Meet the Characters
Victoria Falls
She was essential. She was sure of it, even with the years of silence from the other end of the line. Deployed to learn, observe, and connect with the expectation to one day explain, advise, and if necessary, correct, Falls served to make sense out of the inconsistencies and illogical oddities from the land walkers who breathed air.
Dr. Dandi Moraine
She never felt censored or muzzled, but very little of what she actually said got ink. Simply getting past her background gobbled up a lot of the page. A brilliant bioengineer and entrepreneur who hailed from the Indian subcontinent she built ground-breaking, innovative tech that bridged societal divides—that was usually the extent of the profile. Her mission to release women from the grip of men—getting that across usually fell to her alone. So at the podium she didn’t edit herself. She spoke her mind. That’s where she had latitude and wasn’t afraid to use it.
She was determined to inspire her community to tell its story. She began with hers.
Phagocyte Virus, Unknown etiology
An early artist rendition of the phagocyte disabling virus, a novel pathogen misunderstood and clumsily counteracted in the early days of the Phag virus pandemic.
Ray Cooke
Cooke was a hard-ass when he wanted to be. There was a lot to his manner that wasn’t so welcoming. A bit hot headed and thick in the neck, he’d let you have it if he felt you had it coming. He saw a lot of bullshit sandbaggers in his way and tried not to get into fights over whether to do this or that. All he wanted was to fish the sea. Get the gold. Live the life. Repeat.
A young Dandi Moraine
When she was little, Dandi played alone more than with other kids. More than with anyone for that matter. Neither siblings or parents or pets drew her attention for long. No one described anything in any way that convinced her enough to believe in their vision of pretend. The web they spun was too simple, beyond flat. An inversion of hers. Signs of irregularities came before that. Once she was old enough to speak and to understand questions put to her, it looked like something might be wrong. Her father would find her staring through the pane between the curtains of their simple, two-room home, sometimes with a crayon and pencil and pad of paper. Hours later, he would return and although she hadn’t moved, the paper often remained blank
Mac Igan
Father to Liddy, husband to Jee, a space weatherman who studies solar storms and ions that normally pummel the Earth from outer space. He also knows an active kitchen transforms a house into a home. One of his favorite things was to hear the soft and subtle groan of delight at sinking into a forkful of his home cookin’ down the hatch and into the belly.
Sandra Jean Marsh
As far as the outside world knew, she ran the desk for Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), Intelligence-Cryptography desk. She needed to have a hand in everything, to listen, interpret, and infer. She was planted to keep tabs on where their spears were pointing. The resilience of humanity wasn’t to be underestimated.
Bot Knight
The Bot Knight was about more than zippy cleaning around the house—more than just hauling the heavy groceries, prepping the morning meal, or scrubbing out the burned bits in the pot, tidying the trash cans, caring for the baby, feeding the granddad, prepping the evening meals, wiping up what was often overlooked or, more often, purposefully left behind. It also offered protection. Domestic and militarized. They were better at it than the men. Stronger, faster, lasted longer. Better. Bot Knight debuted at the top as the new standard bearer for self-propelled assistant robots and stayed there.
Phag virus, matured, dormant
Live, viewed @ 50 million magnification, with stain for contrast.
Skate in their environment
A typical scene from the prehistoric eras to today, adult skate fish at home, on the seabed.
Liddy
“Is that…are they sending us a message?” Liddy repeated, more loudly the second time, to her mother, who was zoning out.
“I’m not sure, hon. I never… I never thought about whether the birds had anything to tell us.” Her mom figured there was no real harm in playing along.
“No, Mama, not the birds,” she said, at a loss and shaking her head. “Nature!”
Jee gazed at her child as it dawned on her what was happening. Liddy was always good at finding patterns without being prompted, but this was too much.
Lane
Lane Mother to Skip, the light of her life, snuffed out too soon. Partner to Cooke, lovingly so, but not without regret. She tired of his resistance to listening or understanding what she told him over the years. That guys don’t understand. That creeps are everywhere. Usually where you expect them. And almost always where you don’t. That they’re true to their name and creep up on you, silently, unannounced, and then pounce. That she sees it all the time. Has the scars inside to prove it. A few outside, too. That she doesn’t want to talk about it. And wished he understood why.
Tony Lake
After he lost her to sport fishermen, when he lost any reason to mute his criticism of his own kind and their patience with man, he wandered the halls as a legend, known for mastery of science and tactics, but dazed a bit, a soldier without a war. He accepted the reverence bestowed on him as it was his turn to contribute to build the wall of their edifice by taking the bricks the young ones brought him rather than doing the fetching himself. He even relished being feared a bit. Those under him knew what it was to pay respect and what that meant, what skate could build from that. In unity they were disciplined and orderly unlike the inscrutable land walkers he so despised.
Phag virus, matured, active
A Medusa virus with tentacles that ensnare and lay waste to phagocytes, specialized white blood cells tasked with clearing waste, debris…detritus from within a cell. When propagated and active, death visits quickly. Morbidity and mortality disproportionately effected adult men to such a broad extent that predisposing factors couldn’t be identified, except for one, but it didn’t shrink the data set.
Wes Shoals
Shoals knew that what was expected of him was necessary, but even he hesitated at the prospect of what he would say. There were interests he was sworn to protect and serve, and he would; he had no reason to doubt himself. He shared a duty to his kind and a promise to their maker—Dominion Mother Nature. But he knew men were unaware of the power of the skate and wondered if it was fair even to place them at the level of an enemy since the scales were so uneven. They had been asked to change course. And then warned. Now that the shot across the bow is long since spent, what choices was he left with?
Jee Nool
Mother to Liddy, wife to Mac, Chief Microbiologist at the Special Office of Infectious Disease, Health and Human Services, BFF to Dandi, integral to working out what’s really going on.
Face of the Skate
The unmasked face of the alpha skate, the elite subspecies that put themselves on retainer with Mother Nature in exchange for sanctuary. Their lifespan remains undetermined as no trace can be found after death—the boneless body of scales, muscle, and cartilage dissolves into the sea. Their tissues are recycled, but what drives them—the power behind the electric charge within them—what that comes from and where it goes remains unknown.
Haderbeast
A self-propelled killing machine, unleashed on humanity to wreak havoc, bred for a taste of the sweet meat of men. Specifically, pubescent men capable of reproducing. Maturity of gamete production lands them square in the crosshairs of this ravaging monster.
Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, an incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, events, or locals is entirely coincidental.