The Future We Wish We Had

“I don’t know. I don’t have any information about the seaquake. It could have damaged other domes, as well.”

“We have to do something,” she said. “We might be the only people on the outside of the dome.”

“I don’t even know how to get there,” he said.

She walked over to the storage cabinet and opened the door. Racks of air bottles sat neatly stacked, ready for the next shift, and the next, and the next. They were replenished once a week, and this was only midweek.

He grimaced. “I don’t want to leave you alone. Can your broken fin get you all the way there?”

She hadn’t even thought of that. “Maybe there’s more here.”

“People bring their own gear.”

“What about the whales? Can we call them here?”

His eyes widened. “Probably. They come for harvest. But I don’t know anything about whale handling.”

She grinned. “I do.” She glanced out the porthole. “They’re still there. Any idea where we can find a translator?”

He shrugged, then pointed toward the cabinet full of air bottles. “In there?”

Kisha bent down and looked on the bottom shelf. It was empty. “They’re small. In a drawer?” She began pulling open drawers and cubbies, glancing outside every few minutes to make sure the three lights still hovered around the dome.

Nothing.

She looked out again. No lights. Just the diffuse sunlight that penetrated down here, fifty meters below the sea surface. At least it wasn’t night above them in the world of air and sun. Had the whales gone? How far would the sounds go? “Give me a boost?”

Jai came over and helped her balance with her feet on the bottom shelf. She felt around on the top of the cabinet. There! Something. She hooked her hand around a leather strap and pulled. “We found it,” she breathed, looking down at a round ball the exact right size to hold in her fist, encased in a glassoleum shell to keep it safe from water. Four little blue plastic levers protruded slightly on one side. Four times four commands. But the easy ones were just one lever. Come had to be basic. She knew what to do. It had been in one of her books. She even sang it to Jonathan. One to come and two to wait, three to lift and four to lower. There was more, there was a whole damned language, but she didn’t know it.

Were there even any whales to call? She glanced back out the porthole. The three lights once more hovered above the brilliantly lit city. She breathed a sigh of relief. “They must have just been around the other side.” Now what? “OK. I’ve got to go outside. The sound will only travel well through water.” She reached for a new air bottle.

She smiled as Jai reached past her and grabbed a fresh air bottle for himself.

Ten minutes later, she and Jai clung to the rope just above the shift-station. She thumbed the first lever and a clear, mournful whale song filled the water. A shiver touched her spine. As beautiful as the sound was, she knew humans only heard part of it, and that badly, filtered by bubble-helmets. Yet the smallest portion was beautiful enough that she and Jai reached for each other’s hands.

She let go of the rope, so Jai held on for both of them. They kept their silence, and her own breathing seemed loud and intrusive against the whale-song.

The lights of the three whales didn’t seem to be getting any nearer. Was there something else she should do? Whale training was more than just pushing a button or everyone could do it. Her prep classes had been psychology and some of her reading talked about building a bond with the whales.

“We might have to go to them.” She tried an experimental swoop with her damaged fin. Her right thigh protested. Some piece of her safety training ran in the back of her mind. She turned off the translator for a moment. It seemed sacrilegious to talk over it. “Aren’t there emergency sleds? The kind you’d use if I got hurt in the beds and couldn’t swim and you came for me?”

“And they’re motorized!” Jai grinned. “How come I didn’t know you were so brilliant before?”

How should she take that comment? It didn’t matter. Getting to Jonathan mattered. She followed Jai up-rope to a glassoleum bubble dotted with emergency symbols. Directions for opening the bubble were painted on the shell. Jai pulled a lever and water and air began changing places just like in the locks, the tempo of the exchange exact so that no pressure differences were introduced.

The sled was a simple backboard cupped to hold the injured worker, straps, an air tube and spare helmet, and handholds. She was strapped in moments later, feeling foolish but grateful for any way to get to Jonathan.

She clutched the translator to her as they traveled, excruciatingly slowly, toward the brilliant light of Downbelow Dome, their own small find me light illuminating just a few feet of water in front of them. She lay down in the sled, keeping it as aerodynamic as possible, while Jai trailed his long body behind her and the sled. Every once in a while, she heard the swish of his fins behind her as he added his strength to the tiny motor. The sea floor spun by slowly, seven meters or so below them, rocky and full of waving sea-trees and sponges specially adapted to use the human-provided light to grow unusually large at this depth.

As they came closer, the whales’ dark bodies and lighter bellies began to resolve below the harness lights. When the sled was halfway there, she flipped on the come lever again, watching the whales for any sign they heard her. The translator ball in her hand glowed a soft orange. Proximity?

One of the lights began to grow bigger. A whale was coming toward them. She wanted to crow in relief, but held her tongue, listening. The translator would surely tell her what the whales were saying. If they said anything.

The other two whales stayed by Downbelow Dome.

The translator glowed brighter. Was it trying to talk to her? How would it? She searched the little ball, somehow pressing something that sent the whale song thrumming through her speakers. Then English-translated whale: “Turn it off!”

Oh. Oh! She thumbed off the lever. It must have been like yelling at them. She tried speaking at it. “Thank you.” The ball stayed quiet. The whale kept coming, larger than she thought from this angle. Fast. She leaned toward it, unafraid, the sheer beauty of the behemoth making her want to sing. She squeezed the translator tight to her and a voice spoke in her ear, and she nearly dropped the ball. “The whale expresses confusion.”

It must respond to pressure. She squeezed the ball. “Confusion?” she asked.

“The dome is not responding to it. It needs to drop its cargo.”

“So I don’t need these levers? I can just talk to you?”

“They’re handy if you need to give an emergency command.”

All right. “How can I help it know what to do?”

The translator apparently wasn’t smart enough to answer her question the way she’d phrased it. “What does the whale need?”

“Go to the docks. Help them drop their cargo. Then they’ll leave.”

The whale turned slowly away from her, making a circle. Waiting. Three bulging nets hung from its harness. “I need the whales to help me.”

Jai stayed silent, keeping them on course, letting her work it out. But their com was open. Surely he heard the conversation. She made sure to hold the ball loosely and safely between her fingers. “Jai? Do you have any idea how to get the whales to help the city breathe? If we just help them unload, they’ll leave. I don’t know how to make them stay.”

“Maybe we can find something to attach the whales to the girder. I need to see the damage.”

“They’ll stay together.” The dome loomed up now, more than twice as big as it had looked from the shift-station. They were over halfway there. She squeezed the ball. “Ask the whales to wait for me by the dome.”

Sound belled out from the ball, filling her helmet and the sea around them. The whale she had been talking to (she had been talking to a whale! ) beat them to Downbelow Dome by at least ten minutes. As the dome loomed large and silent and bright above them, Kitha said, “Doesn’t it feel like we’re visiting an artifact?”

Jai grunted. “Like an archeological dig.” She heard the fear in his voice, and wondered if she sounded as bad. Who did he love that was inside, silent, hopefully alive?

The whales bunched, never still. Their harnesses provided air, so they didn’t need to breach to breathe, but breaching was instinct, and every migratory and work path allowed for trips to the surface. Surely their time was running out.

Jai must have felt the same. He was all business as soon as they rounded the huge bright arch of the dome and began to approach the lungs, and the mess that lay on top of them. Kitha thought he might leave the sled on the sea floor and set her free to swim, but he kept her in it, strapped in, and they glided through tumbled bars and floors of steel that had once been a strong structure that stored transports and materials, the goods brought and sent by whales, and the underwater ships of visiting dignitaries. In a way, she liked still being on the sled. It somehow made the tangled landscape seem more like it belonged to a dream. This close, shadows and movement from inside touched the dome’s surface even though the glassoleum had been dialed to its most opaque setting to keep warmth inside it. People lived in there.

Kitcha clutched the translator. “Tell them thank you. Ask them to wait for longer. We will need them.”

It pulsed in her hand and then sang. The low, mournful notes seemed a perfect backdrop to the destruction they saw. Glassoleum and plastic had all weathered the quake well; metal had snapped and fallen.

The lungs were the size of the biggest whale, slightly squatter. They peeled disassociated oxygen from the water and fed it carbon dioxide, breathing the water like mammals so they could be plants in the dome itself, where they exhaled oxygen and inhaled carbon dioxide. They were grouped in two sets of three to minimize damage. A dome could live in lockdown on three lungs for days. The domes were safe. Everyone said so. Her boy was in there.

A long squared metal post lay across three of the lungs, holding them down. The lungs lay quiescent under it, undoubtedly turned off. Shreds of one lung covering floated around one end of the pole, but the other two looked whole and undamaged.

Now that they were here, it was easy to see what they had to do-get the whales to help them lift the large square metal pole that kept the lungs down. But how to do it? Kitha glanced up at the milling whales. They would have to be willing helpers. Psychology, she mused. There was no way to use food. Blue whales sieved the sea for plankton, which was more of a problem than a solution. Surely they were hungry by now, left on-shift past their time. The only thing she knew they wanted was to get rid of their burdens and get free-go eat and breach and play and be whales finished with their hard work. Best get the mechanics down first.

She asked Jai, “Do you see anything we can tie to a harness?”

He was silent for a moment. She thought with him, racking her brain. “What about the harnesses themselves? If we get one off, will it be long enough?”

“You’d have to get the whale right down next to the metal. There wouldn’t be enough torque. It might get hurt.”

Well, that was no good. “What about the lines that hold the lights up?”

“Maybe. But they’re attached directly to the dome.”