David D. LevineScience Fiction Author

About the Story

This story started way back in 2011, when I was teaching at the Alpha Workshop for Young Writers in Pittsburgh. One of the exercises I like to use when teaching (and which I have presented many times as a standalone class) is called “Idea to Outline in an Hour” and follows a series of questions I got from instructor Pat Murphy when I attended Clarion West in 2000. I like to demonstrate the technique by building a story along with the students, and in this case the story I built, starting with the prompt “City Under the Sea” which I pulled from a bag, began with the idea of a broken-down, barely-functional City Under the Sea and moved from there to the idea of shutting it down despite the fact that there were still people living there. But why would even an evil corporation leave people to drown or suffocate? Maybe they weren’t considered human. Maybe they were AIs… or uplifted chimps. From that grew the idea that perhaps one of the chimps was the viewpoint character.

The story outline (which I didn’t even finish during the class) stayed on my hard drive for thirteen years but I never forgot about it. I kept thinking that maybe I would pick it up again and write the story, but the opportunity never came up until 2024, at the Rainforest Writers Workshop, when I finished the novel draft I was working on and still had two days of workshop to go. So I picked up the outline, finished it, and quite unexpectedly whipped out a first draft in less than two days. I was really happy with it and revised it only lightly before putting it into submission. And now here it is, in Analog no less.

The main character’s name, Alpha, is a nod to the Alpha workshop at which the story was born; the other chimps have Greek letter names for consistency with him. The unusual grammar used by the narrative voice is intended to reflect the thinking of a native user of American Sign Language, which puts concepts in a different order from spoken English (topic, then comment), lacks verb tenses (one would sign “I run yesterday” rather than “I ran”), and lacks formal plurals, but does have a rich expressive system of pronouns and uses facial expressions as adjectives and adverbs. The grammar of the story is not strictly ASL but is intended to depict the viewpoint of a nonhuman intelligence. I hope it works for you.

Excerpt

Theta come me very upset, worried. Bad leak below, he sign. Leg fur, belly fur sopping wet. I grab tool box.

We go down ladder, deck 3, find water everywhere. Splash down passageway, look left, look right. Hard tell where leak, bulkheads so damp all the time these days. Notice current under door, storeroom 12. Open door, water rush out, very bad. Inside storeroom, see leak high on outboard wall. Try climb, but can’t. Shoulder hurt too much today.

Get ladder, I sign Theta. While Theta get ladder, I try push cabinet, climb cabinet. Can’t push. Too old. Sigh.

Theta come with ladder. We put ladder, climb ladder. Sprung seam between hull plates. Rust everywhere. Big hole, I sign. Get steel plate, get torch.

Other chimps come, peer around doorway, pant-hoot in concern. Youngsters, babies. Keep away, I sign. Torch come. Dangerous.

Theta come with torch, come with plate. I shake tanks. Acetylene almost empty. Maybe enough. Hoses barely reach top of ladder, pull on bad shoulder. I grin with pain. Hold plate here, I sign Theta. Plate heavy, too heavy for bad shoulder. Theta younger, stronger, hold plate while I light torch. Not easy with two on ladder. We manage.

Flame sputter in running water. Crappy weld. Good enough. Pack holes with rags, I tell Theta. We work together, pack holes, push water back, seal with silicone. Silicone tube almost empty too. Maybe last tube. Try look storeroom 7 again.

Climb down ladder, sit tool box. Sigh. Tired. Old. Get Lambda, I sign Theta, get Mu. Bring pump. Theta go.

Lambda and Mu youngsters. Not good with tools but strong, reliable. They pump out water while I rest.

I rest so much, these days.

Only me, Theta, Zeta left now. Only ones remember lab days, how use tools, how run video. Younger ones smart, able; we teach, they try, but tools hard use. And so many tools broken, lost.

I look up, see water beads on ceiling. Paint flake, seals crack, rust everywhere. Above ceiling, water. Beyond bulkhead, water. Below deck, water. Water all around. We work hard keep water out, but water never rest. More leaks every day. Whole sector deck 2 flood last year, lost for good. What happen when silicone, acetylene, rags all gone? What happen youngsters, babies?

I miss Delta. Love new mate Zeta, but still miss Delta.

Suddenly hear banging, running feet, alarm hoots. I leave room, see what happen. My son Lambda slide down ladder, swing along passageway, rush fast like I never see before. Airlock! he sign me over and over, grin with fear. Airlock airlock airlock!

A sign I hardly ever see last eight years. No sub come, no use for airlock…