♦ 1 ♦

Lab Seven is responsible for the recent boom of babies born from clamshells. It's a hype place to work, with leather sofas in the break room, marble-tiled cubicle half-walls, and team-building activities every other Thursday.

From her cube, Symphony answers one of the receivers floating near her head—a flat disc with a speaker on one side, and a microphone on the other—greeting, "Lab Seven, how can we help you," just loving her job.

The magiphone replies, "We'd like to order a son with the IQ and musical aptitude packages..."

In the aughts, Earth called the idea behind elochildren designer babies, but by the Soaring Twenties, patents of graphene-scaffolded, clamshell-shaped chambers for elobabies—born in elobe shells—were pushed through bureaus, and the new name elochildren replaced the designer baby panic completely.

Elobe shells was a term inspired by the elongated earlobes children developed after prolonged prenatal exposure to the probes in their heads, and was actually suggested by a previous world, according to the footnotes in End-time's manuals; it was a friendly name, for an unfortunate and painful side effect of the clamshell womb.

The renaming helped reduce the picketing outside Lab Seven, which Dr. Taylor appreciated; before the patents cleared—when the protests were sour, new, and designer baby labs were the societal evil covered by social media—Dr. Taylor's GPS system was often too inundated by the signals from picketer cellphones to register a drop-off point, so her electric car would come to a slow stop, a quarter-mile from the lobby.

Now that peace has returned to the streets, Dr. Taylor has more than enough time on her hands. Parking is easy, artificial intelligence handles most of her operations, and business booms. Every employee receives an annual raise, Symphony whistles between phone calls, and the company donates to the country's Universal Basic Income Department, repairing their image on Instagram, Twitter, and Quantabook.

Behind Dr. Taylor, Symphony chats away, occasionally clicking her high heels against the metallic rims of her desk. "It's three payments of eighteen vouchers... Yes, that's right, eighteen each... Unfortunately, no, at this time, government aide doesn't cover fifth-dimensional sensory packages..."

Each planet has only one Lab Seven, and the operations in them are universal. Once a planet reaches Kardashev Scale Type-1, End-time provides the blueprints to the clamshells, then the production lines commence.

Sometimes, Dr. Taylor doesn't feel like she's managing anything anymore; automation's become near-perfect. Yet she's still coming to work, whittling away time.

No one on Earth could read the elobe shell blueprints End-time sent through the QuantaNet, except the artificial superintelligences left by the Originators, of course—Watson, Alexa, Siri, and Cortana—the recursively upgrading smartclouds who were needed to become a Type-1 society in the first place.

Dr. Taylor leans over one of the three paper copies of the blueprints at Lab Seven, quiet and stoic. She's been studying them for months now, in the hours of spare time between clocking in and clocking out. Surely, with enough persistence, she can make at least a little sense of them.

She just wants to get the point where it doesn't look like she's peeking into the spellbook of an ancient wizard, eyes wide with a sense of wonder. She craves a better understanding, knowledge, know-how.

The blueprint display is tucked in a corner of the third floor, over by the east bay window, where the sun hits the crystal-glass early in the day, breaking solar power into scintillating rainbow lights, playing shadows across the stamped and embossed drawings of a deconstructed elobe shell.

In her violet lab coat, orange scrubs, and khaki-colored leggings, Dr. Taylor looks more like a time traveler than a manager at Lab Seven. She acts like one too, for all the nights she invests studying the last decade's artifacts, trying to figure history out. No one bothers wearing anything other than black and white anymore; and no one tries to keep up with the designs of artificial intelligences anymore, either.

While this may be the age of elochildren and robots—technology too advanced for the human mind, blind technological worship—Dr. Taylor still believes there's something for a pure-bred human to provide to the 21st century landscape. There's still purpose to the intellectual tinkerings of mankind.

♦ 2 ♦

In the water world of Valthyzar, Lab Seven converted their society into what Earth would interpret as an oceanpunk paradise—and it only took seven years; a cosmic eyeblink—but from the eyes of the Valthyzians, there's nothing punk about it; coral-bodied miniborgs were the natural next step of their technological development.

Now spiderlike miniborgs whir along the foremast and mizzenmast of Jadin's ship, the Mercougar, their coral-encrusted legs scintillating with crystal batteries. They check for weather patterns and hazards to keep their ship on the safest path.

Jadin watches from the low-tech mainmast as the sky parts, and the faintest glimmer of land plays along the distant, magenta mists. The sun is at the perfect setting point, when the sky lapses rapidly from pink to orange to violet-blue. No matter how safely the golems guide the vessel, they may die once they land ashore.

A flock of dinogulls flies into a school of flying fish, wings beating like drums.

Jadin leans into the iron chains that tent his grandfather's sails to the Mercougar, lost in dark thoughts, a list of anxieties too long to manage. Who would've known the elobe shells were the secret to upgrading their kingdom's golem-makers into coral tech powerhouses?

But with the assistance of miniborgs, these hand-sized coral golems, the colonials can cross the seas with only half a dozen men—on ships of more coral than flesh—and this poses a problem for colonialists who run into the Pangaeans.

Despite the dangers of scant human numbers, their king expects them to pick up a few boxes of miniborgs and head to the seas anyway. Even if only one out of every four ships makes it past the beaches, to the colonies in the mountains, that's enough for the king to eventually seize new territory.

Allana, Jadin's brother, looks out from the bowspirit, into the choppy waters of the sea. Where wind only bristles Jadin's flaming red hair, it whips Alluna's same red tresses out like a curtain of fire behind her.

She plays with the necklace of monoatomic gold around her neck, the crescent-moon-shaped pendant with the coral heart in its center.

In their world, most humanites, or homo saplius, have red hair—just how Earthians of the 21st century hypertechnological age are black- and brunette-haired, nearly exclusively—yet not many grow their hair long. Since they know they may have to fight the Pangaeans, long hair is a liability.

Allana lifts her hand to a deckhand passing by, intending to catch his attention, then realizes the scalawag was already staring at her. "Aye, how much further till Pangaea?" she asks.

"Couple hours." He gestures beyond the bow. "Up through the mists. See?"

From the nose of the Mercougar, she can't see anything but the back of the mermaid statue leading the way, and the angry ocean, throwing itself into itself, unrelenting.

So she looks up to Jadin, who's pointing a coral-powered spyglass to the horizon.

She trusts him.

He wouldn't lead them the wrong way.

♦ 3 ♦

Dr. Taylor has to submit three handwritten requests before End-time's administrators approve her two-day pass to the elobe shell farm.

She hopes, by watching an elochild's birth, she can understand the mechanics of the blueprints better.

Just as she read, when the eight-foot-wide clamshell lifts open, a two-year-old child is curled into a fetal ball, exactly where a pearl would be. Their ears are attached to coral-like sinews that glow with artificially engineered energy—magic, the technicians call it—so when the elochild wails her first scream, she sounds not unlike a person, but also not unlike a machine, either. She is a magical being trapped in a person's body.

Each newborn is swathed in a blanket, just as a human child, but the blanket is much larger, given their two-year incubation, and the fabric is dipped in a basin that reminds Dr. Taylor of her grandmother flinging holy water out the windows, shooing the plague away.

Because of the plague, all children—including elochildren—are immediately pumped with half a dozen vaccines. Whatever anti-vaxxers thought they were accomplishing in the Aughts, the Soaring Twenties were a dark result, and paranoia of disease in the 2030s is nearly as exacerbated as the times of kings.

At the fifth observation of an elochild's birth, Dr. Taylor finally watches a blue pearl, or a blue-skinned child, step coolly from its elobe shell, subtly smiling, in no need of blankets or comfort or even guidance on how to walk.

"Why's he blue?" Dr. Taylor asks.

"He's optimized," the technician tells her. "The elobe shell isn't the optimal environment for every fetus placed in it; but when they do come out that way, doesn't it make you feel it's worth it?"

Dr. Taylor opens and closes her mouth. She wants to respond, except she's captivated by the extraordinary deadlifts the newborn is pulling off with weights the scientists place in front of him. It takes two full-grown adults to carry each weight to the super-two-year-old's feet.

What happens when Earth is covered in optimized elochildren? How many are born, every day?

How long until homo sapien becomes outdated?

♦ 4 ♦

Pangaea is the only continent in Valthyzar. Even if Jadin's and Allana's kingdom populated a sliver of the coastal mountains, it would more than double the hospitable land available to the people.

And because the plague decimated the three islands, they're desperate to find more havens for strong, healthy communities. No civilization in their right mind wants to disappear under the sands of history.

But when the Mercougar crashes on the black-sanded shores, and the blue-skinned natives of Pangaea charge at the vessel with their coral swords and bows, Allana doesn't wish for new land. She only wishes for the safety of friends, family, and a good meal by a hearth.

The five other deckhands take up their coral swords, leaping from the ship, then running their blades in the foam of the waves crashing on the beach. The salt-spray titillates the living coral on the hilts and pommels, so the swords wane and splinter—the better to tear flesh from foe.

"For the King!" Allana shouts.

"For the King!" Jadin roars, and the other deckhands rally alongside their captain.

Allana once heard a story about how the Pangaeans refined coral technologies, long before the secrets spread across the island feifdoms, and this is how the claimed the only main land in Valthyzar.

This is why they now are born with skin bright blue, the true people of the sea.

The dozen Pangaeans charging their ship wear leather jerkins and kilts. Their violet hair is braided with sea glass and leather thongs. They make little noise, other than grunts—silent predators in the moonlight.

As soon as they close distance, they fell three of the deckhands in moments, including the one who was staring at Allana before. Allana's knees tremble as she realizes just how outclassed, and outnumbered, they are compared to the Pangaean coastal forces.

Allana is certain the blue-skinned people, with their better coral blades, and their prepared battle tactics, will slaughter all of them. Then the black sand will drink their blood, and they will be left unremembered.

Except, after felling their friends, four of the Pangaeans push Allana and Jadin into the beach, holding them under iron-sandaled feet. Then they lock their prisoners' arms behind their backs with sharp, coral-encrusted shackles.

♦ 5 ♦

Sometimes, Dr. Taylor takes her employees to lunch, pretending she's rewarding their diligent efforts, when she really just needs to escape the blueprints, the thoughts spinning in her head.

Symphony likes to eat at diners with a salad bar, and Dr. Taylor likes chain restaurant wine, so they decide on the last Marie Callendar's left open in their district. Symphony doesn't bother to take off her pink-tinted sunglasses until they've scooted into their booth and the waiter's come and gone with their drink orders.

As Symphony slowly removes her shades, she asks, "So why you stare at the blueprints so much, if you don't mind me asking?"

Dr. Taylor sips on her martini and puckers her lip, like a child discovering a wedge of lemon. After patting the sticky sugar from her violet-dark lipstick, she says, "This is a damn lemon drop."

"A lemon drop is a type of martini."

"I wanted the dry and sad kind," Dr. Taylor says, "not this fruity business."

Symphony smiles before trying again, "So your love affair with the blueprints...?"

Dr. Taylor sighs, leaning back in the booth. "Food first?"

They take turns leaving and returning with their salads, watching the other's purse and jacket, disappearing into the QuantaNet in their cellphones, scrolling through social media feeds.

Dr. Taylor's salad is mostly spinach, black olives, cheddar, and ranch, while Symphony returns with chard, iceberg, various nuts, and a generous portion of poppy seed dressing. They fork several bites in silence before Dr. Taylor clears her throat. Both of them place their cellphones face down on the table.

"I've a theory," Dr. Taylor says.

Symphony smirks while chewing, talks with her mouth full. "What's that?"

"It's kind of like a conspiracy theory," Dr. Taylor clarifies.

Symphony waves her nondominant hand in a circular motion, stabbing salad with her good arm. "Go on."

"What if," Dr. Taylor whispers, leaning in, "Lab Seven is the way artificial intelligences finally weed us out?"

"Weed us out?" Symphony repeats, furrowing her eyebrows. Then she widens her eyes and points at Dr. Taylor's salad plate with her fork. "Your hair's in your—yeah, there. You got it."

Frustrated, Dr. Taylor still tries to elaborate. "I'm worried," she says, "when enough of the blue-skinned elochildren are created, AI will no longer need us. They're taller, prettier, stronger, smarter, and healthier than people, but with the brains of people, the DNA; they're like a perfected version of us."

"A magic version of us," Symphony says.

Dr. Taylor nods. "Right. We won't be a comparison."

"Yeah, okay," Symphony says. "But even if we're old models, I'm sure they'll let us pass elegantly, you know? We'll simply fade out, like old fashion. There's nothing to really worry about. Our world's beyond worrying about violence."

♦ 6 ♦

The blue-skinned Pangaeans strap Allana to a coral pillar covered in a color-shifting slime coat, like an octopus skin pulled tight over the otherwise splintered and serrated pillar.

Any time Allana tries to wrist from her bindings, the coral cuts into the back of her arms, and the frail flesh of her back, so she tries to stay still.

Yet it's difficult for her to stand there silently when they're also tying Jadin to a palm tree with kelp rope. His futile attempts to fight them make it even harder to watch. The smallest of the Pangaeans can easily overpower her brother—like watching a tiger and mouse.

"What will you do to us?" Allana asks.

They don't look at her, much less respond to her. Instead they piece iron spikes through Jadin's ears. Both she and her brother scream.

"Stop!" Allana cries. "What are you doing!?"

Unable to free himself from his bindings around the palm tree, Jadin's wails die down to whimpers. Then he weeps.

Allana looks to the ground, her heart thudding so hard, she can feel it in her brain. Her breath won't leave its hitch in her throat. She can tell the coral pillar is slicing into her; but she's numbed by adrenaline. By fear.

Tears fall from her eyes, creating the smallest rivulets in the black sand at her feet. Some of her tears splatter on her toes, warm and faint in the chilling night.

Two of the Pangaeans pull on the thin iron chains attached to the spikes in Jadin's ears, until at last, the chains tear. Then they do it again. Each time, they chant:

"For our mothers."

"For our fathers."

"For our daughters."

"For our sons."

"For us."

Eventually, Jadin's earlobes are gone. He's alive yet he's not, his eyes rolled into elsewhere. That's when one of the Pangaeans drive a spike into his skull.

In one last, bubbling wheeze, Allana's brother is gone.

Allana begs, "Please. Please." Yet she's not sure what she's begging for: That they let her go? A swift death? A better king?

The tallest of the Pangaeans, two seven-foot women, unlatch Allana from the coral pillar, and she falls to her knees.

From all the twisting and turning that roiled through her body—convulsing, watching the torture of her brother—the coral demanded a terrible toll; now blood stains through Allana's clothes, from the back of her shoulders to above her ankles.

Since Allana's no longer capable of walking, the tall, blue-skinned women drag her up the coastline, to a grotto that feels forever from the iron spikes, the palm tree, and her brother's mutilated corpse.

Just before one of the women put a hand on the top of Allana's head—perhaps, to protect her from bumping her skull into the mouth of the cave, although Allana's not sure why she's worth protecting anymore—the three women look in unison at the full moon in the center of the sky, a white orb surrounded by a spiral of starlight.

Inside the grotto, the tall women drag Allana to an eight-foot-wide clam, its curvy body encrusted with coral that glows bioluminescent and green. It's a witch's clam, a siren's clam.

"What is this?" Allana stammers.

They push Allana into the half-open mouth of the shell. Inside, a soft bed of beige tissues deflates beneath her, like an under-filled waterbed.

One of the women puts her hand on the top of the clamshell. The other reaches beneath the tissues at Allana's feet.

Allana's mind screams for her to run, but her legs won't move. She doesn't think she could even stand.

Then the woman at her feet looks up at her, exchanging glances. Allana's petrified at her lack of emotion, and even more paralyzed by the coral spikes she pulls out from under the tissues.

Each of the spikes is attached to a spiraling, muscly tendril, purple and green. The iron spikes they used on her brother were mere simulacrum; this is the real deal.

♦ 7 ♦

The next day, while Dr. Taylor squints at the mysterious blueprints riddled with technologies like magic, Symphony comes up behind her, tapping her shoulder.

"Oh," Dr. Taylor mumbles while turning around. "I thought it was quiet. Normally, I hear you talking to customers—"

Symphony shoves a magazine into Dr. Taylor's hand. "Read page 43."

"You're subscribed to print magazines?" Dr. Taylor asks. "Very retro."

"I just get a few of the scientific publications." Symphony scratches the back of her head. "But seriously, page 43; I think you need to see it."

As Symphony walks off, Dr. Taylor tries to assess all the frowning. What could a magazine publish that'd pee in a whistle-why-you-work woman's soup?

Dr. Taylor flips the magazine over, glancing through the cover. Anthropocene, Issue 77, Spring 2033.

From what Dr. Taylor can tell, the magazine is dedicated exclusively to 21st century technologies, including clean energy, stem cell breakthroughs, and of course, elobe shells.

Page 43 is titled, "Ancient Elobe Shell Found: Future of Species?"

Her heart skipping a beat, Dr. Taylor reads slowly, line-by-line. The fast-paced, scroll-and-click QuantaNet programs people for speed, so now it's hard to focus on writing smaller than a paragraph; it's been years since Dr. Taylor has had to focus on details.

Scientists recently discovered a humanlike female skeleton, turned to diamond inside an elobe shell, buried at the bottom of the sea.

Excavations of deep-sea crusts have only recently been available, due to pressure-sensitive elodivers.

Interestingly, the diamond skeleton had a monatomic gold necklace and spikes in her ears, similar to Lab Seven's procedure.

Now anthropologists wonder, is it possible we missed a civilization from the early days of Earth?

And if this is true, why didn't End-time inform us of previous elobe shells constructed on our planet?

♦

♦️

First draft: September 18

Inspired by: #PunkWars contest hosted by Urban-fantasy.

Additional author notes: I combined magepunk (arcanepunk) Earth with oceanpunk Pangaean Earth, a.k.a. Valthyzar. The prompt asks what happens when two punk-worlds collide, but I didn't want to write a literal collision, so much as an anthropological or psychological collision, in two worlds at similar technological crossroads.

This story was fun to write—plus, it helped me elaborate the history of elochildren, a cyborg race in my sci-fi novel Emergence No. 7—so I hope it was also a joy to read.

First draft: September 18

Word count: 3544