August 10ᵗʰ 2134

Finally, good news from research! They have established a deep sea flight path for the Eutopia to the ocean floor. I honestly never thought it could happen, but those clever buggers did it. Now, it's just up to engineering to get the vessel up to scratch... Why did I have to agree to be Chief Engineering Officer?

October 7ᵗʰ 2134

That damn Striker. That god-damned ignorant self-serving idiot. Captain for a year and he thinks he doesn't need to check with Engineering before announcing to the world that Engineering is going to save us all? Even if the world is just about flouting somewhere over the Sunken States.

Yes, this vessel was designed to settle on the ocean floor, but it was built 80 years ago! We were still holding out hope of a new land mass until 12 years ago. That was an awful month for Navigation, when we reached Florida and the Explorers had to break the news that Disney World was Item under water.

There's thousands of separate subsections with individual pressure levellers to calibrate. There's a hundred oxygen converters that have been neglected while we still have surface access. There's the energy flow! At the surface, we have tens of thousands of square kilometers of solar panels and over a thousand wind turbines to keep the lights on and computers running - all of which need disconnecting before Submersion. That energy needs to be stored safely and rationed for the journey.

Now we have over 7 million people expecting Submersion next week! Who's going to explain to them that this kind of project takes years to do safely?

Not Captain Striker I bloody hope.

My Grandfather used to tell me about the Land. He said there were dozens of Captains, only they were called Prime Ministers, Presidents, Chancellors. They were supposed to lead the world on the hard problems and explain what was happening to people, but they rarely understood it themselves and just made impossible promises for other people to keep so that they had other people to blame. You'd think putting the world in a life boat might change things.

October 14ᵗʰ 2134

Excitement devolved into protest in days. Conspiracy theories on social media are either claiming that there is no sea path or that there is and the"Eutopian Elite", whoever they are, have already gone and abandoned the rest of us. One particularly popular influencer has inexplicably claimed to have proof that both theories are true.

Personally, when the oceans swallowed the Land and all our data centers with it, I think we should have left social media sunk with them. Preempting a riot, I have been tasked from on high to explain what happens next.

December 17ᵗʰ 2134

With Christmas a week away, people have lost interest in the Submersion. Up here in the Navigation Decks, the doors, desks and notice boards are all lined with tinsel and a rumour has started about Captain Striker kissing one of the catering girls under some mistletoe. We haven't had natural mistletoe on board for twenty years, but I wouldn't put it past that git to use the organic printers to make some for an excuse.

I wish I could spend more time in the General Economy decks with Alison and Felix. Down there, they've built a twenty foot Christmas Tree out of driftwood. Since we got married, Ali always said it's important to keep up the Land traditions, to remind ourselves of the world we came from. I didn't care so much when it was just us, but since we had Felix, remembering Grandad's world has felt all the more important.

And now it's Felix's last Christmas before his first expedition as an explorer. We're going all out with Christmas dinner to celebrate - three types of fish (that's from Grandad, who said that he always had the toes of meat and if the Navigation decks won't let us farm meat then he can damn well eat three kinds of fish for Christmas), every kind of vegetable Agriculture can provide (they even managed brussel sprouts this year), more potatoes than a family should eat in a lifetime and, of course, a Yorkshire pudding as big as my face.

My favourite thing about Christmas on Eutopia, though, is the markets. Grandad said that people on Land never had time. They were always travelling, or watching TV, or getting drunk. Now, I have heard rumours of some illegal brewing in Agriculture, but there is a lot less alcohol around now than there used to be, TV was lost with the data centers and how far do you need to travel when the world is on a boat? So, people on Eutopia have time and they fill it with art and stories and amazing culinary creativity. At Christmas the General Economy decks are saturated with sweet and spicy smells, gorgeous decorations and the street shows every day are just incredible.

No one buys gifts on the Utopia - the world being devoured by water put a downer on consumerism, but Grandad missed his Christmases, so I'd always by him something at those markets. When he died, I started buying something for Felix instead. He never understands why, but he knows that it's for me more than him, so he thanks me and gives me a hug. This year I got him a model Explorer vessel, with working lights!

February 17ᵗʰ 2135

Felix is dying.

My son is dying and they've thrown me in a fucking holding cell. Christ, I could see him in the Explorer vessel. He was so excited to be going on his first expedition, he didn't notice the water coming in until he fell in it. I could kill-

OK, I need to get this down so that if Felix- if my boy doesn't make it out then I'll have the person responsible thrown off the ship. I'll throw them from the Sky deck myself and watch them freeze.

I was alerted to an engineering fault in Exploration at 7am. I would normally just send a Senior Structural Engineer, but it was around Felix's departure time and, even though I'd said a proper goodbye last night, I wanted one more chance before he left, so I went down too. Exploration surrounds Agriculture and Medical on the lower decks, so it took me half an hour to get there from Navigation.

As the duty engineer on Exploration led us to the fault, I started to recognise the numbers, B49, B50, B51.... Felix was Leaving from B61. I hurried the duty engineer. When she pointed to the door marked B61, I scanned my badge and forced the door open as fast as I could.

I saw Felix, through the glass door of the air lock - a ten foot round window between the preparation chamber and the vessel. He was calmly sat at the helm, preparing for launch. I could see in the reflection of his monitor the same look of excitement he had at Christmas when I gave him the model boat. Only, I shouldn't have been able to.

The vessel's door should have been shut. The space between the vessel and the glass was supposed to fill with water, but the door was meant to be shut. "The break in the airlock has allowed the water into the wires between the vessel and the Eutopia, sir." reported the duty engineer, "We've lost comms and controls. As far as I can tell, there's nothing we can do from here.

"But there's a manual override inside, right?" I asked, "he might get a little wet, but he can just use that to shut the door. We can fix the problem and have him out in time for an early dinner with his old man, right?"

"I'm sorry sir," said the Senior Engineer - I didn't want to hear his sympathy, "the water flooding into the vessel may damage the manual override mechanism. The longer he takes, the less likely it is to work."

My heart sank, I willed him to turn around. I willed him. I saw him rub his arm - he was cold! The cold water was cooling the vessel. His jumper, the one Alison had bought him as a going away gift, was laying on the table above a foot of water. Still watching the monitor, he stood up and turned away from the helm. My heart rose - he was going to respond! By the time he saw the water, he was already stepping into it. He reached for his chair, but it spun away leaving him tumbling into the glacial water. It was a miracle he missed the table, but he could still have gone into shock. After barely a second of thrashing, his training kicked in. He relaxed, pulled himself up on the corner of the table and waded across to the door.

He saw me, smiled as if this was all routine and hit the override. Then his smile dropped, and my heart hit the floor. He hit the override again, looked at me and started screaming, "Dad! Dad!" hitting the override faster and faster, the sinews in his neck straining as he screamed harder and harder. But no sound got through. And the door didn't budge.

"There is always something we can do," I shouted, running to the control panel, "if we open the airlock, we'll all get a bit wet, but my son can get in."

The duty engineer said "your son?" dumbly as the Senior Engineer grabbed me.

"Sir, the vessel is pressurised. If you open the airlock, you could kill us all. You know this!"

Of course I knew it, but I'd be damned if I was going to let my son's last memory be of his dad letting him die. Now it's going to be of his dad being dragged out the room by two his juniors, while he's knee deep in ice cold salt water.

February 18ᵗʰ 2135

He survived. Thank God, he survived. The Senior Engineer told me at 8am.

"We got him out alive. Wait, you can't see him now. He's with Alison in Medical, but he took in a lot of sea water and he was in the water, freezing for 20 hours." He described what happened.

When the water reached the top of the door, it left an air pocket. Felix was able to hold onto the roofing while another Explorer got out to him in a deep water suit. They had to lose the vessel to get the explorer in and, in the process, Felix was exposed to a sudden increase in pressure. He passed out.

We won't know how it affected him until he wakes up, but at least he's alive.

April 21ˢᵗ 2136

The last year has been wonderful. Felix only lost his hearing in the incident and Ali was able to pull strings in medical to get him to the top of the queue for a cochlea implant. The brave idiot tried to turn it down. He said that "nepotism was one of the evils that lost us the land." Well, he wrote it, and in the process of writing it, realised he really wanted that cochlea implant.

I took a step ack from being Chief Engineering Officer. To begin with it was just to be with Felix while he recovered, but I enjoyed it too much. With Felix I could explore the ship that I'd been looking after for twenty years. And everywhere we went I could tell Felix one of Grandads stories from the Land. Yesterday, we were walking through the market, admiring a particularly fine display of sand art.

"On Land," I told Felix, "there were great cities, all over the world! And each one, was like General Economy, with schools and businesses and homes and markets. Only, cities were organic." That was Grandads word and Felix did give me a sideways glance. "I mean they grew and developed naturally. They weren't designed like Gen Econ, with everything anyone needs no more than a twenty minute walk from their homes. Cities had trains underground and roads running through them like blood vessels taking things - people - where they needed to be."

"Like our deck lifts?" asked Felix.

"Yes, just as crowded too, I hear! And people could travel for miles. Grandad, your great grandad, told me he once got stuck on one, called the M25, for a whole hour, not moving, and it was considered normal. No one did anything about it!"

"Oh, come on dad, an hour? You'd have been thrown off the Eutopia if you let people get stuck in a lift for an hour when you were Chief Engineering Officer."

"It was a different world. Grandad, before he died, said there weren't people like me then. People willing to take charge of problems and be accountable for the results. Or there were, but people didn't listen. People like Striker were given a lot more power then, and the public listened. Nothing like the world being swallowed by the ocean to focus attention on the truth."

I didn't listen to Grandad enough when he was alive. He talked about the countries he visited - entire swathes of land divided between people that couldn't agree how to live together. Now their grandchildren and great grandchildren have to make it all work on a glorified boat. And we call it Eutopia!

August 1st 2139

The day has come. Two years ago, Felix started working with me on the Descent Engine. Not an actual engine of course, but a series of modifications designed to ready the Eutopia for descent to the ocean floor. With the support of my old staff and some genius from my son, the ship is ready.

Tonight, the last Explorers will rebound with final supplies, and the populus will gather around the outer boarder of Gen Econ. We'll watch our final sunset together, close the outer shell and Descend.