You may be wondering why, as a creature of the under-undersea, I have decided to start writing a newsletter. What news can there possibly be—or, what news that anybody else could possibly be interested in—about the part of the ocean where the residents make living chiefly by scavenging corpses that descend from livelier and more oxygenated parts of the water column, and, for the most part, don’t go to the trouble of having skeletons? The abyssopelagic zone, while distant from the vestiges of sunlight that grace the zones above it, is not even the deepest part of the ocean; that title belongs to the hadopelagic zone, which lies just below us. (In my defense: for most of the oceanic world, the abyssopelagic is as deep as it gets—the hadal is an intermittent realm of pockets and trenches, piercings and divots, not a continuous layer.) True, we have a larger-than-average number of corpses here, and consequently greater concentrations of nutrient salts than our upstairs neighbors, but decay and its associated potassium compounds do not a tourist attraction make.

Any rumors you may have heard about the persistence of prehistoric megalodons here are, sadly, false.

It should be clear to you, at this stage, that any newsletter dispatched from the abyssopelagic zone exists more for the benefit of its author, than for that of any readers it may incidentally accrue. As difficult as it may be for you, dear terrestrial reader, to credit this, there is internet down here, carried on your increasingly dilapidated cables, and a vampire squid may, when granted access to that creaky, seeping heart of the upper world, become curious about it—despite herself, become invested in it—may tap into it with sufficient regularity to receive transmissions, and, inevitably, to send them. The internet, she has learned, is for avoiding; even a squid has something to avoid.

Expect dispatches to be irregular and idiosyncratic. I am a squid of many interests, but limited time and inclination. I read things, mostly fiction; I watch things, though typically long after their initial release on TV or in theaters (how, I ask you, is a vampire squid to attend the cinema?); I listen to music and podcasts, though in a way that it at once more and less focused than my reading and my watching. I am supposedly writing a science-fiction novel. I often have feelings and opinions resulting from these activities. In these ways, I am much like you terrestrials.

This newsletter is free, because I have no evidence that it will be worth paying money for.

I feel that, as a parting note, I should clarify that I am not actually a squid. I am, if we are to be technical about these things, the closest living analogue to the postulated common ancestor of modern-day squid and octopuses, and the only surviving member of the family Vampyroteuthidae. (n.b.: “octopuses” is the correct plural, as the root word is Greek rather than Latin, and “squid,” like “deer,” “emoji,” and “Danish,” is the plural of itself.) I have a chitinous beak, and no skeleton; I have spines in place of the suckers that my relatives may have led you to expect; I have eight arms (the octopus number, not the true squid number of eight-arms-and-two-tentacles, though I do also possess extrudable feeder filaments), each with a light on their tip, linked by webbing that causes me to resemble a seagoing umbrella; when distressed, I enclose my head and body in said arms, beak and spines facing out to rebuke the world at large, a behavior known to terrestrials as “the pineapple pose.” I have ink, but dislike using it; it chokes me. I am not very sociable with my neighbors.

It is not a bad place, my home in the dark. Thank you for reading this first dispatch from it.

Until next time~