Trenchpunk

In a world like theirs, Kyle Vanderlay figured he shouldn’t have been surprised when a deep-sea ambassador materialized to greet them. 
He and his party of five had just finished prepping their workboat, ready to traverse the submerged, derelict structures of what used to be the town of Malibu. An area once of such affluence surely had to have some objects of value they could salvage from the waters, good enough to barter them food, fuel, anything they needed to survive the wastelands. All in his party were licensed scuba divers, back when diving was just a recreational activity, and not something that was necessary for buying themselves another few days of shallow existence. With all of America’s coastal cities under twelve feet of seawater, its treasures were exclusive only to those privileged and skilled enough to navigate their treacherous conditions. 
In the past they had nabbed expensive oil paintings, ivory busts, and once an airtight vault sporting a small army’s worth of vintage firearms. But they weren’t the only ones with the idea to plunder flooded city streets, and at a point excursions were turning up less and less fruit. Malibu was supposedly one of the last few troves left on the West Coast, and desperation led to their party burning precious gasoline to pass over a few potential spots straight to the honeyhole.
But before they could launch, a torrent of bubbles exploded at the surface fifteen feet from their vessel, revealing a shiny, obsidian craft that disconcertingly resembled a flying saucer. As the party gaped wordlessly, it simmered at the surface, generating steam and frothing foam around it. Then, a hatch at the top opened, and the pilot stepped out. 
He was fully clad in a reinforced wetsuit the same mineral black as the submersible. His outfit’s features were plain, save for the space around his eyes, dominated by a blank, polarized visor that reflected dull green in the sunlight. Even when he spoke, Kyle was still not entirely convinced the entity before him was human.
“Wasters!” the figure exclaimed. “And what good fortune to find a whole convoy!”
“Excuse me,” Kyle retorted, unlocking his throat. “What did you call us?”
“Oh, forgive me, sir.” The stranger’s tone was chipper and verged on shaky, like a biologist who had just stumbled across a rare specimen. “‘Wasters,’ that’s just slang for those who walk the wastelands. I can’t imagine our jargon’s spread to your people.”
Despite his sense of displacement, Kyle felt a flicker of indignation. The nerve of this freak to emerge from the sea dressed in what looked like a tactical gimp suit, and talk like they were the weird ones worthy of attention...
“Listen here, friends,” the stranger continued. “I’ve come to the surface to recruit wasters like yourselves. We have a place miles underwater. An entire society, to be more specific. One untouched by the decades’ worth of pollutants that have ravaged the outside world. It just so happens we’re expanding, and we’re desperately short on labor. I’m extending an offertory hand. Come down with us, earn your keep, and spend the rest of your natural lives in clean, cool comfort. Away from the smog, the UV rays, the radioactive scum of the wastelands...this is no place for man to spend his final days.”
If the stranger’s appearance were a slap in the face then his ludicrous proposal was a truck flattening them. The world seemed to spin around Kyle, to the point of him almost losing his balance. A society? Miles underwater? Did I breathe in some bad air back in Santa Monica?
Meanwhile, the stranger continued to stare at them, and Kyle could clearly imagine a saccharine smile behind his reflective visor. He picked up muttering behind him, and he turned to see the other five in his party conversing among themselves. They were desperate people, willing to do anything to find security and assurance in a ruined world...an unspoiled possibility beyond the reach of the poisons that were slowly killing them. More than ever, Kyle noticed the bags under the eyes, the sores on their faces, their frayed, dirty hair, their skin stretched taut over their bones. There was no longer any dignity in “getting by” in the wastelands...but to them, the only worse thing would be dying there. 
And besides, with a getup like the stranger’s, plus his outlandish craft...who was to say he was lying about a deep-sea society?
“Alright,” said Kyle. “I’m in.”

*

Unsurprisingly, the entirety of Kyle’s party opted to join him and the stranger. Without fanfare, the hatch closed and the craft rocketed off through the floodwaters.
Within minutes they had left the submerged streets and skeletal buildings behind and were cruising over vast tracts of barren sand. The passengers were crowded around the portholes, staring out at the marine expanse. Years of acidification had scrubbed the shallow coastal waters of life; if not for the occasional flurry of bubbles, they might have been flying over a desert.
Meanwhile, Kyle had directed his attention to the mysterious pilot. After the craft had plunged to a certain depth, he flipped a switch, and glass rods above them glowed a vibrant neon blue. He then removed his headpiece. 
Kyle gave a breath of relief upon seeing he was indeed human, with a thin patch of slick dark hair. But when he turned his neck, Kyle saw his eyes were practically all pupil, and his skin had a moist, sickly paleness to it. 
“Is my countenance off-putting to you?” he asked. Kyle tried to respond, but the pilot jabbered on as if he weren’t expecting an answer. “Even a generation or two of adverse conditions can impart drastic physiological effects on humans. For instance, you wasters have rough, bronzed skin and bloodshot eyes for shielding against hostile winds and UV rays. Head lice have even coevolved with your kind to the point of being as inseparable as gut flora.”
Kyle reflexively ran a hand through his hair. He hadn’t heard about “wasters” intrinsically hosting colonies of lice. This mysterious pilot knew much more about them than they themselves did...what did that say about his submerged society’s state of advancement?
The pilot laughed off Kyle’s troubled expression. “Don’t fret about the lice. Our people have started merging tubeworms with our digestive systems to help break down the abyssal compounds in our environment. My name’s Walter Kaito, by the way. Dr. Kaito, if you will.”
Dead silence followed as the craft descended, the sunlit surface above fading into gloom.

*

After an hour of incomprehensible darkness, they saw light on the horizon.
It was the same neon blue of the light inside their craft, but its source manifested as narrow striations that lined the frame of what could only be described as an entire city jutting straight from the seafloor. As they approached, the structures’ exteriors came into view. The buildings were low and compact, composed of alternating earthen black metal and thick tubular glass. Scattered sporadically among the buildings were what looked like half-melted chimneys emitting thick plumes of smoke. But intuition told Kyle they were in fact hydrothermal vents.
“These smokers are at the heart of our success,” Dr. Kaito explained. “Clean, natural, renewable energy for centuries to come, and beyond. Plus, the metals dissolved in the vents provide us with all the building material we’d ever need.”
“When did you accomplish all this?” Kyle asked, mesmerized by the deepwater splendor.
“Over seventy years ago, when we realized that Earth’s ecological fever was incurable,” said Dr. Kaito, his voice becoming sober for the first time. “A coalition of the greatest scientific minds, tired of wasting their energy on a dying planet and a complacent populace, decided to flee. Planning took years. Finding enough forward-thinking investors took even longer. But once we scraped together the means, we wasted no time in our departure. While others looked to the stars for the future of mankind, we took to the seas. A poetic return to our roots.”
The craft drifted towards what resembled a cubic cavern on the city’s outskirts, settling squarely inside it. A heavy metal door sealed them shut.
There was the sound of water draining, and the craft made contact with the floor, jolting its passengers. The same blue light flared outside, revealing the cavern to be a sort of docking port. Dr. Kaito unscrewed the top hatch, and the moment it swung open the passengers doubled over in pain, a stabbing pressure spiking through their ears.
“Equalize,” Dr. Kaito advised. “We’ve fine-tuned the pressure within our walls but it’s still uncomfortable for wasters.”
Kyle pinched his nose shut and swallowed hard multiple times, sensing the gristly crunch of relief inside his head. His party did the same and climbed unsteadily out of the craft, following Dr. Kaito.
They exited the docking port into a narrow metal hallway, lined with doors that presumably led to more launch points for similar vessels. The same blue light emanated from glass rods, glowing eerily on their faces. 
“What kind of light source is this?” Kyle asked.
“Ah, take a look!” Dr. Kaito chirped, stopping at a switch on a wall similar to the one inside his craft. He twisted it like an ignition key, and the rods glowed even brighter. Kyle craned his neck to peer through them, and was shocked to find they were filled with water and lined with what looked like organic Christmas lights. 
“Are those...jellyfish?” Kyle guessed.
“Close!” said Dr. Kaito. “Bioluminescent siphonophores. We engineered this species to be sedentary and derive all its nutrients from the hydrothermal vents. The more chemicals we channel their way,” he explained, gesturing at the switch, “the brighter the light they emit. They breed like rabbits, so our entire city can derive its light from them.”
The party stared at the siphonophores with fascination. They arrived at the end of the hallway and out into what resembled an airport terminal: a vast, white, spacious chamber sporting several side rooms and corridors. The neon blue lighting was intermixed with whites, yellows, and reds, rendering a look more similar to natural light. Certain sections of the walls were giant viewing windows, presenting a view of the black, rocky trenches and vents beyond. Others like Dr. Kaito, clad in more casual, colorful reinforced wetsuits and sporting the same physical characteristics, entered, exited, or otherwise milled about the space, preoccupied with their own business. The few citizens near them stopped to gawk at Kyle and his party, clearly mesmerized by their “waster” appearances.
Kyle felt small and insignificant at the sight. It was the cleanest, most developed, most orderly place he had ever seen in his decades on the move through the wastelands. That this society was operational and thriving just under the surface in complete secrecy, while millions more suffered and starved inland...anger, awe, horror, all of it curdled in Kyle’s stomach.
One of the citizens had walked over to scrutinize them more deeply. Kyle jumped and nearly yelped; the man’s eyes were bulbous black marbles, and a fleshy appendage twitched from his scalp, dangling a yellow bioluminescent bulb.
“Collins, it’s impolite to stare,” Dr. Kaito reprimanded. Collins emitted a raspy noise from his throat and shuffled off, his bulb bobbing in front of him like a carrot on a stick. 
“Despite his poor manners his mental capacities are equivalent to ours,” Dr. Kaito explained to the dumbfounded group. “Collins has taken the next logical step...transfusing with the DNA of abyssal creatures to better himself against the outside environment.” 
He sighed with longing. “He’s a pioneer. Within a few centuries we’ll have passed on the mutations to our kin, and we won’t need these walls, these lights, or this controlled environment anymore. We could just wander the depths, free to explore, free to make a whole new world...”
Kyle was overcome with the same disorienting sense of smallness. “What...what do you call this place?” he whispered.
Dr. Kaito gave another laugh. “Actually some of our younger founders came up with a term for this sort of aesthetic, over a name. ‘Trenchpunk,’ they called it. And I guess it stuck.” 
He spread his arms in a welcoming motion. “So welcome, friends, to the humble city of Trenchpunk.”

*

Dr. Kaito’s tour took them through a cafeteria, where he ordered seven rounds of meals for himself and the party. The trays presented to them at the front counter hosted what resembled crab cakes wrapped in brick-red seaweed like sushi rolls. 
“These little cakes are bite-sized omnibuses for our nutritional needs,” he said as they sat down at a table. “Protein, fatty acids, complex carbohydrates, all from our crustacean and deep-sea algae friends wandering wild just outside our walls.” 
They all took a bite and retched; it was laced with an unpleasant taste not unlike charcoal. “Yeah, give it about a week,” said Dr. Kaito sheepishly. “The taste will grow on you. It always does.”
“So...what about vitamin deficiencies?” a party member piped up, after forcibly swallowing her mouthful. “Surely you’re not getting all your nutritional needs from seafood?”
“Yes, you’re right,” Dr. Kaito admitted. “Our diet is high in cholesterol and salt, low in potassium and vitamins C and D. Mercury buildup is a looming threat, and scurvy is a problem we foolishly didn’t consider. And unfortunately the nature of our departure from the surface world meant we couldn’t gather enough to jumpstart a crop cultivation program down here.”
“So what then?” another said. “Are you going to just live with these deficiencies?”
Dr. Kaito shrugged with another smile. “You already saw our solution. We’ll adapt. We’ll change. We’ll inundate ourselves with the environmental factors at play. I’m sure you tasted the raw hydrothermal ash in your cakes with that first bite; that is merely Step One of assimilating with our new world.” 
He leaned forward on the table, fingers interlocked. “Progress has come a long way down here while the surface world festers in squalor. To resist its sweeping tide would mean our destruction.”
There was a tense silence among the party. “So,” a third finally said, “are you saying we’ll have to...become like...like Collins?”
Dr. Kaito gave a sober nod. “...in time.”
“Uh, I like being me,” Kyle retorted. “I don’t like the idea of becoming some half-fish, worm-gutted thing.”
Dr. Kaito turned to him. “Please, Mister...” 
“Vanderlay,” Kyle snapped.
The doctor hesitated, as if remembering something. “...Mr. Vanderlay. Think of it as bettering yourself, rather than ‘fundamentally changing who you are.’ Besides, you won’t become a full-fledged abyssal denizen in your lifetime. As you procreate, you’ll pass on the adaptations to your children’s children’s children...you alone will ensure the survival of our species. Our advancement.”
Kyle and his party looked at their half-eaten meals. The sudden empty nausea he felt seemed shared collectively among them. 
Dr. Kaito stood. “Come. If you’re to truly understand who we are, I must take you behind the scenes.”

*

Following Dr. Kaito back through the crowded terminal-looking area, Kyle saw that not everyone merely shared the man’s pale skin and cavernous pupils. He noticed that some citizens’ arms were lined with layers of white hair. A few sported tiny glittering orbs along the sides of their bare scalps, which he realized were additional eyes. Still others flared with bioluminescent organs under their skin. And at least one or two bore the same radical anglerfish-esque mutations as Collins.
They passed general stores, fitness centers, and more docking ports, but Dr. Kaito brandished an ID card and scanned it at a door labeled “PROCEDURAL OVERHAULS.” The corridor beyond was narrow with the same neon-blue lighting. The ambient noise from the terminal cancelled out the instant the door closed behind them. 
“Procedural Overhauls is Trenchpunk’s most recent expansion, relatively speaking,” Dr. Kaito said, leading them down the hall. “It only took several years of extended life in the abyss to accept that we would never survive in our current evolutionary state.” 
They walked past a viewing window. In the watery darkness beyond, divers drifted among the half-constructed frame of a new building, emitting their own light from anglerfish lures on their heads. A hydrothermal vent billowed nearby; a vacuum tube operated by more divers was siphoning its discharge into a massive filter. Despite their seemingly ineffective gear, Kyle instinctively knew their bodies were already mutated to cope with the crushing pressure.       
“As you’ve seen, most of us so far have opted for subtle changes,” he explained. “Simple cosmetic or pragmatic traits, to coax the mind into accepting our new reality...that after centuries of manipulating the world around us, the time is fast approaching to manipulate ourselves to the world.”
Dr. Kaito led them down a new corridor, its siphonophores emitting a harsh white light. He opened a side door and peeked inside. “May I see Ayana for a moment?”
Kyle caught a glimpse of what laid beyond the door for only a few seconds, but the image seared permanently into his mind. Trenchpunk’s equivalence of surgeons, wearing form-fitting dark scrubs and visors that shielded their faces, were hunched over an eviscerated patient. More anglerfish-men flanked their sides, providing light for the patient’s exposed stomach cavity. His intestines were draped over a rack behind them like meat hung to cure. The surgeons appeared to be snipping and stitching away at some pale biomass in his guts...until Kyle saw the flashes of rosy-red and realized they were tubeworms.
The sight was blocked by a tall, fully-clad surgeon exiting the room and closing the door behind her. Dr. Kaito placed his hand on her back.
“This is Ayana, my wife,” he said tenderly. “We both opted for the tubeworm transplant.” He unzipped the front of his suit, revealing a cross-shaped surgical scar across his pale midriff. He then laid his other hand on her stomach. “And Ayana is expecting. Our child is not only healthy and strong, but he will be born with the tubeworms already present in his digestive tract. He will be among those to lead Trenchpunk into the future. We are merely privileged enough to have conceived the better generation.”
Ayana squeezed his shoulder affectionately and excused herself back into the room. Dr. Kaito zipped up his suit and beckoned the party to follow. 
He led them further down the corridor, throwing open more doors, showing them the various “procedural overhauls” Trenchpunk’s citizens had subjected themselves to. One woman’s fingertips branched out into dexterous, sensitive antennae, like that of a deep-sea shrimp. 
“She will perform maintenance or surgery with such precision that not even mechanical tools can achieve,” said Dr. Kaito.
They saw a man who bore the same white-haired forearms Kyle had noticed in the terminal, being tended to by a doctor.
“The hairs on his arms support the colonies of red algae we consume,” said Dr. Kaito. “Soon we will be able to grow our own food upon our own bodies.”
Another room revealed a viewing chamber overlooking a reinforced shark cage in the outside water. Men and women sat suspended in the cage, without the use of breathing devices or protective gear.
“Now these folks took a very impressive risk,” he said. “Right now they are incubating pressure implants, to counteract the crushing depths. Plus, their lungs have been fitted with organic gills of perfluorocarbons. The oxygen is extracted and injected into their blood, and the water filters out their skin like sweat. These gills, too, will be passed on to their children. It’s safe to say the risk is paying off.”
After walking for a moment more, Dr. Kaito paused and turned to address the party.
“Friends, you’re probably wondering why I’m showing you so much, so early on,” he said, his tone low and reverent. “It’s because I want to prove to you that we aren’t monsters. We’re not slavers. And we certainly aren’t ‘mad scientists,’ as the trope goes.” 
He sighed, composing himself. “We are but a community of survivors who have seen the future, and have opted to prepare for it, rather than fight against it. Trust me when I say none of us wished to become like this. If we had our way, we’d live as normally and naturally as the day we were born. But we must forgo these outdated conceptions of ‘the perfect human image’ if we are to propagate here. We won’t force it upon you now, but eventually, all of us must take on the treatments, and learn to adapt. For our sake. For the sake of our future generations.”
Kyle was speechless at Dr. Kaito’s decree. The pure, cold logic in it...the reluctant acceptance of their fateful futures...the legitimate desire to survive and thrive...it all seemed difficult, outlandish...but earnest, and perfect. He looked around at the five others with him, and they too seemed resigned to this bold new reality.
With no objection from the party, Dr. Kaito clapped his hands together. “And on that note, I shall lead you to your living quarters. We will give you three day cycles to acclimate and rest. After that, we will need you; our expansion isn’t going to construct itself. But as of now...you all are recognized as official citizens of Trenchpunk.”

*

Dr. Kaito led them back into the terminal. He passed off the party to another Trenchpunk official, whose skin glowed with leaf-green spots. But as they walked off towards the direction of the living quarters, Dr. Kaito laid a hand on Kyle’s shoulder, stopping him.
“Did you say your surname was Vanderlay?” he asked.
Kyle nodded.
“You wouldn’t happen to be related to one Isaac Vanderlay, would you?”
At the mention, a few passersby halted to stare at them. Kyle noticed their stony expressions and merely looked back at Dr. Kaito, his lips sealed. 
Dr. Kaito’s eyes narrowed, rendering his gaze black and soulless like a shark’s. “It’s Kyle, isn’t it.”
Kyle stiffened; he was certain he hadn’t revealed his first name to the man. But his reaction must have been visible enough, for Dr. Kaito smiled again and swept his arm. “Mr. Vanderlay, we’re going to show you one more thing about Trenchpunk you ought to see.”
A few more officials joined Dr. Kaito in herding Kyle off. He assumed they’d take him back to Procedural Overhauls, but instead he was led back to the docking ports. The door closed behind him again, dowsing him once more in silent blue light.
“You seem the shrewdest of your party, Mr. Vanderlay,” said Dr. Kaito from up front as he strolled down the dark hallway. The officials behind Kyle pushed him along. “So I’m sure you have many more questions about our operations. One of them probably has to do with sustainability.”
“Not quite up there, but sure, that’s a valid question,” Kyle muttered. 
“Well, as you already know, the crabs here make up the bulk of our diet,” he said. “The environment they live in is...unforgiving, to say the least. They barely get the chance to eat. Food is scarce, with one notable exception.”
He stopped outside a massive pair of metal doors and stared at Kyle. “I’m sure you’ve seen the old documentaries...when a whale dies, its body sinks to the bottom of the abyss, and is immediately set upon by scavengers. The crabs are the most numerous among them. That’s their only shot of getting food...the only way they themselves can propagate and survive...the only way we can harvest them for our own needs.”
Dr. Kaito pressed a button on the keypad. The metal doors slid open, revealing an empty cubic space. The officials shoved Kyle inside. He stumbled forward, regaining his balance and trying to get back in the hallway, but the officials formed a barrier blocking his path. Dr. Kaito stalked among them like a general addressing his troops.
“But as I’m sure you also know, there are no more whales left in our seas,” he lamented. “The last minke whale died some forty years ago, from a combination of starvation and toxic buildup. Whatever sea life has survived is not quite enough to feed our insatiable crabs.
“And you have your great-uncle Isaac to thank for that,” Dr. Kaito growled. “‘The Gas Giant’ was his nickname in the media. Built his fortune upon the flurry of oil pipelines that lanced through our coasts all those decades ago. Pipelines that failed, poisoning our coasts, leading to nothing but a sorry reminder of our sad environmental history. A history that the wastelands prove we’ve obviously learned nothing from.”
“What are you saying!” Kyle protested, throwing himself at the human wall, but they forced him back and he fell backwards onto the cold metal floor.
“I know you aren’t your great-uncle,” Dr. Kaito simpered. “But an example still needs to be made. He was one of many bad actors who killed the world. We can’t make those same mistakes again. And we won’t allow his legacy to walk our halls.”
The metal doors slid shut with surprising speed, separating Kyle from them. For a scary moment it was dark and silent as Kyle pounded on the doors, bellowing at the top of his lungs, the noise bouncing maddeningly in his enclosure like an angry ghost.
Then, behind him, a metal sheet lifted, revealing the back wall to be another glass viewing window. Bioluminescence filled the room and Kyle wheeled around to see.
A field of marine silt stretched out of sight underneath the blue light. And littering the expanse were ruptured, soggy human corpses, some standing in place, others strewn flat across the seafloor. All were covered in swarms of red-orange crabs, snipping at waterlogged flesh, scuttling in and out of orifices, fighting over middling scraps of hair or sinew.
Kyle looked around at the labels and warnings illuminated on the walls around him. He realized with horrific finality that this space wasn’t a docking port.
It was an airlock.
“Now don’t you worry, Mr. Vanderlay,” Dr. Kaito’s cool voice sneered, compressed through speakers in the room. “When it’s all over, you’ll still wind up a productive citizen of Trenchpunk.”