Solid and liquid waste gushed down a featureless tube chiseled out of rock, splashed against the narrow sidewalk running alongside it. Dim safety lights illuminated the darkness every five yards or so. No apparent exits.
Exhaust vents pumped the foul vapors of this swampy channel into filtration systems designated for the greenhouse or reprocessing into the air supply. Machinery churned the sewage ever forward to prevent stagnation, motorized blowers pushing the stream of grimy liquid into solid waste separators as automated sprayers rained down random showers of bacterial agents to break down the waste.
For once, I felt grateful for the imaginary peanut smell that dominated my senses.
"How fitting," my sister growled. "It looks like the piece of ssogdisfi has found her rightful place!"
A pair of claws shoved my head into a foul mixture of urine, feces, kitchen waste, gray water and toilet lubricant. "Ssogdisfi, it's time for you to join your kin!"
Was she trying to drown me? Since our kind can breathe underwater, the idea seemed ludicrous. It only concerned me that my makeshift patches weren't completely watertight. Already I had to flex brain tissue to expel liquid from an improperly sealed hole.
When I re-emerged, I swear I saw an angel standing in the miry liquid, spreading its great white wings, its flesh human, but with the face of a Ss'sik'chtokiwij. Shivers traveled down my spine. I looked away, facing my sister.
A sprayer hissed, sending down showers of deodorizers. My sister shook off powder.
"Here's water," I said. "Would you like to be baptized?"
"What's that?"
When I explained, she answered, "No, I want you to die!"
She shrieked and clawed at my face, shoving my head under water. "How's that for a baptism!"
The liquid passed through the cracks in my head patches, and the water suddenly resembled a cartoon rainbow. I thought I saw a mermaid swimming at an impossibly low depth.
The blowers and pumps shoved us down the line, closer and closer to a destination as water and compost.
I surfaced. "Sanchirck! Don't you want to go to heaven and run with the creator Ss'sik'chtokiwij's pack forever?"
"No! I'd rather eat, and watch your dead carcass decay on the bottom of this fetid river!" Sanchirck punched me in the face.
"You may reject the gift (amen) of our Savior, but our Lord does not reject you. I will keep you in my prayers, and ask the Lord to change your har—"
My sister slammed my head into the concrete.
Enough was enough. The time for rational discussion had passed, and I had humans to save.
I grabbed for the sidewalk, but Sanchirck pulled me back in.
She threw me against a sidewalk, shoved me under again.
When I resurfaced, I saw an angel and a giant caterpillar having tea at a cafe table beneath an umbrella.
I clawed at my sister as the stream carried us even closer to waste processing.
Since I didn't drown easily, Sanchirck tried to rip open my head as she held me down.
I rolled over and forced her beneath me, clawing at her dome and spouting water with my brain tissue as I waited for my vision to stop looking like grainy movie film.
She knocked me into a ladder.
I had to find a way to detain Sanchirck here and help Boger.
If only I could have thrown one of those `grapplinghooks' I've seen Nim Jas use in movies! Sanchirck would have been stuck in the sewer, the humans safe without any bloodshed.
For several minutes, we thrashed in the foul sludge like angry alligators, each trying to knock the other dead or unconscious.
The stream dragged us further, but no visible exits.
I strained my auditory sensors for important sounds from above, but I only picked up faint scratching sounds that could easily be confused with the noisy activities of the solid waste scrubbers.
The absence of screams appeared to be a good sign, but that could mean anything. Boger might already be dead.
With every dunk under the filth, I took a magical mystery tour through the land of brain damage, to the point in which I became certain our sewer passed below Rosedale Square, and friendly puppets waved to me from drainage grates above our heads.
When the robot approached, I thought it was part of the hallucination.
Big, white, and tombstone shaped, with two LED lamps for eyes, its plastic mouth permanently molded into a happy face. The thing stood like an unmoving sentry, metal claws poised with pipe snakes extending from the palms. A black orb, presumably a camera, projected from the square expanse that served as its neck.
`SEWPER FRIEND', declared the bold black letters on its front panel.
As we drew near to this strange machine, its blinding lights snapped on. "Obstruction detected in drainage channel. Commencing blockage removal procedures."
Rolling on a set of stainless steel tank treads, the machine lowered itself into the sludge via a ramp, claws spinning on their sockets like fan blades.
Moving with surprising speed, the machine extended its arms, churning the sewage. A heavy spray of liquid showered our domes as the robot's spinning blades moved in and out of the foul substance, attempting to pulverize the Ss'sik'chtokiwij shaped `blockages' into compost. A third spinning blade shot out near its bottom portion, further increasing the danger.
Sanchirck shoved me close to the thing's whipping blades. I felt something nick me.
That's when I noticed the ladder, and the bright yellow and red sign reading `High Voltage.'
The sump pump. A curious device. At the time, I only understood that the confusing jumble of plastic pythons stuck to a barrel somehow made use of electricity.
I pushed off the side of the channel the moment the first fan blade bit into my surumwuk, my shoulder fin.
"Warning," the machine droned. "Blockage removal in process."
I climbed up on the narrow sidewalk, but as I reached for the ladder, Sanchirck yanked my tail, throwing me back in, directly in the path of Blockage Bot, with its spinning blades.
I didn't want to kill my poor sister, even if she fully intended to kill me, but I had to do something to stop her, and save my friends. I shoved her in front of Sewper Friend.
Sanchirck shrieked in pain as the blades tore into her head, but she pulled away before more damage could be done.
She shoved me back, chipping my shell with the whirling machinery.
A fourth saw came up from below to slice us from the middle.
I pushed Sanchirck toward it, but she overpowered me and I had to lean sideways to avoid the blades. The momentum threw me hard against the sewer bot's shell, but the machine had been designed to take abuse. It kept doing its job.
Sewper Friend chopped at my leg as I pushed myself away from its underwater solid waste breaker. The liquid slowed the motion of the blades, but still hurt.
I shoved my sister in Sewper's path, but my sister rebounded with so much speed that I experienced a searing pain at the back portion of my banana shaped head before I even could think about defending myself.
The nerves in my tail fell dead, and it moved no more.
I snapped back in a blind fury, smashing my sister against the machine again and again. Sanchirck screamed as the lower blade cut into her, shoved me back into the other blade so hard that it sawed another hole through my already compromised skull.
Shrieking in outrage, I throttled her, hurled her into the machine, clawing and kicking her as she tore into me.
When the blades dug into me again, I retaliated, but to no avail. Sanchirck grabbed me, shoved my head under the glop, pushed my face into the cloud of bubbles created by the spinning blade below.
This is it, I thought. I'm done for.
Although saddened, I knew deep in my heart that her guilt over my death would one day bring a change in Sanchirck's heart, as martyrdom has worked for humans.
No! I thought. I can't die yet! While wonderful to die and depart to be with the Lord, I had lives to save.
Sarah.
Rebecca.
Brice.
Boger.
With a gurgling roar, I burst from the water, and, moved by the Spirit, felt compelled to pray the words of Psalm 18:31-34.
All of a sudden, I found myself in possession of a strength I didn't know I had, and with one terrific blow, impaled Sanchirck's skull on the spinning blades.
My sister let out a horrific shriek, clawing me across the face, but I shoved back again, sawing another swath through her brain.
Her eyeless visage fixed on me, as if silently crying, "How could you do this to your sister?"
She fell forward, sinking beneath the sludge.
I wept, coughing and sneezing as I slowly climbed atop the maintenance walkway.
When I reached the ladder, I knelt beside it, praying for my lost sister's soul.
Perhaps to distract myself from the grisly matter, I found myself examining the sump pump.
The moment I had first viewed this strange contraption, I had been curious about it. Now, having the luxury of ever so briefly investigating the matter, I toyed with it like a child playing with a light switch.
I flicked the lever up, causing the machine to skim a layer of liquid off the top of the robot's ramp, then flicked it down again, shutting it off.
Up, down, up, down, on, off, on, off.
Two fat hoses channeled the slop, one dangling over the ramp, the other running through the wall. A third, I discovered, not a hose at all, but rather a power cord connected to the `High Voltage' electrical outlet above.
The machine routed sewage into an adjacent sewer system, storing the overflow until the liquid balanced out at an acceptable level, wherein it spouted back into the main by cleverly angled drainage and the forces of gravity.
A gurgling screech halted my experimentations before they could proceed any further.
Sanchirck flew out of the sewage like an irate dolphin, crushing me against the concrete. I trembled under a vengeful rain of clawings and beatings.
Her claws latched onto my neck, dragging me back toward the sewer's murky depths.
"Depart from me you wicked (hello) worker of iniquity!" I cried. "I ask you again, repent of your evil and be baptized, lest your soul be cast forever into the outer darkness!"
"If I go there," she growled. "I will take you with me!" She dragged me into the vomit green liquid.
In a panic, I frantically fought back with claws and teeth until I again found purchase on the maintenance walkway.
When I her head popped up once more, I kicked it, and she fell backwards in the mire.
It only bought me a few seconds.
I had only one real weapon left, and it involved a red and yellow sign.
A snap decision. The moment that mutilated Ss'sik'chtokiwij head emerged once more from the filthy liquid, I ripped the gray electrical cord from the back of the sump machine, and I waited.
Waited for Sanchirck to notice the blue white fire sparking through the end of the damaged cord and turn away.
Waited for her to retreat from me, or possibly repent.
She did not.
Instead, she roared at me, lashing out with her claws.
I thrust the end of the cord into the first bodily organ that sought me harm: My sister's mouth.
Sanchirck's whole body spasmed with electrical current, her teeth involuntarily clenching down on their very instrument of torment.
She thrashed and convulsed, the electricity coursing through every fiber of her body, so perfectly conductive was she in her putrid bath.
All around her in this electrified river, a mass of frothy foam bubbled up, a sea of helpful sewage eating bacteria annihilated through electrolysis.
I tried to remove the cord from my sister's mouth, but her jaw had locked in rigor.
Sanchirck's head smoked, brain fluids bubbling out of her wounds like a boiling stew pot.
Her body exploded, bits and pieces of her exoskeleton and internal organs splattering in every direction.
I raised my claws to shield myself, but ended up covered in my sister's blood and guts.
The cord, now free from its locked position in Sanchirck's mouth, now flipped backwards, and I came within inches of being electrocuted myself.
I kicked the insulated part away from me, and it dropped into the toilet water.
The resulting circuit overloaded the base's power station, and the entire compound went dark.
My heart, too, fell into shadow.
I laid on the concrete and cried.