : pillow (m)
wràr : crystal (m)
Verbs
ábáà : seem
àbó : dissolve
ádé : enter
áðyà : urinate
ádzòú : happen
ágáò : switch
àgó : roll
àgóà : avoid
àgú : writhe
ágý : defecate
àjòà : park
ájà : be
ájýú : walk
álí : need
ázéú : slam
èbí : narrow
ébà : distort
ébú : hold
édzì : squat
égí : arrive
ègóó : stroke
èlá : lick
èlàó : extend
élé : absorb
érà : deny
érá : remain
èróú : fall
èrú : describe
érý : idle
éwá : block
ézú : report
ìbò : drown
ìdé : lean
ìgá : notice
ìjè : injure
íjà : curl
írrí : occupy
ìzáà : puff
ízí : stop
ízó : steer
óðí : become
òdzì : touch
ógè : rise
ògìò : discard
óráú : do
ówýú : start
údè : go
údú : sprawl
úgé : sting
úgà : rest
újáú : hear
újí : look
újý : catch
újýú : lock
àrrá : emerge
úrrà : stare
àwó : crumple
úzàú : open
ýdèú : refuse
ydóò : see
ýdý : make
ygýú : swallow
ýló : leave
yrráó : turn
yrryú : seal
ýwé : lift
ywýó : tire
ýzá : press
ýzò : drive
Prepositions
ál : forward
áts : between
érr : in
íp : to
ìrr : into
òk : out
òl : through
òm : about
óm : up
óš : over
òts : of
àq : with
úr : against
yl : from
ýp : along
yq : down
Conjunctions
cò : as though
lí : but
rì : like
rrý : as, while
šé : or
šy : because
tò : and (coordinating verbs)
wó : and (coordinating nouns etc)
Adjectives
có : more
jì : rear
jó : long
Kí : now
kú : alive
lè : some
lì : clear
ngó : harsh
nì : faint
nà : purple
pí : great
pì : smooth
pà : odd
py : hungry
qé : near
qè : past
qý : white
rí : all
rrà : most
rrí : two
rrò : back
rró : fast
rrú : yellow
šà : almost
ší : full
šì : very
šú : high
sà : one
tà : front
tì : solid
tó : warm
tsé : no
tsò : other
tsý : hundred
wò : obvious
PRONOUNS
èí : who
èú : when
íó : how
óà : he
úú : what
úà : which
ýá : it
yí : she
yò : where