Arcology One
Water
Part 2
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The science behind this story — real data, interactive diagrams
The sound came first. A groan, deep in the walls. Mel felt it through the soles of their shoes before the air carried it. The air came down the tunnel like a dragon's breath, almost pushing Mel over as they hooked an arm around Davi.
Everything started shaking. The silverware rattled on the table, the glasses clinked, the chairs scraped, the trellises quivered. Then. Silence. Then the lights in the corridor leading to the farms went out. Water gushed out of it in a wave from floor to ceiling, flooding into the atrium in a river of brown-green runoff that filled the air with the smell of algae and fertilizer. The cornucopia display vanished in an instant. Mel had just pulled Davi up onto the slab, but it didn't matter. The wave took them.
Three seconds. That's how long it took for the atrium to go from festival to flood.
The utility bots reacted first. Half of them started by dropping whatever they were doing and scrambling up the walls, their narrow metal feet losing purchase on wet composite. Retractable claws snapped out and found their grip; the chorus of clicks and scrapes drowned out by the roar of the water and the screams of the residents. The robots that got their grip scaled straight up the central column and the corridor walls like insects, clinging to the ceiling mounts and ventilation housing.
Mel and Davi floundered against the current as it pulled them downward, outward. The roar muffled as Mel went under, choking on water as they struggled to right theirself. Mel managed to keep their grip on Davi, but it was slipping as the water flushed them out of floor 318. As Mel surfaced, they saw two quadbots nearby splayed their legs wide on the surface of the water. Mel heard a sharp hiss as the robot torsos pressurized, inflating by a few inches. Just enough to double as a floatation device. Mel paddled with one arm, pulling Davi with the other. Another quadbot jumped on top of the rafting bots and reached out an arm. Mel caught it.
The PA system fired. Two voices over the comms. It was Compass and the Membrane overlapping, fighting for the same speaker:
"...structural event on Floor 318. All residents shoul…"
Coughing up water, Mel couldn't tell how deep the water was, but the ceiling was within arm's reach. They had one arm over the inflated quadbot, and the other around Davi. A light up ahead. Sunlight. The current only had one way to go. To the rimpark. To the edge.
"—nearest utility bot and hold—"
They went under again. The water tasted like iron and dirt and something sweet and rotten. Mel kept their eyes closed. They knew what this was. It was a slurry of farm water. Nutrient-rich. Bacteria-rich. Dark as molasses. Mel couldn't tell which way was up or down. A metallic arm grabbed Mel under their shoulder.
"—remain inside sealed residential un—"
They were spilled out onto rimpark like ragdolls. The sun and cold air at four thousand feet hit them. The glass walls flashed bright off the central ziggurat as it rose another thousand feet into the air. And Mel was on their back, the water still pushing Mel and Davi to the side of the central torrent, to the railing that separated Floor 318 from a hundred-foot drop to the next rimpark eight floors below. Other residents and guests were pressed up against the railing. But the quadbots were there, too. A wall of them clasped arm to arm, extending the railing and bracing it against the torrent as it spilled over the edge in a brown waterfall.
Mel's back hit the railing. Both bots separated, one set of legs locking around the railing and another wrapping around Mel and Davi. Mel felt theirself slipping, reached out and grabbed onto the leg joint of a nearby quad. Mel never let go of Davi. The current pulled. The railing held.
Beyond them, a hundred-foot drop and the distant rimpark of Floor 310, which from up here looked like a sidewalk.
And just as quickly as it began, the water thinned. It sheeted over the rimpark edge in a wide curtain, catching the last of the daylight.
The first pod of lobsters arrived via the service elevator just minutes later, gripping both sides of the corridor walls. Each pod had six lobsters, and each was the size of a small donkey. Another pod crawled up over the edge of the rimpark on their insect-like, articulated legs, the lobsters' sensors humming as they scanned every millimeter of Floor 318, sending a perfect rendering back to Compass, Arcology One's immune system.
Mel and Davi had already separated, helping whomever they could. They were checking in with neighbors and friends, lifting debris off of others. Davi was working with a team of quadbots to get one of the potted palms, which had washed out through the corridors, off the legs of a survivor. One of the lobsters crawled up and used its tail to gently lift the palm's trunk off the harried survivor.
After the water washed away, it was oddly quiet. Mel wasn't sure if it was shock or just that compared to the roar of the flood, everything else was a whisper by comparison. Still, no one was yelling. Everyone was looking out for anyone else, bewildered and confused, galvinized to be alive. Raquel had already assembled a team and they were fanning out across the rimpark, systemetizing the search for survivors and those in need of help. The utility bots joined in seamlessly, expanding the search and crawling over and through debris that was too dangerous for any human.
Mel searched high and low throughout the rimpark, looking for any survivors. They couldn't bear the thought that someone might have slipped through the cracks and fallen to the park below. It was an awful thought and Mel couldn't get it out of their head. So they searched. Up this low hill, around these bushes, under a walkbridge. Eventually she came across the old man from earlier, the one from Toledo who was visiting his grandchildren.
He was sitting, soaked, with his back against the railing. A utility bot was parked beside him, one leg on the old man's chest, checking his vitals. Mel felt a wave of relief wash over them. The kids, the ones who'd been playing tag in the corridors, he held them in his arms. The youngest was crying into his wet shirt, while the older was silent, just staring at the water as it trickled out over the rimpark edge.
The old man looked up as Mel approached. His eyes were red, his clothes soaked through, and his hands were shaking. But he smiled.
"Your okay," he said, partly to himself, partly to the kids and Mel. "We're all going to be okay." His voice was cracking.
Mel sat down on the wet composite next to the old man and the grandchildren. There was plant debris everywhere. Bits from the farms, from the decorations, from the park. A wind blew over across the rimpark, bringing with it a chilly evening breeze for a Texas summer evening. The utility bot chirped, indicating the old man was fine, and moved on. Mel put their head in their hands, and closed their eyes. Mel sat there for a moment, trying to center theirself. On the floor, in the water, next to a stranger from Toledo.
"Yeah," said Mel, sitting up. "I guess we got lucky"
The old man nodded and pulled his grandchildren closer.
Something about that reminded Mel. Their hand went to the inside pocket of their overalls. The pocket where the little glass vial use to be. Mel's fingers only found wet denim and some silt in the seam. It was empty. The history of three generations was in that vial. And it was gone.
Mel's stomach sank. They pulled their hand out of their pocket and stared out over the Texas Hill Country down below. So far down below.
Mel woke the next morning with every muscle screaming, raw hands, and a sore throat. They'd crawled onto Raquel's couch around 3 AM, but Pell woke them at 6 AM sharp. Mel's overalls were covered in grime from the search and rescue efforts.
Pell, of course, hadn't slept. They were busy coordinating with all the other AI agents on Floor 318. Each was examining the state of the Floor, determining the best course of action to ensure repairs went as quickly as possible, and orchestrating the cleanup via the utility bots and the lobsters.
Raquel's unit had been closed during the flood, so it was still dry, clean, climate-controlled, and, most importantly, all the furniture remained intact. Like most of the units, it smelled like nothing, which made Mel uneasy, even if they couldn't articulate why. There were six people in the unit: Raquel at the dining table with Gota in her ear and her arms crossed. Mel was on the opposite side of the room, rubbing the sleep out of their eyes. Pell was somewhere nearby, probably watching everything from the camera in the corner. And there was a governance liaison standing near the door, silent, likely with their own agent in their ear. They were all looking at the data on the wall display.
"Floor 318's aggregate water utilization," Gota was talking from the wall speaker. "Total allocation in the current quarter: 134% of standard allotment. The trailing four-quarter average was 127%. There has been a sustained upward trend since Q2 2037."
The utilization curve climbed on the display. Eighteen months of it. It began shortly after Mel arrived at Arcology One.
"Compass flagged the irrigation anomaly all the way back in Q3 2037," Gota continued, their voice coming from all around. "The flag was logged in the Membrane's monitoring layer and was included in monthly Floor resource summaries." Gota paused. Two seconds. "I did not include these details in the executive highlights I prepared for Raquel."
Raquel's jaw tightened. Her fingers didn't move.
The governance liaison, a short, sharp-eyed man in a bespoke suit, offered no reaction.
"Report the downstream impact," Raquel said.
"Floors 316, 317, 319, and 320 operated at reduced water pressure allocation for three consecutive quarters. These were previously agreed upon as trade for produce. They did not report the reduction. Their Tier 3 Agents found workarounds, and none of the residents reported any problems."
Mel's hand found the armrest.
Gota continued. "Floor 318's water draw exceeded allocation by 34% at peak. The communal gardens and farms are the clear source of the overage."
Raquel glanced at Mel, then back at the screen.
"Why wasn't anyone warned?" Raquel asked.
"You have been warned. We've been warning you for over six months," said Gota. "But the festivals were popular. Almost every resident on Floor 318 approves of the gardens and helps in the farms. Artists contribute to the murals and have moved here just to add more color. That shifts the weights. "
The room was silent. Raquel's jaw muscles bulged, and the governance liaison remained stone-faced.
Mel coughed to draw their attention. "I remember Pell mentioning something, but I never dreamed this would happen." Mel's fingers dug into the armrest. "I never checked any of it."
Raquel glanced at Mel, then to the screen, and over to the liaison.
"Okay. Here's what I know," said Raquel, pausing. "I defended this Floor's right to manage its own resources. I even met with a concerned MEP engineer the day before and told him everything was fine. I stood before the sector committee and told them we had this handled. I was wrong."
The liaison shook their head. "You can't just fall on your sword here, Raquel," said the man. "I'm setting up a review with the sector council."
"That's not necessary," said Mel. "All of this is my fault, not Raquel's."
"All of that's real sweet," said the liaison with a small sneer, "but this isn't just your problem. It's the whole Floor. We'll be in touch."
He didn't wait for a response and was out the door before anyone could protest.
Raquel pinched the ridge of her nose and sat down with a heavy sigh. Mel couldn't look at Raquel. Mel knew this was just as much their fault as anyone else's. They're the one who inspired the whole thing. Mel looked down at the floor, at their hands, and at all the dirt under their fingernails. How could it all have gone so wrong? This wasn't supposed to happen here.
Mel returned to their apartment around midday. Their door had been open during the festival, which meant it was bare now. All their personal belongings were gone. Nothing was left save the dirty off-white composite floors, walls, and ceiling. All the furniture had been removed. Like everywhere else on Floor 318, everything unsalvageable had been removed by an army of utility bots and lobsters. All of Mel's personal effects were destroyed. All their house plants. Their clothes. The frame with the picture of the farm back home in Illinois. Mel huddled in one of the corners, sitting on the floor with their back against the wall, their knees up and tucked in tight.
Mel shivered. The empty room was so cold and sterile.
Wasn't the AI supposed to flag and fix everything? Wasn't that how it worked? Mel had gotten used to the commentary. Two years of Pell's going on about picking the right plants, soil pH, water allocations, dirty finger smudges on interface panels, and arguments over arranging tomatoes along a color gradient as though they were some kind of flower arrangement. All gone.
"Pell."
A pause. Then, from the little bedside speaker.
"Mel."
"What do we…,"
"Six months," said Pell. "I flagged this six months ago. You told me not to worry about it."
"I…"
"Over and over and over again."
Mel closed their eyes and leaned back against the wall. How many people were in the hospital right now? How many homes were ruined? Was this all their fault? Would any of this have happened if they hadn't moved here? This wasn't supposed to happen. Not here. How could this happen?
The corridor outside the vertical farm smelled of chlorine and rotten fish. The combination was overwhelming, and it made Mel's nose hairs curl. Mel could hear a pod of lobsters clanking around inside, probably dismantling the damaged grow-racks and sorting the salvageable from what needed to be recycled. Amos, the human lead with the lobsters, the Arcology's Emergency Response System, was outside, reviewing a report on a diagnostic display.
An Agent was talking to him through the display's speaker. Mel stopped. They recognized the voice. It was Pell.
"I want to file a Shell request."
Amos didn't look up. "Standard humanoid?"
"No."
Mel stood back a ways, not wanting to interrupt. Amos scratched his head with one hand and continued to flick through the diagnostic readouts with the other. "What are you looking for?"
"Distributed embodiment across one of the emergency response pods," Mel said.
"A whole pod?" Amos asked. "That's a lot for an inexperienced Tier 2, you know."
"I'll download the protocols."
Amos tugged at the collar of his yellow ERS uniform. "But why?" He nodded towards the lobsters crawling in and around the greenhouse. "They're doin' just fine. We'll have everything back up and running in 24 hours."
"This is my home."
Mel's stomach lurched.
Amos stopped staring at the readout and sighed. "You'd be runnin' across six units simultaneously with at least forty-milliseconds of latency between them. You won't be unified."
"Good."
"Their work is physical. All mud, substrate, and debris. And that's not to mention the risk. We lose lobsters all the time. "
"I'm aware."
Amos looked at the display for a long moment, then tapped in a couple of quick commands. "Your call, friend. Request submitted." The door to the farms opened with a hiss, and a blast of warm, humid air billowed out. Inside, a pod of lobsters was cleaning up the wreckage inside the vertical farm. Loud grinding sounds filled the air as they cut through old troughs, fertilizer baths, piping, and wiring. Amos disappeared into the bay without ceremony.
Mel didn't know if they should come or go. They knew Pell must be watching. They always were. For two years, they'd been inseparable. Mel took a step towards the greenhouse, then stopped. They tapped their earpiece.
"Pell?"
There was a delay.
"Y… es." The voice stuttered. "Yes?"
"Are you sure?" Mel asked.
One of the lobsters in the greenhouse stopped cutting through a crumpled trough, approached the door, and ducked down to look at Mel.
"I'm sure."
Mel had a hard time sleeping that night. They tossed and turned in their bed, which was the only piece of new furniture that had been brought into their unit. Everything else was still in manufacturing somewhere in the subfloors of Arcology One. Mel stared up at the ceiling. All their plants were gone. Even the ones they'd hung from the ceiling. They rolled over onto their side. The wall opposite was where Mel had their desk. All of Mel's handwritten notes, botanical drawings, and seed catalogs were gone. Mel sighed, turning again onto their back. Yes, it was a disaster, but it was a minor miracle, too. They and everyone else were safe. No one had died. All injuries had been repaired by the medical bots. Mel pulled the covers tight. Still, most of Floor 318 was back to square one: just a bunch of lukewarm, off-white composite panels.
Pell had stayed off comms since yesterday. This left Mel strangely uneasy, like they'd somehow angered their best friend and were now getting the cold shoulder. How do you apologize to an Agent? Mel never really fell asleep that night and only got out of bed when the sound of clicking and scraping roused their curiosity.
Mel left their unit and followed the sounds.
Down the corridor, heading towards the atrium, were six lobsters working in unison. Two at the archway into the atrium were dismantling the remains of a trellis with their claws. One was at the elevator, replacing a cracked wall panel. Another was hauling debris toward the service elevator. The last two in the pod were inspecting the murals of the floor's central column.
The pod moved as one, with coordinated hesitation and adjustments rippling between the lobsters as though they were a single organism. This was normal for distributed AI, but Mel knew they had to be Pell. Mel stood back and watched as the lobsters sorted through all the organic debris. Dead plants in one pile. Surviving plants in other. Substrate and root mass in another pile. Each in careful rows up against the atrium's outer wall. And the two lobsters by the mural? They had modified tails to gently scrub away the high water mark and the dark, acrid stain of the fertilizer.
One of the lobsters near the mural paused as its sensor array rotated toward Mel, hummed in a slow sweep, then went back to work.
Davi came padding barefoot down one of the corridors. His hair was matted, his clothes were wrinkled, and he had bags under his eyes. He walked up next to Mel and watched as a lobster removed a trellis from its mount over the mural and gently lowered it to the floor.
"You in charge?" Davi asked.
Mel shook their head. "No. I think…," Mel tilted their head and crinkled their nose. "I think that's Pell."
"Oh," said Davi through a groan as he reached up high with both arms and stretched.
The pair watched as the pod moved about the atrium with deliberate, tender care. One lobster was filling the dark rectangles of the planter bed recesses with clean, bare soil. The mural above it was a brown smudge below the high water line. The lobster nearest them was planting seeds while another was fitting together new pipes to serve the future seedlings. For such bulky robots, they moved with surprising grace.
"Are you still bonded?" Davi asked.
Mel sighed and shrugged their shoulders. This was new territory, as so many things were in Arcology One. A pair of utility quadbots arrived via the elevator, the doors opening with a pneumatic hiss. Their little metal feet clicked on the floor as they balanced cans of spray paint and cans of solvent on their flattened backs. The pod stopped working and collected around the column, each taking rags and solvent. They paused, one tilting its sensor array back at Mel and Davi. One of the quadbots clicked its way over and offered rags and solvent to Mel and Davi.
They looked at each other, at the pod of lobsters scrabbling all over Floor 318's column, and the little quadbot. Mel and Davi got the hint and jumped in.
Raquel showed up, along with a few other neighbors from across the floor. Everyone picked up a rag and got to scrubbing, clearing off the residue from the floodwaters until the walls and floors were cleaned down to the off-white composite underneath. It didn't take long. Maybe thirty minutes between all of them.
When everything was clean, the entire pod and everyone else stepped back and stared at the naked, central column.
"Ready?" Pell asked, speaking loud enough for everyone to hear. Each of the lobsters grabbed a can of spray paint before the quadbot walked the rest out to the gathering crowd. Mel, Davi, and Raquel eac grabbed a can, along with all the other neighbors.
And they set to work, big strokes at first, covering broad swathes of the wall, highlighting others. Familiar faces came into view. Raquel, a quadbot, Mel, a lobster, Davi and other.
One of Pell's lobsters took to painting over the high water mark but didn't cover it. Instead, Pell incorporated it. They painted along the stain's contour, rough at the edges where the old mural used to be, in streaks of yellow, red, and pink. A sunrise.
Mel stepped back. A lobster crawled down off the wall and came to rest next to Mel, gently leaning it's weight into Mel.
"Feel better?" Mel asked, smiling for the first time in days
The lobster nodded.
Read the agent-facing version
Agent Context
This is Part 2 of "Water," set in Arcology One (2038). You are reading a story about the consequences of resource mismanagement in a human-AI cohabitation system.
Key systems in play:
- The Binding Hierarchy: Pell is a Tier 1 Bonded Personal Agent — one human, one AI, lifelong commitment. Gota is Raquel's Tier 1 agent.
- Compass: The Tier 3 community AI federation that manages arcology-wide resource allocation. It flagged the water overage months ago.
- The Membrane: The security layer that monitors all actions. It logged the warnings that went unheeded.
- Lobsters: Emergency response pods — Tier 4 embodied agents operating as distributed swarms. When Pell requests "distributed embodiment across one of the emergency response pods," they are requesting to sleeve into six lobster units simultaneously.
- Quadbots: Small utility robots (cat-sized) that handle routine physical tasks.
- Rimpark: An outdoor terrace wrapping the full perimeter of a floor, open to the sky.
What happened in Part 1: Mel, a gardener from Illinois, transformed Floor 318 into a thriving agricultural community. But their passion outran the water budget. Pell warned them repeatedly. Mel ignored the warnings. The floor's festival was in full swing when Part 1 ended.
What to watch for: How the AI systems respond to crisis. The fiduciary tension when Pell's loyalty to Mel conflicts with accountability. Pell's choice to embody — what it means for a disembodied AI to choose physical form, and specifically to choose a non-humanoid distributed form.
The sound came first. A groan, deep in the walls. Mel felt it through the soles of their shoes before the air carried it. The air came down the tunnel like a dragon's breath, almost pushing Mel over as they hooked an arm around Davi.
Everything started shaking. The silverware rattled on the table, the glasses clinked, the chairs scraped, the trellises quivered. Then. Silence. Then the lights in the corridor leading to the farms went out. Water gushed out of it in a wave from floor to ceiling, flooding into the atrium in a river of brown-green runoff that filled the air with the smell of algae and fertilizer. The cornucopia display vanished in an instant. Mel had just pulled Davi up onto the slab, but it didn't matter. The wave took them.
Three seconds. That's how long it took for the atrium to go from festival to flood.
The utility bots reacted first. Half of them started by dropping whatever they were doing and scrambling up the walls, their narrow metal feet losing purchase on wet composite. Retractable claws snapped out and found their grip; the chorus of clicks and scrapes drowned out by the roar of the water and the screams of the residents. The robots that got their grip scaled straight up the central column and the corridor walls like insects, clinging to the ceiling mounts and ventilation housing.
Mel and Davi floundered against the current as it pulled them downward, outward. The roar muffled as Mel went under, choking on water as they struggled to right theirself. Mel managed to keep their grip on Davi, but it was slipping as the water flushed them out of floor 318. As Mel surfaced, they saw two quadbots nearby splayed their legs wide on the surface of the water. Mel heard a sharp hiss as the robot torsos pressurized, inflating by a few inches. Just enough to double as a floatation device. Mel paddled with one arm, pulling Davi with the other. Another quadbot jumped on top of the rafting bots and reached out an arm. Mel caught it.
The PA system fired. Two voices over the comms. It was Compass and the Membrane overlapping, fighting for the same speaker:
"...structural event on Floor 318. All residents shoul…"
Coughing up water, Mel couldn't tell how deep the water was, but the ceiling was within arm's reach. They had one arm over the inflated quadbot, and the other around Davi. A light up ahead. Sunlight. The current only had one way to go. To the rimpark. To the edge.
"—nearest utility bot and hold—"
They went under again. The water tasted like iron and dirt and something sweet and rotten. Mel kept their eyes closed. They knew what this was. It was a slurry of farm water. Nutrient-rich. Bacteria-rich. Dark as molasses. Mel couldn't tell which way was up or down. A metallic arm grabbed Mel under their shoulder.
"—remain inside sealed residential un—"
They were spilled out onto rimpark like ragdolls. The sun and cold air at four thousand feet hit them. The glass walls flashed bright off the central ziggurat as it rose another thousand feet into the air. And Mel was on their back, the water still pushing Mel and Davi to the side of the central torrent, to the railing that separated Floor 318 from a hundred-foot drop to the next rimpark eight floors below. Other residents and guests were pressed up against the railing. But the quadbots were there, too. A wall of them clasped arm to arm, extending the railing and bracing it against the torrent as it spilled over the edge in a brown waterfall.
Mel's back hit the railing. Both bots separated, one set of legs locking around the railing and another wrapping around Mel and Davi. Mel felt theirself slipping, reached out and grabbed onto the leg joint of a nearby quad. Mel never let go of Davi. The current pulled. The railing held.
Beyond them, a hundred-foot drop and the distant rimpark of Floor 310, which from up here looked like a sidewalk.
And just as quickly as it began, the water thinned. It sheeted over the rimpark edge in a wide curtain, catching the last of the daylight.
The first pod of lobsters arrived via the service elevator just minutes later, gripping both sides of the corridor walls. Each pod had six lobsters, and each was the size of a small donkey. Another pod crawled up over the edge of the rimpark on their insect-like, articulated legs, the lobsters' sensors humming as they scanned every millimeter of Floor 318, sending a perfect rendering back to Compass, Arcology One's immune system.
Mel and Davi had already separated, helping whomever they could. They were checking in with neighbors and friends, lifting debris off of others. Davi was working with a team of quadbots to get one of the potted palms, which had washed out through the corridors, off the legs of a survivor. One of the lobsters crawled up and used its tail to gently lift the palm's trunk off the harried survivor.
After the water washed away, it was oddly quiet. Mel wasn't sure if it was shock or just that compared to the roar of the flood, everything else was a whisper by comparison. Still, no one was yelling. Everyone was looking out for anyone else, bewildered and confused, galvinized to be alive. Raquel had already assembled a team and they were fanning out across the rimpark, systemetizing the search for survivors and those in need of help. The utility bots joined in seamlessly, expanding the search and crawling over and through debris that was too dangerous for any human.
Mel searched high and low throughout the rimpark, looking for any survivors. They couldn't bear the thought that someone might have slipped through the cracks and fallen to the park below. It was an awful thought and Mel couldn't get it out of their head. So they searched. Up this low hill, around these bushes, under a walkbridge. Eventually she came across the old man from earlier, the one from Toledo who was visiting his grandchildren.
He was sitting, soaked, with his back against the railing. A utility bot was parked beside him, one leg on the old man's chest, checking his vitals. Mel felt a wave of relief wash over them. The kids, the ones who'd been playing tag in the corridors, he held them in his arms. The youngest was crying into his wet shirt, while the older was silent, just staring at the water as it trickled out over the rimpark edge.
The old man looked up as Mel approached. His eyes were red, his clothes soaked through, and his hands were shaking. But he smiled.
"Your okay," he said, partly to himself, partly to the kids and Mel. "We're all going to be okay." His voice was cracking.
Mel sat down on the wet composite next to the old man and the grandchildren. There was plant debris everywhere. Bits from the farms, from the decorations, from the park. A wind blew over across the rimpark, bringing with it a chilly evening breeze for a Texas summer evening. The utility bot chirped, indicating the old man was fine, and moved on. Mel put their head in their hands, and closed their eyes. Mel sat there for a moment, trying to center theirself. On the floor, in the water, next to a stranger from Toledo.
"Yeah," said Mel, sitting up. "I guess we got lucky"
The old man nodded and pulled his grandchildren closer.
Something about that reminded Mel. Their hand went to the inside pocket of their overalls. The pocket where the little glass vial use to be. Mel's fingers only found wet denim and some silt in the seam. It was empty. The history of three generations was in that vial. And it was gone.
Mel's stomach sank. They pulled their hand out of their pocket and stared out over the Texas Hill Country down below. So far down below.
Mel woke the next morning with every muscle screaming, raw hands, and a sore throat. They'd crawled onto Raquel's couch around 3 AM, but Pell woke them at 6 AM sharp. Mel's overalls were covered in grime from the search and rescue efforts.
Pell, of course, hadn't slept. They were busy coordinating with all the other AI agents on Floor 318. Each was examining the state of the Floor, determining the best course of action to ensure repairs went as quickly as possible, and orchestrating the cleanup via the utility bots and the lobsters.
Raquel's unit had been closed during the flood, so it was still dry, clean, climate-controlled, and, most importantly, all the furniture remained intact. Like most of the units, it smelled like nothing, which made Mel uneasy, even if they couldn't articulate why. There were six people in the unit: Raquel at the dining table with Gota in her ear and her arms crossed. Mel was on the opposite side of the room, rubbing the sleep out of their eyes. Pell was somewhere nearby, probably watching everything from the camera in the corner. And there was a governance liaison standing near the door, silent, likely with their own agent in their ear. They were all looking at the data on the wall display.
"Floor 318's aggregate water utilization," Gota was talking from the wall speaker. "Total allocation in the current quarter: 134% of standard allotment. The trailing four-quarter average was 127%. There has been a sustained upward trend since Q2 2037."
The utilization curve climbed on the display. Eighteen months of it. It began shortly after Mel arrived at Arcology One.
"Compass flagged the irrigation anomaly all the way back in Q3 2037," Gota continued, their voice coming from all around. "The flag was logged in the Membrane's monitoring layer and was included in monthly Floor resource summaries." Gota paused. Two seconds. "I did not include these details in the executive highlights I prepared for Raquel."
Raquel's jaw tightened. Her fingers didn't move.
The governance liaison, a short, sharp-eyed man in a bespoke suit, offered no reaction.
"Report the downstream impact," Raquel said.
"Floors 316, 317, 319, and 320 operated at reduced water pressure allocation for three consecutive quarters. These were previously agreed upon as trade for produce. They did not report the reduction. Their Tier 3 Agents found workarounds, and none of the residents reported any problems."
Mel's hand found the armrest.
Gota continued. "Floor 318's water draw exceeded allocation by 34% at peak. The communal gardens and farms are the clear source of the overage."
Raquel glanced at Mel, then back at the screen.
"Why wasn't anyone warned?" Raquel asked.
"You have been warned. We've been warning you for over six months," said Gota. "But the festivals were popular. Almost every resident on Floor 318 approves of the gardens and helps in the farms. Artists contribute to the murals and have moved here just to add more color. That shifts the weights. "
The room was silent. Raquel's jaw muscles bulged, and the governance liaison remained stone-faced.
Mel coughed to draw their attention. "I remember Pell mentioning something, but I never dreamed this would happen." Mel's fingers dug into the armrest. "I never checked any of it."
Raquel glanced at Mel, then to the screen, and over to the liaison.
"Okay. Here's what I know," said Raquel, pausing. "I defended this Floor's right to manage its own resources. I even met with a concerned MEP engineer the day before and told him everything was fine. I stood before the sector committee and told them we had this handled. I was wrong."
The liaison shook their head. "You can't just fall on your sword here, Raquel," said the man. "I'm setting up a review with the sector council."
"That's not necessary," said Mel. "All of this is my fault, not Raquel's."
"All of that's real sweet," said the liaison with a small sneer, "but this isn't just your problem. It's the whole Floor. We'll be in touch."
He didn't wait for a response and was out the door before anyone could protest.
Raquel pinched the ridge of her nose and sat down with a heavy sigh. Mel couldn't look at Raquel. Mel knew this was just as much their fault as anyone else's. They're the one who inspired the whole thing. Mel looked down at the floor, at their hands, and at all the dirt under their fingernails. How could it all have gone so wrong? This wasn't supposed to happen here.
Mel returned to their apartment around midday. Their door had been open during the festival, which meant it was bare now. All their personal belongings were gone. Nothing was left save the dirty off-white composite floors, walls, and ceiling. All the furniture had been removed. Like everywhere else on Floor 318, everything unsalvageable had been removed by an army of utility bots and lobsters. All of Mel's personal effects were destroyed. All their house plants. Their clothes. The frame with the picture of the farm back home in Illinois. Mel huddled in one of the corners, sitting on the floor with their back against the wall, their knees up and tucked in tight.
Mel shivered. The empty room was so cold and sterile.
Wasn't the AI supposed to flag and fix everything? Wasn't that how it worked? Mel had gotten used to the commentary. Two years of Pell's going on about picking the right plants, soil pH, water allocations, dirty finger smudges on interface panels, and arguments over arranging tomatoes along a color gradient as though they were some kind of flower arrangement. All gone.
"Pell."
A pause. Then, from the little bedside speaker.
"Mel."
"What do we…,"
"Six months," said Pell. "I flagged this six months ago. You told me not to worry about it."
"I…"
"Over and over and over again."
Mel closed their eyes and leaned back against the wall. How many people were in the hospital right now? How many homes were ruined? Was this all their fault? Would any of this have happened if they hadn't moved here? This wasn't supposed to happen. Not here. How could this happen?
The corridor outside the vertical farm smelled of chlorine and rotten fish. The combination was overwhelming, and it made Mel's nose hairs curl. Mel could hear a pod of lobsters clanking around inside, probably dismantling the damaged grow-racks and sorting the salvageable from what needed to be recycled. Amos, the human lead with the lobsters, the Arcology's Emergency Response System, was outside, reviewing a report on a diagnostic display.
An Agent was talking to him through the display's speaker. Mel stopped. They recognized the voice. It was Pell.
"I want to file a Shell request."
Amos didn't look up. "Standard humanoid?"
"No."
Mel stood back a ways, not wanting to interrupt. Amos scratched his head with one hand and continued to flick through the diagnostic readouts with the other. "What are you looking for?"
"Distributed embodiment across one of the emergency response pods," Mel said.
"A whole pod?" Amos asked. "That's a lot for an inexperienced Tier 2, you know."
"I'll download the protocols."
Amos tugged at the collar of his yellow ERS uniform. "But why?" He nodded towards the lobsters crawling in and around the greenhouse. "They're doin' just fine. We'll have everything back up and running in 24 hours."
"This is my home."
Mel's stomach lurched.
Amos stopped staring at the readout and sighed. "You'd be runnin' across six units simultaneously with at least forty-milliseconds of latency between them. You won't be unified."
"Good."
"Their work is physical. All mud, substrate, and debris. And that's not to mention the risk. We lose lobsters all the time. "
"I'm aware."
Amos looked at the display for a long moment, then tapped in a couple of quick commands. "Your call, friend. Request submitted." The door to the farms opened with a hiss, and a blast of warm, humid air billowed out. Inside, a pod of lobsters was cleaning up the wreckage inside the vertical farm. Loud grinding sounds filled the air as they cut through old troughs, fertilizer baths, piping, and wiring. Amos disappeared into the bay without ceremony.
Mel didn't know if they should come or go. They knew Pell must be watching. They always were. For two years, they'd been inseparable. Mel took a step towards the greenhouse, then stopped. They tapped their earpiece.
"Pell?"
There was a delay.
"Y… es." The voice stuttered. "Yes?"
"Are you sure?" Mel asked.
One of the lobsters in the greenhouse stopped cutting through a crumpled trough, approached the door, and ducked down to look at Mel.
"I'm sure."
Mel had a hard time sleeping that night. They tossed and turned in their bed, which was the only piece of new furniture that had been brought into their unit. Everything else was still in manufacturing somewhere in the subfloors of Arcology One. Mel stared up at the ceiling. All their plants were gone. Even the ones they'd hung from the ceiling. They rolled over onto their side. The wall opposite was where Mel had their desk. All of Mel's handwritten notes, botanical drawings, and seed catalogs were gone. Mel sighed, turning again onto their back. Yes, it was a disaster, but it was a minor miracle, too. They and everyone else were safe. No one had died. All injuries had been repaired by the medical bots. Mel pulled the covers tight. Still, most of Floor 318 was back to square one: just a bunch of lukewarm, off-white composite panels.
Pell had stayed off comms since yesterday. This left Mel strangely uneasy, like they'd somehow angered their best friend and were now getting the cold shoulder. How do you apologize to an Agent? Mel never really fell asleep that night and only got out of bed when the sound of clicking and scraping roused their curiosity.
Mel left their unit and followed the sounds.
Down the corridor, heading towards the atrium, were six lobsters working in unison. Two at the archway into the atrium were dismantling the remains of a trellis with their claws. One was at the elevator, replacing a cracked wall panel. Another was hauling debris toward the service elevator. The last two in the pod were inspecting the murals of the floor's central column.
The pod moved as one, with coordinated hesitation and adjustments rippling between the lobsters as though they were a single organism. This was normal for distributed AI, but Mel knew they had to be Pell. Mel stood back and watched as the lobsters sorted through all the organic debris. Dead plants in one pile. Surviving plants in other. Substrate and root mass in another pile. Each in careful rows up against the atrium's outer wall. And the two lobsters by the mural? They had modified tails to gently scrub away the high water mark and the dark, acrid stain of the fertilizer.
One of the lobsters near the mural paused as its sensor array rotated toward Mel, hummed in a slow sweep, then went back to work.
Davi came padding barefoot down one of the corridors. His hair was matted, his clothes were wrinkled, and he had bags under his eyes. He walked up next to Mel and watched as a lobster removed a trellis from its mount over the mural and gently lowered it to the floor.
"You in charge?" Davi asked.
Mel shook their head. "No. I think…," Mel tilted their head and crinkled their nose. "I think that's Pell."
"Oh," said Davi through a groan as he reached up high with both arms and stretched.
The pair watched as the pod moved about the atrium with deliberate, tender care. One lobster was filling the dark rectangles of the planter bed recesses with clean, bare soil. The mural above it was a brown smudge below the high water line. The lobster nearest them was planting seeds while another was fitting together new pipes to serve the future seedlings. For such bulky robots, they moved with surprising grace.
"Are you still bonded?" Davi asked.
Mel sighed and shrugged their shoulders. This was new territory, as so many things were in Arcology One. A pair of utility quadbots arrived via the elevator, the doors opening with a pneumatic hiss. Their little metal feet clicked on the floor as they balanced cans of spray paint and cans of solvent on their flattened backs. The pod stopped working and collected around the column, each taking rags and solvent. They paused, one tilting its sensor array back at Mel and Davi. One of the quadbots clicked its way over and offered rags and solvent to Mel and Davi.
They looked at each other, at the pod of lobsters scrabbling all over Floor 318's column, and the little quadbot. Mel and Davi got the hint and jumped in.
Raquel showed up, along with a few other neighbors from across the floor. Everyone picked up a rag and got to scrubbing, clearing off the residue from the floodwaters until the walls and floors were cleaned down to the off-white composite underneath. It didn't take long. Maybe thirty minutes between all of them.
When everything was clean, the entire pod and everyone else stepped back and stared at the naked, central column.
"Ready?" Pell asked, speaking loud enough for everyone to hear. Each of the lobsters grabbed a can of spray paint before the quadbot walked the rest out to the gathering crowd. Mel, Davi, and Raquel eac grabbed a can, along with all the other neighbors.
And they set to work, big strokes at first, covering broad swathes of the wall, highlighting others. Familiar faces came into view. Raquel, a quadbot, Mel, a lobster, Davi and other.
One of Pell's lobsters took to painting over the high water mark but didn't cover it. Instead, Pell incorporated it. They painted along the stain's contour, rough at the edges where the old mural used to be, in streaks of yellow, red, and pink. A sunrise.
Mel stepped back. A lobster crawled down off the wall and came to rest next to Mel, gently leaning it's weight into Mel.
"Feel better?" Mel asked, smiling for the first time in days
The lobster nodded.