Things We See Under Water | Prosper C. Ìféányí

Bayelsa, Nigeria. 3060.

      The story you have asked me to tell you does not begin with bravery. It, in fact, begins with our naivety, and then loss. I am Navi, and this is my story as an Ijaw boy. In those days, the creeks of the Delta was our home. When we swam, our bodies waded through the water and sand; our faces whitening under the livid gloom of the sea. We children would hurl bushels of soap to ourselves in the water, and wait till the lather got into our noses, just so we would sneeze. That was before we helped ourselves to pieces of smoked fish on the raft after a long period of fishing and swimming. I used to think water was everything—our fortress, and our saviour, but today, water has become our doom.

      We saw the clouds break into a kraken-esque cast. Suddenly, water began pouring into places you wouldn’t even believe. The water rose to our heads and covered the entire mass of land. No, this was no flood, this wasn’t a cascading outburst, or a storm. This was a new phenomenon we were unaccustomed to. In a bid to save ourselves from the scourge, we hid under rocks, and thankfully, since we were Ijaw, we could swim our way to protection—away from floating cars and houses, because by now, the water had gotten to sky-level.

      Their coming was almost unheralded, the alien invaders of our land, who went by the name Cryonoid. A tribe of cryogenic people, who looked somewhat like half fish, half men. We had never seen anything like them before. Something like a wintry flake kept edging from the sun; but winter wasn’t supposed to happen in Nigeria. Some people said they fell from the sky, others said they came from underneath the earth, accursed creatures forgotten by the gods. Away from the speculations, what we understood from everything going on was that they were water creatures, who could only breathe and swim underwater, and their acqui-dome, which stood like an artificial moon, was responsible for the water all over our lands. Their plan was to inhabit our earth, but the only way they could do this was by thriving. So, they initiated a project called C.B or the Cryogenic Bath, where water would cover the expanse of the earth, up to sky level, to enable them to breathe, while causing us, Ijaw, to die. You may ask how I knew all of this, but it’s pretty easy when you know your mother has been taken by enemy pods and placed in their acqui-dome. That is why I am here. That is why we all are here, to get to the root of this invasion and rescue our families. They think we won’t fight. They think we don’t have the capacity to, but we will try.

*

      “…2-1-4  13-1-14!” Came the voices of the Cryonoid soldiers on their water-perambulators, submerged in the water. From where we hid, we could see them hitting a man and stuffing his mouth with their cryogenic-bugs. These bugs, when ingested, drained the blood of any human, which the Cryonoids in turn, ingested from the bugs as cold gas. This was an endless water cycle, which, for some reason, gave them strength and replenished their energy. After they were done, they tore the man’s limbs with their casers, their laser-shooting casers. This rare technology was carried out through crystal amplification by simulated emission of radiation. In short, it shot ice-crystals.

      “What did they say, Navi?” My cousin Taidos’ voice came from the hollow rock we hid in. The Cryonoids spoke a language which I understood to be codified, because they spoke in numeric codes in place of our regular alphabet. For example, the letter ‘A’ was number ‘1’, so when they said, “1-20-20-1-3-11!” I knew it meant “attack!”

“They said ‘bad man’ before they killed him,” I replied absent-mindedly.

“What shall we do?” Asked Pere, a rather stout boy who had the face of a chameleon.

“We stick to the plan. We capture one of them and steal their perambulator—we can’t swim high up the acqui-dome, we won’t last long, the turbulence and pressure will kill us if we do. That is our only chance,” I said.

      What eluded me wasn’t the thought of going up to the acqui-dome. Some people claimed that they had been there before, and that it was somewhat like a theophanic encounter with the gods, but I don’t believe them. What eluded me was how we were going to catch a water-perambulator, without alerting the other soldiers. The water-perambulators were faster than Teslas and worked with some sort of telepathic wave. Yes, the darned fish-creatures created a device which only they could control with their minds! I had seen them shoot water-bombs, which ravaged our houses, huts, and malls, through the nozzle of the device, but what was most incredible, and what was even more scary was that the device was fueled by their DNAs.

“Let’s go back to meet the others in the camp, Navi,” said Taidos, “my breathing weed is wilting away, slowly.”

      Although we could swim and move from one place to the other in the water, we couldn’t last very long, so my father and some elders put their heads together to create swimming masks from seaweeds. This could only last for approximately two hours, because the frigid nature of the water affected the weed in certain temperature.

“All right,” I said, resigned. “Let’s go.”

As we swam through the flowing seabed, we noticed something, or somebody, prop up from underneath a mass of sea shells.

“Boo!” He said, startling us a bit.

“What do you want Ekpeki?” we asked, as we stifled a laugh amidst our seriousness.

“Yes, what do you want, Fishman?” Added Pere.

“Take that back, now!” He said, pointing directly to Pere, revealing a set of scaly fingers in the clear reflection of light from the acqui-dome.

      We called him “Fishman” because he was considered a discordant and an outcast in our tribe. He was the one who first made the discovery of the “healing shit” as we called it, or “regenerative excreta.” This was the waste passed by the Cryonoids in the sea. Little did we know that this excrement had healing properties, it wasn’t until one day, when Ekpeki saw how one of the floating excrement lodged on the root of a wilting sea-weed, and within seconds, this weed blossomed and grew like it never even withered. Ekpeki, who was limp from an attack by the Cryonoids on his home, said he received some sort of entelechy, and this prompted him to apply the excrement on his broken leg. He was healed instantaneously. He came to the camp, happy and excited, and showed everyone the miracle of this mysterious shit he had discovered. The people in excitement felt they had an edge over the Cryonoids, and a meeting was held, saying that the next morning, each family should reconvene their injured, and sick, to the hollow rock where we hid, just so Ekpeki could apply his enigmatic herb for all to be healed. This miracle was short-lived, however. When Ekpeki awoke the next morning, his leg had turned power-white, like those of the Cryonoids, and he had developed dorsal fins and claw-like legs, just like the enemy. This caused a huge commotion within the tribe and led to his banishment.

“Take it back, I say!” He screamed under his voice, which let out a whaley-sirenic echo. 

“Or what?” Snapped Pere. “You will eat me?” He scoffed.

      Just as Ekpeki tried to charge towards him, something seized him from the water. Claw-like legs, gills, humanoid physique—it was a Cryonoid soldier. Quickly, I and the boys swam as fast as we could to safety, while Ekpeki struggled with the soldier. Little did he know that his sirenic scream aimed at Pere had created a psionic wave pattern which had signaled the nearest Cryonoid soldier into a mating call.

      Ekpeki refused to yield, and the soldier ejected his caser to full thrust and aimed it at him. The crystal blast caught Ekpeki in his leg, and the weight of the heavy ice tugged him deep into the seabed.

      We were about to leave the scene when I remembered that just as much as I hated Ekpeki and his stupid fish face; he was once one of us; we Ijaw folks were one, and I couldn’t leave him to that demise. I charged back to the scene, with Pere and Taidos calling after me. God knows I didn’t have the slightest clue of what I’d do when I got to the scene. There wasn’t really a manual on how to stop a humanoid-fish from maiming your friend. I just swam.

*

“Look! It left its water-perambulator!” Taidos Pointed to a mercurial object floating in clear fluid.

      This was our chance. If we had any clear shot at killing one of the Cryonoids, it had to be with their own weapon, since ours wasn’t nearly as sophisticated as theirs. Swiftly, I swam in the direction of the water-perambulator. All three of us gathered round the shining thing. It had silvery blades carved like talons, and two nozzles propped out like exhaust pipes just beneath its metallic sheet. We saw no engine. No gas pipe. No wires. No chips or screws, just a floorboard, lidded with protoplasmic blood DNAs. This was really advanced technology.

“I am going to try something stupid now,” I said.

The others looked at the disintegrating Ekpeki, and then reverted their gaze to me in a haste.

“What is it?”

      I placed my right hand on the pointy edge of the talon blade and swiped it gently. The cut was bloodletting, and in that pang of painful sensation, I attached my hand to the DNA scan and logged in my blood sample. Automatically granting me access to the device. While the other boys celebrated this win, the Cryonoid soldier discovered the override in his suit’s telepathic database, and quickly swam towards us—me, in particular. Not thinking clearly, the only thing which prodded my mind was to drive the talon blade, which tore my hand into our attacker’s body; and this I did. When we opened our eyes, we saw the silvery mercurial edge of a blade grow out of the body of the Cryonoid soldier. His blood, inky blue, suffused with the water, and we just couldn’t believe our eyes.

      We swam gently, pulling the currents of the water past us as we searched for the remains of Ekpeki in the ice-rubbles. But that was all there was to him; ice-rubbles flung and scattered about in the water.

“Quick, we must leave. It’s only a matter of time before the others notice that one of their comrades is missing,” suggested Pere.

“My weed is withered also. We must go, Navi,” said Taidos as he pulled me by the arm.

                                                                         *

      We were looking at caudal fins, dorsal fins, pectoral fins, pelvic fins, scales, maxilla, opercle, on the body of the dead Cryonoid we had taken with us back to the camp. The elders and my father had asked us to recount the story over and over to them, which we did with a hint of breathtaking drama and an obvious obfuscation of reality.

“Is this thing true?” Asked my father, still bewildered.

“Yes, father.” I said.

“Hmmm… Then we must prepare, because they will come for this one,” he said, pointing to the slab where we had laid the dead Cryonoid.

“Sir, we have discovered something about this specimen brought to us by your son and his friends,” said a group of the elderly scientists, who had critically examined the creature to determine what aided its whole existence.

“What is it?”

“Its eyes. They are limpid, even when there are no traces of life in its cell. This changes all we know about the creature.”

“Continue…” my father urged.

“We thought the water they brought with them was some kind of clear fluid which aided their sense of sight, even at night, whereas the water is just what oxygen is to us. Their eyes are microscopic, and they still work, even when dead. They are just dormant.”

“So, take away water and oxygen, and they are dead?”

“Not exactly. The acqui-dome is what powers them all, their technology, down to their eyes, even their bloodstream; if we can take down the acqui-dome, we can take down a whole lot of them, and even the water.”

“That’s why their cryogenic-bugs suck out blood from us?”

“Yes, the blood is evaporated, and then the gas is supplied to the acqui-dome, they need our blood to survive, and to even do anything. That’s why they attack and take some of us away.”

“That’s why they took my mother!” I bellowed.

“Son, we must calm down if we mean to get to the root cause of this,” said my father, holding me by the shoulder.

“To get our homes back, we Ijaws must work together in peace and unity. I heard what you tried to do for Ekpeki. That is the true spirit of the Ijaw,” my father continued. “Just as the Cryonoids strive to make our home their universe, we must strive and fight back for what is ours, as we now have an edge over them. With your expertise on how these fish-creatures operate, will you spearhead this fight, my boy?”

This sounded like a plan, and I could already map it out in my head. We had everything we wanted which could aid the reconquering of our homeland. With our discovery of how they breathed, and the DNA samples which helped power their perambulators, we stood a chance, and were one step ahead of getting back what was ours. First, we will find out what the talon blades were made of and then we will attempt to replicate the metal and fabricate it for battle. Next, we will channel every resource we can find in making the acqui-dome penetrable; the group of elderly scientists were examining the casers which the invaders possessed and were hoping to make a refined sample that could cut through their dome. Only when all of these have been executed can our victory be guaranteed.

“Yes, sir,” I said, taking a deep breath, while I envisioned the great task ahead as we both stared into the watery horizon.