Kantai Collection : Ballad of USS Congress

Ep. 2

With the return of the shipyard workers from their holiday rest and resuming of their labor, I came to realize that I could oddly feel their work on the ship, like the feeling after a tough workout at the gym, soreness in the fiber of my being and I...knew where they all where and what they were doing. The knowledge was just there in my mind. Like a sixth sense. Something instinctual. This led me down a chain of logic. I am bound to this ship by an invisible force that won't let me leave. I am now clearly female and ships are mostly always referred to as she. I am aware of everything happening onboard. The only conclusion that I could come to after several hours of reviewing all the facts over and over again was that I was Congress's soul... spirit...or something like that. I was a ghost in the machine. A chuckle-inducing reference for myself to get as not one person in the year 1942 would get it. Not that I was aware that there was anyone I could tell it to for them to not understand it in the first place. I would learn not much later that my options were not entirely nil.

My first interaction with someone would come on a windy and rainy day in late of september when I observed a woman sitting on top of the bridge of a big battleship that opposite my slipway, her feet dangling over the front edge which was certainly odd as she wasn't dressed for the rainy weather that currently enveloping New York, neither was I in truth of fact. It seemed that in this new state I was impervious to the weather. As I looked at her there was a feeling at the back of my mind as I looked at her that we were the same, kin of a sort. Not entirely expecting a response, I waved at her. When she waved back there was a deep sense of relief as even though it had been quick and in passing I now knew that I was not condemned to be unnoticed and unheard for the rest of my existence.

On the slipway next to mine in the bustling New York Navy Yard was another incomplete hull covered in scaffolding, swarmed with yard workers going about the vast myriad of tasks required to construct a capital ship. The history nerd part of my mind had slowly been reemerging as my existential terror ran out of juice as the new realities of the world settled in and I started to really observe the work going on around me and it was amazing the work that was being done here at the New York Navy Yard. This was infinitely better than any internet research deep dive, better than visiting an archive and looking at pictures or written firsthand accounts. This was seeing it firsthand for yourself. Living a piece of history.

So I closely watched the construction of this ship for nearly a year when one day, after making my daily circuit around my hull to see how the work was going, I noticed her. A woman in absurd nautical attire similar to mine. This brought the realization she must be like me and various unseen women I had seen on the ships that had passed by the yard. She however was the nearest to me so I could attempt something more than just waving.

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It was nearly midnight at the New York Navy Yard and the normally near-deafening noise of the yard was at its minimum. That was what had me at the railing. This was the perfect time to try and make contact with the other ship who was still on her top most completed deck.

"HEY."

I yelled out across the gulf between the two building hulls. She didn't seem to notice at first. She didn't know someone was trying to talk to her.

"HEY YOU SILVER HEIR!"

I yelled a second time. This time she looked around trying to find who was yelling and whom they were yelling at.

"YES I'M TALKING TO. THE BLONDE WOMAN IN THE NAUTICAL COSTUME."

She looked my way and seemed to notice me for the first time.

"ARE YOU YELLING AT ME?"

She yelled back at me, though not as loud as I was trying to get her attention.

"Yes, I am. So you can hear me."

I lowered my voice now that I had established communication.

"Indeed I can."

"So who are you?"

"I am the USS Bennington CV-20, the twelfth ship of Essex class. Who are you?"

After a brief moment of consideration, I responded.

"I'm Congress."

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Bennington and I quickly became quick friends as our options for such were limited due to obvious fundamental limitations of our existence. As we discussed the various topics that came up it became clear to me that she wasn't someone who was isekaied like me, which presented an interesting philosophical road for me to go down. Ships have souls or something like a soul. To Bennington this seemed to be something fundamental and natural even though she did admit she would have liked it if she could be seen and heard as she agreed with me that it could get fairly lonely if you could only talk to other ships and they had to be fairly close to do so. I supposed this meant you had to be able to get along with those ships you were moored with.

I shared the news about the Battle of Kula Gulf. She had found it sad that one of our sisters-in-arms USS Helena had been sunk but apparently, it was like hearing about a disaster on the other side of the world. You feel sad for a moment but you aren't really affected by it so you just move on with your day. I couldn't help but wonder how Helena's siblings felt. Probably pretty bad. Bennington agreed when it came up during our discussion. One thing that Bennington brought up after a while was that we would probably see a lot of action in the Pacific and she wished that we would have an opportunity to work with each other in the future when we left New York.

The first year and a half of my new life had been very...interesting to say the least. The first year and a half of god knows how long I'll keep afloat. I was going to get a more or less front-row seat to some of the greatest and most terrible events of the Twentieth Century and if somehow I survive that long I maybe even meet my career end, serving in the Gulf war, hopefully so. I am not certain how I am supposed to feel about that. I had a long time to think about it. That was something I knew for certain.