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Paisley Paver had never truly dived before. Oh yes, she'd swam in the shallows of the ocean when she was brought down to the beach as a young child, but that hardly counted. And now, while she certainly had the resources to do such things, she was simply too busy- and never really enjoyed such frivolities anyway.
She'd tried to convince Zach that diving into the sea themselves just to lay pavement was unnecessary - she could control her paving machines remotely with ease - but he'd insisted, and so she'd had to push back the rest of her schedule an entire day to purchase a diving suit because apparently Zach hadn't thought to bring an extra even though he knew she didn't own any.
Why couldn't he have just gone down by himself to scout the ocean for animals he wanted to use?
"And that big fishy snake-thing will be the perfect power source for my latest invention!"
Right, because he loved the sound of his own voice too much, and his own robots (no, she would not inflate his already planet-sized ego further by calling them Zachbots, thank you very much) were apparently not a suitable enough audience for his tastes.
"That's called an eel, Zach." If you want to sound like a genius inventor, at least try to act like you know what things are called.
"We don't care about animals here, remember?"
"I don't, and yet I still know that. Correctness of language is a virtue."
"Whatever! Anyway..."
They had been swimming out in a rather shallow area, where the seafloor was still well-illuminated. It was almost barren, the expanse of plain sand broken up by lonely tufts of what looked like some kind of underwater grass. Only a few feet to their right, the gently-sloping floor suddenly plunged down into the depths as if the rest of it had just broken off and sunk into the endless blue. Beyond its edge, the only thing to see was just miles and miles of water, which darkened into a deep, bluish-black void as one peered downward.
Her stomach turned a little as she gazed down into the abyss. The childish part of her brain that still feared monsters wondered if something was staring back.
Her radio crackled. "Paisley! Keep up!"
Paisley rolled her eyes and lazily kicked her feet, glad that her slightly-oversized flippers let her propel herself through the water with only the slightest exertion of effort.
Zach was floating next to a wall of rock that extended all the way out to the edge of the cliff, glaring at her.
"Be happy I didn't leave you behind!"
"How very generous of you," she deadpanned. "I'll have to nominate you for the Nobel Peace Prize later."
Zach rolled his eyes and swam around the edge of the rock wall. She followed, careful not to let her gaze fall to the seemingly bottomless abyss below her feet, and turned around the corner of the rock wall while internally cursing her life choi-
What could only be described as an underwater city burst upon her sight. Structures in every color imaginable rose and twisted into fantastic shapes, forming towers, bridges, arches, fans, roofs seemingly supported on nothing. On every side there was something to feast the eye on- branching forms like stone carved by the hands of a master, coral winding here and there in seemingly random shapes that yet formed passages and chambers like the ancient catacombs beneath the streets of Paris, or stretching up into high ramparts like the walls of a mighty fortress.
Weaving through it all were fish of all shapes, sizes, and colors. Some darted from place to place, while others remained hidden, staring out from gaps in the coral, as if gazing out of the openings of a battlement. Still others rested on their bellies or floated an inch or two above the coral or other solid surface, poised like statues of guardian monsters before the entrance of some ancient palace or temple.
She'd traveled all around the world, visited cities with centuries of history behind them, both in her childhood and as part of her business trips. She was normally unmoved by pomp and grandeur and long-dead glories - she did hold some interest in the places she'd traveled to, but that was a momentary, casual sort of curiosity. Such feelings had been far stronger in her youth, but after so many years of going around the world and seeing city after city after city, the wonder had largely faded away.
This felt like being plunged into a whole new world. This felt fresh, new, in a way that she couldn't quite name.
Paisley didn't notice how far she'd drifted away from Zach until her radio crackled again.
"Paisley! Where are you?!"
Her temper flared before she could smother it. "Leave me alone."
She ignored the childish huff and grumbling from Zach and went on, finding a deep cave formed by the coral and, after taking a few fortifying breaths, began her descent.
The tunnel of coral had some open gaps and seams in its walls, allowing enough light in to let her navigate. The sight reminded her of subway tunnels, only more colorful, and the "trains" could move in any direction.
Eventually the cave opened out into what felt like the underwater equivalent of a street, with two high walls of coral boxing her in. Schools of fish swam back and forth above her, close but never touching, like cars driving in perfect sync. Several larger creatures resting on the higher levels stared out across the "street", like nobles surveying their domain.
A shadow fell over her, and she looked up to see a massive ray glide over her, flapping its wing-like fins like some fantastical blend of both bird and aircraft. As she stared at the almost unreal creature, she accidentally drifted too close to one of the walls, and out of the corner of her eye, she could have sworn that she saw some of the coral move, but when she turned back to get a better look, that chunk of coral was already gone.
The "street" gradually widened into a larger clearing, flooding her vision with yet another riot of color and otherworldly forms and figures. Plumes of tentacles rippled in the current, while striped fish darted in and out from between them. An eel floated through the winding coral, not quite seeming to touch anything, like some ethereal wraith.
On the ground lay a mass of shells and rocks clumped together in a roughly spherical shape.
That... can't be normal, can it?
Paisley slowly drifted down towards the ball of shell and rock. As she approached, it almost looked like the ball was expanding and contracting ever so slightly.
What is this thing?
She descended until she was almost flat on her belly, floating perhaps an inch or two above the sand. Suddenly the ball collapsed and an octopus darted out from it, flinging off the debris and shooting away like an alien jet.
It felt like having cold water splashed in her face. Octopi can do that?
She pushed herself upright, sitting on the sand, and just stared up and around at the unearthly city around her. Every time she thought she'd seen every little thing this place had to offer, something new burst out from nowhere, throwing her off balance once again.
How long she sat there, she didn't know, but her reverie was interrupted with-
"Paisley? What are you doing down here?"
She jumped, almost launching herself off the sandy floor, and whirled around to see a man in a black-and-green wetsuit with a full-face diving mask hovering in the water above and behind her.
The question was out of her mouth before she could even consider propriety, her hands gesturing to the coral rising all about them. "Who built all this?"
Chris Kratt's eyebrows rose so high that they almost disappeared into his hair, but after a few seconds of blinking like a confused puppy, a wide grin spread across his face. "Tiny little animals called coral polyps!"
"What? "
"Here, I'll show you!"
He guided her over to a wide, flat projection of coral that was well-exposed to the sunlight streaming down through the water and tilted himself down until his face was almost up against its surface. She grimaced slightly, but bent down to look.
The surface of the coral was pitted with countless tiny holes. Paisley squinted, her eyes struggling to focus (curse the fact that she couldn't wear her glasses underneath the diving mask she'd bought).
Chris laughed and started tapping a few buttons on a device he wore on the back of his wrist. "Hold on, gimme a minute..."
After a few seconds, he pulled the device off his wrist and held it out for her to see. "Here, use this."
She took it, and immediately felt like she'd been dunked in cold water again. The screen displayed what looked like a tiny cluster of tentacles extending and retracting from one of the tiny holes in the coral. Tilting the device to and fro showed identical creatures poking out of every single hole in sight.
"They look a lot like little aliens, don't they?"
Hands shaking, she gave the device back to Chris. "How do those tiny things build..." she gestured at the underwater city around them again, still at a loss for words, "-all of this? "
"By taking carbonate from the water and combining it with calcium ions to create a form of calcium carbonate called aragonite. It can take thousands of years for a reef to fully form, with new corals building themselves on top of the skeletons of old ones. Usually, only the top layer of coral you see in a reef is actually alive. On top of building entire ecosystems, they purify water by filtering out pollutants, host algae that take in carbon dioxide and release the oxygen we breathe, and maintain the coastlines we live on by reducing erosion and protecting us from storms. Coral reefs are one of the cornerstones of a healthy Earth, one that we can continue to live on."
Paisley's head was spinning under the weight of all this new information. If everything he said was true...
She was the CEO of a company, so profit was indeed a guiding factor in her professional decisions. However, every resource she invested, every project she put forward, every step she took in her professional life, was at its core meant to serve the needs of both today and tomorrow. In her eyes, the people of today owed it to the people of the future to leave the world better than they had found it.
To work and to serve, for now and forever. That was the motto of her company, and of her life. And now...
She knew well enough from history that good causes had been twisted and used as a cover to serve selfish, even destructive, ends, and that many millions had been taken in by lies like that and wreaked havoc upon the world in pursuit of a better world, only to achieve exactly the opposite. In her youth, she had taken it upon herself to investigate the causes as to why and how such things could occur, with the resolve to never be so foolish as to walk down the same path.
Half-remembered sayings about black pots and kettles and roads to hell swirled like fog in the back of her mind as her head broke through the surface of the water. She yanked her diving mask off, and the first gasp of air felt like a breath of new life. In a daze, she hardly noticed what direction she was swimming in until she heard Chris call out behind her.
"Paisley! The shore's this way!" He gestured in the exact opposite direction that she'd just been going.
She stumbled onto land in a daze, hardly noticing the fact that she was still wearing her diving flippers until she felt herself accidentally step on the edge of one and she began to totter forward-
"Paisley!"
Someone grabbed her arm, barely stopping her from landing face-first in the sand. Rex pulled her upright.
"Boss, you okay? You're completely out of it. Did something hap-"
"Get back to the ship. Be on standby. Make sure that everything's running smoothly."
"Uh, bo-?"
"Clear out my schedule and cancel all my appointments for today."
"Boss, wait! What's all this for?"
"I need time to think."
"Whoa, whoa, whoa, hold the phone ." Rex suddenly grabbed her by the shoulders and turned her to face him. "What's going on? This isn't normal for you."
Paisley drew herself up to her full (admittedly unimpressive) height. "I told you, I need time-"
"Paisley!"
She flinched, and Rex's words came tumbling out like poured cement. "What? Brought? This? On? You're not like this, ever! I've known you for years, and you know as well as I do that no matter how much I nag you, you never even consider taking time off work for so much as half a day. You care a lot about your schedules- too much, actually. And now you're just gonna throw away a whole day's worth of stuff for... for what? "
Paisley massaged the bridge of her nose. "Look, Rex, I..." she sighed. "I can't tell you right now. I have a lot on my mind, and I really need to process it. Just... trust me on this, alright?"
Rex looked at her for a while, before taking a deep breath and holding up his hands. "Fine, I'll trust you, but you better tell me eventually, okay? If this gets you in a slump again, I swear I'm gonna drag you out of it myself."
Alright, that did pick up her mood a little. "Kicking and screaming if you have to?"
Rex nodded with a slightly smug grin. "Kicking and screaming if I have to."
Paisley rolled her eyes, suppressing a fond half-smile. "Alright, let's get home."
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Paisley didn't know how long she'd forced herself to stay awake after that. All she knew was that with every step she took in her research, it felt like another weight was being dropped on her chest, until she finally couldn't breathe anymore.
Is this what was meant by staring into the abyss and seeing it stare back?
She was staring at the screen of her computer, at the document consisting of the dozens upon dozens of pages of notes she'd taken, while the first rays of dawn were beginning to peek out from the horizon. With a shaky breath, she raised a cup of pitch-black coffee to her lips, downed half of it in one gulp, and made a copy of her notes in order to begin creating a condensed, annotated version for Rex.
Of course, he didn't turn around immediately. His knee-jerk reaction after reading the first half-sentence of what she ended up sending him was to send a caps-locked text message demanding to know who she was and what she did to the real Paisley Paver. However, she did manage to get him to calm down, and he ended up asking to go over the notes in person with her.
His tanned skin slowly took on more and more of an ashy undertone as he read, and he started looking over at her unabridged version of the notes, cross-referencing every single source and then some.
Her heart twisted a little as she watched him grapple with the full realization of what they'd been doing, but it was the best thing she could have done. He - no, everyone - deserved to know the truth, no matter how painful it was.
Rex collapsed back into his seat, running his hands through his hair, shaking. His eyes were wide open, yet staring at nothing. His lips pressed together, as if he was trying to suppress the urge to throw up.
Maybe dropping everything on him at once wasn't a great idea... "Sorry about all th-"
"I-It's f-fine." His lips curved up into something that was almost a smile, but it was too shaky, too forced. "I-I needed to know anyway..."
After a bit of hesitation, she settled her hand on his shoulder as Rex continued to stare off into the distance, still trembling.
It was a long while before he spoke again. "What are we going to do now?" His voice was fainter, weaker than it had ever been before. "Th-The company... we've been building it one way this whole time... and now-"
Her jaw tightened. "We'll find a way. We've always found a way."
Changing the company would be a long, hard, uphill road. Habits clung to for years were hard to let go of, and the fear of profits falling as a result put countless roadblocks in her path and earned her many enemies. There were times she did consider giving up.
But Paisley was never one to run from a challenge. Neither was Rex, for that matter.
And they would stand together, every step of the way.
Months later, Rex found Paisley dragging him over to the very same spot Zach had nagged her into going diving with him.
Rex checked over all of his diving equipment again, before looking over at her. "Uh, Pais, what's this for?"
"I wanted to show you something."
Without another word, she pulled herself up and over the railing of the ship, plunging feet-first into the ocean. Rex peered over the edge, biting his lip, before hauling himself over and letting himself fall into the water.
His muscles locked up at the shock of suddenly being submerged in cold water. It took him a few seconds to remind himself to breathe.
His radio crackled. "Rex? Doing okay?"
Rex nodded. "Yeah, yeah, don't worry about-"
His gaze latched onto the sight below them, and the rest of his words died in his throat.
Beneath his feet was a kaleidoscope of movement and color. Coral, like vibrant, living skyscrapers, stretched upwards towards them, growing and twisting into fantastic, impossible shapes. Small and medium-sized fish (and many other aquatic animals he couldn't name) darted back and forth, like pedestrians or cars rushing to and fro on their endless routes. Larger creatures floated coolly over the almost chaotic rush of life, while others rested in dark crevices or small caves, or on high ledges, staring down at the hustle and bustle below, as if they felt it was beneath them.
Without another thought, Rex curled in on himself, pivoting forward, and kicked his feet, propelling him down towards the natural city beneath the waves.