Chapter 9: Day at the Beach

David released Flower’s ball, the little slug racing up towards the ceiling to catch it before it bumped against the fish tank, bands of bright blues and oranges rippling down its length as it returned with its prize. It made a show of avoiding David’s hand as he reached out for it, like a puppy running away with a tennis ball, then relinquished it.

There was a beeping sound, David looking up from the game to see Selkie scuttling over to the door. When she opened it, he glimpsed the white plastic and silver chrome of a drone, the floating machine using a hose-like arm with grasping claws to pass her a package that was presumably filled with her order. Like their suits, its near face was covered with lenses and sensors, and it was just the right size to fit through a doorway. She swiped her hand across its face, then it jetted back out of sight.

“What was that?” David asked.

“A delivery drone,” she explained, setting the suitcase-sized package down on the floor. “There are fleets of them that will bring goods to a person’s dwelling.”

“I meant more the hand wave thing,” he said, mimicking the gesture. “Were you signaling for it to leave?”

“It is how we process payments in person,” she explained, lifting her tentacle to demonstrate. “There is a chip embedded beneath my skin that is linked to an account where my currency is stored. It allows me to send and receive money conveniently.”

“I see,” he said with a nod. “We have similar technology on Earth, though it’s mostly used for medical purposes. Most people don’t want their credit card surgically implanted into their body when they can just carry a phone. I guess you have no pockets, though...”

“We do not require clothing.”

“Yeah, I’ve noticed,” he muttered as he looked her up and down. “You don’t really have anything to cover up.”

“And it would make it harder for us to breathe,” she added. “Here – you carry the food.”

“Jealous of my musculoskeletal system, eh?” he joked as he walked over and tucked it under his arm.

“You seem to have more leverage and support than I do,” she conceded. “Jealous, however? I think not. You have yet to witness a fraction of what a Broker’s tentacles can do.”

“I’m sure I’ll find out,” he replied, gesturing to the door. “Ladies first.”

Selkie slithered out and let herself float down the tube, David falling in slow motion behind her. When they reached the ground level, such as it was, they headed for the tube terminal where David had first entered the building. To his surprise, they encountered a couple of Brokers, the two aliens maintaining an almost comical distance from one another. They reacted with alarm when they saw him, dark patterning and spiky papillae erupting across their skin. One of them hurried to a tube opening and was quickly whisked away by the current, while the other kept their eyes on a colorful map of the system pointedly.

“It’s a lovely day for it!” David shouted, giving the frightened Broker a cheerful wave.

“Do not antagonize them,” Selkie grumbled. “You know that we do not enjoy social interaction.”

“I’m just glad to see anybody,” he replied, adjusting the package as they neared the branching tubes. “This city is like a ghost town.”

Selkie entered one of the pipes and was carried away by the gentle current, David following behind her. They left the bright lights of the terminal, the murky water encompassing them as they drifted along. When he glanced up, he could see the yellow glow that bled out of the innumerable windows of the towering structures, along with the dense network of tubes, each one lit by a ring of lights at regular intervals. Far below, the seabed was covered in a sprawl of cables and pipes, tended by a fleet of crawling robots that infested it like crabs.

David knew where they were heading this time, seeing the underwater mountain that formed the island chain rising up ahead, the tube curving to follow it until it was almost vertical. Sparse corals began to appear as they climbed, serving as homes to fish and ocean life, more and more sunlight filtering through.

“Not that you don’t have a lovely home, but being in that city feels like living in a spaceship,” he said as they coasted upward. It couldn’t have been faster than a brisk jog, but it was a surprisingly relaxing way to travel. “The ride here on the Courser was bad enough.”

“Is this your claustrophobia again?” Selkie asked sarcastically.

“You seem perfectly happy to cram yourself into a suit the size of a fridge,” he replied. “That would be a nightmare for a lot of humans.”

“We find confined spaces soothing,” she explained as they leveled out, the dappled sunlight that made it through the water illuminating the reef that was sprouting up around them. Their shapes and hues grew more diverse, sponges and sea grass joining them. Shoals of colorful fish darted about above them, and David could see a few crabs picking through the undergrowth. “That does not mean that we enjoy being so far below the surface, however.”

“Yeah, you’ve told me about how all the bigshots have penthouses up here,” he replied as they coasted towards another terminal that rose up ahead of them. Unlike the pale, synthetic white of many of the structures, this one was made of a concrete-like substance that served as a habitat for the corals that covered it in a colorful blanket. “I take it that’s why so many rooms in the city have fish tanks on the ceiling, right?”

“Yes, it makes us feel like we are closer to the surface,” she replied.

They slid into the building, the flow slowing to deposit them in a kind of airlock, the far door opening into another of the garages that he had seen during his first visit. There was a wall covered in exosuits that were docked in charging bays, as well as a parking area for autonomous trucks.

“Not getting a suit this time?” David asked as they passed by the idle machines.

“It will not be necessary, as we will not be spending a great deal of time away from the water,” she explained as she led him into the garage. A pair of large doors slid open to let them pass, and they exited onto an undersea road that seemed to somehow ward off the surrounding plant life, the water here tangibly warmer than that of the deep ocean. He could feel the heating elements in his suit winding down.

“Finally, I can actually get a closer look at this place,” David said, turning on the spot to admire his surroundings. Corals of all shapes and sizes had made the maze of rocks and boulders their home, forming the basis of a thriving alien ecosystem, crustaceans and fish milling about between them. It was like visiting a tropical aquarium – the strange, colorful creatures with their odd method of locomotion drifting over his head. They were only ten meters deep now, the perpetual sunset reflecting on the surface to create shimmering patterns that moved with the gentle lapping of the waves. He could see a few Broker penthouses in the distance through the clear water, some rising to the surface, their observation lounges peeking above the waves.

“I will admit – it is not unwelcome to have an excuse to come here,” Selkie said as she began to follow the path. She was swimming just above it, kicking her leg-tentacles in a lazy pattern so as not to outpace his bounding gait. “My work rarely brings me far from the city these days.”

“Don’t you get something equivalent to weekends?” he asked as he watched a shoal of stripy fish cross his path. They moved with that up and down, undulating motion, the frill-like fin that ran along the length of their bodies pushing them through the water. “The fourth of Rain, perhaps? A day where you’re guaranteed time off work?”

“That sounds like a human invention,” she scoffed.

“Work hard, play hard,” he replied as they rounded a bend. “If you don’t take the time to relax and decompress, you’ll burn yourself out. I remember the Administrator saying something about giving his workers breaks?”

“Those are social breaks,” she explained. “The workers in the facility are subjected to unusually crowded conditions and require intermittent breaks to alleviate stress. There is a break room with isolation booths.”

“Could have used a few of those in some of the places I’ve worked,” he muttered to himself.

“More free time is one of the rewards of success,” she continued, her trailing blankets waving in the water behind her. “More time to pursue one’s hobbies and to enjoy the fruits of their labor.”

“Doesn’t seem to be doing you much good if you can never get away,” he replied. “Whoa, there’s another one of those shrimp things! Shrimp sheep. Shreep.”

He pointed to a dog-sized animal that was wading through the tall sea grass, its segmented, lobster-like shell giving it a hunched appearance. It was the same creature that he had glimpsed briefly on his way to the city, trudging along on its sturdy legs, its feeding tendrils throwing up clouds of silt as it sifted through the sediment in search of food.

“It is not called a shreep,” Selkie complained, turning to look back at him.

“Too late,” he chimed, taking a step towards the edge of the road. “Is it dangerous? Can I touch it?”

“They are docile,” she replied. “It is quite safe.”

He waded clumsily through the knee-high grass, approaching the giant crustacean slowly so as not to startle it. Its compound eyes were suspended atop flexible stalks, one of them turning to track him as he neared, a gloved hand extended. Its back played host to a colony of furry algae and a few budding corals, giving it a strangely furry texture. It must be a little younger than the larger specimen that he had encountered previously.

Selkie hovered nearby, seeming confused but also amused by his incessant chuckling, watching as he ran his hand along its dorsal plates. It threw up another cloud of dust, prompting him to back away in surprise, but it was just going about its business. It was possible that there were no predators in these shallow waters large enough to threaten it.

“I find it ... endearing to watch you react with wonder to such mundane things,” she said, her coloration taking on a lighter hue. Her blue stripes were very visible again – perhaps a sign that she was happy.

“They’re not mundane to me,” he replied, crouching beside the animal and watching its stout legs plod along. There was a little army of crabs trailing behind it, marching through the grass on their spindly legs, using their claws to rummage through the detritus left in its wake. Perhaps it was exposing more food by disturbing the sediment. “Trappist is an old and very stable system from what we’ve been able to tell through observation. Your ecosystems are probably billions of years older than ours.”

“That is correct,” she replied. “It is approximately twice as old as your solar system. Our star is also much less active than yours. Life arose on this planet roughly six billion years ago, from what we can tell from the fossil record. It also evolved independently on the planets that you call 1d and 1f, though there are theories that panspermia was responsible, the bodies being so close together. Asteroid impacts may have transported microbial life across the system.”

“You have to give me data on some of this stuff,” he pleaded, watching a small fish dart into the corals on the shreep’s back. “I’ll take a school textbook if that’s all you can give me. I’m not an exobiologist, but I’ve still pored over videos from Valbaran wildlife preserves. Seeing a Teth’rak for the first time was like realizing my childhood dreams of seeing a real live dinosaur.”

“I do not know these terms, but if you desire to see more of our wildlife ... I do not see any harm in that. I will have to ask for permission, of course.”

“I’ll take whatever I can get,” he replied, taking one last glance at the magnificent animal before returning to the road.

The corals gave way to the kelp forest as they entered the lagoon between the reef and the shore, David keeping a keen eye on the drifting stalks in search of fish. It was darker here with the floating leaves of the weeds blocking the sun, providing a perfect home for the shy creatures, a few of them peeking out at him as he passed by.

Finally, the ground began to slope up again, each step bringing him a little closer to the shore. His head rose above the surf, and he staggered onto dry land, his boots sinking in the wet sand. The white beach gradually gave way to rusty forest ahead of him, the dense undergrowth and leaning trees disappearing into the mist that shrouded the mountain peaks. After checking his display briefly to ensure that the atmosphere was indeed breathable, he reached up, twisting his helmet to break the seal at the neck. He took in a deep breath of warm, humid air, shaking out his hair as he stowed the helmet beneath his free arm. It was wonderful just to taste unfiltered air, even though it was as thick as soup.

The sight of the mountains naturally guided his gaze to the sky, and he glimpsed the incredible superstructure that ringed the planet, its hull and its stilt-like supports reflecting the sunlight to pick them out through the atmospheric haze. Its scale was just unimaginable, giving him a sense of vertigo, as though his brain couldn’t process something of that size. There were planets, too, what might be 1d and 1b hanging in the cloudy sky like moons.

When he turned, he saw the system’s star hovering low over the horizon, its glow casting a perpetual dusk of pink and orange hues across the waves. It picked out the details of the cloud layer, reminding him of the scant hours before nightfall. Selkie was rising from the water, her wet skin shining, her mass of tentacles powering her across the sand. Just like in the habitat, she could hold herself upright, though her flesh had an almost gelatinous quality. Her next breath expelled water from her vents, and she shook her elongated mantle like a person trying to dislodge liquid from their ears.

She reached for the choker on her neck, presumably switching from his suit’s radio to the translator’s integrated speaker.

“I have not ventured onto land without a suit for some time,” she said, the horizontal bands that were her pupils glittering with a beautiful iridescence as she glanced around. “It will be good exercise, if nothing else.”

“I guess walking around without buoyancy taking the load off would be pretty strenuous for you,” David replied as she crawled up the beach towards him. On land, she had a strange, swaying gait that drew his attention to the way that her flared tentacles narrowed into her slim waist. It looked like a skirt, or like she had hips, which he knew wasn’t the case.

“I will manage,” she replied. Her voice, too, had a different quality on land. He had heard her speak in air when she had entered his habitat, and in the little booth they had set up for him in the research facility, but it somehow sounded more musical against the backdrop of the surf. “Is there any specific area you wish to eat in? I am still rather confused by this ritual.”

“Let’s go a little higher,” he said, waving her on as he headed up the beach. He left deep footprints in the sand, while Selkie left strange, winding tracks. When they neared the border where the sand gave way to soil, he sat down, setting the package on the ground beside him. “Usually, we’d have a nice blanket to sit on, but I don’t think any sand is getting inside this suit. It’s rated for vacuum, so people keep telling me.”

Selkie stopped beside him, watching as he struggled to crack open the clamshell case, fumbling with his human fingers. He popped off his gloves and set them down beside his helmet, but he didn’t have much luck.

“Allow me,” Selkie said, reaching down to slap her hand against the plastic. With the leverage of her suckers, she pulled it open, revealing that it was filled with individually packaged courses.

“Now that is a picnic hamper,” David said, rubbing his hands together eagerly. The motion seemed to fascinate the Broker, her eyes following his digits curiously.

“Picnic,” she repeated awkwardly, waiting for her translator to elaborate. “A meal transported outdoors as part of an excursion, commonly enjoyed in scenic surroundings.”

“You guys don’t do picnics?” he asked, starting to rummage through their haul. He couldn’t read the text without his helmet, but he recognized the pictures. “I guess you don’t like being outside, huh?”