It bothers me, nights when I can't shake dreams out of my head. They make me feel like I should be doing something better. Like my choices were the wrong ones. It's a familiar sense of judgment. I don't care for it. If anyone can talk me down tonight, it won't be me. ...But that's a cute thing to say, right? It cuts a piece of hope into my story. It's like I'll find something down there that finally twists my perspective in a meaningful direction. Like, finally, deep down in it, I'll find the secret truth that makes it all worth it. There's never been a point to it. The ocean doesn't exist for a reason. It's our fault we ruin our lives in it. ...I'm dizzy down here. These damn walls. Vaulted in every direction, wrapping around you like a big intestine. You can't orient yourself. The curve of the machine is tight - they have ballasts, water tanks, thousand-pound manifolds, and failsafe equipment they need to cram behind anything that looks like a wall. So the space suffocates you. It cannot grant you any space to your left and right as it curves to pinch itself shut, so it instead grants you only forward and only back. You shuffle along like a point on a line. I'm a tall thing. Older classes of boat didn't afford me any space to stretch. I guess I might be projecting some of its hells onto this girl. She's kind of cushy. SERA doesn't make these things for just any military grant. Hell, I don't even know why they make them. Nobody did. They set out a new, scarce fleet at random. ...She always reminds me I'm lucky to be stuck with her. I love her. Deeply, I love her.