The One where Sarika Rises

Down in the eel pit, all alone, with nothing but eels and regrets to keep her company, Sarika felt too exhausted to even have a flicker of surprise when all the lights and panels behind the eel aquarium changed all at once to depict Ruta. Standing behind what might’ve been iron bars, Ruta, full of sorrow, confessed to lying about the whole peanut allergy.

Sarika’s first thought was about winning that hundred dollar bet with her. Then she immediately sat up, squinting her eyes. Those were iron bars in front of her. But then the camera switched to Principal Holloway, decrying Ruta’s lies, telling the world to rise up and presumably burn its own flame out.

Sarika rose to unsteady feet as she stared down the image of Holloway. Here she was, so focused on the dead, that she forgot about the living. Her sister was dead, that much was true; but Ruta wasn’t. Sarika still had a chance with her.

A strange feeling arose in Sarika’s stomach, traveling up to her heart, entering her mind. This was the feeling of being part of something greater; in this case, it was friendship. People like to say this and that about the power of friendship, but when the chips are down, you really can always rely on your friends.

Sarika stretched her arms. She had spent too much time drowning in self-pity here. Holloway had given her that method of escape - swimming through the eel aquarium - as a way to torture her, as a way to constantly remind her of the all the missed opportunities, to offer her a false hope in what was clearly a hopeless situation. Except things weren’t so and cut dried.

For the next few days, Sarika got to work rebuilding her strength. Reaching the boundary of her body’s limits was the easy part. First she merely stretched, feeling the contours of the muscles as they activated and shook off the rust. Then came movement - up and down, moving the whole body as one. Each day, Quaid dropped down her daily bread - well, daily black beans with a black fork on a black plate.

At first, she ate all she could, making up for several weeks of a terrible diet. But only after the body recovered could her mind slowly pick up its pace. She could find physical boundaries easily - merely through exercise. But the mind was a whole different beast.

Physically, she was ready to swim. But mentally, she still had several anchors weighing her down. The body’s limits are physical; the mind’s limits are abstract and hard to pin down. Every night, she reflected deeply, down there in the darkness and patches of light, trying to understand the weight within her stomach.

She knew she wanted to save Ruta, but this feeling went beyond that, towards something deeper. There was the boundary between people, Sarika knew, but hadn’t she overcome that by recognizing that she truly cared for Ruta?

Sarika dreamed of Haruka and her walking down the gravel pylon trail again. Green shoots pushed through the dirt all around them; green leaves emerged from the trees; even the sun managed to shine once again out from behind the gray sky.

Sarika couldn’t see what Haruka saw on the horizon; she could only see her sister. She tried to look at all the greens and blues, but came up empty. What was the meaning there? Yeah, they looked pretty, but they’d all go away in the end, leaving Sarika alone.

That realization pulled Sarika out of her fitful sleep. She scratched her head as more realizations flooded in. The concept holding Sarika back currently wasn’t the boundary between people. It was the boundary between the feelings she portrayed to the world and to herself versus the real feelings underneath it all.

Sarika threw herself into her life’s work of overcoming death not only to revive her sister, but to also distract herself from the loneliness and fear of having to walk through life using her own judgement. When Sarika couldn’t make sense of the horizon, she looked at Haruka for comfort. Because if Haruka could make sense of the battered world they lived in, then all Sarika needed to do was rely on her.

But Haruka was gone. Sarika would need to understand that world on her own. All the fear and anxiety that resulted from that, Sarika pushed them away, kept them under wraps, throwing herself deeper and deeper into bringing her sister back so that Haruka could make sense of the world for her.

Sarika ran a hand along the black glass of the aquarium. Several eels made notice of her, glancing as they swam past. Eels just did; they didn't need to ponder on the life they now found themselves. Humans did have to do that, for better or worse. Sarika understood that that pondering is what makes her, her. She looked up at the aquarium, watching the eels drift all the way to the top of the tank.

The time had come to make those first steps into the world under her own strength. And no longer was it for her sister; this time it was for herself, for Ruta. Sarika took assertive steps towards the handle of the airlock, gripping it with a strong hand. She took one look back at the center of the chamber. She then steeled herself and prepared for the swim.

Air hissed as Sarika swung open the door to the airlock. Closing it behind her, she looked up, through black glass panels; eels swam above her, hundreds of them, all interpreting their own world in that neat glass aquarium. Could they really smell fear?

Sarika was certainly afraid, just as she always had been. But she was no longer afraid of being afraid.

She grasped the handle to the exit of the airlock and pulled harder. With a creak, the door opened, and water immediately flooded in. The water felt cool against her, rapidly covering up to her ankles, then her knees, then her waist. Sarika took a deep breath, then plunged into the depths.

Kicking with her legs, paddling with her arms, Sarika emerged onto the other side of the airlock, within the aquarium itself. Lights along the panels danced with it, gently pulsating as Sarika opened her eyes and tried to see through the water. The water was surprisingly clear, and Sarika quickly understood which way was up.

She kicked herself upwards, keeping her swimming calm and composed. Several thoughts flashed around her head; Ruta telling her that she was equally interested in pursuing and overcoming death, Holloway telling her to fight or perish like a dog.

The image of Holloway morphed into her sister on the gravel road. Sarika tried to look at what her sister saw, but the horizon became undone, the boundary between sky and land breaking down as colors escaped their pre-determined lines. Plants died all around, retreating back underground, afraid of the world above, and Sarika realized she had so much farther to swim upwards and not nearly enough breath.

Eels circled around her as her strokes became weaker. Several pushed up against her; Sarika recoiled and this interrupted her rhythm. The water seemed overwhelming, becoming dark and murky. Had Sarika flipped around? She could no longer tell which way was up and which was down. Had her attempt to step beyond the boundary failed, leaving her stuck in a no-man’s land?

Every panel in the aquarium suddenly changed to display a livestream, the unexpected change in light scaring away the eels. Sarika caught a glimpse of the video, which depicted a boy speaking into a camera. Since the video would be played upright, Sarika used the direction of the boy’s head to understand which was up; she had never flipped over at all, she was still heading in the right direction.

Since audio was only available within the chamber via loudspeakers, Sarika couldn’t hear or make out what the boy was saying. But she could understand one thing - he pulled up an image of Ruta. Sarika recognized the picture (since Ruta showed it to her a number of times); it was from Ruta’s first day of school at Vyse. The boy presumably discussed Ruta, but there, off in the background, stood Sarika herself, staring up at the main building of Vyse, about to make a journey into the unknown. Her fears at the time had been alleviated by finding safety in resurrecting her sister.

But she couldn’t resurrect her sister. That was a boundary that couldn’t be crossed. And now, faced with that uncomfortable truth, Sarika resolved to face the fear of the unknown rather than ignore it.

Sarika collected herself and resumed her journey upwards again, each kick and paddle more confident than the last. The eels returned to her; no longer did they circle her. Instead, they swam upwards alongside her, as if cheering for her.

Almost there. A little further. As Sarika’s vision went blurry, full of black spots, images of Ruta and Haruka flashed through her mind. The final image was that of herself.

Saruka broke through the water’s surface. She bobbed along, gasping for breath. She did the swimming equivalent of limping to a nearby metal walkway just over the water’s surface. With a groan, she pulled herself out of the water onto the walkway.

Sarika laid there for a moment, feeling the utter limits of her body, from the physical exertion to the mental willpower. And since she found the boundaries of her person, she now knew her own outline and had a better idea of just who exactly she was.

I’m Sarika. I get nervous, I get scared, I get lonely. But so does everybody else. It's just another part of you. And, once you understand the rest of your own person better, that’s when you overcome the boundaries posed within yourself.

Sarika glanced back down into the water. All the eels swam in a galaxy-like formation, lights pulsing beneath the surface, as if they had all come together to celebrate Sarika’s victory.