Good For You

by: Isaac Aceves

Good For You

Since they could hold their breath indefinitely the two young lovers would spend hours on the floor of their bay looking for mollusks and other snacks that káchtot might make back at home — just another day off Ozette Bay some miles south of the Salish Sea inlet, which eventually lead to the Puget Sound. Ray and Kala were helping get ready for dinner back at Kala’s house. She swam deep on the floor moving acrobatically and almost rhythmically as she made her way through the kelp forests with Ray. These two had been friends for years but now that they were teenagers they had started dating. This was one of the bonds they shared having grown up on the Ozette Reservation, which had been relocated since Cape Alava washed in from a previous round of tidal waves in the late 2100s. The original Ozette Reservation had been swallowed by the rising tides and heavy waves. So the government men came and showed them where they could move to.

Now, sixteen year olds Ray and Kala, dove for different varieties of shellfish like their parents and grandparents, since the tribe agreed to the change. Specifically when they had turned fourteen, their gills finally opened and the elders allowed kids to start doing the deep water diving and gathering on their own, they’d been doing this together. A passerby might observe that Ray and Kala were really the subject of an older story, two young friends that eventually had fallen deeply in love with each other.

Back at home dinner was on the table. The community was so close, as were both Ray and Kala, that they all often dined together. Ray, as an already muscular but still growing teenager, finally swallowed the several large twirls of pasta he had shoved in his mouth only seconds ago, “Who knew the Italian food would be so good on the Res?”

“Stop it, Ray,” Kala’s mother, káchtot in their native Quileute (and these two just called her Ká), said, “you don’t need to flatter me like that.” They spoke Quileute even though they were not Quileute, just like many other Makah did.

“Ah, Mrs. Wolf, I mean. Getting clams for you is my favorite. I love your linguini and clams.”

“Don’t be too nice to Ká, it’ll all go to her head,” Kala said as the three of them shared dinner in the quaint dining room table in the nook just off the kitchen. Out the window you could see the old pick up truck in the gravel driveway. Ray took the plastic parmesan cheese shaker and loaded up shredding more dry cheese, letting the pebbles of old cheese soak up the clam sauce and drown into the mess of noodles.

“Water looked really choppy today, like we might get more of those waves this weekend. The big ones.”

“Nah Mrs. Wolff. I mean it was fine. Once we gor down into the beds it didn’t feel any different. I mean, it seemed pretty calm underneath the water.”

“I worry — waves are always big this time of year. They can get so big especially when there’s a lot of rain.”

“We didn’t feel a thing, Mrs. Wolff. It was aaallll great… just like this dinner,” he said foisting another heaping forkful of noodles into his mouth. “We were going to go back later this week to fill up a couple nets of urchin, when all the Hókwat’ come around for the usual artisanal weekend trips from Portland or Seattle or wherever. We can take the truck, right Kala?”

“Truck is still doing fine. Haven’t had trouble in a few months this time around,” Kala said. The family wanted a new car badly, something that fit with the times, a nice hybrid model, electric and hydrogen powered. But instead they had this old relic in the driveway, a hybrid car from the mid 2000s that grandpa had kept running until the day he died. He always told them someday they won’t want to be found. They’ll need a good old fashioned truck for that. Still, in the here and now everyone agreed that they needed a new car, something that was more modern.

“Someday we won’t need those cars, will we?”

“I mean, we won’t, no. Since the experiments, we’re just waiting for that water to rise again.”

“You two lovebirds, always talking about that damn water. Live for right now.”

“Something’s gotta put this planet right.”

“You can’t change the whole planet, Kala. Just what’s in front of your face. You’re both young. You both don’t know. This is a big planet, kids. Every day is just another little fight for survival.”

“So serious, Ká,” Kala snickered at her mother and the two teens giggled. Underlying this whole conversation was the Ozette Reservation had flooded over a century ago when the rising tides were no longer avoidable. The Band had been relocated to what was now the Ozette Bay since the original Ozette Coast had been washed away, inlcuding Waatch and Queets. Highway 112 had been rebuilt and Neah Bay restablished further up and deeper onto Makah Land. This 23rd century world had many climate refugees launched from their traditional homes. On Band land they generally just considered this another casualty of Hókwat’ or white(sic) colonialism. “Fine. Fine. Well, just be careful. I know The Market is a great way to make a little extra money. But if it’s choppy in the water and if the waves are going to come in on the market or flood it a little bit, I’d prefer you just skip it. You always come back so wet and nasty anyway. I know those Hókwat’ come rain or shine, flood or no flood, and they have all that money from Seattle. But you know town is always such a muddy mess, I don’t want you two bringing it into my house. Or in your rooms when you go do whatever I let you do in there.” They giggled again when she said this. “I’d be mad at you two but you’re just two cute together.”

“You always worry so much, Ká.”

“I do. You’re all I’ve got, Kala. I don’t want no other babies in this damn house. You and this adopted one you’re in love with is enough.” She patted Ray on the head. More giggles. “Stop laughing. You two are always out charging into one mess or another, I don’t wanna clean after no new babies. So just be careful is all. And when it comes to getting those nasty spiked balls.” Ká just twisted her head and stuck her tongue out in disgust. “Anyway, when the waves are up so much that it floods the market down by the building even just a few inches, you know that makes me worry about the undercurrents in the water… Tumble forward.”

“Ká, we have the gills. Tumble forward. We learned it all the time back in elementary. We’re fine underwater. Heck, we might even be better off,” the young teen leaned in a kissed her mom on the cheek.

Ká just shook her head, “Please just tumble forward, Kala.”

“Yes, Ká.”

As it were, the Saturday Craft Market was the big weekly event. The urban warriors out to spend their corporate city money would bring the food trucks from the city almost literally in tow. But they would come to town and the locals would sell plenty — enough to help supplement their household budgets, which was certainly significant, which was why Ray and Kala were out fishing for urchin.

Later that night the two teens sat on the porch cuddling under the cheap Band built tin roof, while the rain sounded a discord so furious that it sounded sweet. The waves down the road could be heard crashing hard against the shore. The two lovers looked into each others’ eyes as they caressed each other’s face. “Ká is right. Someday soon, maybe in our life, and maybe in our kids’, life the waves are going to swallow this whole little town again.”

“Some day the water is going to swallow the whole world.”

“Do you remember what she always says about the gills?”
“Yes, you heard it again tonight. She always talks about her great grandpa. He always said the waves come then they come. And that’s why the gills are so important. As long as we have them we don’t need as much land — it’s all they have and they’ll always take it from you…. Because the other thing great grandpa always said was, “Hókwat’ will always cheat you.“

“Well, that’s all because of your great, great grandfather. When he came home from the experiment he didn’t bring the government, he just brought the gills. ‘They will come for gills. Even when the land is gone, they’ll still want these gills,’ Ka’ always says.”

“It’s a little creepy.”

“So is having gills, if you think about it.”-

“Well it’s all we got. Other than a lot of drunks and shitty jobs, these fucking gills at least make us special.”

***********************************

Poverty was the one constant on these coastal indigenous lands. With the autocratic politics of the late and early millennium politics. Indigenous communities had certainly been forgotten in the United States, still a vast land but certainly hemmed in by rising tides on both sides of this new omnipresent Manifest Destiny. These days state assistance was severely depleted, if not non-existent. Bands and Reservations were left to fend for themselves and their people living in already impoverished communities. That did not change, even now several hundred years after the Trail of Tears. Money was certainly not a luxury in this community. The forests, the oceans, the skies, the friendships forged in a close community — they all vitalized a town still built almost exclusively on it’s relationship with nature. Sure, trucks sat in driveways dozens of years past their expiration dates, great grandmothers lived in the same squalor as their grandchildren, and community events weren’t just for show, they were for survival, with feasts and dinners filling the bellies of children that might otherwise go to bed hungry because someone at home had chosen to buy other items instead of enough food for the kids.

As with many Indigenous communities, alcohol was a severe problem. Many felt this was a genetic predisposition and the bigger drinkers on the reservation claimed that science had bound them to the bottle. That was true, in the sense that science had an answer. But genetics wasn’t particularly at fault. The science of poverty and society was what really laid claim over the bodies and minds of the local drunks.

The link between addiction and trauma was well established although poorly publicized even is these times. “Data has shown that the more trauma one experiences, the greater one’s risks of developing an addiction. Our experience of trauma is more enhanced for a variety of reasons.”

“Ka’ you’re being so nerdy.”

“Maybe. I just want you to know I know. And it’s ok.”

“What are you doing, Ka’?”

“I had to pull it up on my device. Here, let me tell you.”

Kala was petrified as her mother started to talk about drinking and drug use from something she found on her phone. The terror was inescapable, “For instance, these communities were at greater risk of having their families split apart by the government compared to the general population, an unquestionably traumatic experience for the families concerned, but also for the community as a whole. This certainly traced back to the many centuries of laying and neglect Native American communities had experienced at the hands of the United States government. Thousands of older Native Americans were forcibly removed from their families during their youth when the Governments of North America pursued a policy akin to cultural genocide.”

“Ka’, please stop. I get it. Our lives our built on generations of trauma. Ok. I get that this is not my fault. I’m still not trying to get knocked up by Ray.”

He mother remained completely undeterred, not looking up from the reading on her device’s screen, “Decades ago, many children of Native Americans were forced into boarding schools where they were not permitted to use their own language or even their own names, or conversely many had little to no schooling at all. Also, around a quarter of Native Americans still live below the poverty line, the same percentage as at the turn of the millenium. Similarly, the rate of unemployment remained double for Native Americans compared to the general population.”

“MOM! Enough. We get the same thing in school. It goes something like: So on the Ozette Bay and across America, Natives lived with elevated levels of stress that were certainly well above what scientists considered ‘average’. Science further shows that stress hormones suppress the immune system. This means that Native Americans were also much more at risk of developing chronic illnesses such as diabetes, liver disease and obesity.”

“Oh-Em-Gee. Yes. Exactly. That’s what is also says here: The cycle of addiction perpetuated itself, poverty, fractured family, pain and then substances to cope. So genetics had little to do with needing to drink. Years of systematic oppression and neglect had scientifically and almost literally forced people to drink just to manage their lives. Even with the link between addiction and trauma is well established. and the more trauma you experience, the greater your risks of developing an addiction, mitigating trauma was never on the agenda of the United States government.”

“Mom, why are you doing this, Ka’ said.” But this was often how her mother would talk to her about her great, great, great grandfather, in cryptic and disengaged facts. Genetic engineering advanced, becoming more than just a method of the moment or a scientific zeitgeist from only the late 2000s. As time passed, research for social work and civics’ programs was unrevealing. So the government believed that they could engineer a certain way of life, that they could change people from the core of the genetic code and not from the management of their general upbringing and acculturation. So, as genetic science continued to proliferate, research organizations started receiving funding through grants and private investment to meet these new development needs. At Washington State University a few hours from Ozette Bay in Pullman, one lab was particularly well funded. It was here that Howling Moon Wolff had his first interactions with the world of research — one of the many places where innovation happened not for the sake of advancement but for profit. Although he was born under the howls of wolves and a full moon, Howling Moon Wolff was more generally called Howie.

He was the valedictorian at the Ozette Tribal School and he was a state champion swimmer, having earned a full scholarship to Washington State because of his swimming skill, also excelling in science and math. Every generation a small town finds a superstar to send into the world and for this generation, Howie was it. Sometime after his freshman year he began working at one of the genetics labs related to Killpel Feil syndrome. This was a rare genetic disease that caused babies to be born with cervical vertebral fusion, an abnormal fusion of at least two spinal bones (vertebrae) in the neck. Common features include a short neck, low hairline at the back of the head, and restricted movement of the upper spine.

The leading researcher was a dark, old man trafficking in conspiracy, mad science and twisted biology. Professor Emile Ploetz would appear rarely in his twisted and constricted body, an old man worn by the years, bruised by the academia, science, administration and world that was burning. Meanwhile, he just wanted to experiment. In the 21st century the ravages of a worn world were starting to affect the humans, the very same species which had caused those same ravages. Professor Ploetz was a German who had travelled to the isolated campus there in Pullman in order to conduct a new sort of genetic research. He was a medical doctor and research scientist that had done extensive work on Klippel Feil deformities. The combination of these somewhat disparate interests had landed the professor a generous grant to work at this campus amidst the non-descript trees and rolling hills of eastern Washington.

He was certainly eccentric. So no one paid much mind as he took a strange interest in aquatic sports. Swimming, diving, water polo and even the rowing team were events he not only attended but donated to from his own monies. He met Howling Moon at one such meet there on campus. He was deeply taken with Howling Moon’s abilities watching him slice and cut through the water. He didn’t glide like some of the taller and longer contestants. His violent motion and powerful strokes moved him through the water with great speed. This impressive display was certainly not missed by Professor Ploetz. When the Professor also realized that Howie was studying to be a geneticist with great marks, he went out of his way to meet the young man. He mailed him and asked him to come by his office one afternoon because he thought he might have some research work that Howie would be a good fit for.

“You are quite a good swimmer, Mr. Volf,” the accent of Professor Ploetz was noticeable.

“I am.”

“Let me cut to ze chase. I must ask, you are an excellent specimen of a young man, intellectually and physically. So why are you here, Sir, studying genetics?’ He looked over the short and stocky build of this swimmer, thick through the neck and shoulders, with robust arms and thick legs which surely propelled him through the water at a considerably faster speed.

“I am fascinated by evolution and biology. Where genetics is studied I believe the answers will be revealed.”

“Your scores in previous classes have been quite impressive,” Prof Ploetz said. “Off the record, I admit, I have been asking around about you.”

“I’ve been working hard.”

“Yes, yes. Indeed. But I want to ask very upfront: can you verk harder?”

He thought briefly but his instinct felt as right as ever. “I can.”.

“And why are you interested in Klippel Feil, Mr. Wolf?”

“To be honest, Sir, it’s not really the condition itself. Those conditions will come and go. I appreciate your work combining genetics and orthopedics. You take what is natural and what is unnatural and find a solution to that.”

“Is that what you think I do?”

“I think you help people.”

“Ah, yes. Some people are helped by my work. And still many are not.”

Howie nodded. He understood that not everyone could be helped, or at least that’s what he understood the comment to mean. Quickly, they agreed to put Howie on a work study job that would allow him to do research under Professor Ploetz. Just like that, their relationship blossomed rapidly. He stayed at this job for almost two academic years, from the Spring of his Sophomore year until winter break of his senior year when he was applying for jobs at some of the better genetic research institutions around the world. The two men had grown close and conversed often. The twisted look from his sober and ingenious eyes could be construed as madness. Howie hardly noticed since he was always hard at work and swept away by the variety of difficult assignments Professor Plotze had assigned him.

One day the two men were in the lab late a few days before Howie was set to go home for Winter Break back in Ozette. “Let me ask you Howie,” the Professor began, the accent of the professor something to which Howling Moon had grown accustomed, “Free will, HOwie? Do we really have it? Or is our fate sealed in the DNA and all the mitochondria we are provided at conception? Do people really do whatever they want? Or are they pre-programmed like the software we use to tabulate our data?”

“Well, Prof., I guess I think people will do whatever they want. They have the freedom of their own actions all the time, like moment upon new moment. Is that what they want?” Howie held the pause of his rhetorical question. “… That may be a different question. Free will never guarantees satisfaction.”

“Yes. Of course. Strong observations, young man. But still, shouldn’t people be allowed to do whatever they want because they have the free will to do so? Can’t people be trusted, expected… even encouraged to manage their own affairs and behave however they want?”

“Maybe. But I contend from experience that free will from one individual can cause trauma in another — your free will imposes itself on another. Then you are making lasting damage. People are no longer experiencing free will, they are hiding from pain caused by other people. Drinking and other harmful behaviors never happen in a vacuum. It’s the Newtonian way, for each and every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. So even if there is no free will, there is always a collective concern, an overarching morality because of everyone’s interconnectedness. I would suggest that as a society we should be more sensitive to the pains we cause because those effects can last forever.”

“What if we could scientifically control those? Couldn’t the core of all of that trauma be managed better by genetics?”

“I certainly agree that is a possibility. I just know that trauma is not a genetic issue. But how the body manages trauma might very well be.”

“It is always so fascinating talking to you. I’m going to miss you once you are gone. Hey, before you leave for break let me show you my latest project? I mean, would you like to see it? I think you’ll get a kick out of it.”

“Oh Professor, of course I would. You know me. Is it the project in the basement?.” Howie was immediately curious because he thought he had seen all the professor’s work but he was aware of some top secret work that had been kept highly confidential in one wing of the basement. To think that there was a project he had not seen surprised and certainly intrigued him. To think that top secret project was also Professor Plotze’s made him even more excited.

“Indeed, Howie. Let’s go.” So, there, deep on the basement floor in an anonymous building just off campus was a hallway which Howie had hardly noticed before since he was always so focused on his own work in the building. But he now noticed that this other hallway ran deep in the opposite direction of any work Howie had in the basement. The skinny corridor led to where the muted screeching of chimpanzees was audible but was really sounded like muffled shouting. As they got tot he door, the screaming primates garbled sounds penetrated some of the brick lining a bit more and the sounds started skipping cacophonously off the walls. A humidity settled into the air almost like when Howie would enter the locker rooms at the pool. A door bolted with a highly securitized lock loomed there at the end. After entering several numbers Professor Ploetz put his hand and on the standard red light sensor for palm print confirmation while a camera scanned his face for further security. The massive door unlocked as the bolt slid from the doorframe. Looking back quickly closed the open/close button from the inside to shut the door as rapidly as possible. The door closed as Howie stepped into a jungle of a room split on both sides by caged chimpanzees on one side and tank of water on the other side. The muted shouts were now stabbing loudly in his ears, almost pecking against the insides of his skull.

Caution signs and top secret labels covered the these confines. Howie tried to take in all the organized chaos around him. The cages on the one side of the building had the chimps and to look at them was, for a trained, academic eye like Howie’s, to suddenly grasp the heretofore unnamed madness of Prof. Ploetz, which he had not recognized in the years prior. Each primate had obvious Klippel Feil syndrome. Their shoulders pulled in tight around their necks as if the top vertebrae by the neck had been fused. Then, on the sides of each of their necks were cuts or scratches. To look at them one might think they had been caused by an attack or rough play in some sort of cage fight. The truth was far less barbaric but maybe more brutal.

Howie looked at the tank in front of him as he scanned the room back and forth. He looked back and forth several times because he could not figure out what the disfigured and wounded chimpanzees had to do with the aquatic ones he now clearly saw swimming in the tank, submerged, not needing a breach to breath. Then he took a step closer to the tank to try and see how the animals were breathing under the surface. He saw bubbles emerging not just from their mouths but also their necks. Then he looked back at the chimps in the cages. Then back at the tank. Then at the cages one last time. As a chimp pushed fiercely through the water, Howie saw the lightly flapping pink fleshed gills that were allowing the monkeys to breathe. Then he realized that the wounds on the caged chimps were not from fighting, they were developing a certain manufactured mutation. They must be were growing gills ad\nd the organs had not fully formed yet between. He spun to meet the doctor with his innumerable questions when he felt a prick in the neck. Then he felt another on the other side of his neck. Professor Ploetz stood there as Howie fell to his knees. He tried to offer up some questions but he could not. He only heard the doctor having a one-way conversation with him, “You will be the first Howie. You are perfect. These gills will suit you perfectly.”

*********************

When Howie regained consciousness he felt a pain from his chest to the top of his head. He slowly opened his eyes to find himself in a cage like the other animals, and also with the other animals trapped along that row of the facility. The chimpanzee in the cage next to him looked at him sadly, the two trapped in the modern dungeon of some mad European, a crazed and dogmatic foreigner who had been paid in research grants from Howie’s own government.

Then Howie’s eyes caught the Professor across the room. “Ah. You’re back with us, I see. I may have used too much anesthesia. But… well, I can’t tell you how much you really are the perfect specimen.”

“What are you doing?” Howie asked groggily as started to regain some energy. But the bars were certainly fast, and he was trapped.

“For some years now, I have been looking for a human to give my newly developed human genetic treatment. One that doesn’t need the Klippel Feil mutation as I’m sure you noticed exists in these other animals.”

“Professor?… me? Why am I…” He felt around his body putting his hand to his forehead and then his neck which was also sore. He touched the sides and felt the tender flesh where the skin was exposed. He looked up at the professor knowing what he felt were certainly his new gills.

“This entire time I’ve been preparing you. You are ready to be the new breed.”

“New breed? Professor, what are you talking about.”

“The world is flooding and burning. Once the fires die down, the waters will continue to rise around washout the ashes, so many ashes. So much water, avalanches, hurricanes and tidal waves. And you will be the new superspecies. You will be amphibious. You can feel it yourself, your gills are mostly developed now. You will become a danger on land and in the water. Maybe even a little stronger.”

“Danger? Professor,” he stepped closely to the cage bars. “Can we just discuss this? Let me out. This is too crazy. It’s like out of one of those crazy, old James Bond movie or something.”

“Oh, How-vie, eeet….eeees…. Done!” His accent was clear and his voice climbed slightly in pitch. He hoisted a finger to the air with another twisted expression across his white face. “The injections are taking hold! The DNA continues changing as we speak. The next few hours you will metamorphosize like a caterpillar so that soon you will be a butterfly… my beautiful, water-born butterfly.”

“I just want to get out of this cage. Dammit, Professor let me just get out of here. This has to be a crazy joke!”

“That’s not what the next step is. The next step is the tank,” and Professor Ploetz pointed towards the chimpanzees swimming in the tank.

“I’m not ready for this.”

“It doesn’t matter. The time has come.” Then the floor started to shake as the cage began rising. It was hefted from a crane above. That was in place to take the cage across the center aisle and over to the water tank.

“I’m not going to be able to breathe!” Howie shouted when he realized he was going be forced under the water for some extended amount of time. “You’re going to drown me like this! You’re fucking crazy. What if I want to get out?!?”
“I’m sorry Howie. You are never getting out. If this works, I will have to kill you since I can’t let you live as evidence. In fact, I have already called in a missing person report to campus police. It seems you “haven’t been at your shifts this week,” I told them. And you have been experiencing a lot of depression, young man. I’m sorry to say you are already a disappeared person at this point.”

“And if I drown?”
“Exactly, my boy. Then you will also die. I’m worried about that possibility but if you can’t survive that just means I need to continue to work on these sorts of genetic cocktails. It is crude, but there will always be new students.” The cage continued moving across the laboratory floor. “Not many swimmers have such a powerful combination of neck and shoulder strength. This was why you don’t need the deformity. Your body type is so strong through the shoulders and head you can support the lung/gill fusion better and maintain mobility. At least, zat eez my theeeeery!” He grinned broadly as Howie screamed one last time in distress. But it was a brief yell. Quickly, the tank opened to receive the cage and then slowly it was then abruptly lowered into the tank. Finally, it rested there at the bottom. Howie panicked inside the cage as he instinctively tried to hold his breath. The professor watched intently waiting to see if the gills were successful and functioning on his prized specimen.

The success was almost immediately clear. As soon as Howie could no longer hold his breath he exhaled thinking he was about to suffocate. But as he exhaled the air bubbles came from the sides of his neck. His eyes opened in amazement as the gills began to function and he realized he could in deed breathe underwater. He looked around the tank as the chimpanzees were floating about him with their gills. The scene was certainly nothing like he had ever imagined, trapped in a cage, surrounded by amphibious primates looking in on him curious to see who the newcomer was. Howie looked around, trapped but alive, realizing the treatment had worked. He looked at the professor through the thick glass whose eyes were wide with excitement. The professor walked over to the wall and pressed a few buttons. Then from above the same mechanism from before entered the water and lifted the cage back out and to the dry laboratory floor where a very excited professor awaited.

Emile Ploetz strode by the cage one last time, taking a moment to address his pupil, “I am sincerely sorry that this is our final moment. You have been so close to me in assisting with this very research und advancement.” An anger began to swell in Howie like he’d not felt before. It surged in his arms and legs. “But this is the bittersweet nature of science. Deciding which scientific evidence to keep and to discard is difficult. So, I take no happiness in your demise. You are a truly special being — especially now.” As he heard them, the words fired in Howie’s brain. His arms virtually convulsed as he reached them out through the bars and grabbed the professor by his throat. He slammed his skull into the bars with mortal force. Professor Ploetze’s head slammed against the cage and even in this genetic rage Howie could feel the thin bone gave way to the bars. The blow must have killed the professor instantly. Howie suddenly aware of his own strength, felt the body go limp in his hands and looked down to see that the knees had buckled. How let go of his grip and the professor just violently dropped to the floor.

Trapped in the cage, Howie looked at the door and realized it likely also activated and opened by a palm sensor. Luckily the professor had fallen right by the door. So, Howie hefted the limp arm of the dead professor up. He did it quickly so that the heat sensors would still register an acceptable body heat. Howie laid the palm on the doorlock and a green light quickly signaled that the lock had engaged. The door bolt unhinged and Howie stepped out, tossing the limp arm aside. He scanned the lab for the nearest way out — the same door he came in. All he had to do was hit the open/close button on this side at this point. He thought of the tank full of amphibious chimpanzees and the other animals trapped in their cages but he knew he could not save them. Neither Howie nor these animals had asked for, planned out, or chosen this newly gilled fate. The moment resonated like an old saying back on the reservation, “So that’s how it feels to have someone else decide what’s good for you.” Howie quickly went out the way he came in.

There was nothing magical after that. Just the terror of a situation and the quick corresponding reactions. He left the facility back through the corridor down which he had originally come. Really, he just walked out. Howie had been in the building for much of his academic career and many times in the basement as well. So, when he walked out ruffled and tired, the security guards assumed he had been there all night. Although the professor said he had called in a missing person’s report, the couple of guys that worked graveyard would surely not have been told of it at this point. They just stared at the devices watching stuff across the nets counting the hours until they could go sleep through the day. And so they certainly wouldn’t look at his neck either, of course. He wore his labcoat out which was not unusual and he just left the facility, as if none of the trauma from the last few hours had even happened. He immediately left campus. The professor said he had erased any record of him and Howie believed him. So, he quickly chose to embrace this anonymity. The trauma of the lab left him wanting only to hide; to lose his government name, and commit and return to help his family. In short order, he went back to his dorm and collected his things. Then, as easily as he walked out of the laboratory building, he hitchhiked the back roads from Pullman to where someone could pick him up in Spokane.

Howling Wolff came back to the Ozette Bay. Although only at college for less than four years, once he came home he felt like it had been decades. There is nowhere to hide on the Rez, though. Quickly, among the very close circle of the Band they discussed the value of Howling Wolff’s deformity. Because the Band funding could be moved around very discreetly, even in this hypermonitored digital world, and combined with Howie’s scientific training, the Ozzette were able to reverse engineer Howie’s own genetic mutation. Eventually, he induced the mutation into the genetic code of anyone in the Band. The tribe, which shrank to under 200 people by that time and was even smaller now, thrived with this new secret and aquatic independence. The elders insisted this change remain a secret part of Ozette living for a variety of reasons, or as Howie would always say, “Sometimes you have to know what’s good for you.”

______________

Kyla and Ray tuned up their microphones in the truck when they got in. No one else looked to be stirring in town, no one trying to get out early to harvest for Market like they were. They sat shoulder to shoulder but they still tested the microphones and earpieces.

“How many we gonna get today? Test. Test.” Kyla said as she fiddled with the piece in her ear trying to set it comfortably but still able to maximize as much sound as possible.

“I dunno. What do you think? I think we should fill up, eight? Ten?… A whole dozen? Test.”

“Ká was still worried this morning. I told her… test… that everything is fine but said the waves are going to get choppy… test. At least, that’s what she said the Moccasin radio said this morning before we left. Test.”

“Then just 8. Test…” He pulled out the ear piece to look at it and then put it back in. “If it gets bad then we won’t worry about carrying them. Test.”

“Plus none of the Hókwat’ will really be there. We probably won’t be able to sell them all, just eat them ourselves really if we get more than 8 each… you know Ká hates them.” They both laughed out loud and stung their ears through the microphones.

“I hope not. Ká can just reheat the linguini and clam sauce from last night for herself.”

“You mean she can reheat if for herself AND for you.”

“Yeah. Yeah. Sure… Ok. These are working.” He put his finger to his ear to turn the device off. Then he just spoke normally, “That sea urchin shit is kinda nasty. I definitely don’t like watching them squirm. But I do like that taste.”

“I know. That’s why you make me crack them all open at Market.” She giggled and kissed him on the cheek and then the neck until he squirmed like an eel, still giggling as they made their way further out to the landing point.

“Really, Ká said the Moccasin radio told her it’s going to get bad today? She doesn’t know what she’s talking about.”

“She said you’d say that too. She said you’ve been old enough to know everything for a few years now.”

Saturday morning the sun started strong in the morning holding the wind away. The morning carts were arriving before dawn when the two teens went to dive. Slowly, they waded into the water, waves licking their ankles. The chill of the wetsuit slowly warmed as they swam deeper into the ocean until they both finally put on their goggles. With their flippers on they swam a good distance. Some 50 meters below the water the flora swayed majestically against the currents. The fish darted about, both large and small; they stayed away from the humans. They made their way carefully looking for the biggest urchins. Then they would rake it over and into the wire netting. Because they could make their way through the bottom of the water and the remaining kelp forests so methodically they always got the best and biggest sea urchins, if that’s what they were looking for.

The caught glimpses of one another across the beds and winked as they each saw the several very large urchins they each toted along.

“Epic catch today,” Ray said through the radio.

They swam around old harvesting land, what used to be Ericson Bay and Shafer’s Point when it was Ozette Lake. This was no longer fresh water though, and the urchins love the calm water on the back side of the new ocean floor. If one was patient, there could find quite a few extremely large urchins out on the long outer strip of Olympic National Park which had originally hemmed in the lake, now submerged after many decades of rising sea levels. Rotting alpines rested softly on the murky ocean floor. Meanwhile the kelp climbed towards the surface much like the fallen pines had, before the old ridge had been swallowed up. The craggy shelves on their right we’re gorgeous displays of coastal wildlife. Fish darted about below circling around them in the dark light. Even without strong sun from above a light penetrated the submerged environment. The water an almost sparkling picture of black and and white, an underwater photo like Ansel Adams might have wanted to capture. Because of their extra-human strength the two teens swam powerfully against the shifting currents. Then they would get close to a new part of the ocean floor to hunt for the largest of the large urchin. If they found one bigger than the ones selected before they would take the smaller urchin out and set it back down on the sea floor. The diversity of old and new ecology made for great urchin hunting and today certainly did not disappoint.

Collecting another one, Ray said, “Big fuckers, big big ones for sure. We’re gonna be fine with eight. Feels like it is getting rougher though, like even right now it’s picking up.”

“Definitely, Babe.”

They swam a few minutes more and then suddenly the current surged at the top of their torsos and dragged them up and away from the forests below, the urchins flapping behind them in the netting and poking sharply at their legs. Ray and Kala surged forward faster than they had ever had before, the ocean pulling into a high and massive wave.

“What the fuck is happening?” Ray asked Kala.

“I have no idea. Shit.”

“Kala!! This is troub…” The radio cut off which meant they were suddenly more than a 100 yeards from each other, the maximum connection distance for their microphones. They were both elevated from the kelp forests now deep beneath them. Neither of them could see anything because they were caught in what they now recognized was a giant wave. Fish and logs bounced against them cutting and bruising them. The salt water in the wounds might have stung but for their surging adrenaline, the wave charging towards the land. The large wave in which they suddenly found themselves had certainly sucked them up in their entirety. The size of the wave against such a large face of underwater geography threw up a monumental wave. The tsunami crested and tore up the lightly held forests that had been rotting there for decades. Then just as quickly as they had launched upward into the highest and fastest part of the wave, they were knocked backward and thrown behind banging sharply against the entire wash of large and destructive objects that then surged toward the shoreline.

Each of them, caught by surprise instinctively just tried to hold firm amidst the heavy debris that was pushing them around in the wave crest. Suddenly their radios came back into contact and they could hear each other cursing.

“Mother fucker! It’s the big one!”

“We’re gonna get pummeled on the shore.”

“It’s gonna happen real fast.”

“Remember what they told us: Tumble forward!”

“Tumble forward!” They were both tucked into a ball as the old trees rotting from the water’s floor tumbled around and knocked them hard and forcefully. They were shoved into awkward and dangerous positions. They tried to right themselves and maneuver through the pulsing crush of debris that was smallowing them in this wave.

“I see you.”

“I see you too!” To them this all seemed like minutes and minutes of paralysis and fear. But waves like this can travel in hundreds of miles an hour at their fastest and most dangerous. All of this happened in a matter of seconds before they plummeted down against the short and tumbled forward. They realized this was nothing to be taken lightly. As the wave came upon the land they heard shrieks which made them even more certain to ball themselves up and brace for impact against whatever heavy object that might stop their momentum, no matter how much it might hurt.

Eventually, Ray sat leaning up against a tree, the wreckage was everywhere. They had no idea where they were. Kala stumbled over, hair pressed against her back; cuts and blood coming out on the outside of the wetsuits. She lay against Ray’s shoulder.

“It happened.”

“It happened, Sweetheart.”

“Who else do you think is here?”

Ray’s chest heaved as he still tried to catch his breath, the gills bristled in the damp atmosphere. “We’re gonna find out shortly. I”m sure whoever didn’t shelter or wasn’t Ozette wasn’t strong enough to withstand the wash.”

“How far up do you think it went?”

“I can’t see anything. I just see the water and the trees. Town is wiped.”

“All the Hókwat’… They can’t have survived.”

“I don’t know. We can’t worry about whether they survived. No matter what some one will come and ‘check’ on us,” making airquotes with his fingers.

“What do we do about that? We go? What about Ka!!! What about Ka!!!!”

“We need to see who is still with us — who the elders are. Hello?!?!” Ray shouted.

Waves and wind howled as the damp ground and torn apart forest around them creaked and rustled. There was no one there yet, there had to be though. Kala and Ray stood each other up, each unable to fully stand on their own.

“What if there is no one, Ray?”

“I don’t don’t know.” They fumbled forward but were more steady by the step as they started to reorient themselves. Then another wave followed. A large push of water flooded forward to their waists — a big wave, not the tsunami they had just survived. Ray and Kala dove in to swim forward . There in the rushing flood the two young Ozette knew why the elders had worked so hard to save this strange genetic feature. Ka was swimming to them, her face alight as she saw her daughter and her boyfriend swimming in the heavy current towards her. Other people from town swam towards them a well.

“You’re alive, baby.”

“Yes, Ka. Yes. Tumble forward, Ka. Tumble forward.”

“Yes, baby. Tumble forward.”

Everyone else looked around at each other, the band members gills resting as the Ozette treaded water above the surface. One of the elders swam over to Ray, “Boy, your parents are on the other side of these waves. All the Ozette are fine.”

“Fine,?”

“Fine.”

“Then what do we do now? So what about all the Hókwat’ at Market?”

“They may have all died. We were never going to be able to help them.” Ray looked over at Kala and his heart raced. Love and adrenaline do powerful things to a young mind. They swam over to each other and kissed passionately; sweetly.

“Hello!” Came another voice off in the distance.

“Hello!” “Hello!” “Hello!” “Hello!”

The chorus rang out.

“Ozette tribe?!”

Affirmative answers came from all around. Suddenly the two young lovers looked at each knowing that their time had come amidst the rest of their Band. They were newly prepared for a flooded world. Dry or not, the land they rested on was theirs.