Atlantis

[Genesis]

I woke up groggily, eyes bleary, mouth like sandpaper. My alarm clock flashed silently at me, the lights in my room slowly coming up to full as I groaned and rolled over. Someone pounded on the door.

"Go 'way," I slurred, sleep attempting to drag me back into the depths, and then they knocked on the door again. I flopped onto my back, the light red against my closed lids, and gave up. I stumbled past the table to the door, clicking the intercom. "Who's it?"

"It's Franklin, and you're going to be late to shift if you don't move your bones!"

"Wha - no, it's..." my eyes tracked over to the offending alarm clock. Nearly 7 am. Apparently I'd been fighting the lights for almost an hour. "Shit!" Adrenaline hit my sleepy system like a tidal wave, and I dressed in a flurry that would have put the Tasmanian devil to shame. Two minutes later I burst out of my room, one arm in my uniform jacket the other stuffing a piece of gum in my mouth to hide the morning breath. Franklin was slouching against the bulkhead, and he grinned at me, coming away and following me down the hall.

We walked in silence for the most part, him taking long strides to keep up with my hurried half-jog. I shot him a sideways glance, and our eyes met. His were sparkling with misplaced humor. "Not a word, Franky," I growled.

[Genesis]

"I wouldn't dream of it," he said, reaching over and smoothing down an errant piece of my hair. I slapped his hand away, and then we were at Theta Station. I slipped into my cubby, stripping off the jacket I'd only just shrugged into and hanging it up haphazardly.

"Thought you weren't gonna make it, Gen." I looked up from arranging my dogtags against my tank top to see Sara's shock of ginger hair peeking around the walls that separated our locker cubbies. She smiled, and it looked genuine. "Glad you're here."

"Thanks," I replied after an awkward moment, and her smile widened and she disappeared around the corner. I hesitated, then shucked my boots (I hadn't even tied them) and slammed my locker closed. I padded over to where the suits were hanging, and zeroed in on mine. Franklin poked me in the shoulder blade and I flinched away, his chuckle following me as I stepped into the back of my suit. The techs scurried around the five of us - Franklin Goss, Sara Mason, Joe and John Halloway, and me, Genesis Clinton - getting seals together and tested for airtightness, hoses connected, helmets secured. I flexed my gloved hand, looking at state of the art fabric and polymers. There was a patch right where the thumb connected to the rest of the glove, circling the joint. I knew it was good, though, the patch had been there when I had first put on the suit two years ago.

Benny the tech gave us the thumbs up, and I picked up my work bag. He stepped over and helped me sling it over one shoulder and across my body, and I smiled gratefully through the glass of the helmet. Air regulators hissed as I was supplied with a constant stream of oxygen, and we trudged from the prep area to the loading platform.

[Genesis]

Everyone had their bags secured, and we stood in a staggered formation, the twins in front, the other three behind. Lights clicked from green to yellow, a warning to leave the airlock, then the doors were sealed behind us and the lights turned red.

My suit crumpled around my slim body as the pressure in the airlock was increased, and then the suit systems compensated, the shock gel inflating and pushing back. I had heard - every newbie heard the story of what happened if the suit malfunctioned at this point. Your body got popped like a zit, and the techs would spend the whole day spraying your out of it with a hose. I was pretty sure that was just an urban legend. Fairly sure.

I flexed my hand and the suit creaked. Mostly...sure. I took slow, measured breaths, and the red light began to blink. Pressure achieved. The floor under our feet shifted and started to descend, down, down into water. It climbed my suit and covered my helmet, and then we were free from the station and stepping out into the dark ocean floor. The lights built into our helmets and gloves gave us enough brightness to see where we were going. Standard scrape and sweep, keeping the habitats clear of sea life. Just another day in the life of an Atlantian.

The twin joked between themselves as they walked, and Sara was saying something flirty to Franklin even though now was really not the time, leaving me alone with my thoughts as I plied my scraper to the hull.

[Genesis]

Atlantis was a massive series of underwater habitats, each section capable of sustaining itself, and connected to each other by the stations. We were scraping Habitat Eight, the lights from within gleaming out at odd intervals. If we didn't keep the windows clear citizens would bitch, and if we didn't keep the rest of the hull clean we risked corrosion and eventual breach. As the domes were massive, it was a full time job keeping up with the barnacles and whatever else decided to try to make us their home.

Not for the first time I looked up, my headlight streaming off above me until it terminated in the gloom. Situated deep in the Bathypelagic Zone, we were too deep to get even a glimmer of grey, the surface thousands of meters over my head. I had been born beneath the water, and I would die here. I stared at the tool in my hand, and then at the patch on the thumb of my glove. The pessimist inside me wondered how many more years the suit would last. Who would be the unlucky diver inside when it finally failed? One of my children? Grandchildren? The thought of my progeny, as yet not conceived, doomed to live their lives as part of a scraping team depressed me.

[Genesis]

It could always be worse, I mused, putting as much effort as I could muster behind my tool. Moving underwater wasn't exactly easy, but our suits were designed to take the pressure and keep us going. Clouds of debris filtered up in front of my helmet in the stream of light from my lamp. I could be working in the oil refinery in Habitat Two, or the Well, about a mile west of Atlantis. At least here I got to stretch my legs a bit and see the sights. I stared out at the ocean again, the darkness closing in around me, and sighed. Well workers did month long shifts, with a week between to stay with their families. The oil they pumped was practically Atlantis' lifesblood, the crude refined into just about everything with even the waste byproducts put back to use in some fashion.

As long as the Well was functioning we would continue to survive here, deep under the ocean. The thought of it drying up never occurred to anyone - or if it did, they kept it to themselves. I thought about it sometimes, though, staring through a porthole at the lanternfish out in the deeps. I didn't talk about it though. No one wants to be the one starting a rumor or making trouble for the Congress, least of all me. Keeping my head down and doing my job without drawing notice was a family tradition.

I shuffled around the perimeter of the Habitat, scanning the sides. We started at the top and worked down - tomorrow we would be returning to the top of the Habitat again to clean off what had started growing while we had worked around the rest of the dome. Six days a week with Wednesdays off. I scrubbed at a porthole, waving slowly at the child I saw inside staring at me. She waved back and then ran off, out of sight.

[Genesis]

I felt a tug on my air hose, and I turned to see Franklin had come up behind me. I flipped him off, and he returned the gesture with a grin. Our hoses were our lifelines back to the Station, circulating fresh air into our helmets, and I always felt a stab of panic when mine was touched when we were Outside. I glared at him as forcefully as I could, but didn't seem to make an impression on him.

"Nearly time," he said over the comm, and I just nodded, doggedly returning to my scraping. Time to return back to the Inside, to the haven that protected our fragile bodies from the heavy blackness of the depths. It was unnatural, to live like this. On some level I felt sure we all knew it; we were not born with gills or webbed toes. In our water world we were the anomaly. The sore thumb that stuck up on this portion of the seabed.

I was thinking too much. Again.

I stowed my scraper and sponge in my bag after giving the nearest porthole another swipe (not that there was anything to see), and turned to go back to the airlock. Franklin followed me, our hoses automatically reeling in as we returned. I didn't say anything. I never said much, not while we were Out. It was just... too oppressive, the darkness too complete. Once the lock cycled behind us and the water began to drain out, I sighed and finally cracked a smile. "You mess with my air again, Franklin, I swear to Poseidon, I'll stick a fish in your suit overnight."

The water swirled away into the grate under our weighted boots, and he unlocked his helmet. "Might smell better!" He shuffled over to a bench set in the wall and sat down, the rest of us slowly joining him. The suits compensated for a lot of the pressure of the deep, but we still had to be brought back to station pressure gradually. Fifteen minutes in the chamber before the lights would blink green and the inner doors would open.

I leaned back against the bulkhead, closing my eyes for a minute. "Remind me why I bothered getting out of bed this morning,"

"Why, to serve the Congress and this beautiful set of pearls we are allowed to live inside of." Franklin winked, and Sara giggled.

Her giggle annoyed me. "So the worlds your oyster then, is that it?" I rolled my eyes.

"Well... yes."

"Franklin can write his own ticket after his turn with the Scrapers," said Sara, needlessly. We were stuck, he was upwardly mobile. Very fucking upwardly mobile, practically a harpoon pointed at the big chair. The Goss name meant he only had to do a tour of the more menial jobs on board Atlantis, and then he would find himself behind a desk or doing whatever the hell he wanted to do. Nothing, even, if he wanted. When your grandfather had been Majority Chairperson of the Congress and the family line one of the richer in the community, you had open doors around you. Options.

People, like Sara Mason, figured Franklin would run for office, make his living as a politician like most of his ancestors had. But then, they didn't know him like I did.