Chapter Eighteen - Flush Prime​

“In 2034, rich tycoon and owner of Theracore, Wallace Everyman, discovered his London penthouse filled with a foot of untreated sewer water. It was an act of vandalism caused by some activists fighting against his new proposal that would tax employees based on the number of hours worked.

As the news went around, the ultra-rich and top-percenters became worried that such an attack could be carried out against their own homes.

Then, middle management officer J. Grimm proposed Flush Prime, a service whereupon the undesirables of the rich would be treated with the respect they deserved... for a small monthly fee.

In 2047 it was discovered that Flush Prime never actually existed as anything more than a very expensive pipe dream.”

Excerpt from The Great Scams, 2052

***

Bob was actually pretty nice, I decided.

“C’mon,” he said once it became clear we didn’t have a clue what we were doing. The man turned and led us through one of the doors at the end of the room where an admin area was laid out. There were a few desks in neat cubicles and posters on the wall, mostly maps of the sewers or blueprints of some sewage plants, but there were a few nude women with spread legs and the sort of proportions that were only possible with extensive surgery, or in cartoons. Classy place.

The far end of the room had a few screens with the camera feeds overlooking what looked like a really complex command centre.

“Right this way,” Bob said. He opened a second door into a small office and plopped himself down behind a chair with a heavy thump. “Close the door, please.”

I slid in before Gomorrah, then found a spot by the corner. I felt like the world’s most boring voyeur.

Bob gestured to a grubby seat across from his desk. It was the only seat in the room not covered in papers or soda cans. Once everything was settled, he reached up and removed his helmet. “Now, what’s a samurai doing down here?”

“You knew I was a samurai?” Gomorrah asked.

“Kinda obvious, isn’t it?”

“And you’re not... worried?”

Bob shrugged. “Might’ve lied on a few reports here and there. Taken a bribe or two in my day. But I never did nothing worth that sort of attention. I’m responsible for making sure the three-odd billion tons of sewage getting pumped by here don’t explode and get processed well enough. It’s boring work, but the pay’s alright, and someone’s gotta do it.”

“I... see. You don’t mind the Sewer Dragons?”

“Them? ‘Course not. I run this plant, that’s it. The Sewer Dragons take care of their home. Mighty thankful for it too. No one else will do what they do.”

“And what’s that?” Gomorrah asked.

“Everything,” Bob said. “They know how every machine works, can tell something’s fucked by the noise or smell alone. They’ll dive in sludge to fix valves, and run down lines that’ll kill a normal man from the smell alone just to kick at a clog.”

“Huh,” Gomorrah said.

Bob nodded. “Folk don’t know it, but without the Dragons, this city would go to shit. So I don’t mind them, nor does anyone else up top. You wouldn’t imagine how much it would cost to replace them with "normal" folk. Billions, trillions, even.”

Bob gestured, and Gomorrah leaned back as she received a file. It was shared my way almost immediately.

I opened it, curious (and trusting Myalis that it wasn’t some virus-filled thing). The entire document was text. Thick, boring text, occasionally broken up with a wonderful graph that was entirely incomprehensible. “What am I looking at?” I asked.

A cost-analysis breakdown, done in 2050 by the city of New Montreal, estimating the cost of hiring civilian contractors and additional city workers in order to operate the sewer systems. The final tally is in the order of several billion credits. A month.

That... probably made some sense. No wonder the city was happy to keep the Sewer Dragons around.

“Interesting,” Gomorrah said. “Maybe you can assist me. I’m looking for a group of people that were abducted by the Sewer Dragons. We suspect they’re in one of these locations.”

I imagined that Gomorrah sent Bob a copy of the map. The foreman nodded along. “Alright. Most of ‘em are good enough folk. Weird, but not all bad. Might have a few bad apples here taking people off the street. It’s something they’ve done before.”

“Why?” Gomorrah asked.

“Parts, because they’re horny, because they need more hands working on the shit they do. Who knows?” Bob said.

I grimaced. Not the nicest reasoning, there. And how little he cared wasn’t pleasant either. Then again, most people wouldn’t give two shits about some homeless.

“Do you know how we can reach that section?” Gomorrah asked.

“That’s past the edge of SPT-44,” Bob said. “But I think I can show you a way over. You’ll want to go down the east corridor a good ways, then you’ll see a sign on an embankment labelled ‘Ratways.’ Get in there, and head to... is that... yeah, you’ll want sludge line 537. The place you’re looking for, the nearest one, should be off of junction 6H dash 5K.”

Gomorrah nodded slowly. “I have it mapped.”

“You’ll want to be careful down there. The sludge lines aren’t bad, but they’re not safe either. Shitskimmer accidents happen, and you can’t swim in sludge. It’ll suck you right in, like quicksand. And the Ratways have some nasty folk in them, but usually they’ll be pretty far from the more civilized parts of the sewer.”

“Thank you,” Gomorrah said.

“No problem. Anything, as long as it doesn’t have me filling out more paperwork.”

Gomorrah stood up, then extended her hand to Bob.

“No, no, we don’t shake down here,” he said.

“I see? Well, in either case, thank you for the directions.”

Gomorrah headed to the door, and held it open for just a moment so that I could follow her out. I got a call almost as soon as we were back in the offices. “He was distracting us. He sent a message to some server warning them that a samurai was down here.”

“Oh, great,” I said.

“Yeah, he looked like the sleazy sort,” Raccoon said.

“Because he was fat and dirty?” I asked.

“Huh? Nah, because he does paperwork stuff,” she replied.

A fair and just point. “Think his directions are worth following?” I asked.

“They’re pretty straightforward,” Gomorrah said. My map flashed and updated, a yellow line cutting through it towards one of the flashing buildings. “I think it’s similar to what Atyacus projected as a route.”

“Is there a way to get to those placed overland? Like, without being in the sewers?”

Some locations can be reached from the exterior. The sewer system is mostly suspended beneath the structure holding the city in place, and large portions of it should be accessible from the exterior. But some areas are buried inside of the hexplate, and others are within the basements of the structures above.

“Right,” I said. “That’s how they kidnapped people; every building is linked to the sewers. Damn, if they try to run away, we’ll never catch anyone.”

Gomorrah nodded as she stepped out into the main corridor again. The Sewer Dragons that had been around earlier were conspicuously missing.

“Well, fuck.”

“No choice about it,” Gomorrah said. “Let’s keep moving. It shouldn’t be easy for them to hide as many people as they’ve abducted.”

“It’s not like they can just flush them away,” I grumbled.

We were quiet after that, walking down the surprisingly loud corridor, Gomorrah’s footfalls echoing ahead of us along with the rumble of the working ventilation. The corridor straightened after the curve, though the floor wasn’t level. It took me a few steps to realize there was a slight uphill tilt to it.

Weird. And also annoying to walk on.

The passage went on and on, with alcoves on the sides and places where the walls would open up and large pipes with QR-coded labels ran through.

“That’s the Ratways,” Gomorrah said a little ways down. She gestured ahead to an alcove that was very obviously surrounded by a knee-high wall. There were spikes on the inside of the wall, each about half a foot long.

“What the hell is up with that?” I asked.

“I’m assuming it has to do with the rats,” she said.

“Rats tall enough you’d place the spikes this high off the ground?” I asked. “No, don’t answer. I’ve seen some big rats before.” But never any that required spike walls.

“Yeah, they’re real fucking big,” Rac said. “I saw one the size of a dog once. Like, a decent-sized dog. Some of them are covered in boils and, like, tumours and shit, because they’re not smart and they’ll eat anything. You hear stories about packs of them pouring out of sewer grates and eating homeless people or people carrying food that’s not sealed right.”

I was beginning to suspect Gomorrah and I were in for a fun morning.

***