"Oceanic Logic, Angel Deep" by Neil Willcox

The Set Of All Things contains the Ocean, and perhaps that is the only set large enough. Or so it appears sitting out here on the boat, the water empty from horizon to horizon. The wind tugs at the sail, just enough to keep way on.

Daniela’s at the stern of the boat, keeping an eye on the wheel, and I’m at the prow, looking out. As far from each other as we can get on the boat. Not because we’ve argued, but to take a bit of time. Before we get sick of each other.

We’ll talk again at supper time, or if we need to alter the rig. But for now, as the sun makes it’s slow way to the sea, we’ll keep our distance.

The Set Of Supernatural Events incudes blessings and curses, the divine, the diabolic, and much stranger things. It seems as though we’ve been sailing out here forever, since the waters were divided from the land. Time is strictly a natural phenomenon, and our perception can be stretched by our experiences. Still, something is out of joint.

This is Angel Deep, where an angel fell into the ocean. That happened when a Spanish Galleon passed by, it happened during World War 2, seen by a flight of Avengers who had strayed off course, it had happened last year when a climate research vessel had lingered, and it had happened last night while Daniela and I had watched from the deck of the boat. It had happened once and it had happened many times.

Time seems to stretch. The ocean, the angel or just the experience of sitting here, looking out over the water. Impossible to know.

The Set of Lost Things is infinite but bounded. Lost words, lost days and nights. Lost ships, lost sailors, lost islands and deserts and rain lands. A lost angel.

Lost boats? I can’t remember when we last saw land. When we last spoke to anyone. We get the weather reports from the satellite, but that’s all. We’re not lost – we know where we are on the great blank map of ocean. It’s the rest of the world that’s lost.

Though the map is not blank. We’ve crossed from the ocean floor, already deep enough to sink a hill, over to the Angel Deep. Below us is deeper than any mountain, deep enough that no one has ever been down there. The kind of depth that crushes robots, drinks up probes.

The wind drops, joining the Set Of Lost Things it seems. I turn and lower the sail, Daniela securing the boat. With the way off her she bobs gently in the swell. Just sea and sky and us in between.

Perhaps the Angel Deep has no bottom. Infinite and unbounded, part of the Set Of Supernatural Events. A column of water never ending, the pressure increasing unimaginably.

The Set Of Entities in the ocean includes fish and turtles, algae and floating rafts of weed. It includes the boat and, as I slip in, it includes me.

Floating between sky and abyss, sound muted. The shadow of the boat and the slight pad as Daniela walks the deck to watch for me. All else is still, motionless. Here in the centre of the ocean the categories dissolve, logic unravels, leaving only peace.

Neil Willcox lives in South East England where he twice failed to get the most basic sailing certificate. Unqualified as a sailor he has turned to writing, with pieces published by Kaleidotrope, Swords And Sorcery Magazine and Malarkey Books, as well as editing non-fiction for Voidspace Press.