Caliguari's Drop is the worst place you can live in Blackstoke. There are two jobs: eel farmer, and refinery worker, and neither of these jobs is clean, and neither of these jobs smells good. They're respectable jobs—at least that's what they're called by the people who don't have to work them, but they're no treat.

Of course, there's also the support jobs; the workers who work for the workers. There are the pubs; boarding houses; pawnbrokers; electricians; plumbers; ballast operators; private investigators; insurance brokers; bookies; butcheries; indenturies; slough boxes; ladies of all sorts and species, who loiter too long at street corners and outside taverns; men dressed in black, selling things that shouldn't be sold to people who shouldn't be buying them; trinket sellers trading little hand-made totems for pennies; and the ever-present hot food vendors who sell food at too cheap a price, covering it with condiments to hide the flavour, in the hopes that some poor rain-drenched fool will be too hungry to think twice before ordering what he can only hope isn't a rat sausage.

Down at level 8, the rain has mostly been funneled into the pipes that go down to the hydro turbines, or diverted into the sluices for the eel farms, so you don't get the splashing, splattering waterfalls that plague the higher levels, but Caliguari's Drop always leaks. It'll be leaking when you move in here, it's leaking right now, and it'll be leaking when you leave, or when you die—whatever comes first. Nothing beats the drip drip drip drip of water on the back of your neck, 24/7, as the rain pours in. Even on days when the rain stops, the dripping doesn't stop in Caliguari's Drop, because the place is so waterlogged that it doesn't have a chance to drain out before the storm starts up again.

Down at level 8 is where I live, shoving paper for the ministry of infrastructure, trying to keep track of what parts of this rickety scrap-heap are still livable, and what parts are too broken to just stick back together with string.

This place stopped being livable a decade ago.

The wires are frayed and bunched too close together, the steam pipes are cracked, the water pipes are rusted, the gas pipes are sealed with putty, the basal skeleton of the tower is too narrow to support all the building that's crept up its sides, and the conduits in this place are too much of a rat's maze for the maintenance crews to figure out where they are, half the time, let alone which ones they've checked. There are some places here which barely even see official maintenance any more.

Sometimes, when the wind gets bad and the ballast stations can't keep up, the whole structure begins to tilt. The bridges weft and bob, and you can hear the squash plates moaning, deep inside the tower's bones. It feels like the whole place is going to slide off its pilings and into the clouds below.

I've been telling the ministry, sending report after report up the wire, that it's only a matter of time before this whole dump does, in fact, slide into the clouds and end the lot of us, but they tell me—it's not that they don't care, they tell me—it's just that they can't spare the resources to mend the place. The mines around here have been gutted, they say—the only thing left around here is coal, and until they can find new seams of metal, or a new site to mine, they have to spread their resources around as best they can.



The only bright side to the whole of Caliguari's Drop is Peasie's Pie and Mash—the man running it—I'm not sure what is real name is—is a saint. A big fat, giant, saint. Only good cup of tea in the whole south of Blackstoke, and pies with real eel. For all that Caliguari's Drop is an eel farm, there's not a lot of actual eel in the foods sold here. Most of it goes up into the middle of the city, and we get stuck with the run-off and the end bits that that the farms wouldn't dare try and sell to anyone else. His food though, you can trust, and he's always got a hot drink at hand to take the chill out of your bones.

Sometimes, on nights like this, with the water running through the soles of your boots, the neon blinding you, and your hand still throbbing from touching a stripped wire, it's the only thing worth sticking around for.

Indrop Signal!
. . . . . . . WIRE TRANSFER ogx
Noxlight Intercity tELECOM 440BAUD
Fourth, 44, 721NT 13:23:01
All bits accounted for!

FROM:cao001421hellena
TO:cao000543blackstoke

begin printout

Forthcomb, N
My dear fellow: regarding your theory that there is some kind of inimitably and undeniably deliberate action in the recent appearances of the creatures that show up all over the basements of our cities: while this theory is certainly a troubling one, I must say that in spite of your insistence upon the existence of this pattern I simply do not see it!

Perhaps it's the weather getting to you, I've always said there's too much sun over Blackstoke for your own good. Ha ha!

But, if you'll indulge me for a moment I feel it is my duty to draw your attention to the very first recordings of the appearance of these creatures.

Tritine, strange fish men, utterly sterile. Very vocal but no words, just noises.
Kanoptine. No eyes. Learned to speak but not very well. Tried to get around but kept bumping into things.
Moelletine, absolutely hideous tangly things made out of nerves. Only 3 ever appeared. Died in weeks. No photos, thank goodness.
Nemeatine. Covered in hair. Couldn't speak. Always seemed sad, apparently. Could reproduce but died out anyway due to unshakeable melancholy. Some of em just stopped living, poor blighters.

Nigel, the list goes on. Hissing lizard people with eight eyes and backwards legs. Absolutely normal-looking human blokes whose sole oddity was having enormous arms and being unable to talk. Some of these species are still around today (although from the sounds of it it's a stroke of luck for us that not many of them made it, eh?) and you wouldn't say there was any sort of order to them at all, would you?

Fast forward through a couple dozen of these poor sods lurching their way through the annals of history before we start to get some creatures who actually managed successful integration, and here I will say that you seem to be correct, with a sort of moderate leaning towards increasing 'refinement' in the progressively newer species. I do not, however, see what you are saying about 'cycles of testing' and to be honest I am fairly tempted to write off your entire postulation as the ramblings of someone who has been working too long on the same thing and is in dire need of a vacation, but I will further review your report, since you're a jolly good friend of mine and in spite of your eccentricity a very together sort of chap, who has contributed quite a bit to our field.

However, it seems fairly obvious to me that this is some kind of accelerated evolution. You'll note that the creatures always appear at the bottom-most levels of our cities, sometimes just above the cloud layer. While we know that exposure to the world beneath for nearly any amount of time is absolutely lethal, we do _not_ know precisely what is down there and as far as anyone is concerned there could be an entire division of the Kingdom Animalia, complete with members of the human race, struggling for life below the clouds, somehow adapted to live with whatever toxin or radioactivity that has struck the land, but nevertheless plagued by endless mutations.

See: the Espridine, the Zeuridine or the Gamidine, or for that matter the Renardine, a race of upright, intelligent people, absolutely charming, civilized and respectable as you please who manage to shoot just shy of being normal everyday chaps and chappesses on account of that they are all gigantic bloody dogs on two legs. We don't even have dogs on these cities. Can we prove that we ever did have dogs? Were they made up by someone and put in the encyclopædia as a prank? Could they always talk? Who knows, maybe they could always talk and someone forgot to write this down. However, it is entirely probable that dogs do or did exist, mute and quadrupedal, and continue to live in some form on the planet beneath us, and that we are simply seeing an accelerated branch of the species that has evolved constructively and converged upon the same intellectual level as our humble Homo Sapiens.

Perhaps the rapidly changing samples that make their way to our cities are merely due to the fact that the evolution is accelerated to such an extent, below, that making their way to our level and separating themselves from the source is the only way their genome can stabilize, but that beneath us, progress marches on.

Perhaps in the future we will see emerge vastly superior creatures to us, who will take us to the stars with their superb intelligence and refined and hardy anatomy.

It seems to me that's the only hope we have to break this wretched cycle of survival that we've occupied for so long, biffing around between the gutter and the stars for seven decades and who knows how long before. You study the theoretical side of things more than the ad practicus, but you know how difficult it is to improve anything around here. With resources so scarce that everyone is focused on maintaining what exists instead of making any effort to actually improve anything. It seems to me that we need a new race of Sapiens, human-derived or not, to take us above this mud-scratching existence and lead us to a bright new future. I hold hope that this is future is being prepared by jolly old mother nature beneath our feet right this moment, and that some day we shall all hitch ourselves up together by our collective bootstraps and move on to better lives.

Anyway, I will not discount what you've sent me completely and will continue to try and correlate it with our research here. I hope to see you soon; perhaps I will take a vacation, if you don't, and visit you! Give my love to Maude and to dear old Twins, the finest example of our progressive evolution as I've ever seen.

All the best,
Engray Stirling

end printout

The Zeuridine. discovered 12 generations back in the lower levels of the city of Grange. Subsequently found over the next five years in Altoma, Blackstoke, Charmouth, Font Bleu, Hellena, Herstoke and Meagan.

pros:
phased vision across 7 eyes means they have acute visual and depth perception
can see the full spectrum of colour, including infrared and ultraviolet
extremely dense bones
extremely strong in short bursts, capable of moving objects up to 10-20 times their own weight and jumping extreme distances.

cons:
extended, high-intensity physical exertion can lead to internal hæmorrhaging and ruptured muscles.
65% of zeuridine births require post-natal surgery to remove vestigal limbs and digits, and to drain intramuscular hæmatomas (pockets of blood which have built up high pressure inside the muscles and which can be crippling if not dealt with)
stiff and badly articulated fingers mean they are not suited to fine tasks.
Very few zeuridine can smell.

Zeuridine are universally bald and completely hairless. They have pale, almost translucent skin and can not stay in the sun for any length of time without burning badly.
Zeuridine are, by nature, cursed with hideously malformed faces, and tend to wear hoods over the the upper portion of their face to avoid disturbing people. A few wealthier ones wear custom-fitted masks.

The Renardine. discovered 7 generations back in the lower levels of the city of Blackstoke. Subsequently found over the next 5 years in Athena, Berth, Derrickfor, Needle, and Woodstation

pros:
Extremely sensitive hearing
Almost peerless sense of smell.
Well adapted to extreme heat and cold.

cons:
Difficulty with mobility, an account of their digitigrade legs' incompatibility with their spine, and their resulting inability to walk on all fours.
45% percent of renardine births require post-natal surgery to correct maldeveloped finger digits.



To compensate for their digitigrade legs, the Renardine almost always wear special boots, which extend their heel and allow them to stand upright without losing balance or putting stress on their back.