Tomorrow Factory

by Rich Larson

“There’s been a threat of sorts,” Four Warm Currents signed, secreting a small dark privacy cloud to shade the conversation from workers filing onto the now-empty skiff. “Against the project. Radicals who may attempt sabotage.”

  “We know,” signed the guard, whose name was a pungent Two Sinking Corpses. “The councillor told us. That’s why we have these.” Two Sinking Corpses hefted a conical weapon Four Warm Currents dimly recognized as a screamer, built to amplify a sonar burst to lethal strength. Nine Brittle Spines had not exaggerated the seriousness of the situation.

  “Pray to the Leviathans you don’t have to use them,” Four Warm Currents signed, then joined the workers embarking on the skiff, tasting familiar names, slinging tentacles over knotted muscles, adding to a multilayered scent joke involving an aging councillor and a frost shark.

  Spirits were high. The Drill was cutting smoothly. They were approaching the other side, and though for some that only meant the end of contract and full payment, others had also been infected by Four Warm Currents’s fervor.

  “What will we see?” a worker signed. “Souls of the dead? The Leviathans themselves?”

  “Nothing outside the physical laws,” Four Warm Currents replied, but then, sensing the disappointment: “But nothing like we have ever seen before. It will be unimaginable. Wondrous. And they’ll soak our names all through the memory sponges, to remember the brave explorers who first broke the ice.”

  A mass of tentacles waved in approval of the idea. Four Warm Currents settled back as the skiff began to move and a wave of new debates sprang up.

  The City of Bone was roughly spherical, a beautiful lattice of ancient skeleton swathed in sponge and cultivated coral, glowing ethereal blue with bioluminescence. It was older than any councillor, a relic of the dim past before the archives: a Leviathan skeleton dredged from the seafloor with buoyant coral, built up and around until it could float unsupported, tethered in place above the jagged rock bed.

  Devotees believed the Leviathans had sacrificed their corporeal forms to leave city husks behind; Four Warm Currents shared the more heretical view that the Leviathans were extinct, and for all their size might have been no more intelligent than the living algae feeders that still hauled their bulk along the seafloor. It was not a theory to divulge in polite discourse. Drilling through the roof of the world was agitator enough on its own.

  As the skiff passed the City of Bone’s carved sentinels, workers began to jet off to their respective housing blocks. Four Warm Currents was one of the last to disembark, having been afforded, as one of the council’s foremost engineers, an artful gray-and-purple spire in the city center. Of course, that was before the Drill. Nine Brittle Spines’s desire for a “sideshow” aside, Four Warm Currents felt the daily loss of council approval like the descending cold of a crevice. Relocation was not out of the realm of possibility.

  For now, though, the house’s main door shuttered open at a touch, and, more importantly, Four Warm Currents’s mates were inside. Six Bubbling Thermals, sleek and swollen with eggs, drizzling ribbons of birth mucus like a halo, but with eyes still bright and darting. Three Jagged Reefs, lean and long, skin stained from a heavy work cycle in the smelting vents, submitting to a massage. Their taste made Four Warm Currents ache, deep and deeper.

  “So our heroic third returns,” Six Bubbling Thermals signed, interrupting the massage and prompting a ruffle of protest.

  “Have you ended the world yet?” Three Jagged Reefs added. “Don’t stop, Six. I’m nearly loose enough to slough.”

  “Nearly,” Four Warm Currents signed. “I blacked a councillor. Badly.”

  Both mates guffawed, though Six Bubbling Thermals’s had a nervous shiver to it.

  “From how far?” Three Jagged Reefs demanded. “Could they tell it was yours?”

  “From not even a tentacle away,” Four Warm Currents admitted. “We were in conversation.”

  Three Jagged Reefs laughed again, the reckless, waving laugh that had made Four Warm Currents fall in love, but their other mate did not.

  “Conversation about what?” Six Bubbling Thermals signed.

  Four Warm Currents hesitated, tasting around to make sure a strong emotion hadn’t slipped the gland again, but the water was clear and cold and anxiety-free. “Nine Brittle Spines is a skeptic of the worst kind. Intelligent, but refusing to self-educate.”

  “Did you not explain the density calculation?” Three Jagged Reefs signed plaintively.

  Four Warm Currents moved to reply, then recognized a familiar mocking tilt in Three Jagged Reefs’s tentacles and turned the answer into a crude “floating feces” gesticulation.

  “Tell us the mathematics again,” Three Jagged Reefs teased. “Nothing slicks me better for sex, Four. All those beautiful variables.”

  Six Bubbling Thermals smiled at the back-and-forth, but was still lightly spackled with mauve worry. The birth mucus spiralling out in all directions made for an easy distraction.

  “We need to collect again,” Four Warm Currents signed, gesturing to the trembling ribbons. “Or you’ll bury us in our sleep.”

  “And then I’ll finally have the house all to my own,” Six Bubbling Thermals signed, cloying. But the mauve worry dissolved into flushed healthy pink as they all began coiling the mucus and storing it in coral tubing. Four Warm Currents stroked the egg sacs gently as they worked, imagining each one hatching into an altered world.

  After they finished with the birth mucus and pricked themselves with a recreational skimmer venom, Three Jagged Reefs made them sample a truly terrible pheromone poem composed at the smelting vents between geysers.

  The recitation was quickly cancelled in favor of hallucination-laced sex in which they all slid over and around Six Bubbling Thermals’s swollen mantle, probing and pulping, and afterward the three of them drifted in the artificial current, slowly revolving as they discussed anything and everything:

  Colony annexation, the validity of aesthetic tentacle removal, the new eatery that served everything dead and frozen with frescoes carved into the flesh, so-and-so’s scent change, the best birthing tanks, the after-ache they’d had the last time they used skimmer venom. Anything and everything except for the Drill.

  Much later, when the other two had slipped into a sleeping harness, Four Warm Currents jetted upward to the top of their gray-and-purple spire, coiling there to look out over the City of Bone. Revelers jetted back and forth in the distance, visible by blots of blue-green excitement and arousal. Some were workers from the Drill, Four Warm Currents knew, celebrating the end of a successful work cycle.

  Four Warm Currents’s namesake parent had been a laborer of the same sort. A laborer who came home to cramped quarters and hungry children, but was never too exhausted to spin them a story, tentacles whirling and flourishing like a true bard. Four Warm Currents had been a logical child, always finding gaps in the tall tales of Leviathans and heroes and oceans beyond their own. But still, the stories had sunk in deep. Enough so that Four Warm Currents might be able to sign them to the children growing in Six Bubbling Thermals’s egg sacs.

  There was no need for Nine Brittle Spines or the council to know it was those stories that had ignited Four Warm Currents’s curiosity for the roof of the world in the first place. Soon there would be new stories to tell. In seven, maybe eight more work cycles, they would break through.

  After such a long percolation, the idea was dizzying. Four Warm Currents didn’t know what awaited on the other side. There were theories, of course. Many theories. Four Warm Currents had studied gas bubbles and knew that whatever substance lay beyond the ice was not water as they knew it, not nearly so heavy. It could very well be deadly. Four Warm Currents would take precautions, but—

  The brush of a tentacle tip, a familiar taste. Six Bubbling Thermals had ballooned up to join the stillness. Four Warm Currents extended a welcoming clasp, and the rasp of skin on skin was a comforting one. Calming.

  “Someone almost started a riot in the plaza today,” S
ix Bubbling Thermals signed.

  The calm vanished. “Over what? Over the project?”

  “Yes.” Six Bubbling Thermals stared out across the city with a long clicking burst, then turned to face Four Warm Currents. “They had artificial panic. In storage globes. Broke them wide open right as the market peaked. It was . . .” Tentacles wove in and out, searching for a descriptor. “Chaos.”

  “Are you all right?” Four Warm Currents signed hard. “You should have told me. You’re birthing.”

  Six Bubbling Thermals waved a quick-dying laugh. “I’m still bigger than you are. And I told Three Jagged Reefs. We agreed it would be best not to add to your stress. But I’ve never kept secrets well, have I?”

  Another stare, longer this time. Four Warm Currents joined in, scraping sound across the architecture of the city, mapping curves and crevices, spars and spires.

  “Before they were dragged off, they dropped one last globe,” Six Bubbling Thermals signed. “It was your name, fresh, mixed with a decay scent. They said you’re a monster, and if nobody stops you, you’ll end the world.”

  Four Warm Currents shivered, clenched hard against the noxious fear threatening to tendril into the water. “Fresh?”

  “Yes.”

  Who had it been? Four Warm Currents thought of the many workers and observers jetting up and down the tunnel, bringing status reports, complaints, updates. Any one of them could have come close enough to coax their chief engineer’s name taste into a concealed globe. With a start, Four Warm Currents realized Six Bubbling Thermals was not gazing pensively over the city, but keeping watch.

  “I know you won’t consider halting the project,” Six Bubbling Thermals signed. “But you need to be careful. Promise me that much.”

  Four Warm Currents remembered the councillor’s warning and stroked Six Bubbling Thermals’s egg sacs with a trembling tentacle. “I’ll be careful. And when we break through, this will all go away. They’ll see there’s no danger.”

  “And when will that be?” The mauve worry was creeping back across Six Bubbling Thermals’s skin.

  “Soon,” Four Warm Currents signed. “Seven work cycles.”

  They enmeshed their tentacles and curled against each other, bobbing there in silence as the City of Bone’s ghostly blue guide lights began to blink out one by one.

  The first attack came three cycles later, after shift. A pair of free-swimmers, with their skins pumped pitch-black and a sonar cloak in tow, managed to bore halfway through the Drill’s protective shell before the guards spotted them and chased them off. The news came by a messenger whom Three Jagged Reefs, unhappily awoken, nearly eviscerated. Bare moments later, Four Warm Currents stroked goodbyes to both mates and took the skiff to the project site, tentacles heavy from sleep but hearts thrumming electric.

  Nine Brittle Spines somehow contrived to arrive first.

  “Four Warm Currents, it is a pleasure to see you so well rested.” The councillor’s tentacles moved as smoothly and blandly as ever, but Four Warm Currents could see the faintest of trembling at their tips. Mortal after all.

  “I came as quickly as I was able,” Four Warm Currents signed, not rising to the barb. “Were either of the perpetrators identified?”

  “No.” Nine Brittle Spines gave the word a twist of annoyance. “Assumedly they were two of yours. They knew the thinnest point of the shell and left behind a project-tagged auger.”

  One tentacle produced the spiral tool and set it drifting between them. It was a miniature cousin to the behemoth Drill, used to sample ice consistency.

  Four Warm Currents inspected the implement. “I’ll speak with inventory, but I imagine it was taken without their knowledge.”

  “Do that,” Nine Brittle Spines signed. “In the meanwhile, security will be increased. We’ll have guards at all times from now on. Body searches for workers.”

  Four Warm Currents waved a vague agreement, staring up at the burnished armor shell, the hole scored in its underbelly. The workers would not be happy, but they were so close now, too close to let anything derail the project. Four Warm Currents would agree to anything, so long as the Drill was safe.

  Tension became a sharp, sooty tang overlaying every conversation, so much so that Four Warm Currents was given council approval for a globe of artificially mixed happiness to waft around the tunnel entrance. It ended being mostly sucked up by the guards, who were happy enough already to swagger around with screamers and combat hooks bristling in their tentacles, interrogating any particularly worry-spackled worker who happened to look their way.

  Four Warm Currents complained to the councillor, but was soundly ignored, told only that the guards had been instructed to treat the project site and its crew with the utmost respect. Enthusiasm was now a thing of the past. Workers spoke rarely and with short tempers, and every time the Drill slowed or an error was found in its calibration, the possibility of sabotage hung in the tunnel like a decay scent. Four Warm Currents found a slip in the most recent density calculation that promised to put things back a full work cycle, but still the Drill churned.

  At home, they began receiving death threats. Six Bubbling Thermals found the first, a tiny automaton that waved its stiff tentacles in a prerecorded message: “We won’t need a drill to puncture your eyes and every one of your eggs.” Three Jagged Reefs shredded it to pieces. Four Warm Currents gave the pieces to the council’s investigator.

  Then, two cycles before breakthrough, black globes of artificial malice were slicked to their spire with adhesive and timed to burst while they slept. Only one went off, but it was enough to necessitate a pore-cleanse for Six Bubbling Thermals and a dedicated surveillance detail for the house.

  Three Jagged Reefs fumed and fumed. “After the Drill breaks through, you’ll let me borrow it, won’t you?” The demand was jittery with skimmer venom, and made only once Six Bubbling Thermals, finally returned from the cleansing tanks, was out of sight range. “I’m going to find the shit-eater who blacked Six and stick them on the bit gland first.”

  Three Jagged Reefs had been pulled from smelting after an incidence of “hazardously elevated emotions,” in which a copper-worker trilling about the impending end of the world had their tentacle held over a geyser until it turned to pulp. Staying in the house full cycle, under the watchful eyes and mouths of council surveillance, was not an easy transition. Not even stocked with high-quality venom.

  “It’ll all be over soon,” Four Warm Current signed, mind half-filled, as was now the norm, with figures from the latest density calculation. One final cycle.

  “Tell it to Six,” Three Jagged Reefs signed back, short and clipped, and turned away.

  Four Warm Currents swam into the next room, to where their mate was adrift in the sleeping harness. The egg sacs were bulging now, slick with the constant emission of birth mucus, bearing no trace of black ichor stains. The cleansing tanks had reported no permanent damage. Four Warm Currents sent a gentle prod of sonar and elicited a twitch.

  “I’m awake,” Six Bubbling Thermals signed, languid. “I’d sleep better with you two around me.”

  “They’ll catch the lunatics who planted that globe,” Four Warm Currents signed back.

  Six Bubbling Thermals signed nothing for a long moment, then waved a sad laugh. “I don’t think it’s lunatics. Not anymore. A lot of people are saying the same thing, you know.”

  “Saying what?”

  “You spend all of your time at the Drill, even when you’re here with us.” The accusation was soft, but it stung. “You haven’t been paying attention. The transit currents are full of devotees calling you a blasphemer. Saying you think yourself a Leviathan. Unbounded. The whole city is frightened.”

  “Then it’s a city of idiots,” Four Warm Currents signed abruptly.

  “I’m frightened. I have no shame admitting it. I’m frightened for our children. For them to have two parents only. One parent only. None. For them to never even hatch. Who knows?” Six Bubbling Thermals raised a shaky
smile. “Maybe the idiot is the one who isn’t frightened.”

  “But I’m going to give them an altered world, a new world . . .” Four Warm Currents’s words blurred as Six Bubbling Thermals stilled two waving tentacles.

  “I don’t give a floating shit about a new world if it’s one where you take a hook in the back,” Six Bubbling Thermals signed back, slow and clear. “Don’t go to the Drill tomorrow. They’ll send for you when it breaks the ice.”

  At first, Four Warm Currents didn’t even comprehend the words. After spending a third of a lifespan planning, building, lobbying, watching, the idea of not being there to witness the final churn, the final crack and squeal of ice giving away, was dizzying. Nauseating.

  “If you go, I think you’ll be dead before you come home,” Six Bubbling Thermals signed. “You’re worth more to us alive for one more cycle than as a name taste wafting through the archives for all eternity.”

  “I’ve watched it from the very start.” Four Warm Currents tried not to tremble. “Every turn. Every single turn.”

  “And without you it moves no faster, no slower,” Six Bubbling Thermals replied. “Isn’t that what you say?”

  “I have to be there.”

  “You don’t.” Six Bubbling Thermals gave a weary shudder. “Is it a new world for our children, or only for you?”

  Four Warm Currents’s tentacles went slack, adrift. The two of them stared at each other in the gloom, until, suddenly, something stirred in the egg sacs. The motion repeated, a faint but mesmerizing ripple. Six Bubbling Thermals gave a slight wriggle of pain.

  Four Warm Currents climbed into the harness, turning acid blue in an apology that could not have been properly signed.

  “I’ll stay. I’ll stay, I’ll stay.”

  They folded against each other and spoke of other things, of the strange currents that had brought them together, the future looming in the birthing tanks. Then they slept, deeply, even when Three Jagged Reefs wobbled in to join them much later, nearly unhooking the harness with chemical-clumsy tentacles.