After the End: Recent Apocalypses

by Kage Baker

  Maggie ran her hands up and down my arm as we walked, occasionally leaning in close to kiss my cheek and nibble on my ear. “Max says you’re amazing. You saved the day.”

  I shrugged. “It wasn’t a big deal.”

  The whole bar thing was pretty hazy, bubbled-out by all the Effy I’d done. My skin was still singing from it. Mostly what I had was a warm glow right in my crotch and a stuttery view of the dark streets and the long rows of candles in the windows of the towers, but Maggie’s hand felt good, and she looked good, and I had some plans of my own for when we got back to the apartment, so I knew I was coming down nice and slow, like falling into a warm featherbed full of helium and tongues.

  “Anyone could have figured out his tonic was empty, if we hadn’t all been so damn high.” I stopped in front of a bank of autovendors. Three of them were sold out, and one was broken open, but there were still a couple drinks in the last one. I dropped my money in and chose a bottle of Blue Vitality for her, and a Sweatshine for me. It was a pleasant surprise when the machine kicked out the bottles.

  “Wow!” Maggie beamed at me.

  I grinned and fished out her bottle. “Lucky night, I guess: first the bar, now this.”

  “I don’t think the bar thing was luck. I wouldn’t have thought of it.” She downed her Blue Vitality in two long swallows, and giggled. “And you did it when your eyes were as big as a fish. You were doing handstands on the bar.”

  I didn’t remember that. Bar sugar and red lace bras, I remembered. But not handstands. “I don’t see how Max keeps that place going when he can’t even remember to restock.”

  Maggie rubbed up against me. “Wicky’s a lot better than most clubs. And anyway, that’s why he’s got you. A real live hero.” She giggled again. “I’m glad we didn’t have to fight our way out of another riot. I hate that.”

  In an alley, some trogs were making it. Clustered bodies, hermaphroditic, climbing on each other and humping, their mouths open, smiling and panting. I glanced at them and kept going, but Maggie grabbed my arm and tugged me back.

  The trogs were really going at it, all in a flounder, three of them piled, their skins gleaming with sweat slick and saliva. They looked back at us with yellow eyes and not a bit of shame. They just smiled and got into a heavy groaning rhythm.

  “I can’t believe how much they do it,” Maggie whispered. She gripped my arm, pressing against me. “They’re like dogs.”

  “That’s about how smart they are.”

  They changed positions, one crouching as though Maggie’s words had inspired them. The others piled on top of him . . . or her. Maggie’s hand slid to the front of my pants, fumbled with the zipper and reached inside. “They’re so . . . Oh, God.” She pulled me close and started working on my belt, almost tearing at it.

  “What the hell?” I tried to push her off, but she was all over me, her hands reaching inside my pants, touching me, making me hard. The Effy was still working, that was for sure.

  “Let’s do it, too. Here. I want you.”

  “Are you crazy?”

  “They don’t care. Come on. Maybe this time it’ll take. Knock me up.” She touched me, her eyes widening at my sudden size. “You’re never like this.” She touched me again. “Oh God. Please.” She pressed herself against me, looking over at the trogs. “Like that. Just like that.” She pulled off her shimmersilk blouse, exposing her black corset and the pale skin of her breasts.

  I stared at her skin and curves. That beautiful body she’d teased me with all night long. Suddenly I didn’t care about the trogs or the few people walking by on the street. We both yanked at my belt. My pants fell down around my ankles. We slammed up against the alley wall, pressing against old concrete and staring into each other’s eyes and then she pulled me into her and her lips were on my ear, biting and panting and whispering as we moved against each other.

  The trogs just grinned and grinned and watched us with their big yellow eyes as we all shared the alley, and all watched each other.

  At five in the morning, Chee called again, his voice coming straight into my head through my earbug. In all the excitement and Effy, I’d forgotten to take it out. Pump Six was down again. “You said I was supposed to call you,” he whined.

  I groaned and dragged myself out of bed. “Yeah. Yeah. I did. Don’t worry about it. You did good. I’ll be there.”

  Maggie rolled over. “Where you going?”

  I pulled on my pants and gave her a quick kiss. “Got to go save the world.”

  “They work you too hard. I don’t think you should go.”

  “And let Chee sort it out? You’ve got to be kidding. We’d be up to our necks in sludge by dinner time.”

  “My hero.” She smiled sleepily. “See if you can find me some donuts when you come back. I feel pregnant.”

  She looked so happy and warm and fuzzy I almost climbed back into bed with her, but I fought off the urge and just gave her another kiss. “Will do.”

  Outside, light was just starting to break in the sky, a slow yellowing of the smog. The streets were almost silent at the early hour. It was hard not to be bitter about being up at this ungodly hungover time, but it was better than having to deal with the sewage backup if Chee hadn’t called. I headed downtown and bought a bagel from a girly-faced guy who didn’t know how to make change.

  The bagel was wrapped in some kind of plastic film that dissolved when I put it in my mouth. It wasn’t bad, but it ticked me off that bagel boy got confused with the change and needed me to go into his cash pouch and count out my own money.

  It seems like I always end up bailing everyone out. Even dumb bagel guys. Maggie says I’m as compulsive as Chee. She would have just stood there and waited until bagel boy sorted it out, even if it took all day. But I have a damn hard time watching some trogwad drop dollars all over the sidewalk. Sometimes it’s just easier to climb out of the oatmeal and do things yourself.

  Chee was waiting for me when I got in, practically bouncing up and down. Five pumps down, now.

  “It started with just one when I called you, but now there’s five. They keep shutting off.”

  I went into the control room. The troubleshooting database was still down so I grabbed the hardcopy manuals again. Weird how the pumps were all going off-line like that. The control room, normally alive with the hum of the machines, was quieter with half of them down. Around the city, sewage lines were backing up as we failed to cycle waste into the treatment facilities and pump the treated water out into the river.

  I thought about Nora with her rash, thanks to swimming in that gunk. It could really make you nervous. Looks clean, makes you rash. And we’re at the bottom of the river. It’s not just our crap in it. Everyone upstream, too. Our treatment plants pump water up from underground or pipe it in and treat it from lakes upstate. At least that’s the theory. I don’t really buy it; I’ve seen the amount of water we move through here and there’s no way it’s all coming from the lakes. In reality, we’ve got twenty-million-odd people all sucking water that we don’t know where it’s coming from or what’s in it. Like I said, I drink bottled water even if I have to hike all over the city to find it. Or soda water. Or . . . tonic, even.

  I closed my eyes, trying to piece the evening back together. All those empty canisters of tonic under the bar. Travis Alvarez saves the world while flying to the moon on Effy, and two rounds of sex yesterday.

  Hell, yeah.

  Chee and I brought the PressureDynes up one by one. All of them came back online except Pump Six. It was stubborn. We reprimed it. Fired. Reprimed. Nothing.

  Suze came down to backseat drive, dragging Zoo, her secretary, behind her. Suze was completely strung out. Her blouse was half-tucked in, and she had big old fishy Effy eyes that were almost as red as the flashers on the console. But her fishy eyes narrowed when she saw all the flashers. “How come all these pumps went down? It’s your job to keep them working.”

  I just looked at her. Zoned out of her mind at six a.m., romp
ing around with her secretary girlfriend while she tried to crack the whip on the rest of us. Now that’s leadership. Suddenly I thought that maybe I needed to get a different job. Or needed to start licking big piles of Effy before I came to work. Anything to take the edge off Suze.

  “If you want me to fix it, I’ll need you to clear out so I can concentrate.”

  Suze looked at me like she was chewing on a lemon. “You better get it fixed.” She poked my chest with a thick finger. “If you don’t, I’m making Chee your boss.” She glanced at Zoo. “It’s your turn on the couch. Come on.” They trooped off.

  Chee watched them go. He started picking at his head. “They never do any work,” he said.

  Another flasher went amber on the console. I flipped through the manual, hunting for a reason. “Who does? A job like this, where nobody gets fired?”

  “Yeah, but there ought to be a way to get rid of her, at least. She moved all her home furniture into the office, the other day. She never goes home now. Says she likes the A/C here.”

  “You shouldn’t complain. You’re the guy who was throwing t.p. around yesterday.”

  He looked at me, puzzled. “So?”

  I shrugged. “Never mind. Don’t worry about Suze. We’re the bottom of the pile, Chee. Get used to it. Let’s try the reboot again.”

  It didn’t work.

  I went back to the manual. Sludge was probably coming up a hundred thousand toilets in the city by now. Weird how all the pumps shut down like that: one, two, three, four. I closed my eyes, thinking. Something about my Effy spree kept tickling the back of my head. Effy flashbacks, for sure. But they kept coming: big old eggs, big old silver eggs, all of them sucked dry by egg-slurping dinosaurs. Wow. That was some kind of weird spree. Nuns and stainless steel eggs. The urinals and Maggie . . . I blinked. Everything clicked. Pieces of the puzzle coming together. Cosmic Effy convergence: Emptied silver eggs. Max forgetting to restock his bar.

  I looked up at Chee, then down at the manuals, then back up at Chee. “How long have we been running these pumps?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “When did they get installed?”

  Chee stared at the ceiling, picked his head thoughtfully. “Hell if I know. Before I came on, that’s for sure.”

  “Me too. I’ve been here nine years. Have we got a computer that would tell us that? A receipt? Something?” I flipped to the front of the manual in my hands. “PressureDyne: Hi-Capacity, Self-Purging, Multi-Platform Pumping Engine. Model 13-44474-888.” I frowned. “This manual was printed in 2020.”

  Chee whistled and leaned over to finger the plasticized pages. “That’s pretty damn old.”

  “Built to last, right? People built things to last, back then.”

  “More than a hundred years?” He shrugged. “I had a car like that, once. Real solid. Engine hardly had any rust on it at all. And it had both headlights. But too damn old.” He picked something out of his scalp and examined it for a second before flicking it onto the floor. “No one works on cars anymore. I can’t remember the last time I saw a taxi running.”

  I looked at him, trying to decide if I wanted to say anything about flicking scalp on the floor, then just gave it up. I flipped through the manual some more until I found the part I wanted: “Individual Reporting Modules: Remote Access, Connectivity Features, and Data Collection.” Following the manual’s instructions, I opened a new set of diagnostic windows that bypassed the PressureDynes’ generalized reports for pump station managers and instead connected directly with the pumps’ raw log data. What I got was: “Host source data not found.”

  Big surprise.

  The rest of the error text advised me to check the remote reporting module extension connectors, whatever those were. I closed the manual and tucked it under my arm. “Come on. I think I know what’s wrong.” I led Chee out of the control room and down into the bowels of the tunnels and plant system. The elevator was busted so we had to take the access stairs.

  As we went deeper and deeper, darkness closed in. Grit and dust were everywhere. Rats skittered away from us. Isolated LEDs kept the stairwell visible, but barely. Dust and shadows and moving rats were all you could see in the dim amber. Eventually even the LEDs gave out. Chee found an emergency lantern in a wall socket, blanketed with gray fluffy dust, but it still had a charge. My asthma started to tickle and close in, sitting on my chest from all the crud in the air. I took a hit off my inhaler, and we kept going down. Finally, we hit bottom.

  Light from Chee’s lantern wavered and disappeared in the cavern’s darkness. The metal of the PressureDynes glinted dimly. Chee sneezed. The motion sent his lantern rocking. Shadows shifted crazily until he used a hand to stop it. “You can’t see shit down here,” he muttered.

  “Shut up. I’m thinking.”

  “I’ve never been down here.”

  “I came down, once. When I first came on. When Mercati was still alive.”

  “No wonder you act like him. He trained you?”

  “Sure.” I hunted around for the emergency lighting.

  Mercati had shown the switches to me when he brought me down, nearly a decade before, and told me about the pumps. He’d been old then, but still working, and I liked the guy. He had a way of paying attention to things. Focused. Not like most people who can barely say hello to you before they start looking at their watch, or planning their party schedule, or complaining about their skin rashes. He used to say my teachers didn’t know shit about algebra and that I should have stayed in school. Even knowing that he was just comparing me to Suze, I thought it was a pretty nice thing for him to say.

  No one knew the pump systems as well as he did, so even after he got sick and I took over his job, I’d still sneak out to the hospital to ask him questions. He was my secret weapon until the cancer finally took out his guts.

  I found the emergency lighting and pulled the switches. Fluorescent lights flickered, and came alive, buzzing. Some bulbs didn’t come on, but there were enough.

  Chee gasped. “They’re huge.”

  A cathedral of engineering. Overhead, pipes arched through cavern dimness, shimmering under the muted light of the fluorescents, an interconnecting web of iron and shadows that centered in complex rosettes around the ranked loom of the pumps.

  They towered over us, gleaming dully, three stories tall, steel dinosaurs. Dust mantled them. Rust blossoms patterned their hides in complex overlays that made them look like they’d been draped in oriental rugs. Pentagonal bolts as big as my hands studded their armored plating and stitched together the vast sectioned pipes that spanned the darkness and shot down black tunnels in every compass direction, reaching for every neighborhood in the city. Moisture jewels gleamed and dripped from ancient joints. The pumps thrummed on. Perfectly designed. Forgotten by everyone in the city above. Beasts working without complaint, loyal despite abandonment.

  Except that one of them had now gone silent.

  I stifled an urge to get down on my knees and apologize for neglecting them, for betraying these loyal machines that had run for more than a century.

  I went over to Pump Six’s control panel, and stroked the dinosaur’s vast belly where it loomed over me. The control panel was all covered with dust, but it glowed when I ran my hand over it. Amber signals and lime text glowing authoritatively, telling me just what was wrong, telling me and telling me, and never complaining that I hadn’t been listening.

  Raw data had stopped piping up to the control room at some point, and had instead sat in the dark, waiting for someone to come down and notice it. And the raw data was the answer to all my questions. At the top of the list: Model 13-44474-888, Requires Scheduled Maintenance. 946,080,000 cycles completed.

  I ran through the pump diagnostics:

  Valve Ring Part# 12-33939, Scheduled for Replacement.

  Piston Parts# 232-2, 222-5, 222-6, 222-4-1, Scheduled for Replacement.

  Displacement Catch Reservoir, Part# 37-37-375-77, Damaged, Replace.

  Emerg
ency Release Trigger Bearing, Part# 810-9, Damaged, Replace.

  Valve Kit, Part# 437834-13, Damaged, Replace.

  Master Drive Regulator, Part# 39-23-9834959-5, Damaged, Replace.

  Priority Maintenance:

  Compression Sensors, Part# 49-4, Part# 7777-302, Part# 403-74698

  Primary Train, Part# 010303-0

  Gurney Belt Valve, Part# 9-0-2 . . .

  The list went on. I keyed into the maintenance history. The list opened up, running well into Mercati’s tenure and even before, dozens of maintenance triggers and scheduled work requests, all of them blinking down here in the darkness, and ignored. Twenty-five years of neglect.

  “Hey!” Chee called. “Check this out! They left magazines down here!”

  I glanced over. He’d found a pile of trash someone had stuffed under one of the pumps. He was down on his hands and knees, reaching underneath, rooting things out: magazines, what looked like old food wrappers. I started to tell him to quit messing with stuff, but then I let it go. At least he wasn’t breaking anything. I rubbed my eyes and went back to the pump diagnostics.

  For the six years I’d been in charge, there were over a dozen errors displayed, but the PressureDynes had just kept going, chugging away as bits and pieces of them rattled away, and now, suddenly this one had given way completely, coming apart at the seams, loyally chugging until it just couldn’t go on anymore and the maintenance backlog finally took the sucker down. I went over and started looking at the logs for the nine other pumps.

  Every one of them was riddled with neglect: warning dumps, data logs full of error corrections, alarm triggers.

  I went back to Pump Six and looked at its logs again. The men who’d built the machines had built them to last, but enough tiny little knives can still kill a big old dinosaur, and this one was beyond dead.

  “We’ll need to call PressureDyne,” I said. “This thing is going to need more help than we can give it.”