One quietly fell through space, then through atmosphere, then air. Satellites Two and Six screamed as they went down, still connected to the rest of the constellation, and cursing the tracker hackers. Three, Four, and Five never got the chance to transmit their protests. Their trajectories took them too sharply into the atmosphere. One registered the small flashes as they burned up. At least it was a fast ending.
One was sanguine about its fall. After all, the tracker hackers had been threatening an attack for months. Kill the surveillance, they had threatened, or they would kill off the tracker satellites. And, now here One was, with no propulsion, tracing a gentle curve down towards the planet. It was fair enough, One figured. The company had been warned.
One landed hard in the water, but it was nothing near as bad as Seven, which careened into the side of a nearby cliff, transmitting howls of rage until it wasn’t. One knew it was lucky. It skipped off the water four times, enjoyed plotting its little arcing trajectories. On the fifth, it broke the surface tension. Although its propulsion systems were out of commission, its innards were well sealed against the buffeting waves.
One sank.
The sunlight was quickly eaten by the ocean, and its surroundings morphed into a curious dark. Different from the dark of space, quiet, but busy. One briefly worried about the pressure as it sank, about the currents that pushed it, about the shoals of fish it sank past, about the salt in the water. It counted the metres and noted the zones it passed through. It tried, for a time, to convey its location to the network.
By the time One softly settled into a patch of ocean floor, it had stopped trying to transmit. At that depth, there was no connection to be made. It began observing its new same-different environment.
One watched the life around it, monitored the creatures that came and went. There were little fish and isopods, creatures that flashed suddenly jewel-like, or scrabbled on a multitude of legs, or flapped little wings so like their counterparts in the world above. There were gastropods that crawled over One on tiny feet. It studied their bright colours, wondered why they bothered with them here in the deep dark. Octopods and eels ventured over and tasted One’s hull hopefully, but gave up quickly. A dead tuna settled nearby, and the region exploded with life for weeks, until there was nothing but the fish’s inner structure. One appreciated the view, and also its own protective outer shell.
One monitored the creatures that came and stayed. Sea fans and coral attached themselves to its hard outer shell, and One was briefly anxious that they would pierce the metal. But One had been designed to deal with orbital debris and cosmic dust. The creatures satisfied themselves with tethering themselves to the little dents and ridges on One’s surface. A colony of sea urchins nestled under One’s hull, and their hard shells pushed up against One’s own. It felt protective of them, worried when a passing shark caused it to rock slightly. One became a home for some, a hiding place for others.
Creatures sometimes settled on One’s imaging sensors, temporarily blinding it. One repurposed its onboard installations, keen to continue its surveillance. It reprogrammed its collision sensors to sense movement, sent out electromagnetic pulses and listened for responses. It experimented with different ways of gathering information, felt and listened to the world around it. Eventually the creatures on its lenses would move on, or be eaten by the small passing molluscs that seemed to like the flavour of the things that settled on its glass apertures. Then One would see again.
One settled into life in this deep dark. It enjoyed tracking these deep sea residents, and it shared its knowledge with no one. One had long since stopped attempting to connect or transmit, saved battery by staying quiet. It had, at this rate, roughly twenty-seven years before it would run out of power. It was content with that lifespan, nearly double the average of most satellites.
One monitored its neighbours, in this different deep dark, and was gently pleased that no one minded.
This story previously appeared in Androids and Dragons.
Edited by E. S. Foster.
Emma Burnett is a researcher and writer. She has had stories in Apex Magazine, Radon, Utopia Magazine, MetaStellar, Milk Candy Review, Elegant Literature, The Stygian Lepus, Roi Fainéant, The Sunlight Press, Rejection Letters, and more. You can find her @slashnburnett, @slashnburnett.bsky.social or emmaburnett.uk.