It didn’t matter as long as the reactor still burned, the screw still turned, and the music still played. That music was our residual humanity made manifest; it was the sound of hope: hope of finding the living and relieving their mortal woes, the damned seeking the doomed and spreading the seed of Maenad salvation… before it was too late. Such was our mission.

Such were we missionaries.

All at once, the music stopped. From miles away, far across the void, down from the world of light and air, came a new sound, a deep electronic vibration low enough to be detectable even through water. A sound meant specifically for submarines to hear: an Ultra Low Frequency radio signal.

In the belly of the boat, a rusty, cracked voice: “Can you hear that?”

“Yes.”

“Sounds like an invitation.”

“Let’s RSVP.”

The glittering blue surface of the sea spread in all directions to the thin circumference of the horizon, swells rolling in long regiments under the sun. In the middle of this enormity, a giraffe-speckled pole rose from the water-the boat’s radio antenna. It scanned the heavens for the least electronic whisper and immediately fixed upon the loudest signal. This was routed to the AV console in the radio shack, where Reggie Jinnah played it for a small audience that included Captain Harvey Coombs, Dr. Alice Langhorne, and me. All of us Xombies. Reggie’s mates, three other Anglo-Pakistani musicians who formerly comprised the Beatles tribute band known as the Blackpudlians, waited in the background, having been using the room as a makeshift music studio.

On the video screen, we could see an image of a man. He was a very familiar man, a man we had not seen since the height of the Agent X pandemic and never expected to see again. A man I had seen shoot himself on national television.