deeper

Deep below the lowest trenches, the deepest points on planet earth, there was silence. The waters were still. The fish were still. Down here, where it was so cold, fish did not swim. Unless they had to. They conserved energy. Down here, where there was so much pressure, they had developed a hardness that was unique to them and nothing else on the planet. Not even diamonds. Millions of tons of saltwater were pressing down on this place. It was still. There was no light. It was so deep that the fish they had lanterns attached to their bodies did not exist, could not exist here. The ones here’s had no eyes. They had very sensitive scales. They could detect movement from miles away. Vibrations. Food. From no activity, there was suddenly a flurry of it. Fish that had been so still, you wouldn’t have seen them, even in the brightest light, began to rise from the ocean floor. All of them rose. Up and up. Farther and farther. Minutes passed. Nothing. An hour after they had all escaped, the ocean floor began to move. There was a shift. Dust began to fall off. Silting through the water. Two hours after that, the ocean floor began to rise. It was so slow that you would not understand what was happening. A whole day passed since the fish had heard the ring vibrations that no one else would have been able to hear, that no other living creature on earth would have heard, not even those that we think have the most sensitive noses. A whole day passed before it became apparent what it was. The megalodon that had for so long been hibernating on the deepest ocean floor had risen. It shook off its silt, a slow motion, thousands of miles of skin moving, up, down, up, down. Is this what ants feel when they see us? Its eyes the size of houses. Its small fins the size of skyscrapers. It tilted its head up, the size of an airplane, and looked upwards, presumably at the surface. Thousands of liters of water went gushing into its mouth as it opened it in a wide yawn. A vortex, around it, a vacuum left by all the water that had left, and none that was coming back. Thousands of miles above it, on the surface, a bubble rose and popped. The only indication of what was coming. Slowly, it began to rise. It was in no rush. To it, hundreds of years was a mere speck in time. The last time it had risen, the dinosaurs had still been around. This time, we were. The dinosaurs, at least, had been much bigger and stronger. Would our tanks and other toys be enough? It rose to the surface. Casually. Taking all the fine in the world. Time was something to control, not something to be controlled by. In its wake, fish that had scrambled away, stood still in the water, frozen in shock.