In a black cab arranged by Uncle Malek, Zaleekhah reflects on Lon­don as she watch­es the cityscape blur by, view­ing it not as a realm of his­tor­i­cal grandeur but as a liv­ing enti­ty shaped by its rivers, both vis­i­ble and buried. The Riv­er Fleet, once a vital water­way, is now hid­den beneath bricks, hav­ing endured decades of neglect, serv­ing as a metaphor for for­got­ten mem­o­ries. Sim­i­lar­ly, the Riv­er Effra flows unno­ticed under urban struc­tures, while the Tyburn, a for­mer source of fresh salmon, is now lost beneath the city’s infra­struc­ture, and the West­bourne runs unseen through the Sloane Square Tube sta­tion. All of these rivers rep­re­sent the hid­den his­to­ries of the city, echo­ing Zaleekhah’s intro­spec­tion.

Upon arriv­ing at the Cen­tre for Ecol­o­gy and Hydrol­o­gy in Bermond­sey, she steps into an office envi­ron­ment filled with typ­i­cal bureau­cra­cy, devoid of per­son­al touch but designed for col­lab­o­ra­tion. She finds her office marked with her name, sym­bol­iz­ing the iden­ti­ty she has reshaped through mar­riage. As she con­tem­plates her life, she grap­ples with feel­ings of her mar­riage disintegrating—her hus­band seemed to be the cen­ter of her uni­verse, yet their rela­tion­ship had steadi­ly frayed.

Zaleekhah recalls her late men­tor, Pro­fes­sor Beren­berg, who pas­sion­ate­ly researched the con­cept of ‘aquat­ic memory’—the idea that water holds mem­o­ries of the sub­stances it’s come in con­tact with. Hav­ing faced career-end­ing ridicule for his uncon­ven­tion­al the­o­ries, Beren­berg became a ghost in Zaleekhah’s life; she sel­dom voic­es his name, but his influ­ence lingers in her thoughts. After his death, Zaleekhah secret­ly con­tin­ued his exper­i­ments, explor­ing the valid­i­ty of his ideas, but ten­sions with her hus­band arose when he dis­cov­ered her obses­sion, which he deemed a waste of time.

The clash reveals deep­er frac­tures in their mar­riage, focus­ing on Zaleekhah’s unre­solved feel­ings for Berenberg—an emo­tion­al com­plex­i­ty her hus­band couldn’t accept. After a heart-wrench­ing con­fronta­tion about her past, Zaleekhah leaves their home, tak­ing refuge in the lab for the night. Sur­round­ed by mem­o­ries and reminders of lost con­nec­tions, she reflects on her short­com­ings in com­mu­ni­ca­tion and emo­tion­al­ly pre­pares for the path ahead, haunt­ed by the specter of Berenberg’s lega­cy.

As she drifts into sleep on a sofa in her office, she feels the pres­ence of the rivers of time—unseen yet potent, rep­re­sent­ing both lost oppor­tu­ni­ties and the relent­less flow of life and sci­ence that per­sists, with or with­out her engage­ment. Zaleekhah acknowl­edges her attrac­tion to those dri­ven by dreams larg­er than them­selves, despite the per­ilous cost that such com­mit­ment often entails.