The Icebound Clocktower and Other Noise Inspired Stories

The Underwater Travel Station

Beatae Memoriae, Subaquatic Dreams, Babble Noise

In a world where water gradually engulfed most of the available land mass, people had technologically adapted to life of a more aquatic nature, as well as a more aerial one. This particular city was underwater, and this was a part of it more intimate with the sea that surrounded it. You could actually get close enough to hear it rumbling behind the thick glass, which at four in the afternoon was already covered in fingerprints and was scratched and tarnished from access to the public at its best and very worst. Bell chimes could be heard throughout the establishment, and the echoey drone of a man announcing names of those being admitted into the gates. It's curious to think that history came full circle back to independent, walled cities. Footsteps echoed on the marble tile and voices murmured anxiously and excitedly.

This was a an entrance/exit point to the city, which was why the building looked so impressive. Ornate carvings and shiny silver pillars shot up from the ground and curved and branched into a skeleton of arches. It's very much modern and sleek, with geometric shapes and smooth, seamless-looking furniture, as well as possessing the presence of a cathedral or a relic of the Roman empire. There is a wide window showing the docking station, with families eagerly crowding 'round. Young children stand on benches to get a decent view of the spectacle, waiting for a close family member to step out of a submarine. The door to it is big, black, and imposing. It has almost a bubbly texture to it, almost invisible until you come close.

The door into the city itself is just as large, if not larger, letting the view beyond it in through glass interrupted by complex silver tangles of metal frames. The motif of marine life and old gods like Poseidon and Neptune are repeated all over, and there is a fountain with a carving of a mermaid center stage in the middle of the lobby.

It's a wonder to think how many small children will grow up to equate the blue of the sea to the blue of the sky here. It's still very easy to take a trip to the surface, (Some of these places are on top of the water as well.) but that is a far off place that, in a perfectly comfortable place like this, they could go their whole lives without seeing it.