Carlsbad Cavern – 23317928 @ Alexey Stiop | Dreamstime.com
The cave system blew moist air in my face as it rushed past me as I entered the room, but the simple rotating door acted as an airlock, letting in only one small slice of outside air in per passthrough, protecting the fragile environment from the elevator airshaft and preventing dry desert air of the high plane nearly a thousand feet overhead from drying out our planet’s most precious resource. Bright lights illuminated the small manmade room carved out of stone, a few soda straws dripping from the limestone ceiling, working their way up to a stalagmite in about a hundred years. A Haydian Guide stood up from a small computer station as I walked his way, placing himself between me and the entrance to the underground pools.
I nod at him, not staring at the map of scars covering his face and arms. I had gotten better at that over the past week.
Dropping my small duffle bag on a bench along the wall, I sat down beside it to remove my shoes. They were good lonzo-leather. I just finished breaking them in last month. Running a finger along the butter soft side, I remember how long I saved to get them. Most of the things I’ve owned in my life have been near-plastics, created out of plant fibers. Hayden-Home dinosaur era developed the microbes to process plant and animal matter much earlier than the human homeworld, and the wonderful coal and oil that humans expected to find with a fully developed biosphere were not under this planet’s skin. All of carbon matter got processed back to nutrients instead of layered into sedimentary stone for resource drilling. Instead something very different developed and survived under Hayden-Home.
My socks followed the shoes, then shirt, pants, underwear were added to a neat pile on top of the small duffle, filled with a few items that represented me. My hopes, my dreams.
My life.
My parent recommended it. I don’t know if it will mean anything later, but right now, it is my tombstone asking, begging, that I won’t be forgotten.
I stood naked before the guide, the cold stone beneath my feet sending shivers up and down my back. A drop from one of the soda straws landed on my nose.
“Last chance to walk away,” he said.
I snorted. “Would you even let me?”
He dropped his eyes to the side. Likely my file was still open on his computer, sent down ahead of me with the final updates I had given before entering the elevator. I’m twelfth generation on the planet, nearly three hundred years of adjustments to this biosphere. My line has the best success rate, and Hayden-Home needed successes.
Last week, my number came up. Five days ago, my physical compatibility was confirmed. Two days ago, my mental compatibility was approved. Only one in twenty make it through the testing and a third still fail, even with all the modern assessments available.
The pretense of this being voluntary was just a pretense. He knew it. I knew it.
“Thought so.”
He placed his hand on the door sensor, stepping aside as a soft click filled the air and the lights in the small room dimmed to a low red. “They want you to go to the Carlson pools, just follow the signs. And good luck.”
I inhaled deeply and exhaled slowly, then stepped into the hollow mountain.
The Hayden-Home had no oil, but it did have plenty of limestone pressed from billions of sea creatures. The flat plains where humans first landed their colony ships above covered an ancient seabed, carved and hollowed out over millions of years into a cave system which stretched for hundreds of miles. Two teenage brothers chased this planet’s version of bats one night, sixteen years after landing, thinking themselves invincible as only a generation born on-world can. A world their parents spent a decade and a half doing their best to make safe…and never quite succeeding.
The Carlsons discovered the caves and showed their friends.
I followed the signs pointing to the Carlson cave, going past The Mourners, a pair of stalagmites soaring nearly twenty feet over my head, leaning toward each other, water slowly coursing down their sides as though they were covered in tears. Listed on a plaque before them was the first generation who died in the horrors of the caves.
There are not many on the list, just nine human names, though both of the Carlson boys were listed among them. Swimming in underground pools with no equipment, again, was something only teenagers would think sane.
Two among the friendship circle, Jones Silvers and my ancestor, Gorgie Santiago, lived to tell the tale. Kind-of.
I entered the Silvers Cave following my signs. Bubbly rocks looking like puff-blooms either side of the entrance disappear from my interest as I turn the curve around a massive fallen column and see the deep cavern lit with low red-lights turning the pools into pits of blood. A narrow bridge, covered in wet drips but no slime, hopped between the pools in a spiral further down. My bare feet gripped the shimmering glass-kind planks better than my leather shoes would have been able to. Still I held the handrail tight I was descended, walking on the slippery surface.
Carlson isn’t the lowest of the caves, that honors is the Lower Caves found a hundred years after first-fall, but it laid nearly another four hundred feet below where the elevator stopped. I walk a long time, passing wonders barely lit, the lights brightening as I approach and fading as I leave. I saw only two humans the entire time, clothed like guides, not like a naked sacrifice to Hayden-Home’s horrors.
Our greatest treasure and worse nightmare.
Did I consider turning around a dozen times? Or course. I may be dutiful, raised and indoctrinated in the needs of my world, but I am not without self-preservation.
I wouldn’t have made it past the mental tests if I didn’t value my own life.
Some of the pools in the Truist and the White caverns, where I could see something moving in the waters, had me frozen in place until I could get my feet to move again, but I never turned around even once. I hope whoever comes after will appreciate that.
An hour travel—maybe more, maybe less, hard to tell in the endless dark—ended the journey at chamber entrance where a guide sat in a small carved chair. His face blossomed red beyond just the red lights, the scars vivid and new, puffy and bruised, a testament of survival, if not success.
I wonder if I should take the survival as hope. Maybe this won’t work.
“Brother Mikeal Santiago, welcome.” The guide’s voice was raw, still recovering from the screaming was my guess.
“Thank you,” I said, not meaning it but what are you going to say, likely to the last person who made it this far. “What’s next?”
“This way. The Uncles would like you to try the butterfly pool first.”
I winced. Those that lived within the butterfly pool were among the oldest and largest, few chose humans at this point, and when they did, the risk was great to both ends of the merger. But the choice wasn’t unexpected; my biological father had entered the pool and walked out an Uncle.
Even under the low red lights, the butterfly pool shimmered in colors. Below long twisted things turned, like ancient earth tapeworms, waiting for a host.
There was never a chance to walk away, I reminded myself. Then sat on the bank of the pool and eased into the water.
(words 1,281; first published 8/17/2025)