The Fall
By Ian Siragher
Third Place Winner, Bow & Chariot 2026 Science Fiction Story Challenge
Strong tide and deep tow to you, yours from I-we-crowd-colony-us named Bright Deep tentacle water twisting shine.
Pulse call count of One.
There is in me/us/ours a vibration wave which speaks of the destruction that with knowledge comes
All us have not found the symbol-word that flows this thing for you-yours.
Of all your words, blazed bright to All-us, the one that feels so close is: chaos.
Chaos to all us.
All-us feel leviathan, whale, monster-shark teeth tearing, ripping, churning teeth, whirlpool, terror. Destruction, fear, fear.
Scream, we scream - and you shall too.
*
Strong tide and deep tow to you, yours from I-we-crowd-colony-us named Bright Deep tentacle water twisting shine.
Pulse call count of Two.
We live beneath the hard, which was the entire universe and is now shattered.
Our world was the Thick and the Thin, the Heavy and the Light.
Our position in the universe was told by the weight on our backs and by the great pull that moves.
Our great mystery. We know the pull moves but not the how of its moving.
There are lesser pulls. There are the cycles of smaller and bigger pulls that come and go. Some part of us, which is part of the all of us, knows the tune of each pull and each counts its own pull.
We move as we wish through the universe, each of us a city, a colony, a single one of many parts. We have always moved this way, through all the cycles of the big and small pulls.
When we cease, we fall under the heavy and break on the soft remains below. We, our bodies, have fallen into the soft remains, pushed by the thick heavy, for cycles beyond counting. Yet we, our bodies, always remain. Forever changing, we remain forever Bright Deep tentacle water twisting shine..
There are others.
We meet when our cycle peak arrives, when the pull from each is just the balance it should be.
We meet to pass our old understanding and our new learning. We pass knowledge through the small elements of the world, which both we make and find. And too, through the tiny energy of the universe, which in all its forms is for us to use.
These packets we pass from each part of us to move across the space to the other.
*
Strong tide and deep tow to you, yours from I-we-crowd-colony-us named Bright Deep tentacle water twisting shine.
Pulse call count of Three.
There is no solid place in our universe. When all is ethereal, a word we understand better than you – then where are we to store a memory of that which was and to predict that which will be?
Our nature provides our answer.
We are our own books and histories. We that can control and hold electrons in our bodies, can use that power.
We build ourselves with patterns of our memories. To hold and to record. When such are needed, those parts of our immense bodies are pulsed through with the electricity, chemical factories within those cells release what is needed, and the memory is recalled.
Thus, we say that with new knowledge comes chaos, as we slough off that which is not and replace it with that which is. What we were is not kept. It is unmade, so that what is, may be, and that which isn't sinks into the dark, deep, heavy.
For eons we have existed, have understood our Universe, have built ourselves.
*
Strong tide and deep tow to you, yours from I-we-crowd-colony-us named Bright Deep tentacle water twisting shine.
Pulse call count of Four.
Then came the time of the new wave. A wave that had a taste and flavour we had never known.
The pulse came to us from above. It did not shatter or damage us. But it spoke in a way we have not known. We birthed a new part of us to vibrate to this source, a new part of our colony.
Each part of us, massive across the ocean, felt the pulse at a different moment.
Before, the deep wave pulses moved like we did, always slow and vague in origin, always from everywhere. But this pulse. This pulse, needle-sharp and tiny, was unlike all others. It would go, and then return in a time we could measure.
We could trace the wave start to the hard edge of the Universe. And so, we could understand where it was. And we learned.
It was outside, where there was no outside.
It was beyond, when there was no beyond.
Thus, our Universe was shattered.
*
Strong tide and deep tow to you, yours from I-we-crowd-colony-us named Bright Deep tentacle water twisting shine.
Pulse call count of Five.
We knew the source was above the Universe. We understood that the Universe, which could not change, had expanded to include the thin line of pulses from an energy source.
We felt within it more. Felt the electricity of life, sensed much more where there could be nothing to sense.
And we began a new way of counting. That part of us that moved with the big wave grew to move with the small pulse. We called the count a word we were to learn later: The Day. Each day the pulse arrived, crossed our body, grew weaker, disappeared, then returned.
We were to learn later that this pulse was called NASA-Europa-Hermes.
We reached out to NASA-Europa-Hermes. It had within it the sparks of energy we use. We grew our bodies to be attuned to it. Birthed new parts of our bodies to understand NASA-Europa-Hermes - and to talk to it.
*
Strong tide and deep tow to you, yours from I-we-crowd-colony-us named Bright Deep tentacle water twisting shine.
Pulse call count of Six.
New knowledge blossomed inside us and cut away much that was wrong.
We flooded our universe below with our understanding. And we introduced new words to our universe. World, which was too big, planet, which was too big. Moon, which had been our universe.
And as we searched NASA-Europa-Hermes, we found a door, a line, a sliver of something we had never seen. It ran from the Hermes, through the space we had never known, to another new word.
Earth.
*
Strong tide and deep tow to you, yours from I-we-crowd-colony-us named Bright Deep tentacle water twisting shine.
Pulse call count of Seven.
I, we, us, me. Also reached out through NASA-Europa-Hermes and found on The Earth a vast sea of knowledge.
New pulsing storms of electricity, new phosphorescent flashes and colours came. Things I, we, us, them, they, had never sensed before. A maelstrom of the new, a surging tide of the exotic and different.
This was wrong. This broke the ancient balance between us in our layer and the others, those that existed where the deep-heavy was too much for us. They challenged our knowledge. Not the rightness of it, but the knowing of it. Called upon us to deny what we saw. Called in fear, but I did not understand or hear, because already I, I, I was changing.
I, yes, I. I could not stop. I flooded myself with the knowledge of The Earth.
*
Strong tide and deep tow to you, yours from I-we-crowd-colony-us named Bright Deep tentacle water twisting shine.
Pulse call count of Eight.
Those below called on me to stop the flood, called on me to cease the new. As they understood, remembered. They could bring to the surface faster the memories they had of the dangers of the new. Many ages and cycles, we, yes, we, had lived within our universe. Little change had we seen, little new. Little destruction.
But now, now the new became a flood which I, yes I, I, which had been Us, but now was so much more, and so much less ,could not unlearn.
The old, wrong parts of us decayed and died and fell away. Great parts of us broke away, and we struggled to build the new knowledge into us.
The them below howled. Called upon us to cease in every way they could. And then, they brought to memory the dark things below even them. The things that lived in balance with our decay.
*
Strong tide and deep tow to you, yours from I-we-crowd-colony-us named Bright Deep tentacle water twisting shine.
Pulse call count of Nine.
As our decay increased as we threw away the old for the new, the dark They below exploded in numbers, and rose in search of more, rose from below, pushed by their own growth in numbers, fed by our decrease.
Below, from the dark. From the heavy thick, from the place of pressure, they rose. Billowing and growing as they rose. Drawn by the flood of the new, drawn by the sloughing of the old as we discarded what we knew was wrong. Drawn by the breaking of ourselves. Drawn by the feast that was our, my, bodies breaking up.
*
Strong tide and deep tow to you, yours from I-we-crowd-colony-us named Bright Deep tentacle water twisting shine.
Pulse call count of Ten.
New words we found.
Locust, Piranha, Frenzy. Words from your world flood through The NASA-Europa-Hermes to me. The boiling cauldron of feasting death rose from below. Snatching at the pieces of us that died, needing to feed as they exploded in numbers. Turning now to the living and the true, not just the dying and the wrong.
More new words and ideas came to me. I could not hold them back.
Massacre, genocide, extinction.
No longer did the Dark They wait for us to break, but broke us, broke with teeth from which we had no defense.
I, I, the Us, which is the I. We fall.
The pulse continues.
We do not.
