The Green Ocean

When I got here, the sky was sometimes black and sometimes white, but the sun never rose. It does now, but what it does next is different every time. Once, it rose when the light started and started following a straight line across the sky, the way it does in the real world, but before it was halfway up, it slipped and fell off the side of its arc, and the sky was empty for the rest of the day. Sometimes the sun barely wobbles over the horizon; sometimes it clings to it like a bubble. Sometimes it comes up at night and burns a hole in the black sky.

The ground is covered in green water that comes up to the bottom hem of my jeans, no matter how far I walk. I took off my shoes and it feels like I’m standing on concrete, but when I look down at night, I can see what looks like stars. Static buzzes across the backs of my eyes when I try to look straight at the ground. It’s easier to look at the water, which is as smooth as glass except for the ripples spreading out from me.

Sometimes I wonder how old I am now. I’ve been conscious since I got here, so mentally at least, I’m aging fifty percent faster than I would have in the real world. When I touch my face, it feels different than it used to, but I can’t see my reflection in the water and there isn’t anyone around to ask. No one might ever see my new face.

It’s late in the day. I stretch. My shoes, hanging over my shoulders, slide under my arms. The sun is doing slow laps around the top of the sky. It probably won’t set until after nightfall. 

I watch it spin. Eventually, when I turn around, something is different about a notch of water on the horizon. 

I stop and blink. If it’s an optical illusion, it’s the first time I’ve seen one here. I slosh over to it. The water splashes up higher than it usually does when I’m walking around, and I stop to roll up my jeans. My shoes knock against my chest.

The reflection of a building has appeared on the surface of the water. It’s a concrete block punctured with three rows of identical rectangular windows. From this angle, I can see straight through the building and out through the windows on the other side. It’s the first gray thing I’ve seen since I got here.

I walk around it. Reflections appear of the other sides of the building. The sides are shorter than the front and back; everything else is the same all the way around. When I’m back to the front, I walk into the reflection and step into the empty sunlight where the building should be.

The daylight blinks out. The feel of the water around my ankles and the concrete under it disappears. All I can see is the star-studded black of the ocean floor, even if I look down at myself. The back of my skull stings. 

I turn around, or I think I do, but I can’t feel my clothes or the air moving against my skin. I can’t hear my own breathing, or the blood in my ears. I’ve never heard silence like this. I turn back around and keep walking, to see if I’ll come out the other side of where the building should be, but for a second I’m afraid there’s no way out of here.

It doesn’t last. Light sears my eyes, and I’m standing in the water again, facing the sun. I can see myself, and I can hear that I’m breathing hard. I look up and close my eyes. Orange fuzzes across the backs of my eyelids.

When I open my eyes, the reflection under me is white. It isn’t the sky shining through the building’s windows, and it isn’t me — I still don’t get a reflection, and I’m not wearing white anyway. It’s a cloth banner stretched across the wall, hanging limp in the motionless air. I stand on the side of the reflection where the letters are only backwards and not also upside down and wait for the ripples in the surface of the water to die away. The words waver into focus.

Welcome to Ararat!