The descent through the upright channel of the 920th Tier was not a fall. It was a slow, high-pressure full-body VR into the throat of a stone-hard world.
Inside the iron belly of Obsidian Diving Bell Number Three, the darkness was held at bay only by the cool, emerald glow of the chemical glowing lantern hanging between the two watching couches. The light was soft, casting pale green reflections across the four-inch quartz portholes and lighting up the frost that had begun to blossom along the bronze rivet-heads. Every exhale from Qiao Ming and Yan Zhiqiu swelled into a pale cloud of mist that was right away drawn toward the punched holes in copper canisters beneath their feet. There, the wet lime plaster hissed faintly as it drank the carbonic acid. The air was heavy, carrying the dense, bitter-salt aroma of calcium hydroxide mingled with the earthy sweetness of dried marsh-moss and the sharp, stone tang of cold forged iron.
Outside the quartz discs, the water was no longer mere liquid. Under one hundred and sixty deep-water lengths of water-pressure head, the black tide had tightly packed into an oily, high-thickness gel that pressed against the faceted black glass hull with a relentless, inward crush of nearly three crushing deep-sea pressure. At that depth, space itself felt thick, sticky. When the bell swung on its two miles of braided star-fallen cable, it didn’t sway like a swinging weight in air, but moved with a sluggish, deadened pushback, as if sinking…
