The Mountain in the Sea

“Several years ago,” the modulated, shifting voice began, “you volunteered to have your neural connectome mapped and uploaded.” “Right, yeah. DIANIMA project. Back when they were renting a big lab here at the institute.

I may not know the word I am speaking, but that word is not the message. The message is: “We hear you. We read you.” The message is connection.

We give words only to the things that matter to us as a society. The things that make no difference to us are erased from our world by never becoming a part of language in the first place. In this way, each language organizes the world into a pattern. Each language decides what has meaning—and what does not. As native speakers, we are born inside t

Now moons decline and rise, Dead metaphors that looked alive. And you about to die Out past the water-clock of tides Naming and renaming your desires. You rode in wind And scarred the cheek Like the edge of an autumn leaf. I put you in your hollow ship With wine and bread to drift The wine-dark sea. You put me In my hollow ship. A memorized part of

Across its surface flowed a syntax of shapes—a steady sequence of silhouettes—ringed, scrolled, involuted, whorled. The figures danced on the octopus’s skin. The place the two octopuses had chosen was bathed in light by a beam-angle from the penetrated hull, and the patterns across the larger one’s pale skin reminded Ha of the articulated cut-out f

You have seen, though, the many stray cats and dogs in our city.” “I have.” “And wondered about them?” “I suppose.” “They are old Istanbulites. Some of the oldest, and caring for them has been a tradition for longer than anyone can remember. And not only these animals: The Ottomans established foundations which fed street dogs and wolves in the mou

Ancient, this shape-song. In it, rhythm of tide, of moon-ripple played out on night water. Of buoy-clang near the beach and shore of man. Of crab-scuttle and claw-clack. Of fish-dart and propeller-chug. Of whale-song in the wave. Rhythm of the struggle in the jaw of the shark, the loss of limb and spray of ink as the hero battles back against death

But what could be more illusory than the world we see? After all, in the darkness inside our skulls, nothing reaches us. There is no light, no sound—nothing. The brain dwells there alone, in a blackness as total as any cave’s, receiving only translations from outside, fed to it through its sensory apparatus. —Dr. Arnkatla Mínervudóttir-Chan, Buildi

She waved her gloved hand and a submersible appeared in the tank. It was smaller than the other two, no larger than a coconut, ovoid and dull, its surface an array of what looked like black eyes and larger depressions. “Not just invisible—or nearly so—but also as silent as I can get it. Its propellers oscillate randomly through a series of imitativ