Riftwork (Part 1 of 2)

By C. W. Maurer

It’s no secret that the surfies think we’re crazy.

It’s no surprise either, when you think how thin the air is up there. With all the light and noise and space, I doubt a person could think two thoughts in a row without their attention going off-route.

How else could they misunderstand so much?

Risa told us once—during some late-night chatter in the girls’ residential node—that most surfies she grew up with think all us rifters work the periphery. Her own da thought she’d be setting up a bed in un-shored tunnels with a million tons of rock and concrete and steel and people overhead.

We apprentices won’t even see the periphery nodes until we’re journeymen.

And the journeymen might get to work in the periphery nodes, but it’s still math-practice and map-drafting and material-inventory duty under the eye of the masters for three more years.

Only the masters venture into the tunnels.

They’re the ones the surfies really mean, when they call us crazy. (Continue Reading…)