Lisica Chapters

Thanks for joining us on our Scientist Soap Opera escapist journey to the mysterious island of Lisica! You can find previous episodes in the link above or column on the right. Please don’t forget to subscribe and leave a comment if you enjoy what you find!

Audio for this chapter:

7 – The Tunnels

Katrina wakes up, her head full of sand, her eyes sticky, her heart hollow. Yeh. That was a trip all right. Now she’s tangled with Jay in bed in the Captain’s cabin underground. It’s pretty dark but a ray of silver light somehow leaks through the boat and down the hall to reflect on the far wall. She takes a deep breath.

Jay is snoring. She giggles joylessly, depleted. Patting the top of his head she tries to pull her limbs clear. They’d been holding each other desperately, wrapped tight. Still fully clothed she’s somewhat surprised that things hadn’t gone farther than they had. At one point she’d started feeling like a dirty girl, grinding against him as the Detroit electro got going. That shit always made her wet. But the sweet boy hadn’t responded in kind. It had frustrated her at the time but she is absolutely relieved now. He’d had some kind of emotional breakthrough instead and gotten all saccharine and romantic. In the end it had been so innocent and pure.

He’d told her he loved her.

Well. Let’s see if that still holds true when his head feels done in.

What is the last thing she remembers? The visuals had been amazing. They’d watched blotches of color pinwheel across the ceiling like clouds, talking about their upbringings. She’d been raised by her single dad. He’d been raised by his single mom. This realization of shared experience led to another flood of tears and desperate embraces from Jay.

What a teddy bear. She can’t remember the last time she’d made herself so available to a man and had him treat her this way. Not rejection—like the exact opposite of rejection. The rejection of objectification, perhaps? She’d danced for him and he burst into tears. Well. How will her ego ever recover? She giggles again. Ah, molly! You are magic! A chemically-guaranteed night of happiness and love every time.

He grunts. She rests her forehead against his and grunts in reply.

Jay unsticks his lips and looks at her with an abashed half-smile. “Water.” His voice is rough and creaky.

“I’ll fetch your bottle. Hold on, player.”

Now she fully extricates herself, dragging her limbs free of the bed. The cool air folds itself about her bare skin and she regrets leaving his warm embrace. Aw. Maybe she still feels a bit of the glow herself. Now. Where did he leave his water?

Jay rouses himself, his dreams fading. He’d been somewhere warm and wet, subterranean. It felt like a birth. Rebirth. Katrina had fed him the magic pill that unlocked his depths and he had—Katrina had… Oh, no. And then he had said all kinds of crazy shit. Told her he loved her. And yeah, sure, a kernel of that dearness still remains. She is awesome, no doubt. But the thrill is gone, baby. Gone for good. Aw, no. What a mess. He just couldn’t handle his drugs and keep his mouth shut! Come on, dude! Grow up! This isn’t a music festival, it’s like a career-defining opportunity with leaders from nearly every scientific field he loves.

Jay rolls onto his back with a groan, black misgivings and regret clawing at him, as chemically-guaranteed as the joy. “What have I done now?” He brushes his broken hand with his chin and hisses in pain. That fourth metacarpal had snapped like a pencil when the rock landed on it. He hopes it will someday heal right. He has so many plans for it. A sudden sob catches in his throat. “Fuck. Now I’ll never be a guitar god.”

Katrina returns with his water and stands framed in the narrow door, her hair curled under her chin like a question mark. “Hey.”

Jay doesn’t move. “Hey.”

Ξ

Pradeep joins Amy in the kitchen just as she finishes making eight bowls of oatmeal. “You can’t feed everyone every meal,” he scolds her. “You have to do your research too.”

“Oh, don’t worry about me,” Amy waves a hand at him. “I’ve got plenty irons in plenty fires. And this isn’t much more than boiling water.”

“And chopping ginger and dried cranberries and making green tea and coffee.”

“Espresso. Careful. Don’t let Flavia hear you call it anything else.” Amy hands him a tray. “Now, let’s go check up on the Love Palace. See if they survived the night.” She follows him with a kettle and a tray of mugs. “You might be able to finally ask the big man some of your questions.”

“Did you notice?” Pradeep drops his voice to a murmur, “Jay never came back to his hammock last night.”

“Yeah the sub sounded like a nightclub til early hours.” Amy grins. “Hookups in the field… Ah, I remember the days. Well, I hope at least they used protection.”

They climb the ramp to the giant tent, sagging now at a couple corners. When she leaves, Amy resolves to reset the guy lines. It’s the least she can do. “Knock knock…?” she sings out.

“A moment,” Miriam answers. Then after some rustling of fabric she unzips the inner door that seals off their sleeping chamber. She is tousled, in a wool jumper and scarf and flannel pajama bottoms. “Just reading. Go ahead and set up in there—”

“Ooo. The foyer!” Amy chuckles.

“—and I’ll see if Zo is ready to get up.”

“How is he?”

“Still alive.” Miriam addresses him over her shoulder. “How are you, mijo?”

“The headache…” his voice rumbles, “is very bad. And my neck. Ah. I cannot move my head.”

Miriam kneels by his pillows and forces her hands beneath his neck. She begins to massage him.

“Ai! Too rough!” He lifts a pleading hand. “Softer! Softer…!”

Amy and Pradeep set places on the tent floor for the oatmeal and tea. Miriam soothes Alonso with murmured words of love.

Finally he groans, something releasing. Then his breath catches and he grasps her wrist. “I remember…”

“Yes? Dancing til dawn?” Miriam tries to lighten the mood with a joke but there is something distracted in his eyes. He searches for something he’s lost.

“Por su puesto, Mirrie, but no… I remember… Last night I saw a vision. In the dark.”

“Is this like the time you saw Jesus walking through the trees?”

“No, that was in college. And I had never drunk brandy.” He laughs sadly at the memory. But no. He makes an effort to regain the evaporating traces of what he saw last night before they are gone for good. It was very significant. Of that he is sure. But the concussion knocked it right out, and his wife’s beautiful face takes his attention now. “Ah, it’s gone. Something about Plexity, no doubt. Hopefully, when we are working on it I will remember.”

They get him to sit up in bed and feed him there with a large towel spread across his lap. The other three sit in the foyer to ply him with questions, which he assures them he can handle. “Please. Get my mind off this headache and make me use my brain again for something other than self-pity.”

“Aha. Yes…” Pradeep doesn’t quite know how to respond to this. Doctor Sergio Alonso Saavedra Colon Ramirez Aguirre is quite possibly his living idol. Pradeep had moved heaven and earth to get into Amy’s lab last semester, partially because of her association with Doctor Alonso. And now, after circling him like a nervous suitor for a week, he is ready to finally ask his first questions. He just hopes that he doesn’t waste Alonso’s time or sound like an idiot. But he needs to start with the basics. “Well, Doctor, I’m hoping I can sort of get your insight into Plexity at the foundational level. Like mission statement onward before we get into—”

“Yes, yes…” Alonso nods. “That is what I am hoping too. You can’t understand this new system just by looking at its features. It is like, Miriam, my dear, like drawing a map from only seeing the mountain peaks without looking at the rivers and the valleys. Yes?”

“Quite.” Pradeep takes a deep breath and tries to collect his thoughts. Amy studiously looks away. This is his moment. She hadn’t let him prepare too much with her. He needs to get over his hero-worship and show Alonso that he belongs here. “So. Who will this survey be for?”

“For?” This is a question Alonso hasn’t truly examined, but it is a worthy one. “Well, when our reports first come out they will be classified. So it will be for the Air Force, I suppose. But that won’t last long. Maybe just a pass over our final draft with a black pen by somebody at the CIA. I don’t know. But eventually we are looking at the top journals, perhaps by the end of the year. And also I am dedicated to popularizing Plexity. For civilians and amateurs. I want this to be our teaching tool, our grand example to the world.” As he speaks his voice gathers resonance and depth again. His throat and chest clear and he speaks with growing conviction. “I want armies of observers fanning out over the entire globe, seeing the web of life in an entirely new way. There. That is who it is for. Does that answer your question?”

“Thank you, yes.” Pradeep laughs at the wild ambition of it. “But what, uh, what kind of security issues do you think we’ll encounter? Is there anything the Air Force told you that you shouldn’t—?”

Alonso laughs. “I have no idea. Do we mention the dead body? The sub buried in the sand? I don’t think we will. But this place is just full of surprises, no?”

Pradeep nods slowly. He can’t get over the feeling that Alonso is still hiding something about the military from them. “So, moving on. I have a question just about a matter of procedure. See, I’ve already started collecting samples but I want to make sure I do it in the proper way. The Plexity way. Now, let’s say I detach a nice bryophyte from a rock and put it in my bag. The way I understand it, you’d like me to focus not on the moss itself, but far more on the context. The mineral composition of the rock. What the moss was doing to it over time. How it establishes with other bryophytes a type of wet little nook, like a nano-climate of its own at the base of a Toyon tree. So what should I sample? The moss, the rock, and the tree? What goes into the plastic bag?”

“Nano-climate. That is an excellent term. So, this issue is exactly the thing that lies at the crux of—”

Pradeep, in his excitement, interrupts Alonso. “And are you even interested in notating the taxonomy of individual species at all any more or are we somehow beyond that?”

Alonso laughs, holding up a hand to deflect the torrent. “Slow down, hermano. Slow down. Yes, we are still recording the classic details. We are recording all of it. Plexity will liberate you as a researcher to bring all your observational skills to each moment. All of them. The color of the sky. The smell in the air. They are all connected. Don’t you see? This is the world of big data now.”

These words are like an invocation to Pradeep. He points at Alonso, a giddy thrill shooting through him. “Exactly! Yes! Global bio-informatics! It is where I was sure you were headed!”

Alonso waves at the island with his cane. “If we collect all the data we can sense and measure, if we soak in the entire context of life-forms here on this island, then that amount of data will be a treasure greater than an entire golden hoard. We will be able to find connections and causalities that so far remain invisible to us. We will be able to chart the humidity of the air above your bryophyte in many different contexts, and that will allow us—”

“Well, frankly, we don’t even know what we will be able to do with the data.” Pradeep sits back, shrugging. “It will be a mine that people can excavate for—well, forever. As new data theory is applied, new insights will emerge. I already work in connective systems primarily. The push and pull of biological and organic pathways. But you want to expand those diagnostics to literally an infinite degree. It’s like studying the heavens with a telescope that sees frequencies we haven’t yet discovered. So we are witnesses here, recorders and researchers. But we can leave theory to others. As long as we keep the record, all else will follow.”

Alonso leans back with a happy sigh. “Ah, yes. This one gets it, Amy. I am very glad you brought him.”

Pradeep feels like light is shining through his skin. This is it. This quiet moment in a tent. This is the moment he has been working toward his entire life. All the sacrifice, the waking up at four in the morning as a ten year old to do his homework before helping to open the restaurant. The lost social life, the bullying and teasing. The desperate academic competitions. It is all for these words, spoken by one of the wisest minds on the planet. This is it. Pradeep belongs. The august society is opening its doors to him. “So… Thank you, Doctor Alonso. Thank you so very much. But, I mean, in your estimation, are there certain systems that are more fundamental than others? Shall we start with some possible bedrock…” Prad makes an inclusive gesture toward Miriam, “…and move outward? Upward? Or are all systems—?”

“All systems are stratum independent and of equal value. No chicken and no egg. Everything all at once, in an organic ball. Recursive, with multiple (possibly infinite) connections and nodes. This is an entire organism here. Lisica. So start wherever you like.”

“Of course. Of course.” Pradeep falls silent, rearranging his plan of attack for the island. He has to think far larger than he has. He’s been focusing the last few years on just single specific cooperative, parasitic, and symbiotic relationships between two species. But now he has to operate from the assumption that every species influences every other species. Interdependence shoots through everything like oxygen.

“So…” Amy takes the opportunity to go even deeper. “Let’s talk about what Plexity looks like at the comparative genomics level, Lonzo. I’m not quite with you. It sounds like we’re going to be massively sequencing everything, and, like, all the time? At different moments? In situ as much as possible? How? My personal take on Plexity is that your vision is astounding and the science is sound but the capability in the field just isn’t there yet. How are we going to acquire and process so many genetic samples? Have you talked to Katrina about this? She has ideas about a unit with realtime displays for operator feedback. So you can tell what you should even be looking at next.”

“Of course.” He waves his hand at her. “Of course. We have thought of all this. And this will not be a perfect attempt. That is what you and Colonel Baitgie and Flavia the mathematician need to understand. This is the first faltering step. What this will do is show us what we need to solve next. Plexity will be iterative, no doubt. As will the study of Lisica.”

“And this Colonel…” Pradeep asks. “I get the sense that he hasn’t officially signed off on your Plexity project?”

Alonso searches for the proper words. In his silence they realize the Colonel has not. Finally, he says, “There is a module in Plexity that will allow us to output our data into more traditional graphs and lists. But listen. I brought it up to Baitgie and his contractors as much as possible but I could tell none of them see the utility in it.”

“That’s why I ask.” Pradeep’s self-assurance grows with each sentence. “I can’t imagine what the military would find worthwhile in Plexity. I’m surprised you mentioned it to them.”

“I just focused on how it will increase resolution and decrease error rates for their environmental impact reports. Because it will do that too. There is a business model, I understand, in selling Plexity software to labs running normal assays for them to pick out new features in their data and modify their systems. But I am not so interested in business myself. Maybe one of you can lead that spin-off and make us all rich, eh? I will be out in the field with my sample kits and laptop. Hopefully for the rest of my life.”

Miriam asks quietly, “Is there any reason to believe the military types will disapprove of what we’re doing here, Zo? Did they know we’d find their sub and that we’d have a drone get a glimpse of the interior? I just don’t want to fall afoul of anyone.”

“No. See. This is an abandoned post. The program was run by postwar generations who are now all dead. It remained forgotten for like thirty years. The Air Force flags it as ‘an outstanding issue to resolve’ every time they take a Pacific Command inventory but it’s always been very far down the list. Baitgie thought he could kill two birds with one stone by getting rid of a nagging bureaucratic detail,” Alonso’s waving cane once again includes the whole island, “and this troublesome scientist their PJs rescued, who, in a single fateful conversation at the military hospital after his debriefing has reawakened the Colonel’s undergrad love of forest management.”

“What’s a PJ?” Amy wonders. “You got rescued by pajamas?”

“A squad of very scary men. The Air Force Parajumper rescuers. They showed up to the gulag one night in silence and spoke to one guard after another. Very frightening. They all moved like ghosts. Nobody even thought to fight them. And I did not recognize much of the hardware they wore, nor any of its purpose. They found me in my box and carried me away, onto a helicopter that looked like a spaceship.”

Pradeep shakes his head in wonder at the trials this man has suffered. But he perseveres. “I just have one more question—”

“Liar.” Amy laughs at Pradeep.

“At least regarding this security slash military side of things…” Pradeep amends. “Esquibel asked the question a couple nights ago. How did a Cuban scientist pass a background check for any United States classified military… anything?”

“Ah.” Alonso sighs. “Just so. For that you have my uncle Don Jorge Colon to thank.” Alonso lets that hang for a moment, just to see the puzzlement grow in the young man’s long face. “You see, Don Colon was one of the ultimate anti-Castro operatives of the 1960s. In Miami he was famous, called El Dueño, the Landlord, for how many CIA people he would host at his hotel, even at his house. But his activity got too hot for the rest of the family so me and my sisters and my cousins all spent the 80s growing up in Madrid instead. None of the rest of us take part in politics at all. Cuban politics is a curse. It killed him, on a visit to Mexico in 1989. And it kills anyone who touches it in any way. They showed me they have a file on me as thick as a phone book. So they know. I am a citizen of the world. I study life not death. And apparently that was enough for them.”

Miriam sips her tea. Amy’s nervous laugh fills the silence. Alonso points with his cane under the platform. “There. Big gray tub, still wrapped with tape. Pradeep. Could you please do me the favor of bringing it up here?”

Amy stands before Pradeep does. “I’ll just help—”

“Amy, por favor. Let the young man do it. This is in response to his question about field collections and also your question about genomic assays. I am not so dreamy that I did not think of the real-world problems. I anticipated them as much as I could.”

“This one?” Pradeep drags a tub of Alonso’s description out from under the platform. A packing list is taped to the lid, a long column of items. “Says… sample kits and I guess their assorted accessories? Oh! Field kits?”

“That’s the one. Please cut it open and bring one of the kits up here. It’s amazing. When you meet the right people in the military it is like magic the things they can accomplish with a phone call. Those contractors… all black-budget. Could you imagine being a black-budget field biologist or geologist who is working on national security issues, with like a completely unlimited budget and no oversight? But nobody except like four people in the whole world would ever know your work. Would you do it?”

Miriam makes a face. “When I’m old and ready to die on a strategically-valuable mountain side.”

“Well, I mean,” Amy hems and haws, “I suppose I could for preservation, like keeping a secret Army base from putting pressure on a threatened species or something. But if they want me to like hunt caribou in the Arctic Circle because… I don’t know, they keep disrupting their radar or something, then no. No thank you.”

“I don’t believe,” Alonso rumbles, “that any of them get a choice in the matter. Maybe when they are very senior. That is certainly one of the trade-offs.” Pradeep tears the tape clear and lifts the lid. He brings them a white oblong carton about the size of a shoebox. A serial number is printed on its side. Nothing more.

“Open it, please,” Alonso instructs Pradeep. “I had a fascinating conversation with one of the contractors one day on the advances in microfluidics and their use as diagnostic machines. A lot has changed in the last five years. It led to these prototypes. We have eleven of the units and then, yes, show us…”

Pradeep holds up the machine. It looks like a giant white credit card reader with a wider tray jutting out from under its keypad.

“It is built to be modular. You put the sample in the front and then we have all these different little boxes you can plug in: micro-robots and solutions acting like transistors and circuits, creating a profile of the sample on, well, whatever module you have in there. You can get blood types and genetic or enzyme profiles, even some electrochemical activity can be captured with the potassium and calcium ion sequencers. The plan is to have it cross-reference an onboard database that fixes the sample as species-specific as well as location and time-specific. It is an integrated, real-time—”

Pradeep goggles. “What are you talking about? This is—? No way. This is an actual working field, like, Star Trek tricorder? But that’s impossible. Not with today’s technology. We are at least five to ten years away from that kind of technological integration, especially for something robust enough to be used in the field. Microfluidics is a particular area of interest for me and I follow the developments very closely and I can assure you what you are promising here simply won’t work like that. At least yet.”

“Let me finish, Pradeep.”

“And that you somehow snapped your fingers and got these units cobbled together in, what, like ten weeks? I’m sorry. Somebody promised you something, Doctor, that they couldn’t deliver.”

“Eight weeks. But they already had invented all the pieces and separately tested and built them for other black budget projects. It was just a matter of putting them all together. Now. That NDA we signed? The one Flavia is so irate about? Yes, it is primarily about these units. They are never allowed to leave the island.”

Pradeep stares at the unit, his preconceptions about the state of current technology falling away in a giddy rush. “Fascinating. But why would they let us have access…?”

“We aren’t the only ones using Lisica as a test bed. My guess is that they didn’t have qualified personnel who could be here in the timeframe and who passed the background checks like you did.”

“Like we did?” As Pradeep echoes this, Amy and Miriam frown. They didn’t know they’d been checked either?

“Yes, and you all passed. Even Maahjabeen at the last second. Now in that secret black budget world, there must be entire labs who developed some component of this thing eagerly awaiting our real world results. I call it a Dyson, in honor of my hero Freeman Dyson, and also because it is like a powerful vacuum in the field.”

Pradeep blinks at Alonso, marshaling his thoughts. “So it seems what you’re telling us, Doctor, is that there are maybe a few solitary elements in the United States military who have a vested interest in research being conducted on the island, in the manner we hope to achieve. But the larger Air Force and military complex, they have basically abandoned this island after using it as a dump and then they put a bunch of arbitrary rules around it that we have to abide by, and also they can’t be bothered to help or hinder our efforts. Does that sound accurate?”

“Yes.”

“Huh. It’s actually a really a fantastic situation to be in,” Pradeep realizes. “We get all the resources with none of the accountability.”

“The American way.”

Ξ

“The only traditional thing I got from the Chinese side of my family,” Mandy tells Jay, who drowses on the beach under a sun hat, “is an ancient healing art that everyone—all my aunts and cousins and everybody—use on each other. It’s called Tui Na. Have you heard of it?”

“Is it like Tai Chi? Or… what’s that other one? Qi Gong?”

“No, not really. Those are like about your energy.”

“Your vibe.”

“This is about tendons and bones and muscles. Scar tissue.”

“Oh. I see.”

“So, like what I’m saying is, I’ve gotten to work on Esquibel in the past and it’s really helped her, especially with her bad hip. So she trusts me.”

“Trusts you to do what?”

“Reset your broken hand.”

“Oh. Ohh…” Jay sits up, fully awake now. “Wait a minute there. Is that what we’re talking about? Because I didn’t realize that’s what we were talking about. I thought the plan would be to just maybe keep it immobilized until we could get it back somewhere they had a surgical unit. Cause this is like a pins situation, isn’t it?”

“Maybe it doesn’t have to be.”

He only stares at her. “Why? What are you going to do?”

Mandy gives him a reassuring smile. “It’s already knitting again, but in the wrong shape. And it’s all scar tissue, even in the bone. And scar tissue looks like this.” She holds out her splayed hands, one over the other. “The fibers are all crossed and stiff. But if we pull on them…” She brings her fingers and hands into alignment, “…it is still scar tissue, but lengthened into orderly rows again so it acts much more like normal tissue.” She shrugs. “You can have almost a full recovery.”

“I’m totally dubious about the ‘pull on them’ part of this, dude.”

“The art is learning how much to pull to release the tension and straighten the fibers without pulling so hard you damage them. That’s the art my family passed down. I’m really good at it.”

“Look, Mandy, it’s a super sweet offer and I really appreciate you. I do. But, like can I have some time to think about it?”

“Okay. But there’s a short window for bone breaks like this. The longer you wait the less successful the recovery is and the more painful it becomes.”

“So it is painful.”

“Oh, you will howl.” Mandy giggles. “But it passes. It’s good pain. Seriously. Healing pain.”

“Man. And you said Esquibel signed off on this?”

Mandy nods. “Can I just see your hand at least?”

“Just see?”

“And maybe touch.”

“It’s super tender, so…”

“That’s why I’m here.”

Jay makes a face, then unwraps his right hand and holds it out to Mandy. She places it in her lap, holding it like an injured bird. “Is that okay?”

Jay nods. He releases a deep breath. The black mood that came after his night of carousing hasn’t lifted, but he is touched by Mandy’s care. He’s being mothered from like eighteen different directions here. And somehow he doesn’t mind at all.

Her index finger runs over the swollen bump below the last knuckle of his ring finger. “Oh, yeah. So angry. I can feel your pulse just like buzzing.”

“You can?”

“We’ve got to get this bone straight, Jay.”

But he doesn’t like how bright her smile is. “Wait. You’re like enjoying this, you fucking sadist.”

Mandy can’t help giggling. “I just know how much it will help once you’re ready. I’m excited for you.”

“You’re just gonna, what, like pull on my ring finger?”

“Mostly. Tui Na is about understanding how bones and tendons and muscles are all connected. So I will hold down the right tendon like this…” She demonstrates on her own hand, flexing her forearm and finding the relevant tendon that bunches near her elbow. She presses down on it and then releases her flex, using the pressure to pull on the tendon. “See? Stretch. Like making saltwater taffy.”

“So will this be a long slow pull or a—”

“No. Short snap. Ready?” Mandy is done being careful with his feelings and is eager to get something accomplished today. She wants to talk to Katrina about her idea for the drone but so far she is nowhere to be seen. Esquibel shooed her out of the clean room with instructions to help Jay. Now she just wants to be able to check this off her list so she can get back to her fruitless attempts to get some actual atmospheric science done on Lisica. The wind looks so calm at the moment she might be able to deploy a weather balloon and radiosonde.

“Short… snap?” Jay holds out his limp hand with a grimace, as if he’s trying to give it away to her. “What do I have to do?”

“Not much, really. Just like stay loose if you can. First I need to move it a bit this way and that so that might hurt. But it’s just the first diagnostic…”

“Aaauggghhh.” Tears squeeze out from under his eyes. “You’re sure you know what you’re doing?”

“It’s just scar tissue, Jay. And it’s all stuck. The blood and the fibers and everything. We just got to—” YANK “—unstick it.”

Jay bawls, jerking his hand away, cradling it and curling up in a ball in the sand. Mandy suppresses a nervous giggle. She knows from experience he would not appreciate hearing it in the least.

Finally he uncurls, flexing his fingers. “Hey… It does hurt less.”

“I told you.”

“I mean, it isn’t perfect…” He runs his fingers over the fourth metacarpal, “but it is better. Oh my god that hurt so much.”

“Now it’s flowing. Your body can heal itself there. We should immobilize it, though. Usually my auntie would help control the pain and swelling with acupuncture but I never learned it. That’s too much of the energy stuff for me. And it doesn’t always work.”

“I’m still gonna get x-rays when I can.”

“You totally should.”

“Wow. This actually is seriously improved. Thank you so much. I can’t believe it. Now do my ankle.”

Mandy laughs, pleased. “No… Esquibel said your ankle is just tendons and soft tissue takes longer. The window doesn’t start for manipulations for another week or more, after the swelling goes down. Then getting more Tui Na done on the scar tissue until the six month period is recommended.”

“Cool. Six months. Okay. So like where you living these days?”

She laughs. “Topanga.”

“Groovy. I’ve got a buddy down there. I’ll come visit every couple weeks and make you lunch and you can pull me apart.”

Ξ

“And just what do you think you’re doing in there, you hussy?”

Katrina has fallen back asleep in the Captain’s bunk, holding Jay’s jacket under her chin. She starts awake to find Triquet standing in the doorway, hands on hips.

“Oh. Hey. Oh.” Katrina wakes from the deepest sleep of her life and draws a breath in, heroically battling the absolute vacuum of energy and life and hope and love within her. She’s so far gone it almost feels like a K hole. It’s not that she has no will left. It’s that there’s now a howling void within her and whatever she feeds it is only sucked away. She sits up anyway, knowing in some abstract sense that’s the societal expectation and poor Triquet’s never done anything to warrant disrespect. “Sorry.”

Triquet holds up a sample kit. “You see what this is, Katrina? This is a field forensics kit. I could dust that mattress for hair and skin cells and get a pretty good reading. At least until you two decided to contaminate the setting with your sideways samba! Now I have to contend with, I don’t know, fresh fluids and pheromones. Is that a joint! Ye gods, children. What else have you done?”

“Nothing.” Katrina can’t square Triquet’s behavior with what she’s starting to recall of last night. “Wait… You were down here with us. You danced with me. Why are you pretending like you’re all shocked now?”

Triquet leans in and with a tiny bit too much sass, says, “Because you’re helpless and vulnerable, darling. It just seemed like the right play. No.” They sigh. “Don’t worry. After I saw where things were headed last night I came down here and took all my samples in this cabin then. So I’m lying about that part. Still wish you wouldn’t sleep on the bunk, though. That old vinyl is already cracking.”

Katrina sits up, her hand falling on Jay’s water bottle. She drains it. Then she puts on his jacket.

Triquet recognizes it. They pat Katrina on the shoulder, as condescending as possible. “So how’s your little heteronormative romance going dear?”

“It was very sweet, actually. Not at all what you’d expect. Do you…? Uh, are you into party drugs?”

Triquet gives Katrina a dimpled smile, leading her to the control room. “I’ve been known to dabble. But not inside any of my actual field sites, sugar. And I’m not sure there’s anyone here who’s really my type, if you know what I’m saying.”

“Oh. For sure. Well, uh, we can just have like a dance party with you, if you like. And we didn’t even do anything, if you want to know the truth. It was just like a sleepover. A really emotional like tearful sleepover. He’s a great guy. Not what I thought at all.”

Triquet gives her a sincere smile. “That’s really sweet. Now quit touching my stuff or I’m going to have to stop liking you so much, Katrina dear. So. Is that the panel down there?”

The dark rectangle in the corner is still resting at an angle against the far wall. Triquet edges closer to the darkness, feeling the cold breath of air crossing their cheek one way, then another. As a fan of all things kooky and weird and occult, this real-world version of abandoned cold wet darkness is a bit too much, even for them. But that’s what the headlamp’s floodlight setting is for, even though it shortens the battery life to an hour.

The floodlight blazes on the chamber down below, picking out molding sheaves of documents scattered across the floor, clothing, boxes upon boxes of beer bottles, furniture stacked and leaning against the walls, on and on, a literal decaying wonderland of postwar memorabilia and artifacts in a belowdecks hold, shot through with rusting pipes and conduit. Triquet quivers like a rabbit in a garden. There’s got to be a catch, right? This absolutely profligate amount of easy discovery can’t come without some price. Finally, Triquet murmurs to themself, “I know what it is.”

Katrina peers down, arms crossed. “You know what what is?”

“The catch. The price for all this bounty. It’s the answer to a question I’ve been asking since I first heard from Alonso: But why bring an archaeologist on a field biology project? He told me it was about integrating Plexity into the human realm and the context of the past, but I didn’t really buy it. I came because he is a legend and his work is fascinating and I could take the semester off.” Triquet crouches at the hatch, preparing to descend. “But now I buy it.”

Katrina watches Triquet hesitate at the edge. Her brain is sludge but even so the answer is apparent. “Alonso knew about this?”

“He must have.” Triquet takes a deep breath. “I cannot believe you went down there all by yourself, child, in the dark. On drugs. Heavens to Betsy. Did you have any kind of light at all?”

Katrina shrugs. “I had my phone. But I didn’t use it.”

Triquet shivers, a mix of excitement and dread. “Well, here I go. Just leave me a new battery every hour and food and water when you remember and I’ll see you in a month.”

Ξ

Miriam sets stakes in the soft moss-crowned dirt. It’s almost a crime to excavate such lovely topsoil. It is a rich chocolate, shot through with pale networks of roots, and only becomes sandy a meter down. Oh, the garden her dad would have grown here!

Esquibel had presented her with the entire New Trench Project after breakfast. It had evidently taken the expertise of nearly every one of them to come to an agreement. And the site they’ve chosen has satisfied none. It does not have a ready supply of sand. The winds might cause an unfavorable stink from time to time. And Jay will have to relocate his hammock. But on a beach this small with eleven giant primates and all their excreta, there is no such thing as a good answer.

But they’d all agreed that Miriam should be the one to dig it, with help from Triquet as needed (although good luck getting them out of the sub). But she had told them she didn’t need the help anyway. She likes digging. And she can use some time alone.

This island feels strangely like home. Perhaps it’s the sunless Irish climate and cold ocean. She doesn’t miss the humid heat or flies of her Japanese expedition, but she did love the tame pygmy deer of Yakushima and the clever macaques holding tourists hostage for food. It’s a shame there’s no large animals here to befriend. Somehow she doubts the otters or crabs or even foxes will do.

The sand is heavy-grained, dark gray with sharp edges. It looks like freshly metamorphosed clay. The larger bits disintegrate with a pinch. Good cat litter, that. Why, the business possibilities just keep coming! The exercise lightens her mood. She stands in the cut, a meter deep and forty centimeters wide but not even a meter long yet. She still has a lot of work to do and the perspiration is now running freely down her back.

There are two activities where Miriam has always considered herself in world-class shape: hiking and digging. She just does so much of both she can sustain the activity all day, at a pace that often puts younger people to shame. So she digs, clawing away the secrets of the earth one spadeful at a time.

Well. Eight weeks here. Then back to home base in Chicago with Alonso for perhaps the summer. Then she’ll need to teach at least two classes next fall and hope that she can get back to Japan for a final wrap-up maybe by winter break. Then they’ll need to find time to present and promote Plexity results. Yes, her life is booked. And it was booked even before the world miraculously returned her lost husband to her. Now, and with him so damaged, now her life is utterly mad. She should hire an assistant. Maybe Katrina would be free, although perhaps organizational skills are not quite her strength. Well, someone… Someone big and strong who might be able to lift Alonso on the days he can’t walk. Perhaps he will be in a wheelchair, and they will have to modify the house. Or sell it. If he can’t get into the loft, then what’s the use of having it? Well, they can transfer its library to the living room, perhaps. And install ramps at the front and back. Yes, perhaps they should just sell it instead. They will have to rethink their entire career trajectory plans, as agreed upon for the last twenty years or so. She’d abandoned hers, of course, over the last five years. And the idea of being brought back to the regimen she’d planned for herself as a twenty-six year old rankled. She’d learned so much since then of what she wanted to do with her life, her very days and hours, that she would need to revisit that agreement with him. In due time.

For now, she is here to dig. The geology of this island remains as much a mystery as before. What she’d seen of the interior suggests erosion as the primary force landscaping the island. Nothing newly volcanic up there, no sign that glaciers might have carved anything in eons past, as they did on Mauna Kea. But Lisica is far lower in elevation, although much further north in latitude…

Dig. Dig and uncover. What will you find today? I half expect there’ll be bones, or an unexploded nuclear torpedo or some such frightful thing. So far just this lovely soil and dark sand. But what must lie beneath? If the bedrock is limestone and we already have proof of caves then how many caves might there be? Why, this whole shelf here might be shot through with all kinds of secrets.

Miriam stops, breathing hard, sweat dripping from the point of her long nose. “Ah, yes. This… this is what my first main goal is here.” The spade bites into the sand once again and she heaves. “Once I’m done here, my job is to find the tunnels.”