If Sound Had Eyes

In the beginning, darkness rested upon the deep.

The waters stretched beyond sight, and what lay beneath them had no shape to any human eye.

No light reached the bottom.

No one had seen the mountains there.

No one had measured the valleys.

Then the word went out.

It entered the waters and traveled into the darkness.

And something answered.

The word went out again.

The nearer places answered first.

The deeper places answered later.

And the depths began to separate.

There was water above and ground below.

There were high places and low places.

And there was distance between them.

Again the word went out across the face of the deep.

It returned from one place, then another.

A ridge appeared.

Then a plain.

The ground fell away into a valley.

Farther on, it rose again.

And what had seemed formless began to take shape.

The waters gathered into basins.

Boundaries appeared between them.

Long mountain ranges stretched beneath the sea.

Channels divided one region from another.

Great trenches opened in the deep.

And the word continued.

It did not see with light.

It knew by what returned.

Where the ground was near, the answer came quickly.

Where the ground was far below, the answer took longer.

Where the surface was hard, the echo returned strongly.

Where it was soft, the answer changed.

And from those answers, the hidden world was given form.

The greater light crossed above the waters.

Then darkness came.

The lesser light rose, and the stars appeared over the deep.

Evening passed.

Morning came.

And still the word went out.

Line after line, the unseen earth took its place.

Mountains.

Valleys.

Plains.

Ridges.

Depths.

What no eye could see was becoming visible.

Nothing beneath the waters had moved.

The mountains had been there.

The valleys had been there.

The deep had always possessed its form.

It had only been hidden.

Then another line appeared across the monitor.

The hydrographer watched as the multibeam sonar completed its pass beneath the survey vessel.

A mountain range rose across the screen.

The ship had crossed over it hours before.

No one aboard had seen it.

Until they listened.