Untitled Solarpunk Story Excerpt
I pulled something in my back while ironing 2 days ago (yes, really) and I've spent most of my time since trying to sit very very still so it stops spasming.
On the down side, it's kept me from my sewing, baking, and socializing plans. On the plus side, it's been good for storyboarding a short solarpunk story I'd like to get out.
Here's a little piece of it. Mostly a brain dump, very little editing. Also you will never convince me that names aren't going to be absolutely ridiculous in the future. Lean into it.
The oxygen mask bumped rhythmically against her left leg as she walked down the narrow passageway. She synced her breathing with her steps, keeping her mind on the brief echo of her footsteps and the bobbing of the light from her headlamp and definitely not on the question of just how much dirt and questionable infrastructure sat above and around her.
2 steps, breathe in. When was the last time a real earthquake had come through?
2 steps, breathe out. When was the last time someone had checked the walls down here?
2 steps, breathe in. How long ago did those cracks show up?
2 steps, breathe out. How long would the air down here last if the air pumps stopped? How long would she last until her tank ran out?
Olive’s nails bit into her palms, bringing her mind back to the job, and she quickened her pace.
The next section of lights blinked on as she passed the motion sensor. A cold wave of anxiety churned in her stomach at the idea of the now-empty sections behind her going dark, a seemingly endless tunnel of blackness. Even after a decade of working in the pipes, Olive had to force herself not to give in to the ancient instinct whispering urgently for her to run from the dark and whatever watched and waited in it.
Her eyes scanned for the latest section number. She’d gone deep enough that she should be getting close to the offshoot. 220Z, 221A, there – 221B. Digging her pad out of her tool bag with one hand, she wiped years of grime off the code beneath the number with her other.
The screen flashed to life and the EcoSphere logo appeared, its 10 colored rings pulsing around the Earth, one for each of the services the utility company oversaw globally. Her foot tapped impatiently as the logo dissolved only to be replaced by the AquaTech sector’s logo. Her finger was already hovering over the screen as the authentication prompt appeared. She pressed firmly against the screen protector that was already peeling in the corners and WELCOME OLIVE MCGARDEN greeted her.
“Come on, this century already,” she muttered as the pad struggled to find its connection to the wireless this far from the hub.
Finally in the system, she quickly scrolled to her active work order and scanned the code beneath the section number. She made sure the check-in had registered before stowing the pad back in the bag and pushing the old offshoot door open with a resisting creak that echoed down the hall.
She recalled Apple’s teasing when they had received their work orders that morning. Apple was overseeing the installation of the main pipes for the new office wing on the north side of town – “I’ll bring you back a bar from the fancy new replicator they just installed” – with its brightly lit corridors and smooth automatic doors.
Olive, on the other hand, had been assigned to one of the oldest pipe sections on the flow. Not that she minded. She’d take grimy doors and stale air over running into whatever found a way to survive just under the subscape any day. Nothing survived this deep in the sections.
Stepping into the offshoot, Olive widened the scope and increased the brightness of her headlamp. The AquaTech system could determine there was an issue in the section, now it was up to her to figure out where it was coming from, what was causing it, and get it fixed. The newer pipe areas could self-service most leak alerts, but the maze of aging pipes and narrower tunnels this far down hadn’t been worth the trouble – and cost – to upgrade and so required manual inspection and maintenance whenever a leak alert was picked up.
She spent the next hour walking through the tunnels, looking for puddles and other telltale signs of a leak significant enough to trigger the alert. As the tunnel began branching, she pulled colored flags out of a pocket in her bag and began to mark the forks. Blue for main pipe. Green for first offshoot. Yellow for third. They helped keep the paths organized for future maintenance needs while also making sure she could find her way out when she was done. The fact that there were none down here already here told her she was the first to come down this offshoot in a good, long time.
Expecting the leak to be deeper in the flow grid, she walked past the first dozen branches and picked one at random to begin flagging.
Olive had just pulled out a purple flag to mark the newly found fourth offshoot in her branch when her foot stepped on something soft. Flinching back, she shone her light down where she’d stepped, expecting to see some long-dead remains. Instead, she found a small green patch of moss.
She strained her hearing, listening around the sound of her pulse knocking in her ears. There it was. A thin but steady dripping noise echoed dimly down the branch towards her.
She quickened her pace, stopping only to hang a fresh flag as new branches popped up to show her path forward. As she hung the last of her purple flags, she made a mental note to pick up more when she checked back in at HQ later and forged ahead regardless, determined to find the source of the leak after coming so far.
Olive pulled up short as she came to a fifth branch, her head whipping around to stare down the narrow tunnel. Her headlamp showed nothing and yet she could have sworn… Taking a deep breath, she turned the light off.
But where she expected suffocating darkness, a dim glow greeted her at the end of the branch and the trickle of water sounded like laughter calling her name.
