Commonwealth: A Novel of Utopia, part 1, chapter 7
Author’s Note: This is an excerpt from my novel Commonwealth. The rest of today’s installment is free, but only on my Patreon site. If you want to read the next part today, it’s already up on Patreon as well. You can sign up for as little as $1/month, or $2 for exclusive author’s notes and behind-the-scenes material. There’s also a table of contents for all published chapters.
Rae dreamed of black water.
In the caverns of her nightmares, it was everywhere: dripping from the ceilings of dark tunnels, seeping through gaps in wood and brick, gushing from cracked walls as she tried to plug the leak. Sometimes it was a shallow lake that she splashed through, rippling around her ankles; sometimes it was the sea, immense, implacable. Sometimes it caught her up in a raging cascade, tumbling her over and over and sweeping her away as she fought for breath.
Her days and nights were blurring together. The antiquated defenses that kept the ocean out of New York’s underground had been neglected too badly and for too long. Working on the subway had become a race from one breakdown to another: trying to plug a leak, diagnose a broken-down pump, clear a drain pipe clogged with garbage, get a jammed gate to open.
Engineers and maintenance crews worked overtime, a hectic chaos of late and double shifts. They fought for every inch, but some tunnels flooded despite their best efforts, and the equipment couldn’t be spared to pump them dry again. Step by step, they were forced to retreat as the sea pressed in on them. Sections of the New York subway map went dark.