The Depths Above

"The Depths Above" is included as prelude No. 16 in *The Juno Contingency (novel).*

## Teaser

An advanced octopus civilization contends with an asteroid impact that threatens to toxify their aquatic environment.

## Plot

### 1. The Leg-Thinkers

Sorgil is an adolescent of a species of intelligent octopi who live in the inland Great Sea. Sorgil lives with his father Reegil, an eccentric inventor. Most of the octopi in their consortium live in the towering vertical Reef City that has been sculpted from corral over centuries, though Reegil lives as an outcast near the End Falls, the miles-wide waterfall that many believe marks the end of the world.

Reegil is conducting studies on the flight of birds and is building flying simulacra, which he launches into the air. Sorgil helps his father tinker and enjoys launching the small machines with a slingshot, though he complains of why they can't move to the city. Reegil insists he needs the strong currents near the End Falls to power his workshop's waterwheels.

Near dusk Sorgil sneaks out and heads to the Reef City to watch a performance of chromatomancy. Octopi communicate by forming shapes and textures on their skin, and the chromatomancers are experts in forming rapid sequences of texture and color to tell a story. Sorgil is entranced and imagines using this skill to attract his childhood friend, Amaiel, who lives in the Reef City with her well-off family. Sorgil tries to head home after the performance, but he lingers past dark and the waters outside the city are now teeming with sharks. He barely makes it inside a shark shelter—a wide shell with small inlets for octopi to squeeze into—and has to remain there until daybreak.

The next morning Reegil angrily storms into the city searching for him and causes a scene when he retrieves Sorgil from the shelter. The passing Elder—with whom Reegil repeatedly quarrels—uses the opportunity to upbraid him. The Elder also chastises Reegil for studying the surface world, which he asserts is flat and two-dimensional, therefore there is no possibility—neither logically nor mathematically—that anything on the surface could ever arise that would be of greater depth than of what is in the ocean. Reegil responds by ridiculing the Elder's superstitious doctrine that the End Falls is the edge of the world where the water falls off into infinity. Reegil rather asserts that the Ends Falls simply flow into another Great Sea, at the terminus of which is another End Falls that flows into another sea, and so on into infinity.

While the two argue, an embarrassed Sorgil catches Amaiel watching from the crowd. They exchange a brief flicker of signals arranging to meet later.

As father and son head back to the workshop, Sorgil asks about an insult the Elder used, calling Reegil a "leg-thinker." Reegil explains that more than half of an octopus's brain is in their legs, although the head has more smarts than any individual leg. Orthodox octopi like the Elder teach that it's the head's job to dominate the impulsive thinking of the legs, but Reegil instead sees the Elder's thinking as too narrow and restrained. Reegil says being called a "leg-thinker" just means he's more capable and inquisitive, and that threatens the Elder. When Sorgil confesses that he sneaked out to see a chromatomancy show, Reegil says the Elder would also criticize such spectacles as leg-thinking, and he encourages Sorgil to pursue his passion.

### 2. The Frenzy

At the end of the week, Sorgil heads to the spot on the reef where he and Amaiel agreed to meet, a place they used to stargaze as childhood friends. Amaiel expresses her concern that her family will betroth her soon, but Sorgil is too shy to express any feelings. He offers only fruitless commiserations and is secretly miserable that he cannot court her.

As they stargaze, a bright meteor appears in the sky, growing larger and larger until it outshines the moon. It begins to burn then streaks overhead in a fiery swathe, causing a tremendous explosion on the far side of the Sea. After a minute the shockwave reaches them and a violent seaquake erupts, shattering and collapsing the Reef City.

Sorgil and Amaiel rush to aid those trapped in the Reef City, but the structure is unstable and continually collapsing. The water soon becomes murky with the blood of the victims trapped in the collapse, which drives the sharks into a frenzy. Sharks overwhelm the city's damaged netting and pick the reef for meat. Sorgil, Amaiel, and the others are forced to retreat to the shark shelters.

The next morning Reegil arrives and is relieved to find Sorgil safe in a shelter. The city's survivors hold a council, with the Elder urging people to rebuild quickly, while Reegil argues that they must investigate the explosion first, as otherwise worse dangers could transpire. The Elder accuses Reegil of wanting to abandon the city, but Reegil disregards him and heads out with Sorgil to investigate.

Reegil grabs his tools, a portable sleeping shelter, and he and Sorgil venture eastwards to the crash site. They see the shore swept with fire—a phenomenon of "air chemistry"—and choked with black smoke. Acid rain begins to fall, forcing them to stay underwater. They encounter many refugee octopi on the way, all of whom are traveling west towards the End Falls to escape a spreading poison in the water.

After a week of travel the water has become almost too toxic to continue, and Reegil calculates that they are still a day away from the impact site. He lingers for another day to take measurements of the water, then shares his findings with Sorgil: if this continues, the entire Great Sea is doomed. The toxicity will eventually reach every corner of the Sea and kill off all life within a month. Sorgil is overwhelmed by this prophecy of doom.

But Reegil shares with Sorgil the reason he has been studying birds: he has long wanted to build a flying wing that would carry them over the End Falls and let them explore the lower sea. Reegil says they must return and work quickly to finish this machine in secret, keeping it from the rest of the consortium. Sorgil fears that such a flight will just carry them off the edge of the world, but Reegil counsels him that it is either that or a slow death from the poison.

### 3. The Tinkerers

Reegil and Sorgil return clandestinely to his workshop. Reegil demonstrates a small model flying wing carrying a weight, and he says that by scaling this up the machine will eventually be able to carry both of them over the Falls. They set about carving and fastening whale bones to make the frame, then stretching fish membrane over. They rush to complete a full-scale prototype, which proves completely unworkable. Reegil admits that this approach was overanxious and that they must start over by building progressively larger models to solve the scaling issues as they go.

Amaiel comes over one day bringing news of the Reef City, where the consortium seeks to rebuild despite the rising toxicity. She also brings over some refugees who said they wanted to meet their city's "tinkerer," and Amaiel could only think to lead them to Reegil. Sorgil is surprised to learn from the refugees that most consortiums have workshop octopi like his father, but it is only in the orthodox Reef City that Reegil is stigmatized.

The refugees consult with Reegil on how to combat the rising toxicity. Reegil demonstrates how to make water filters and place them at the holes of shark shelters. By safeguarding the shelters' entrances and using pumps to filter the water, they can keep the water inside pure. He also shows them a prototype "frogsuit" he has built, a fish membrane sewn up so that an octopus can maneuver around inside, which can protect them from the toxic water. The refugees express interest, so Reegil puts them to work building more of these contraptions, with which they plan to poison-proof the Reef City. Meanwhile Reegil moves their flying wing to a distant workplace closer to the End Falls so that he can keep that work secret.

More and more refugees arrive in Reef City, and many seek out Reegil's workshop. They have quickly used his filters to create poison-free shelters that are used to house baby octolings and the young. They are also producing many frogsuits to protect the octopi while outside of the shelters. The Reef City even equips an expedition of several octopi with frogsuits in another attempt to reach the impact site and deduce the source of the poison.

Reegil's growing clout drives him into conflict with the Elder, who shows up and demands more refugees come and work on his own quarter of the city. Most ignore his summons and view Reegil as the only source of salvation.

Sorgil eventually goes to visit Amaiel in the Reef City. He is stunned to find that they have already constructed a large network of poison-free shelters connected by sealed membrane tunnels, offering a pool of clean water to live in. They are even setting up farming pods to host fish and generate food. Amaiel praises Reegil highly and suggests that Sorgil should ask him to help arrange their future, suggesting that they can now be wed.

Sorgil goes back to his father and describes the wonders the consortium has accomplished in rebuilding the city using his inventions. He asks why the flying wing is even necessary anymore and whether they shouldn't just stay here. But Reegil darkly warns him that all he has done is buy them more time—buy his workforce more time. While he has had the refugees building filters and frogsuits, he has also had them sculpting larger, stronger whale bones that he has been surreptitiously using to build the flying wing. He says the City's plan to farm fish will never work at scale, and, even if they poison-proofed the whole Reef City, starvation will kill them all in the end. Sorgil suggests that, if that's true, they need to tell everyone about the flying wing so that they can build enough for everyone. But Reegil insists they will never be able to build enough wings, and only a handful will escape. He says it's his job as a father to ensure that that handful includes Sorgil, and this is the only way. He also forbids him to tell Amaiel.

### 4. The Mob

Two weeks later the water toxicity has climbed fatally high. Octopi cannot move outside the clean zones without a full frogsuit, and to work they have to extend their tentacles beyond its protective skin, resulting in burns and blisters. Most octopi now work in poison-free workshops protected by Reegil's filters, but Sorgil and Reegil must work outside on their flying wing. The strong blisters they exhibit and the long hours they spend away from the workshop begin to arouse suspicion.

Sorgil is fastening the final pieces of the flying wing together and testing it underwater. He realizes he used to launch his model wings using a slingshot, but this large flying wing has no such contraption. So Reegil takes him to where he has been working on this final piece, which he calls the launch. He explains that building a slingshot powerful enough to get the wing airborne—and without destroying it—would have been even harder than building the wing itself. Instead Reegil shows him where he has anchored many ballast bladders to the sea floor. Using a long, intestinal hose he has pumped the bladders full of air. Once the flying wing is complete, he will bring it here to the sea floor, attach the ballast bladders, and cut them all free. The air-filled sacs will then rocket the wing upwards and out of the water, vaulting it airborne to fly over the End Falls. Sorgil is incredulous that this will work.

As their departure date nears, the Elder becomes suspicious of the whale bone pieces Reegil's workshop is building, which seem to disappear. Still smarting from Reegil's rise in popularity, the Elder assigns spies to follow the bones' manufacture, and they uncover the secret lab.

The Elder leads a mob there, catching Reegil making final preparations on the flying wing, now anchored to the ballast tanks on the seafloor. Sorgil watches the confrontation develop from a distance in the murky water. The Elder accuses Reegil of treachery, using his filters and frogsuits to distract them while he plots his own escape. Reegil dissembles that he needed to test this prototype first before he shared it with everyone, but the mob attacks him. The Elder tries to climb onto the flying wing and launch it while many others pile on. When they cut the ballast lines, the flying wing momentarily launches upwards but the imbalanced system quickly tears itself apart and the pieces sink to the seafloor. The mob heads back to the city bearing news of Reegil's betrayal.

Once the scene is clear, Sorgil heads in to find his father mortally wounded and suffering from the toxic water. Sorgil fearfully asks what he's supposed to do, but Reegil just tells him to trust himself, as he's far cleverer than Reegil ever was. He encourages Sorgil to "think with his legs," then dies.

*Read the conclusions "5. The End Falls" on Amazon.*