Your Messages Travel Underwater

Right now, your messages are at the bottom of the ocean. Send a text to another continent and it does not fly up to a satellite, whatever the films have taught you. It dives. Almost all traffic between continents travels through cables lying on the sea floor, past shipwrecks and deep sea trenches, in the permanent dark. Send this to the person you message across an ocean.

Upravo sada, tvoje poruke nalaze se na dnu oceana. Pošalješ poruku na drugi kontinent i ona ne odleti do satelita, što god ti filmovi utuvili u glavu. Ona zaroni. Gotovo sav promet između kontinenata putuje kroz kabele koji leže na morskom dnu, pored olupina brodova i dubokih oceanskih rovova, u trajnoj tami. Pošalji ovo osobi kojoj pišeš preko oceana.

Each cable is surprisingly modest, often about as thick as a garden hose. Inside, protected by layers of steel and plastic, run thin glass fibers that carry your words as flashes of light. Special ships lay them slowly across entire oceans, and the routes are planned the way roads are planned, around underwater mountains, away from fishing grounds, avoiding places where the seabed likes to move.

Svaki kabel je iznenađujuće skroman, često debeo tek koliko i vrtno crijevo. Unutra, zaštićena slojevima čelika i plastike, prolaze tanka staklena vlakna koja nose tvoje riječi kao bljeskove svjetlosti. Posebni brodovi polažu ih polako preko cijelih oceana, a rute se planiraju onako kako se planiraju ceste, oko podvodnih planina, dalje od ribolovnih područja, izbjegavajući mjesta gdje se morsko dno voli pomicati.

The system has enemies, and the most persistent ones are not spies but sharks and ship anchors. Cables get bitten, snagged and buried, and when one breaks, a repair ship sails out, hooks the cable off the seabed, hauls it up and splices the glass back together in a floating workshop. So tonight, when you message someone far away, picture the journey. Your words just crossed an ocean floor, as a flash of light in a glass thread.

Sustav ima neprijatelje, a najuporniji nisu špijuni nego morski psi i sidra brodova. Kabele grizu, zapinju i zakapaju, a kad se jedan prekine, brod za popravke isplovi, izvuče kabel s morskog dna, podigne ga i spoji staklo natrag u plutajućoj radionici. Zato, večeras, kad pišeš poruku nekome daleko, zamisli to putovanje. Tvoje riječi upravo su prešle oceansko dno, kao bljesak svjetlosti u staklenoj niti.