Episode 9 - A Dark, Deep Place. And the Hollow Beyond.

  Chapter 86 - Preparations

  Bosun Wesley lifts the roller shutter at the back of the storage trailer with a flourish more akin to the unveiling of a rare antique. Instead of something worthy of awe, it reveals only the bare walls of the tiny partition section at the back of the metal compartment used as the airlock.

  “I present… a box that will keep you alive!” he exclaims, gesturing me inside.

  It has been several days since we left All-Markets, and the split point the Navigators had arranged for our routes is tomorrow. With the dawn, when I wake up for my shift change, I’ll be going into the wilds to find the intact manifestation platform and blood-bond like Rattakul commanded me. The golden Garuda has been following Moreau’s crew, disappearing for only a few hours here and there before returning to camp with us for meals.

  “You cleared out one of the storage trailers?” I ask, lifting my torso up with my wrists and sitting on the back to stand and enter the airlock. I can guess why the crews were not regularly using this trailer. The floor of the deck is just higher than my hips, not at the lowered height the crews prefer for loading and unloading.

  “Technically, it’s the trailer we use for medical quarantine. Got most of the supplies a cob needs to live if he’s gonna be stuck on his own for a while. Including a personal water tank, and a battery that you can worry about on your own,” comments Wesley idly as he climbs up behind me and drags the roller door shut behind us. The airlock is a tight fit for two people, with just enough room for us both to stand side by side, illuminated by the bright blue digits counting down the air-quality measurements as the fans turn on.

  I brush ?some white dust off my shoulder, watching it get sucked up into the fan as we both wait. Wesley continues. “Quartermaster has allowed you enough food for the route the Navigator plotted for you, so no going off on your own adventure now, you hear. Plus an extra fifty percent overage that we would rather you not eat if you don’t have to. It’s for emergencies.”

  I sniff. “You don’t really need to worry about that. No one is eating those meal cakes for snacks.”

  Wesley chuckles as he flicks off the switch for the fans and lifts the inner door. I peel off my respirator and breathe the stale gym-sock air, a lingering note of bleach adding to the perfume.

  The trailer is almost identical to many of the others, except miniaturized. A small locker area stands by the airlock, with a bank of cubbies and hangers for suits. The next area has storage trunks with their lids coated in a padded plasticized fabric for sitting, the top of what might be a fold-out table mounted against the wall. The area beyond is split with a bed and hygiene facilities. At the base of the bed is a small space large enough to stand and change, with a latrine mounted against the wall, and a curtain hanging from a rail overhead for privacy. The other side is occupied by a hand pump tap and sink, with the clear water storage tub mounted below the stand and a second tank, colored opaque blue, for the wastewater.

  I run my gloved hand across one bench, a layer of grime balling under the rubber tip of my finger. “When was the last time you used this space?”

  Wesley strips his respirator off and taps his chin thoughtfully. “For people? Uh, fuck. Maybe when your predecessor was using it. I was storing the spare boots in here until you insisted on using it.”

  “I made a bargain with the Captain,” I rebuke, stepping to inspect the bed. The sheets at least look clean, freshly changed. I crack the cap on the water storage tub to check if it’s full. “Can I have some supplies to try cleaning a bit? I can smell those boots.”

  Wesley leans sideways against the storage cubbies. “Ask the Quartermaster what she’ll apportion you. We might have some rags you can dry dust with at least. Your cryptid gonna be okay pulling this thing?”

  I cringe inwardly. Not unexpectedly, Pooka’s cryptid status bought me an immediate deference with the crews I lacked as a loaner, as well as some nervous distance from almost everyone but the Captains, Addie, and Wesley. Explaining that there was only certain work I could get from him was accepted without questions, I suspect partially out of fear of invoking his wrath and a culture of their leaders all being cryptids. While I could let him get his way for most work, Pooka and I have been mentally fighting about the prospect of this ever since the Captain gave his go-ahead for my mission. It’s not like Pell could pull it. “He’s gonna have to be.”

  “You got lucky, you know? Bargaining with the Captain like that. He’d never negotiate with the regular crew. Especially not without a vote.”

  “Lucky I’m not regular crew,” I say shortly, dodging his implication. “I’m a loaner.”

  “You’re a bloody cryptid.”

  “You didn’t know that when you got me.”

  “Unpleasant surprise.”

  “More like value for money,” I retort.

  “There’s one matter I need to discuss with you though,” Wesley’s voice takes an odd turn for serious. I pause from my review of the trailer to turn back to him. “I’m the one with your control device… I’m saying that because I’m fairly certain you won’t kill me to claim it back these days. What do you want to do?”

  My breath completely escapes my chest. My back is healed these days. The incision was tiny in the first place, with no physical reminder except when I wander my fingers at the base of my spine and can feel the fine dips of the single scar that remains there. I stand straight, nervous suddenly about what the correct response to his question is. Can I ask for it?

  “Umm. What are my options?”

  Wesley shrugs. “I obviously can’t give it to you. That would defeat the point of it, I think.”

  “Yeah… I was told it was for the safety of others.”

  Wesley sighs. “Look, you have my pity. I dunno what’s normal for bubbler cryptids. First I'd ever heard of such a thing when Aster explained it to me in our handover. It is unfair that the Captains get to run around out here and you got stuck with that. But, to also be fair, I ain’t ever seen anything like the shit you pulled in Baise. The Captain can pull off some superhuman feats when he is transformed, but that is nothing compared to what you can do apparently. So, I can’t give it to you. But I’m not a fan of the idea of giving it to Everett either. For all I care, you can kill him.”

  I swallow, a fine sweat beginning to bead on my brow. The trailer, like all of them, is hot.

  “I can hang onto it. But, you’ll be going out of its range for most of your little vacation, so it’ll be dead anyway… don’t fuck up, yah hear?”

  I file that piece of information away despite my nerves at this conversation. I don’t know if he consciously slipped me that fact. “Can I see it?”

  Wesley raises an eyebrow, his tone taking a darker twist. “I don’t think that’s a great idea.”

  I catch myself grabbing my wrist and hugging my arm against my body, and turn back to sorting through the boxes hoping movement will hide my nerves. “Yeah.”

  If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

  Wesley gives a short, chipper whistle to break the mood. “What you gonna do with only one bed?”

  I twist my head sharply at him, giving him a glare. “Fuck off.” It's not the only thing I want to say, but I suspect a threat won’t be well received given the topic of conversation.

  “Yeah, I wouldn’t want to share with the wolf-pup either. Can you imagine? You’ll wake up with a knife in your back.”

  “Give us a spare set of sheets. We’ll get something going on the floor, or rotate, or something.” Ugh, this is going to be a mess. I lift the lids of each of the storage trunks to review their contents: food, medical supplies, ropes, and tools for repairs, even an old compass in case the navigation tech is compromised. I don’t think I’d get lost when we can just send Pooka out on the wing to scout our way through almost anything.

  Wesley watches me go through the bins. “Fair enough. But help me bring all the ropes out of that tub. You won’t need them, and I didn’t know they were here. And maybe a couple of those spare tires shoved under the bed, two should be plenty for ya.”

  I drag out the first of four spares stacked under the bed to help him rearrange the storage as requested. With some luck, I can negotiate a small water ration and some soap out of the Quartermaster to give the walls a scrub; dusting is unlikely to remove any of the smell. As we roll the back of the trailer shut, one crate of ropes mounted on my shoulder and my neck craned to make space for it, I watch Rattakul’s symbiont pass overhead to land past our camp.

  She’s come to drop Rhett off like she promised, then. In less than a day, I’ll be setting off.

  I never discussed with her the dizzy spells I’d been having, like I set out to on the day she let me know this opportunity was finally here. It has to be the hollow calling. I'm certain it's why conduits used to do the blood-bonding. It all seems like a moot point if I can go and be done with all this and not feel it anymore and no one will ever need to know it was happening. Reminded of my implant by Wesley, I have no desire for anyone to think I’m unstable. I’m not even sure I could explain the feeling of ghosts in my mind. Maybe Rattukul blood-bonded the moment she manifested and she never knew what it felt like.

  I bounce the crate on my shoulder to get a better balance, and follow Wesley to unload.

  “I’m returning these,” I say as I dump down a pile of documents twined together with a thin cord for Carol at his folding table set up outside the green storage trailer reserved for the really valuable goods.

  The science team uses it as their home base. Unlike most of the able-crew, they are the only ones responsible for cataloging and storing the really valuable antiques unearthed by the team. Metal, circuit boards, plastic, and old technology - anything recyclable really - can be sold to any old dealer in half the domes we stop at. The valuable goods are carefully held onto for the right buyer, shuttled in storage until contact can be made.

  To my surprise, Carol had a small section of the space set aside as a herbarium. Stored between memories of men, are memories of plants. Most of them were samples he collected on the road when they saw the occasional plant, carefully pressed and dried. Some were just leaves, but the valuable ones are the flowers and fruits or seed-pods, useful for identifying them plants from descriptive papers very similar to the ones my father’s lab used to write.

  Nothing has reminded me so much of my dad since I left Murasaki, not even spending time in Junk’s workshop. In my free time, curled up in my bunk with a scrap of board as a desk, I’ve done my best to sketch in pen Carol's samples before time inevitably destroyed them too. The environment of the trailers are far less than perfect, and I can already tell by the brittle yellowing of the samples that they are temporary preservations at best.

  “How many did you get through?” asks Carol as he looks up from his notes, pen twirling in his gloved hand.

  I pull the top folder through the twine, and open it for him, splaying the scattered drawings at the top. “I have sketches of the flowers and seed pods for the most degraded samples you requested. I did one copy as they are, and one I tried to guess what they might look like when they were fresher… but I’m not so good with plants, sorry.”

  Carol puts his pen down and pushes the sketches around. “You did a better job than I can. My hand shakes too much for the finely detailed work these days. Your work on the vasculature looks very good.”

  “I used to draw scincids based on descriptions of their scale counts. Veins are much easier. Look, I even got the dots in the throat of the Diuris. You could see them still, despite it being dried. What color were they?”

  Carol nods. “Deep blue, like ink. Did you mark which ones you were done with?” He lifts one drawing in particular, lingering. Then, he dusts the white spores that have already settled on its surface with the back of his hand and turns through the pile.

  “Yeah. There’s a scrap of plastic wrap halfway through the pile where I stopped. If you keep it safe for me, I’ll pick up where I left off when I get back.” I’m conscious as we speak of two figures wandering our way, the taller one with a shock of red hair that has to be Patrick.

  “Ahoy, Conrad!” he cries as they draw close, one hand lifted to wave. “I have one grumpy boy ready for delivery. Beware, for he bites.”

  Rhett shoves Patrick in the shoulder playfully as they walk with a barely audible grunt.

  “See! What did I say?” cries Patrick.

  “No one thinks you’re funny,” mutters Rhett.

  “I think you’re funny,” I reassure Patrick, earning an exasperated ‘thank you!’. “Wesley showed me our trailer. I’ve still gotta talk Pooka into pulling it, though.”

  Rhett’s eyebrows knit behind his mask. “Is that possible?” Then his eyes wander downwards, and I note they remain on the sketches that Carol is still riffling through.

  “Yeah. He’ll grump and moan, but he’ll do it.”

  Patrick leans on my shoulder, putting slightly more weight on me than I’d prefer. “You’re like Rhett then? You give your magic invisible pet a name too?”

  “Are those botanical specimens?” interrupts Rhett.

  “Yeah. Carol, you know Everett?”

  “Yes, I know him.”

  “He ever tell you about his collection of ferns?” I prompt.

  Rhett shoots me an awkward glance, but his eyes tellingly return to the sketches shortly after.

  Carol is polite, but neutral. “I had not heard. What kind?”

  “I have a Dypsis, a few Chamaedorea, hmm… a Yucca, although I know that’s not a fern…”

  I leave them to it, patting Patrick’s hand as he continues to lean on my shoulder. “You ever met Pooka?” I ask him.

  Patrick looks down his nose from his perch over me, half of his expression hidden behind his respirator. “Oh. And how would I meet an invisible cryptid?”

  “You could pat him?”

  “Pat him?” he blinks, incredulous. “Fuck me, eh? You’re serious.”

  I shrug, tipping his elbow off my shoulder. “You could ride him if I’m feeling generous?”

  That earns a bout of manic laughter. “No, no. I literally cannot imagine that. Terrifying, gross. No thanks, cob. I’ll leave that sort of thing to men stronger than me. I’ll fan my face from the shade and enjoy watching you all gallivant about on invisible lightning monsters from a distance, thank you very much.”

  I feel a twinge in my gut, unsure suddenly if I should have asked him, given he has no symbiont of his own. “Let me know if you change your mind. I’m sorry, if I shouldn’t have asked.”

  The corners of Patrick’s eyes wrinkle. It’s not the broad grin he has when playing, but it seems sincere and bittersweet. “You’re fine, girl. I know good intentions when I hear them. Have fun on your little trip. I’m going to head back.” I dislike the wink he gives me as he finally pulls away from me, but I give him a wave as he retreats all the same, completely ignored by Rhett.

  I sigh, rubbing my shoulder where he touched me, and glance at Rhett’s turned shoulder as he leans over Carol’s work now, eagerly discussing the specimens with the older man who already has the stack untied, completely ruining the order I’d carefully left them in to fish out something or another they are discussing.

  I sigh and drag a chair from under the table to sit and patiently wait out their discussion rather than breaking them up to go brief Rhett on our trailer and its setup.

  Chapter 1

  

  
• Episode title is now ‘A Ticking Clock’


  
• Adjusted some of the descriptive language throughout chapter


  
• Made symbiont naming more accessible - I dumped the rule to not mention animals, it just makes the latin naming too inaccessible otherwise. Like it’s already dumb I have latin and japanese and chinese and german in my not-earth but earth-like world when, like, its unclear if the romans ever existed? Some world building is going to be stupid just for the sake of the premise lol


  
• Rewrote the interaction to be a large, rare giraffid (specifically an okapi) which better keeps with later symbiont canon


  
• The mix-up about beaks is therefore changed into a mix-up about odd vs even toes


  
• Dropped some earlier hints of collectivist ideologies that help clue to world state a little earlier


  

  Chapter 2

  

  
• Rewrote bar theming to be about the company, dropped company values on the back wall to bring more hints about world state and collectivist cultural attitudes that underpin system acceptance - the company motto/values for Murasaki were selected to be: “Adaptation in Adversity” - Endurance, Resolve, Unity


  
• Renamed city-monitors to be just monitors to be… I dunno less weird?


  
• Tweaked the dialogue to make it easier to understand the bread & circuses aspects of the world building and how risky/unusual Conrada’s manifestation circumstances are which justify her different worldview from episode 1 characters


  
• Big five is now big three for the stupidest reason I’m not going to explain


  
• Also tweaked dialogue to just make it generally less “here is a conversation about things the characters know but I need to explain to you as the reader”


  
• Conrada made less of a ‘not like the other girls’


  
• Removed messaging via monitors. I caved and use full names now as well.


  
• Books are a weird idea in this world, made it more clear they are kind of rare.


  
• Lab interactions adjusted to setup Conrada’s tech abilities a little earlier and build vibe of community/collective resilience in the neglected basement labs


  
• Murasaki tech operations more concretely pivoted to being biosciences based in line with later world building (‘physics’ based technologies lean magitech, chemistry and biotechnology lean similar/more advanced than our own)


  
• Fixed some british spelling that slipped through in a few places


  

  Chapter 3

  

  
• Do americans know what a fortnight is? Who cares, I’m keeping it.


  
• Added more clutter, people live, they would fill even a bland world with rich, tiny personal objects. Removed screens in personal places - I’m weird in that I don’t think this world would actually have much advertising (there kind of… isn’t capitalism(?) at least not that occurs at the level of the everyday person functioning on company credits) and culture occurs at the company level - like work events, quarterly celebrations, promotions, etc. Within that, people identify by departments and activities that occur at those levels. Anyway, trying to leave more clues about this in the background. Ethnic/racial identities are non-existent partially because I’m just not interested in going there in this fic.


  
• Dropped some very subtle clues that the city is weird in here as well (the domes lol, it really just sneaks up that this is a post-apocalypse lol, I think it was too sneaky).


  
• Access to nature/plants as running motif of power/money massaged a little


  
• Description of how Conrad operates adjusted to be less ‘tell’ but it sort of is what it is. I feel like the rest of the story ‘shows’ this stuff enough that I could get away with losing it, but dunno. It stays for now. I tweaked it slightly.


  
• Planted some more clues for Conrad’s major motivations


  
• Interaction with Harris adjusted for more insight into freeman vs serf angle here in the worldview tradeoff


  
• Misc grammar clean up


  

  Chapter 4

  

  
• LESS BOOKS!


  
• Had to make the reference mix up about horns now, cause of how chapter 1 was tweaked


  
• Tweaking dialogue for stronger use of titles. Conrada rarely uses them in internal dialogue but will use them in spoken dialogue depending on context. I wanted to do something more with honorifics that I never got around to so this is introduced here, going japanese with the honorifics would work for Murasaki but not elsewhere so I went old english for feudalism ‘vibes’. Sire/dame is much higher ranked, sir/madam or ma’am for slightly higher rank, mr/ms for equal rank and or lower (polite), and sirrah/serrah for much lower rank (with a pretty rude connotation, how Shakespearean!). Serrah is not real, but I’m using it because every other female equivalent I just did not like.


  
• Watanabe has a first name now, Masahiro Watanabe. He’s also less casual with Conrada now.


  
• I dropped more hints in this convo Conrada has run ins with security before.


  

  Chapter 5

  

  
• Minor language tweaks here and there, I just made everything more ‘contracts’ and less buying and selling humans. Like, it is still buying and selling humans, but with more paperwork steps now (hooray! D:). The thing is technically you could have a choice to not work… but it’s like the equivalent of being both stateless and unemployed. Like how are you going to feed/cloth yourself? The support systems are 100% tied to employment now - the point is that the manorial feudalism is just cloaked in a new identity of companies. Anyway, unemployment is not a realistic choice, but it is technically a choice you could make I guess.


  
• Removed unwired messaging.


  
• Tweaked some language around interpretation of the magic tiger’s mental state.


  
• Made it more obvious Conrada is kind of self-destructively drawn to danger - she’s a bit cracked you guys


  
• It is surprisingly important to the lore that the handler attacked by the tiger dies here, so I tweaked this to be a more intentional culling that only Conrada sees. It’s sort of more fucked up now D:


  

  Chapter 6

  

  
• Adjusted the corporate message at the chapter opening to align to the changed handler death and drop more company values/world state hints


  
• More general celebration in the background, hints of what people do in their spare time.


  
• Tweaked the conversation to make this more about Conrada’s own personal anxieties around manifestation rather than like ‘the system is wrong’. It is, but Conrada has more personal problems at this stage of things.


  
• Harris has multiple brothers, fixed this.


  
• Removed messaging.


  
• Slightly tweaked the flow of events for the Murasaki break in, but nothing significant.


  
• More british spelling fixes because I have lived in countries where both british and american spelling are used and I don’t know which one is what anymore. I think I’m catching everything to standardize to american though?


  
• Slight reflection of serf vs freeman circumstances thrown into some internal dialogue.


  

  Chapter 7

  

  
• Fixed some rampant comma abuse in this chapter.


  
• Fixed a frankly stupid world building break


  
• I made it clear that Rhett is actually using the blunt edge of his knife in this interaction (it previously just left no mark, but now I outright say it). It is a little bit too ‘shadow daddy’ for him to actually threaten her life at this point, lol. It’s also inconsistent with his character. He’s a bit alpha, but he’s not unreasonable aggressive (I think).


  
• He also wouldn't salute, removed that


  
• Adrian doesn't use nicknames I've decided, so removed that from Adrian's one line of dialogue in this chapter


  
• Dropped a single hint that Conrada sort of knows she was tolerated unusually and attributes it to management not caring. I actually think she would be happier and this fic wouldn't happen if she was punished lol, she lives in a state of nihilistic ennui


  
• Content is otherwise mostly unchanged.


  

  Chapter 8

  

  
• Gilroy is actually a doctor like Armin. Made this clearer lol.


  
• So the snake and rat metaphor in this chapter is fundamentally problematic to work with for in-world lore… but also I really like it. So I just made it a snake, the fact that snakes eat rats is an interpretation you can have as a reader, but Conrada no longer draws the comparison.


  
• Slight tweaks to explain serfs vs freemen a bit more


  

  Chapter 9

  

  
• Reformatting to make the messages consistent with new way of handling this (and also the timing of when they would all be at work to send them from wired devices)


  
• Adjusted some of the instructions to better describe the biding process going on at manifestation. Made some people excited about it. New job, magic pet! They would be right?


  
• Adjusted the manifestation reveal slightly to better capture the imagery I’ve settled into for these matters.