Doggerland. Ben Smith

tried to stir the vegetables, but they had melted together into a grey disc and fused to the surface of the pan. He pushed at the blackened edge, but it was stuck. He turned off the heat, looked down at the picture of the meal in the book, then closed it slowly, picked up the pan and took it over to the table. He’d once tried to make something for him and the old man out of the book, and they’d both sat there for hours trying to finish it, until, finally, the old man had poured homebrew over their bowls and they’d downed them in one wincing gulp.

      The book always said to ‘season well’. The boy reached for the salt cellar but it was empty, so he got up and checked the cupboards. He saw himself for a moment, as if through one of the cameras, searching for salt in the middle of the sea. It’d be quicker if he just scraped some off his boots.

      He opened the long, sliding door beneath the counter. The space behind was stuffed with pans that had never been used and instruction manuals for appliances that had long since broken. The boy squatted down and reached into the back – just more pans and empty packets, then a sharp edge. He pulled his hand out and saw a small cut on the tip of his finger. He rubbed the blood away then reached back in, took out the object and held it up to the light.

      It looked like a turbine. It was only a few inches tall and it had been made by hand – cut and folded out of an empty tin. There were nicks along the edges that showed where the metal had been sheared. He took it over to the table and sat down, holding it up in front of him. He blew lightly and the blades turned.

      The old man came in and crossed over to the cupboard. ‘So I was thinking, seeing as you owe me five tins …’ He stopped in the middle of the room and stared at the boy. ‘Where did you get that?’

The boy turned the model round. It had been made very carefully. ‘I just found it.’

      ‘Give it here.’ The old man’s voice was low and quiet.

      ‘It was in the cupboard.’

      ‘Give it here.’ The old man walked forward quickly and snatched it from the boy. ‘I thought I’d got rid of all these.’ He bent it in half and shoved it in his pocket.

      The boy looked up at the old man. ‘What is it?’

      ‘Nothing.’

      The water system groaned. The boy sat very still. His mouth felt suddenly dry. ‘Did he …?’

      ‘It’s nothing,’ the old man said again. He was about to say something else – his mouth moved, just a small twinge in the top corner, like a glitch between two wires – then he shook his head, turned and left the room.

      Rain thumped against the rig. The boy didn’t move. The cold metal of the stool pressed into the backs of his legs. The old man was right; it was nothing. He should just forget it. There were more important things to focus on. They’d lost another percentage of output since the morning, and there would be more turbines down tomorrow. The rain would work itself through rivets. Rust would bloom out of chipped paint.

      It’s not like there was much to forget anyway. One of the few clear memories he had was of the officials calling him in and asking him to sit down in one of their offices.

      Unfortunate. That was what they’d said. It was unfortunate that his father had chosen to renege on his contract.

He couldn’t remember who had spoken, or how many people were in that brightly lit room. All he could remember was that the veneer on the desk had been peeling away at one corner. He’d thought about what glue he would have used if he’d had to stick it back down.

      They’d explained things very carefully. How the boy’s position in the Company was affected. How the term of service had to be fulfilled and, as the only next of kin, this duty fell to him. It was unfortunate, they’d said, but it was policy. They went over the legal criteria and the job specifications, the duties and securities guaranteed. But they did not explain the one thing the boy most wanted to know.

      ‘What does “renege” mean?’ he’d once asked the old man, casually, in the middle of a job, like it was something he’d just read in one of his technical manuals.

      The old man had looked at him for a long time out of the corner of his eye. His hand had moved to the ratchet in front of him, then stopped. ‘Give up,’ he’d said, finally.

      Which was as much as he’d ever said on the subject. His face would darken and close over, as if a switch had clicked off. But it didn’t matter. The more time the boy spent on the farm, the more he knew what it meant. It was something to do with the endlessness. It was something to do with the fact that there was no way out. The boy would stand on the edge of the rig’s platform and look across the water. He knew, and he wanted to know, and he didn’t want to know anything; like the waves churning between the towers, rearing up and splitting and knocking back into each other.

He looked down at his meal, which had hardened into a stiff mass. He touched it with his fork, then pushed the pan slowly off the table and into the bin. It didn’t matter anyway. The food was packed with vitamins and supplements. A person could get by on less than a tin a day, and he’d already had vegetables for breakfast.

      The water system groaned. The filters needed replacing and the water was already starting to taste brackish. It groaned again and the boy’s stomach chimed in. He hit it with the flat of his hand. His meal smoked slowly in the bin.

Cracks

      At night, when the boy couldn’t sleep, he would take his toolbag, his welding torch and a bucket of rustproof paint and go out into the corridors; making repairs, chasing draughts, trying to shore things up.

      There. He would stop and put out his hand, then move it around slowly. There was always a draught somewhere. Up in the corners of the corridor, where the two wall plates met, or around the edges of the floor, the wind would be crawling through rivets, working its way through the cracks in the metal.

      Outside, the weather would circle and press in. The wind would pitch itself low and sonorous, so that it sounded like voices speaking from every bolt and screw. Rain would echo off every surface. The boy would reach up and press his finger to the crack, feeling for the colder air. That was all there was – just a few sheets of corroding metal – separating him from the dark.

He would take out a tub of filler and get to work. He liked the way the filler smelled when it was damp – the gritty, chemical tang of it. He would lean close to the wall and breathe it in. Sometimes he would dip the pads of his fingers into the tub, wait for them to dry, then peel the curved pieces off one by one.

      As he worked, he would recite from the technical manuals he kept in his room. ‘There are several systems in place to prevent failures caused by adverse conditions.’ He knew all three of the manuals by heart. ‘The ride-through system prevents low-voltage disconnect by …’ Then something would start dripping somewhere up in the vents. He would tell himself that he’d checked them all recently and made sure they were sealed. It might just be condensation. If the dripping was regular then it was just condensation. He would stop and listen, measuring the sound against his heartbeat. It sounded regular. He breathed out. But what if his heart wasn’t beating regularly? He would stop breathing and listen, and his wretched heart would begin an irregular beat.

      The wind would knock against the rig and throw rain like punches.

      ‘The ride-through system prevents …’

      The dripping would continue, each drop hitting the vent in exactly the same place, chipping away at the metal, molecule by molecule, millimetre by millimetre. Soon it would wear away a dent, then a divot, then a hole; then it would begin its work again on the layer below. Given time, a single drop of water would carve out a tunnel through every level of the rig.

      The boy would reach for a screwdriver to open the vent but, just at that moment, the dripping would stop.

However