A uniform barrier of air separated the mist from the surface of the cherenkov water. The mist heaved over the glowing surface, compressing a pencil smudge of grey vapour against the pristine gap. A trail of arcs sparked from the edges of the mass as pressure sought equilibrium. Tiny wisps floated above, repelling each other in an endless skirmish.  

The procession of the mists was interrupted by the coming of the boatman. His vessel moved silently through the waves, its aura pressing away both the mists and the cyan swirls below, appearing as a negative image of the sun on the horizon.

As the boat reached the shore, charged vapour rushed to fill the void trailing behind.

The boatman remained with his back to me even as he grounded into the asphalt sands. I felt as if I owed him a gold coin for safe passage, not that I’d seen any for close to a decade.

I stepped in, careful not to capsize the boat. The kind of chemo I could afford would only make things worse. 

After a minute of silent careening, we were so deep in the mist that I could no longer see the fading point of the wake, only the swirling of irradiated vapour. With no bearings to tell time or direction, the silence swelled between us, broken only by the clicks of a geiger counter. 

To distract myself from wondering how many roentgens I’d breathed in, I asked him the  question that had been on my mind since I saw him arrive. “What’s with the oars? Don’t motors work out here? ”

The boatman stayed quiet for a few strokes before he replied, “This is hallowed ground. The only hum should come from their throat. If you ain’t polite they’ll shiver the flesh straight from your bones.”

I decided against a follow-up.

Not long after, a concrete horizon came into view. It was perfectly flat and trimmed with flanks of exposed rebar. I thought I saw bats looming in the mist, but as we neared Breath, I realised that they were the bound feet of the poor bastards who hadn’t shown their proper respect.

The boatman shifted the vessel port-wise using an oar as a fulcrum and we drifted sideways until we hit a patch of rebar bent into a ladder. I reached for the first rung and the boatman whispered “Remember, this is their song.”

I nodded and continued my ascent, feeling a slight give from the side of the rebar that wasn’t embedded in the concrete. 

When I stood atop the mass, I could finally see the entrance to Breath, a colossal pit lined with a bramble of scrap clawing its way out of the earth. The low end sound greeted me first; a drone like a chanting mongol fragmented into a thousand channels, each playing from a different edge of the twisted metal.

I walked toward the sole break in the scrap, and the texture of the air changed, the slow, rumbling noise accepted me as a friend. I suppose she told them I was coming.

The gap opened to a long slope carved into smooth concrete, the first walkway I’d ever seen that wasn’t plastered with gum stains and cig butts. I moved slowly, listening to the sound of my footsteps receding into tides of reverb. 

My mind shifted to the back of my brain and my jagged thoughts dissolved. In front of me, the spiral slope rode the edges of the pit’s grey wall, straddled by the impenetrable scrap, but inside, all I could see was her. 

She had dad’s blue eyes; they were about her only constant. When she broke from the mainstream into the riptide of wasteland gangs, she decided her identity was a vulnerability. Camo tats spread over her skin like lesions on a skaghead. She told me it wasn’t about looking a certain way; it was OPSEC, plain and simple. She used to say that appearance was just a chain to the past, an inconvenience. But no matter what she looked like, she stared at me the same way. Ink and implants could warp her all she wanted, but I knew those eyes. I wasn’t some surveillance drone; I was her brother. 

As I descended, the voice grew into a multitude. The range of tones sprawled from the depths to the peaks, each bursting into clarity for a moment, only to fade back into ceaseless vibration.

The slope petered out and the scrap rolled away. Breath opened up to me - an unbroken hemisphere with white crystal ridges streaking along the concrete walls. 

The floor was embedded with thick cables of mycelium, which had been cultivated into a circuit board. The network condensed around screens placed in the ground. Each of which marked another life sacrificed to a world beyond the endless scrimmage of corporate warfare. I followed the cables, borne along on a wave of resonance.

Her node had no words, no name, just a screen visualising her contribution to the ensemble. The screen was circled by a tapestry of abstract symbols, some of which I recognised from her ink. The shifting colours on the screen were powered by the electro-chemical signals of her decomposition. The wiring must’ve looked like a pack of eels picking apart a fallen whale.

Is this really what you wanted? You used to tell me that you guys were working towards something real out here, something better. You were so scared of getting trapped inside some prefab rentpod that you ran out here and got yourself stuck in a little box instead. Bound to some screen, is that freedom? 

Her sound waves passed through my head, undisturbed by the storm inside. She listened as good now as she did back then, the only difference was I didn’t get to see her smug grin.

Fractured sentences flowed through my head, editing themselves out of existence the moment I questioned them. Soon, there were no more thoughts, only the undulation of synthetic voices threatening to sweep me into the background. The waves piled upon me. If I just let them take me, where would they put my body? There was no node waiting for me here, nor was there a noose. I was a stray wire, frayed by radiation and loss. The boatman said it best, this was their song, not mine.

I dropped to the ground, and the layers of vibration continued to build, crushing me under the weight of their turbulence. 

“Was there ever a place for me?” I asked the question aloud, sinning against Breath’s golden rule.

The waves screeched and divebombed into a lower octave. “When you made your new world out here in the ruins, would you have smashed your fists against the city I called home? All ‘cause I was too scared to join you, like that justified me as a sacrifice? Well, I’m here now, aren’t I? And where are you Falke, some fucking box?”  

A whirlwind of bass tones shattered into sharp screams which spiralled out to the far edges of the pit. The screams crashed against the concrete, spattering me with broken waveforms that tingled as they brushed past my skin. 

Her voice never surfaced whole, but familiarity streaked each synth. She surfed along the edges of waves, always prepared to crash into dissonance.

Same as she ever was.