(Private entry used with permission, recorded two days after final medical evaluation)
I have just been informed that I will not be joining The Survey of the Silent Circle in the field. The committee’s phrasing was “reassignment to land-based support.” What they meant was I failed the motion-tolerance evaluation.
They ran it twice. Both times, I lasted seven minutes before the horizon started pitching in two directions at once. I told them it was the lighting. They told me it was inner ear equilibrium. Barlow called it “a regrettable misalignment between man and medium.”
It feels like being told you can’t go to sea because you blink too often.
I built half the Little Concord’s telemetry panel from spare instrumentation scavenged out of the old dive locker. I calibrated the pressure hull sensors by hand, welded the starboard seal ring myself, and tuned the ballast tanks until the thing could hold neutral buoyancy to within two centimeters. If the Concord has a soul, I wired it.
Now I’m supposed to sit at a desk in Rawley Chapter House, logging transmissions and inventorying biscuits.
I told Klara I’d rather drown than file requisition forms. She reminded me that “the Order values endurance over dramatics.” I reminded her that endurance was difficult when you’re chained to a typewriter. We called it even.
Eleanor stopped by later with a cup of tea and a grin. Said she’d “film something nice for the land crew.” I told her to make sure the camera caught the Concord’s port side — it’s the better weld. She said she’d catch my reflection in the water instead. I didn’t know how to answer that.
Now the others are already packing. I hear Alistar’s coat brushing the hallway every few minutes, like a clock pendulum measuring how long I’ve got to sit here pretending not to mind.
Maybe it’s for the best. Someone has to keep the signals clean and the logs straight. Someone has to make sure the tea shipment doesn’t end up in the fuel locker again. And the truth is, even if they let me aboard, I’d probably be leaning over the rail the whole time, watching my breakfast salute the lake.
So I’ll man the radios. I’ll keep their coordinates crisp, their reports logged, their power budget tight. And when they come back, I’ll be the one standing on the dock, waiting with the recovery sling and a level deck.
If I can’t go down with the Concord, I can at least make sure she comes home right.
— T.A., Rawley Chapter House
