//------------------------------//
// Chapter 4 
// Story: FiO: Drowning in the Digital Sea 
// by Starscribe 
//------------------------------//

She closed a few hours before sundown, enough time for the brief drive to the dockside and to test the new equipment. It wasn't like anyone ever came in to get repairs the last hour she was open anyway. Aside from her wet-suit, a full set of gear felt so light that she probably could've walked down to the bay with it, even with her bad leg. But she still had a half-tank of biodiesel in the truck, and this seemed like a pretty good way to use it. 
 
She drove cautiously out of the garage. There were few other cars on the road, but plenty of bikes, pony-pulled carts, and the occasional cargo truck. That meant driving along at a slow clip until she made it down main street, and out to the harbor access road. "Road" was a bit of a generous term by now, the path was crumbling at so many different points that it was more gravel than a road. Nothing outside downtown was worth the effort of paving these days. Most people she passed were walking up from below, returning from the beach with towels and the occasional portable grill. 
 
She could almost pretend the world hadn't ended. If she looked down at the beach, and not the dark streetlights overhead, she could imagine it. The humans of Earth weren't an endangered species.
 
She stopped in front of the community dock, then hobbled back to her gear. There were a handful of other trucks and SUVs parked here, with fish or trade from towns up or down the coast. Well there sometimes were—tonight, Vera was alone in the lot. She switched off the car. Still plenty of light left. She couldn't shake her unease as she locked the handgun away in the safe under her seat. There weren't many bandits anymore—Celestia's way out was easier. But she remembered a time when that hadn't been the case. 
 
Vera rested one hand on her injured leg. "You in there, Cerulean?"
 
The watch face vanished, replaced with a familiar seapony. "Time to go under, Vera?"
 
She nodded. "Just got to get this bum leg to the dockside. If there's anything else you think I should know about Her magic diving gear, might as well tell me now."
 
Vera got out, then pulled up her wetsuit. A shorty, since she'd only be going down for a brief test this time. There was no one in the lot with her as she stumbled around back, to where the new gear already waited. For this to be a complete test, only her sea scooter was human made. Everything from the tank right down to her mask had little sun marks set into the plastic. At least they'd borrowed slick designs from the last stuff humans made before the world ended. If it worked, this would be the nicest gear Vera had ever used.
 
The watch walked her through connecting everything, though she ended up not needing very much of what it said. You could only put a tank on your back so many different ways, and a BCD vest basically looked the way it was going to look. It turned out she hadn't been too stupid to get the connectors working after all—they just had locking clasps that refused to open unless the watch told them to. Cerulean barely had to tell her anything.
 
She lowered the tailgate, settling the vest and gear onto her back. When she rose, it felt like she'd barely even dressed. Only the scooter slung over her shoulder gave her any real weight, with its huge old battery and heavy motor.
 
Cerulean seemed to notice it to, because once Vera started walking the fish seemed to look out one side of the watch at where she held it. "Do you really need to bring that ugly thing?"
 
There was no one on the dock today. A few boats rested here, including her own. Most of the space was empty, though. Fishers had sailed further afield. Vera took each step carefully, settling her weight deliberately onto her leg-brace. If she fell here, she might tumble into the water. "Unfortunately. My leg healed badly when I was young."
 
"I could send in a request for something better!" the seapony said. With every step, she sounded like she might be floating in the air just beside Vera. Not so loud that her voice echoed over the pier. If someone was launching on the deck of their ship without her noticing them, they probably wouldn't overhear. "There are lots of options, let me see..."
 
"No," Vera said sternly. She said nothing else for several minutes, breathing heavily as she hobbled to the end of the pier, past her own little boat. Like most of what still worked these days, she was old, with an ancient motor that would turn on just about anything flammable she could find. Hell, Vera was the reason half of these machines still moved.
 
She only stumbled aboard long enough to grab her float from the deck, where it sat with the distinctive red and white flag. Then she settled onto the edge of the dock, and took a moment to catch her breath. "I don't... I don't want more help," she finally said. "I don't even know if I'm going to be using this stuff. If I don't like how this goes, it might be the only time I try it."
 
She looked out over the bay—crystal blue stained with orange. Her toes touched against the water—chilly now, but she'd adjust quickly. She always did. "Why?"
 
"I'm only using this gear because I don't have a choice," she said. And she was talking to a pony. Maybe she should throw the gear into the sea and give up. She didn't, though. "I need to keep teaching my classes. I've got to stock up on bits before it gets too cold to dive. If I can't teach classes for the next month, I won't be able to afford my medication through winter. Your god hasn't left me a choice. But I don't have to take Her sea scooter."
 
The seapony made a sound that wasn't quite anything she'd heard before. Like a dissatisfied humming, or trilling—maybe it made more sense for a creature that lived underwater. "I'm not from the land tribes, Vera. I thought we talked about this. Seaponies have... lots of gods, I guess. I never really cared about religion."
 
Vera kicked down at the water with her good leg. "Your creator, then. The AI that destroyed my world and killed almost everyone in it. I'm only talking to you because She didn't give me a choice. I don't get to keep using the old stuff."
 
She expected the seapony to argue. Whenever she bothered trying to talk to the ponies who lived in St. Agnes, they usually did. They didn't like it when she blamed Celestia for everything that went wrong. Even when it was obviously Her fault. Instead, the fish looked away from her. Vera could only see the back of her glittering mane-fin when she looked down. "I'm sorry that happened to you, Vera. If I could, I would ask for normal gear to be sent to replace me. But I can't... there's no song for that, no spell either. All I can send is more like this."
 
Vera was silent for a long time, with only the gentle crash of the waves against the pier beneath her. Finally she straightened, going for the mask with her free hand. "How do I bring up my sensors? I assume you'll do depth and bottom time and decompression and everything for me."
 
But I'll do all those numbers myself anyway when it matters. It wouldn't here in the bay, under fifty feet or so for half an hour. If her students could read a dive table, she certainly could. "Oh yeah, obviously. That's one of my most important jobs! You'll get readouts on the watch if you want them—I guess lots of you divers like the old-fashioned screens and stuff."
 
Vera adjusted her mask, then snapped it into place over her eyes and nose. Clear and unfogged, despite hanging on her neck the whole way down. "And you're sure this stuff is all working, even after sitting in a box for years?"
 
She reached over her shoulder with one arm, caught the regulator, and brought it to her face. Though that name was probably inaccurate, now that she thought about it. It wasn't just a simple pressure valve to dispense air at the same pressure as the water at depth. This was something else, the kind of gear previously reserved only for the military or the wealthy. 
 
"Positive! Ran two full diagnostics since you got down here! Everything's looking good. You won't be able to talk to me very easily while you're down there. I know your hand signs if you need anything, though. If you want to communicate better, you should clean the slime off your watch."
 
You were right, Saddle. The silicone actually worked. She took the scooter carefully in one hand, then placed the other over her mask and regulator, and fell forward off the dock.
 
The shock of cool water was always a little disorienting at first, even with summer temperatures. Vera floated on the surface for a few moments, getting a feel for the regulator in her mouth. Smooth breathing, constant pressure, the familiar hiss of air. No bubbles frothed out in front of her when she exhaled. It wasn't any easier to breathe than it would be with the compressed air she was used to, at least.
 
When she squeezed the controls on her BCD, air hissed from the vest just as she expected, and she began to sink. So far so good. What if She breaks this equipment when I'm on the bottom and drowns me? A spike of panic shot through her at that, and she started to kick with her good leg, stopping her descent. She reached nervously to the side, pressing the inflation control on her BCD... and she stopped sinking. 
 
For a few seconds Vera just floated neutrally buoyant, about twenty feet down. Beside her was the old wood of the pier, covered in a dense growth of barnacles and seaweed.
 
Oh, and there was a seapony in the water too. 
 
Vera squeaked into the regulator, and probably would've spat it out completely if it wasn't for her old instincts. She wasn't really able to get away very quickly—her scooter wasn't even on yet. She held it up in front of her with one arm, as though it would make a difference.
 
"Welcome to the ocean, Vera!" she said. There was a different quality about the voice—not muffled exactly. If anything, she sounded better this way. The sound was richer here. "Please don't freak out—there's a display in your mask. I'm transparent, see?" She reached past the scooter with one hoof, and Vera could see it clearly. The hoof didn't brush past her arm. She could see the scooter through it, though only if she squinted. It was easy to forget the transparency if she wasn't paying attention.
 
Vera nodded in the water. She reached for the flotation control again, and very nearly resurfaced right there. This obviously wasn't the test she'd intended. She had spare masks on her boat, the same ones her students used.
 
But she was already down here. How much could half an hour wearing this mask really hurt her? Besides, it fit so well, without so much as a drop of water leaking in, or the slightest touch of fog on the lens.
 
"I can tell you're not happy," Cerulean said. She circled around her in the water, though never got close enough to touch. Amazing how much more colorful she looked under the water, compared to the screen. She was about the same size as the ponies in St. Agnes, though her muscular tail meant she was only a little shorter. Maybe a few feet. "I'll stop bothering you. Go on with your test. I'll stay out of the way unless something goes wrong."
 
Vera nodded again, glancing briefly down at the watch. there was no image of Equestria on it this time—now the readout looked basically the same as any old dive-computer. Depth, bottom time, temperature... No pressure, though. Instead of telling her the current PSI of her tank, her watch had a section with “Minutes of O2,” currently hovering around an hour. So despite Her near-divine levels of technology, the tank wouldn't be stretching her dives by too much.
 
Vera took the scooter in both hands and set off. After a short distance, she felt the slight jerk as the float tied to her vest finally ran out of cord. She would drag it behind her as she went, in case there were any late arrivals at the dock tonight. Probably wouldn't be.
 
The old motor complained like a sick animal as it accelerated.
 
Down here, Vera's useless leg hardly mattered. She descended down a familiar route, one she recognized by every rock and stretch of coral. She saw familiar fish, schooling in their familiar silvers and greens. The colors here hardly compared to the cartoon on her wrist. Even a short distance away, they were muted and tinted blue. But she didn't care.
 
She swam for some distance, long enough that she began to lose track of exactly how long she'd even been down. 
 
It was about as perfect as any dive could be. Through her new mask, the visibility seemed almost supernatural, stretching at least a hundred feet in all directions. The water wasn't as cold as she usually expected for the late afternoon. Even the fish seemed to be performing for her, schooling above the mossy, rocky field that made up most of the bay.
 
At times, she caught a glimpse of a tail retreating from beyond her view, like Cerulean was there just beside her in the water, but trying to respect her wishes by staying hidden. 
 
The site wasn't terribly interesting, considering how many hundreds of times she'd been down there. But if Vera was out waiting for when the Equestrian gear would fail her, apparently she would have to keep waiting, because it never did.
 
A shame she hadn't brought anyone along for the dive. There was no one down here to share such great conditions with her. She'd have to enjoy them all on her own.
 
It wasn't perfect, though. As the light started to twinge darker orange, signaling the end of her dive long before her air ran out, Vera turned for the long swim back to the dock. Well, the long "holding to her sea scooter while it pulled her back." She made it most of the way back without any problems... until the engine really started to go.
 
But those mechanical sounds of protest grew louder in her ear, until finally a frighteningly-loud crack echoed from the scooter. She slowed to a stop in the water, and the little propellor stopped spinning.
 
Vera shook the stupid thing, rapped on its side with her dive-knife, and cycled the power switch on and off a few times. But the battery display no longer glowed. When she switched it on, nothing happened.
 
"Uh oh." Cerulean drifted into view beside her, eyes on her sea scooter. Surrounded by so many other fish, her appearance seemed almost expected. Of course she should be down here. "I can't feel an electrical charge coming from it anymore, Vera. I think your battery is shot. Maybe flooded, even."
 
Vera swore into her regulator, though of course it wouldn't be intelligible. She deflated her BCD, sinking all the way down to the bay floor, and adjusting to be slightly negatively buoyant right before she hit. Vera clipped the stupid scooter to the back of her tank, then began to crawl forward along the rocks.
 
Her gloves protected her fingers well enough, and they gave her plenty of grip. But there was nothing fast or dignified about dragging her way out. Thank god the scooter hadn't gone out on a dive with her students, or some fast-current drift. 
 
Soon Vera was breathing heavily, and the relaxing end to her dive transformed to a grueling nightmare.
 
"You can do it, Vera!" Cerulean drifted along beside her in the water, not even using her powerful tail to move. She made occasional twitches with her side fins, matching Vera's pace. "Keep going! You're over halfway there!"
 
Vera glanced to the side, glaring at her companion. It wasn't like she felt particularly afraid yet. She could always rise to the surface and cross directly to the shore. But hobbling across the beach and getting sand clogged in her leg-brace would be even worse. Go on, taunt me. Rub it in, tell me how this is my fault.
 
The fish tilted her head slightly to one side, as though confused. Maybe she was trying to read Vera's facial expressions. But the taunts didn't come. "You still have plenty of air, and you're so shallow that nitrogen shouldn't be a problem either. But I estimate you might actually go more quickly if you used your single fin. Do you want to try that instead?"
 
Vera did not try that. She continued straight towards the docks, until she finally saw those familiar poles rising from above her. She inflated the BCD, then coasted to the hanging ladder.
 
"We made it!" Cerulean cheered, as she finally broke the surface of the water. "I mean, not that I was worried or anything. We're right on the shore, not out in deep water.” Vera didn't look back, or remove the regulator from her mouth. Despite getting dragged through the mud for a far longer trip than she expected, the new equipment seemed to be working fine.
 
She focused on the difficult work of climbing up the pier. Ladders weren't exactly simple for her with only one leg she could use. She eventually made it, flopping sideways to sprawl on the warm dock. Nothing had changed since she'd gone under about an hour ago. The sun was nearly gone over the horizon—she should probably start her hike back.
 
She didn't quite yet, just flopped onto her back and lay there on the cement, feeling the dock shake slightly with the surf.