Mission Bar
Shelly stared through the mist at the red neon in front of her, not quite ready to concede that this was it. She’d got used to things not making sense down here but this was getting way beyond weird. Signalling to her buddy to follow, she swam through the open outer door and pulled it water-tight behind her before thumping the button with her clenched fist. As with all the other entrances, she could sense more than feel the water being pressured out and stared blankly as three lone droplets slid awkwardly down the now misting glass.
As with all the other entrances, as her legs begun to take the weight they’d been designed to, she heard the muted clunk of the closing valves and her suit exhaled as the pressure normalised again and the remaining moisture dried. Pressing an open palm against the inner door she stepped through into the new room and heard it click lightly behind her. She wiped her boots on the mat.
This was the sixth that they’d been in over the past three days and as she swung off her helmet and ran a gloved hand through her hair, she knew it was going to take much longer to clear than the others. She took a generous breath and marveled again at the engineering that maintained this place after so long; she knew in her head that the pressure locks and anti-decay systems were much more complicated to build and keep powered, but it was the neon signs in each of the buildings that kept her in awe.
And with the power stores as well sealed as they were, it was the neon signs that had been detected – not by the crunching circuitry of her team’s equipment, but by her own eyes.
As Tam made her way through the second door, Shelly ran a finger across one of the shelves, noting how much louder the door sounded without the insulating helmet, but how even at that volume it didn’t disturb the mood of the room. These guys really knew what they had been doing.
“Wow. This isn’t quite what I’d expected from the sign.”
“Me either Tam. We’ve covered four square nauticals and just when you think you’ve got a handle on this place…”
She took Tam’s hand in hers and together they walked wide-eyed through the deserted entrance hall, aware of the grand ceiling probably eighteen feet above them seemingly supported by the shelves lining both sides and seeming to rise stright out of the floors.
Hand in hand they walked through the central aisle past a dozen long tables on each side, many strewn with some of the contents of the shelves, some piled atop each other on the tables, some left open in front of where someone had once been sitting.
“Wow,” said Tam again, breaking the reverent hush that seemed to lie on this place like dust. “You ready?”
Shelly squeezed her hand in affirmation as they approached the only other door and they walked into the main bar.
Directly ahead of them and raised 18 inches above the floor on a podium they recognised the Benches of the Inn and either side of them, arcing away from them like two huge broken horseshoes, the Lower Benches with loose seats behind them.
“Wow,” said Shelly as her thoughts escaped into words “I think it’s my turn to ‘wow’… this is exactly like it is in some places on the surface!”
Tam grinned back at at her and pointed. “So the Pupillage students would have sat there, and the Junior Counsel and QCs over there, right?”
Shelly couldn’t help keep the grin from her face. The first place they’d found in Mission was the mess hall, then the apartment buildings and the two trading stores, and now a Bar. What was this place? And what the hell was it doing at the bottom of the Atlantic?
Simon Smithson
Is it at all strange that I want to be part of this expedition?
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georgelondon
Not to me, but then I know how much you like girls in pressure suits holding hands in massive legal libraries in the deserted ruins of Atlantis. I wrote this just for you.
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Paty Cockrum
LOL…
I dunno… a rather tongue in cheek wink at the certainty with which archeologists of today interpret the structures of the past and their supposed usages…heh… do they really know anything… or can places as well as concepts have different meanings for different societies?
Food for thought…
Paty
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georgelondon
Was there that much cynicism in there? I got a lot of wonderment from these two characters… always interesting to see how much was obviously left to interpretation based on the reader’s mood/prejudices…
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Nicolas Papaconstantinou
Ha! Very clever, sir.
Having recently played Bioshock – all of which is set in a weird art-deco and dilapidated undersea city – I really loved the setting of this. A lot of the images, such as the girls in their suits holding hands, are pretty awesome, too.
Nice work!
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georgelondon
Thanks mate – suspect it crossed the line from ‘clever’ into ‘smart-arse’ a little, but I can live with that!
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georgelondon
I don’t know how much people care about the process for these pieces but I’m finding it an interesting exercise in ‘observing’ myself in the run up to each piece and some of the decisions made, especially as I’m writing most of them in pretty much one go.
With this weeks image, I either wanted to play directly with what we were looking at, or with the word “Mission” but all the inflections of the word seemed to have been used by others this week, and going with the ‘strong sense of place’ discussed elsewhere with regard to the bar/tavern idea also felt like re-covering ground.
And then midweek I realised the alternate (legalese) meaning for ‘Bar’, decided to play with that instead and was mulling over the kind of situation/environment that might warrant the neon – it’s not something generally associated with the legal profession! Then during a fresh look at the image on Saturday I felt all that haze around the neon could be underwater and went from there.
This was another flow-written piece and I wasn’t sure what was going on when I first started typing. The main struggles I think were the section describing the tables piled with books either side of them (saying it without, you know saying it), and the bit with the pressure chamber (I kept trying to get too many descriptions into each sentence). Other than that, after my comments to Rivka last week, I consciously gave names to my characters and explicit genders (I consciously didn’t in a few previous pieces – don’t know whether anybody picked up on that).
Anyway. I’m enjoying watching myself as I write these so thought I’d share and invite comment! I know it might be more pertinent to take this kind of thing to the forums, but I don’t think anybody is really using them at the moment…
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Rivka Jacobs
I was wondering how you came up with the setting. I figured you had to do an end-run around Ian’s Mars location, as I had to, since my first reaction to the picture was to write a story set in a lunar colony in the near future. Choosing an undersea, a deep sea setting and then turning that on it’s head, so to speak, was very inventive and interesting. Well done!
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Rivka Jacobs
I enjoyed this story very much. One of your best, George. I read it several times before anyone commented, and I probably shouldn’t have read the other comments before I commented here.
In any case, my interpretation of the setting was that it could take place in the future, and that the “Atlantis” aspect of it is more, “We” the modern English-speaking nations, we are the Atlanteans. The ice cap is melting, and at some point exploration switches from space, to finding ways for people to live under the ocean.
You then open your story years in the future after that, and we are left to wonder what ever happened to the people who built the underwater towns.
Of course, one could say, the two ladies are scientists or treasure-hunters of the present time, and have stumbled on some secret military project that was abandoned.
I got the impression that the two women in the story are not familiar with the culture that is clearly our culture; they interpret things askew. Thus they are from somewhere/somewhen else. Or alternatively, the familiarity, the similiarity of something ancient and alien to our modern culture is the scary part.
Interesting that you wrote this in a “flow” because technically it holds together nicely. The science fictional aspects are good. The sense of place is excellent. The mysteries are left for the protagonists and reader to ponder.
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