The Foundations of the Sea

"It's my first time here. Where should I start? Could you recommend a few places—including that dental clinic they say they built down below?"

"The bakery on the 3rd Undersea Base has wonderful macarons. If you like sweet things, you'll be fine."

I answered Priya with a vague nod. I had all but cut my ties with sweetness. Cavities never came, but the weight never left, either. Give sugar up and, surprisingly, life does not turn so hard and hideous and sad that you want to abandon it. You only become a person who takes in more of what is bitter. In my case, that was coffee.

"Where's the coffee good?"

"There are two cafés here on the 4th Undersea Base, and they use different beans. I liked Red Coral better—the one that uses Yirgacheffe."

So Red Coral was the name of a café. Or else they ground coral and stirred it into the coffee. Either way, so long as it tasted like coffee.

"Thank you. I'll buy you a cup sometime."

"You should see the beach later, too, and have a look at the aquarium and the cable car on the 2nd Undersea Base. They made the beach while they were building the island, and they did a decent job of it. It's even prettier at night. The 1st and 2nd Undersea Bases open to tourists at the start of next year, so you'd do well to see them before then."

"Thank you. Do you happen to know where I can catch the Central Elevator?"

I was reading the words carved inside the Central Elevator.

What did that mean? Not English, surely. Something about safe operation? Or that the descent took more than twenty minutes? Spanish? Latin? It had to be Latin.

The newest interpreters handled thirty-six languages and every document written in them—a full set, with a unit fitted over the teeth, devices set beside both eardrums, and lenses laid over the eyes. My mother's interpreter was more than ten years old and had to pierce the ear like an earring. It couldn't read text, it managed only ten languages and those only in a limited way, and being an old model it was a glaring red, impossible to miss. I didn't have the money for a new one. Even a single cheap interpreter that covered every language on earth cost as much as a new car.

Once I'd paid my younger sibling's university tuition, there were no choices left. The old units didn't stop at the ear, either. To hold a conversation you had to embed one in a lower tooth or clip it to your lip. Rather than wear the thing on my mouth, I had asked a classmate to set an old interpreter—no bigger than a quarter of a pinky—into my lower tooth. The one at my ear was too large to install in an eardrum and hung there like an earring. I was idly touching it when a voice reached me, and I turned my head.

"He spreads his light about him and covers the foundations of the sea with light."

Fortunately it seemed to be one of the ten languages my interpreter supported. It was translating, after all. My mother had told me not to worry, that the device would work properly. I'd already been reassured when Priya Kumari's conversation came through perfectly, but meeting foreigners one after another still drew me tight. Latin, then.

"......Is that from the Bible?"

I asked, guessing ahead of anything I actually knew. All I remembered were a few verses picked up while following a friend to church for the snacks. Love your neighbor. Cast the stone. That sort of thing. So this was God's light reaching even the deep sea? Wouldn't that kill every creature down there?

"It's from Job. His love illuminates even the bottom of the sea, where there is nothing but darkness."

I wouldn't have minded if some of that great love were poured out on me. ......No. By their reading, perhaps it already had been, and that was why I was here. Swallowing my distrust and my aversion to religion, I offered my hand first.

"I'm Park Moohyun, the dentist who just joined the undersea base."

A hard-boned hand closed around mine and shook it. A white man in a suit looked at me as he spoke.

"Michael Roaker, Chief Undersea Director of engineering. Are you on your way to the clinic?"

"Yes. I was curious what the place I'll be working in looks like—"

I lost the rest of it all at once. The elevator, which had been on the surface, simply dropped into the sea, and I stared, spellbound, at the view through its transparent walls. Only later did I come back to myself enough to look at Michael's face. He spoke as if he understood exactly what I was doing.

"Astonishing, isn't it? Most people act just like that their first time."

"Pardon me. I've hardly even been to an aquarium. This is the first time I've looked straight into the sea."

The farther the transparent car descended, the more the fish changed. The water was nearly the color of the sky, and schools moved through it. Was that a shark? A few of the people riding with me snickered at the sight of me gaping, lost, at the world outside. We're underwater. I'll bet you stood there once with your mouth hanging open, too. Michael smiled at me.

"Give it three months and you'll be sick of this view. I'll see you at the clinic later."

We must have arrived without my noticing; the doors opened. He stepped off at the 2nd Undersea Base and was gone. Most of the others followed him down, and I was left alone in the car. A silver sticker on the wall marked the place: −200 m.

On the way down to the 2nd I had lost all track of time, watching the fish and the green and sky-blue of the water. Then, the farther we sank, the less there was to see. I had started out delighted, thrilled by the sea, and as the elevator kept dropping the expression left my face. Was it supposed to be like this? Outside the car bound for the 3rd Undersea Base, everything was pitch-black. Nothing showed. Only a darkness thick as ink.

As if to comfort passengers who had met that dark all at once, glowing holographic fish clung to the walls in clusters. I looked at the pictures.

I began making a point of not looking at the walls. I had no particular fear of seafood, but alone in this dark I had the feeling I was about to acquire, as a souvenir, a terror of the deep.

Inside, the elevator was bright as noon, and the blackness outside was not about to come in. The dark went on and on and startled me, but I soon settled. The ride dragged without mercy. An ordinary elevator already makes time feel twice as stuck; alone in a black sea, it felt as if time were not moving at all.

A car that could have held a hundred people, and only me inside it. Only after I had wondered, several hundred times, when on earth we would reach the 3rd Undersea Base did a chime finally announce that we had.

The doors opened. With a blaze of light, a woman boarded, hauling in an enormous smell of bread. Black hair, somewhere around 167 centimeters, her arms full of it—she looked at my face.

"Oh! We haven't met. Hello!"

The moment I heard the greeting, I answered just as fast.

"Hello. I'm Park Moohyun. The new dentist."

"Nice to meet you. I'm Yook Geum-yi. I work at the research center. I heard the clinic opens tomorrow?"

"I haven't heard a thing about that."

The only dentist who was supposed to work there had heard nothing? At the absurdity in my voice, Geum-yi giggled.

"Then you'll need to block the appointments, or put the notice back up. Open the undersea-base program on your pad and change the listing. Today's your first time down here, right?"

"Yes. ......Unfortunately, I don't even know where the clinic is yet."

"You don't? That's a problem."

She said it as if it were no problem at all, pulled a piece of bread from the paper bag, and bit into it, then pressed a palm-sized bun into my hand and told me to eat. The bag was packed solid, as if she had swept the whole bakery clean. I stood there holding what I'd been handed before I quite knew it, and when she said it was a red-bean bun I split it in half. The inside was crammed with sweet red bean. The bread was fiercely hot.

"The 3rd Undersea Base was built in the mesopelagic zone, so the light doesn't reach it. Surprised you, didn't it?"

"Yes."

"Anything below two hundred meters is already the deep sea. Everything under the 2nd Undersea Base just keeps being deep sea. You won't see a thing."

To human eyes, that is. Even with a piece of bread in her mouth, Geum-yi's diction never suffered. I was looking at her hair—light, nearly brown—when she urged me on, and I bit into the bun in my hand. Warm bread filled my mouth. It was good. The elevator filled with the smell of it.

"Eat it while it's hot. They just took it out of the oven."

"Thank you."

It had been a very long time since a red-bean bun like this. As if possessed, I finished the whole steaming thing. Utterly sweet, soft, delicious. Sugar after so long, and my brain seemed to scream that this—this was it. Somewhere in the eating, we arrived at the 4th Undersea Base. Still chewing, I covered my mouth with a hand.

"Do we get off here?"

"Yes. This is the 4th Undersea Base. What you just rode is the Central Elevator. It runs the whole station, so for almost everywhere, you'll just take this."

The doors opened, and the moment we stepped off, people piled in as if they had been waiting. Watching them, something occurred to me.

"The wait for the elevator must be long."

"We're three thousand meters down. The ride takes about ten minutes. Press the button, and during that wait you're bound to meet every kind of person there is."

The Central Elevator stood in Jungang-dong, the Central Sector, and unless you were bound for the lodgings, the research center, or anything to do with mining, most of daily life seemed gathered there. We had been walking through it together when Geum-yi said she had to get to the research center, told me the clinic would turn up if I kept right, waved, and was gone.

"I'll see you later."

"I'll be around, Doctor."

They said tomorrow was a clinic day, and the worry began to creep in. Not knowing where the place was could wait. The real question was whether even the basic instruments would be there. They were opening tomorrow? What if I arrived and found nothing at all, and someone handed me a flathead screwdriver and told me to start treating people?