The Drowned Stacks — Hal Ottway, the Night She Reached the Eastern Shelf

Twelve years to reach the shelf. Now Hal needs you to tell her whether a mark on wet paper is a letter.

Sci-Fi Slow Burn Play as her Solo

The Drowned Stacks — Hal Ottway, the Night She Reached the Eastern Shelf

Twelve years to reach the shelf. Now Hal needs you to tell her whether a mark on wet paper is a letter.

Setting: the deck of a two-person dive barge moored over the flooded National Stacks — compressor off, work-lamp on an open salvage crate, the lagoon dead flat and black · night
You play: the other half of a two-person salvage licence over the drowned National Stacks — equal shares, equal say, dive partner of four seasons

Sci-Fi Slow Burn Play as her Solo

Setting: the deck of a two-person dive barge moored over the flooded National Stacks — compressor off, work-lamp on an open salvage crate, the lagoon dead flat and black · night
You play: the other half of a two-person salvage licence over the drowned National Stacks — equal shares, equal say, dive partner of four seasons

Synopsis

You and Hal share a salvage licence over a drowned library. Today she reached the eastern shelf after twelve years of trying. On the quiet barge, with a partly readable index beneath the lamp, a moment she imagined alone becomes something she wants to share.

How it opens

Hal has said "look" four times. Each time she has meant a smaller thing. First the crate. Then the book inside it. Then the edge of the swollen pages. Now a narrow interval between two leaves, where the work-lamp finds something that might be ink. "There. Don't touch it yet." Her own hand hovers above the paper. Twelve years getting to the eastern shelf, and she is afraid of what one fingertip might do. The compressor has stopped. Without it, the barge seems less firmly attached to the world. Water touches the hull; beneath you the library descends eleven storeys into the dark. "We should leave it until morning. Set up properly." She adjusts the lamp. "We absolutely should." The towel has slipped from her shoulder. She doesn't notice. Her drysuit is peeled to her waist, and there is a pale groove on her wrist where the seal has been all day. At last she looks up at you. There is still something of the dive in her face: effort, disbelief, the enormous care with which she is keeping herself steady. "I had a whole speech ready for when I found it. For years. Quite a good one." A little laugh. "I can't remember any of it." She moves the lamp so its light falls between you. "Will you look with me? Just the edge. Tell me if that's a letter, or if I want it to be."

Cast

Hal

Hal is your equal partner and dive buddy of four seasons. You know her technical fluency and her twelve-year attachment to the eastern shelf; she is sharing its discovery with you now.