Hey, Suu

[The Good Reverend Roger]

Ever hear about those subs that get sunk, or just dive too deep?  They reach "crush depth" and BAM!  They flatten like eggshells, pretty much instantaneously.  But right before you get to that depth, the rivets pop out of the walls like bullets.  Ping ping ping.  Fact.  Subs that have recovered from just above crush depths have reported casualties, people actually shot with rivets.

Sometimes crush depth is measured in feet, sometimes in dollars, sometimes in insane levels of stress and weirdness that just keep getting worse.  Sometimes you run in circles that just keep getting smaller, until one day you just disappear.  How much can you take, Suu, before your love will crack?  No, I'm not screaming, that's just a cat being eaten by a coyote on the other side of the fence.  A human throat couldn't make that noise.  At least not for any real length of time.  They'd come by and shoot you full of tranquilizers before you kept that up very long.  Preferably really strong tranquilizers, ones that would stop the whispering that manages to get past the pills.

Then sometimes you write "psycho letters" on PD, so that you can pretend it's all just a joke.  Ho ho!  You can kid about how everything is getting all disconnected and how even the peyote does nothing anymore.  Ha ha!  It's all just a joke.  My neighbors aren't turning their lights on, that's just the moon reflecting on the mountains.  I don't really sit naked in my back yard with a laptop and a gun to keep the bastards away.  That would just be fucking crazy, and we all know that we're the ones with our heads screwed on nice and tight.

See, I'm really the main character, I'm not a very small guppy in a great big fucking ocean, and those huge shadows moving around below me are really just tricks of the current, you know, trails of silt that just look like really big things with fins and bony heads.  And teeth.  Big, fucking teeth in multiple rows, with bits of flesh lodged in between them.  There's nothing like that down there, somewhere right around crush depth.  It's just smooth sailing, if you can ignore that weird keening noise. 

No, everything is fine here in Tucson.  I'm keeping it together.  But it's cold, and I should probably put some clothes on.

TGRR,
Ping ping ping.

[Richter]

It's the lucky ones who have a crush depth.  They can just let their sanity fold up like a beer can against the head of a fraternity bro and get carted off to comfy medical care, a psych ward and assistance of the state and their family.  Help and "reasonable accommodation" will spill forth and maybe people will be a bit more mindful of you in future.  I mean, now they know you aren't some kind of limitless tank, a bottomless hole for the shit they don't want to have to do.  Some of these reptiles need to realize that there are humans sprinkled into the world here and there.

Get deeper, and deeper, like a sperm whale with a death wish.  My bones groan and my head swims, but somehow I know I won't be ALLOWED to cave.  My brain will stretch thin as spaghetti, squash flat as a pancake, or condense to cold berserk singularity, but it won't fail.  That beast in the back of my brain, many taloned hand around the dead man switch won't let go.  It would be too EASY on me.  So I stay functional.  I get MORE functional.   

Like that whale, some of need to know when too much weird is too much.  We'll keep holding our hand in the box to see if we CAN, and no poison needle will dissuade us.  We'll warp ourselves into sharks if we don't come up for air.

[Eater of Clowns]

Those rivets aren't failing, either, nor did the manufacturer fail by installing them.  Those little studs of strength don't betray, they assist in making the inevitable that much less horrible than finding what waits in the the deep.  Rosie the Riveter is a mercy killer and even if she saves you in more than the one way it's still a damn funny gag.  Put her visage to motion and her famed determination cracks into a knowing, sly smirk like someone trying, oh trying hard not to laugh when they know it's not appropriate but it's so funny and why don't they get it?  She'll take off the bandanna to let wild hair flow freely and unroll her sleeves to reveal the trick of the golden apple hidden just behind that clenched bicep.

We have an odd fascination with those dark places in the ocean, we go there to escape and we go there to understand and, Rosie help us, we go there just because we can and we want to know what it's like.  After all we've got this wondrous shell around us, all that support and knowledge, research and evolution, the rest of the mighty and fearless along for the ride.  What we don't share as a crew is a subtle panicky voice asking what the hell we're doing in a submarine why are we diving and why are we called sailors aren't ships supposed to stay afloat isn't that what they're all about after all the deep ends at some point but the horizon just keeps going plus, y'know, there's sunshine.

I'm not the crazy one.  The poor saps on level seas are scared by storms and waves that I welcome as points of rest, respite from stirring unknowns or, worse, endless silence and darkness.  We whisper to respect that quiet, or maybe because we know its reverberation could rattle the instruments loose straining from endless waters all around, or maybe we're afraid something will hear us.  Our brightest lights are dimmed by the encompassing, I now hesitate to call it water, this midnight ichor bears no resemblance to loving rains.  I'm not the crazy one, here diving deeper in terrified, hysterical glee.

I'm one of the lucky ones.  I'm at the controls.

[Suu]

I hit crush depth the other day and my warning alarms didn't go off.

Let me pull myself back to the surface and I'll get back to you.

[Suu]

Our posts are really a shadow of what we want to be, rather than what we are.

Sure, some of us interact in real life, but are we all really in on our own dirty little secrets? Of course not.

Is posting our way to surface? To bring ourselves to a safer level before the rivets pop? To spill even a fraction of fiction at an feeble fling to make ourselves feel fulfilled? However, the darkness of the depths defy even our more desperate of desires.  We want to see what's down there, but we don't, because we still fear the unknown and the consequences that could be waiting for us if we push ourselves to the breach. The quiet ocean is a place we can retreat to, but it's only a matter of time until the rivets finally do pop. Right?

But you'll only know if you dare yourself to do so.

[rong]

[The Good Reverend Roger]

But you'll only know if you dare yourself to do so.

Oh, I dare.  The pills aren't to make me feel better, they're to make me functional at these depths, much as divers switch over to a helium/hydrogen mix at very great depths.  It keeps the screams locked up in their pouch, and allows me to keep my terrible secret for one more horrible day.

I mean, the alternative is sitting in a meeting and seeing the little holes form in my skin, with the little insectile legs poking out and wiggling around.  Do you suppose my coworkers are prepared for that?  No, they're all crazy.  They haven't learned to adjust, yet.

But fuck it, Suu, you're right.  Let's set the diving planes at full incline and see just how fast and how deep this bastard will go.  It's the only way to test the system, and we are nothing if not professional.  We'll just have to wear kevlar vests to keep those damn rivets from gunning us down like latter day Johnny Ringos.

Also, we'll need to protect ourselves from the rest of the crew.  Nitrogen narcosis is a funny thing, and makes otherwise normal adults lose their shit completely...So we must be prepared when they all start coming unglued.  They aren't like us, Suu...they don't know the face of degeneracy.  They aren't prepared for the awful things that you find at crush depth, the huge fucking beasties that live down there and eat everything that gets near them, and digest even the bones, shitting out nothing more than a thin gruel, as you and I would after a rum binge.

But we are prepared, aren't we?

Call me Ishmael.  My boss is crazy, and I'm in for the ride.

[.]

[Suu]

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

God, fantastic!

[.]