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Escape pod episode 1057 riftwork part 1 by C.W. maurer.
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Content Warning Situations that could upset those with claustrophobia welcome to Escape Pod. I'm Mer Lafferty, your host and co editor. Today's story is part one of rift work by C.W. maurer. C.W. is a new England writer of epic fantasy, low tech, sci fi, and video game soundtrack reviews. She lives in New Hampshire with her husband, son, and a giant floof of a dog. If you like video game music or are looking for some new music for your writing playlist, check out her blog, Toonsdays with Marrer. It's narrated for us by Nicola Chapman. Nicola has worked professionally as an actress for over 30 years in teenager film, radio and Internet. Her voiceover experience includes TV and radio advertising, singing jingles, film dubbing and synchronization training, videos, corporate films, animation, video games, and interactive voice response for telephone menus. She spends most of her time running her voiceover business, OfStim, which sources and provides translations, subtitles, and voiceovers in over 40 languages. She has been known to write a story or two purely for her own enjoyment, but she loves bringing other people's stories to life in the studio. This story originally ran in Brave New Tales of Girls who Invent and Imagine anthology, July 2025. Take a big deep breath and hold it. It's story.
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Riftwork by C.W. mora Part 1 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 girl's residential node that most serfies she grew up with. Think all us rifters work the periphery? Her own DA thought she'd be setting up a bed in unshored 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 journeyman 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 serfies really mean when they call us crazy. They're the ones who do the first rounds of surveying and tunnel bracing, going belly to ground to get through passages where pre cryo supports have collapsed in the centuries since the tunnels were first built. That was back when the Mini Ice Age forced those who couldn't flee to warmer climates to go underground. The cryochron glaciation to be proper about it. And Instructor Perrin always wants us to be proper about it. Even among the Rifters, not everyone hopes to become a master. Which sometimes makes me think even some of us are crazy. Who wouldn't want to be the first person in a thousand years to survey new tunnels to see if the tunnels here, 400ft under Neresen City, extend the whole way along the coast? If there's a new, undiscovered hub somewhere out there, I want to be the one to find it. Just a few more years of training and I'll get to start looking. Here you go, Nat. Well done. Instructor Perrin's voice pulls me back to the classroom. He sets my exam on the desk in front of me, the score circled at the top of the page. A high score, but not a perfect one. On the back of your exams, perrin says to the entire class as he continues down the row, you'll find your partner assignments for the practical exam. I ignore that, instead flipping through the pages to see what I did wrong. The only correction to be found is at the bottom of the second page. I frown and check the string of equations twice. I misconverted the units. I glance nervously at Parrin, who is still returning exams at the back of the classroom. It was exactly the sort of miscalculation that deterred Rifters from pursuing the mastery. Here, it meant a few points off on my exam. Out in the periphery, it could mean an incorrect load distribution during tunnel widening, which could lead to a tunnel collapse. At best, that meant shoveling out to the closest node by hand. At worst, it could trigger a collapse that opens a sinkhole big enough to swallow up some surfy's home. Will the mistake disqualify me from the practical exam? I push the thought away before it can take root, then take a breath. Be reasonable, Nat. Rifters work in pairs for good reasons. Most work goes quicker with two, and if something goes wrong in the tunnels, someone is there to help. Or to go for help. But calculation checks are just as important. Even a master can drop a negative sign or convert units incorrectly, but the chance of two making the same mistake is small enough to bet their lives on it. It's why, even in our apprentice practicals, we're assigned partners to learn, to teach and learn from each other, to rely on each other in our individual weaknesses. There's no risk of collapse in the tunnels they use for practical exams. The central hub is at the south eastern edge of Nirasen City, and the apprentice's training and residential nodes are at the far reaches of the Hub system. We're two full miles away from any building on the surface that might have disturbed the ground when the city was built, back before they knew the rifts were there. I assume they'll put me with Zeff. He's pretty good at drafting tunnel maps, but struggles at the math. I don't think he'd be apprenticing at all if he didn't need journeyman credentials to leave the boundaries of the central system. Some of the bigger nodes on the periphery still have artefacts from the before times in them, and he's as determined to study those as I am to survey new tunnels. I turn the exam over. Maybe instead of Zef it would be Luma or Torin. I'm not sure they'd teach me much, but I could help them. I frown down at the page and read it again. Risa. What could Risa and I have to learn from one another? She and I are always top in the class. Aren't they supposed to match us with people who are bad at things? Are there things the instructors think I need to improve that I don't know about? I look across the room to see if Risa's as confused as I am about the assignment, but she's already gathered her things. She's the strangest surfy I've ever met. A lot of Rifters keep to themselves, but Risa is oddly distant about it, sticks close to the walls when passing anyone between nodes, and shudders at the accidental shoulder bumps that are inevitable when navigating the tunnels like she thinks coming from Nereson City puts her above us in a non physical sense, I mean. She twists her dark brown braid into a bun at the base of her skull and jabs a pencil through it as she starts towards the door, moving on to the next thing in her schedule and ignoring the rest of us as usual. Our exam is four days later. We both get to the node early for equipment, but we're quiet as the instructors hand out our gear. There's no point in asking about the partner assignments if the instructors mean to explain, they'll do so when we're done. I arrange my notebook and drawing tools alongside the tightly wound rope measuring line in my pack, then add medical supplies, a bottle of water, and a ration kit. Though I'm sure we'll be done with the exam before we need lunch Risa checks the helmets, flipping the headlamps on and off. She hands mine over and I pull it tight over my dark curls before snugging down the straps. Next year's practical will add the ventilators everyone wears outside the central system, but for now it's enough to have the air quality sensors that all rifters wear snug around their necks at all times. Even out in the periphery, a person can take steps to avoid tunnel collapses or or get lucky and survive if a ceiling comes down. No one survives asphyxiation or respiratory paralysis from gases they can't see. The last thing Instructor Perrin hands us are the beginnings of a map and three sheets of transparent overlays that depict a city which, in this manufactured world of the exam, stands over the tunnels we're about to enter. To pass the exam, we need to accurately survey the tunnels, labelling important features and marking where we would recommend additional support braces if the tunnels really did run under the city on the transparents. Risa reaches for the maps before I can gesture towards her, and I try not to frown at her assuming the role. She is certainly the better draftsman, but she could have at least pretended to consider before claiming the job. Perrin hands the sheets to her without additional comment. That makes me the rope runner. I grab my gloves from their pocket on the tool belt and tug them on, then pull the measuring line out of my pack. My heart accelerates with nervous anticipation as I stand next to Risa in front of the safety door where we'll enter the tunnels. We'll return through the one on the far side in a few hours. When Instructor Perrin opens the door, my mouth goes dry at the sight of the dark passage stretching beyond the doorway. My first tunnel expedition. Not a real tunnel, maybe, but close enough to make me stop and stare, distracted by thoughts of the periphery. It means I'm a few seconds behind Risa in turning on my headlamp. Good luck, perrin says. I give him a polite smile, my mouth dry, and Risa nods without looking at either of us before going through the doorway. I follow, unable to stop myself from grinning as I cross the threshold into the darkness beyond the safety door. The door swings shut, sending a gust of air rushing past us as it clanks into place, shutting out the light of the node and the ambient whirring noises present throughout the central tunnel system. I shut my eyes and laugh, appreciating the warmth of the sound echoing off dirt floors and walls of bare stone. It's so different from the sharp edges of noise that bounce off the metal plates lining the tunnels and nodes throughout the central system ahead. I hear Reza snort and open my eyes to find her looking back at me, smirking. Not mocking, but amused. It's probably the most directly she's ever interacted with me. I return the smile and then let out a breath. Time to get to work. I reach overhead where I can easily place my hand flat against the ceiling. Height is about 6 foot here. Width is similar. I stretch my arms wide to confirm. Risa nods. She's already gotten her notebook out and clipped the first page of the map to it. She takes a few notes before looking down the tunnel and adjusting the angle of her headlamp. It provides full visibility ahead and reveals a right turn in the tunnel about a hundred feet out. A turn without a node surrounding it. Weird. She points at a wooden support frame built against the stone a little way down the stretch of tunnel. First checkpoint. 50ft. No. Riza is already 30ft from me. I eye the distance between her and the support 60ft out. Risa tips her head in acknowledgment and sets her triangular pencil flat against the map, comparing the measurement scales etched into the sides to what's on the page. Hmm, would make it an even 10ft per grid square, she says. That seems a little too neat, but we'll know for sure when we've gotten a true measurement. I press the magnet hooked to the end of the rope onto the door just above ground level, then unwind loops as I walk forward. A glance at the map as I pass Risa shows that the instructors have sketched out the beginnings of the map for us, stopping at that first support frame, which they've labelled in the same shorthand we've all been taught from day one. The rest of the page is a blank grid that we'll fill in as we go, noting positions and conditions of existing support structures and places where additional supports will be required considering the layout of the imaginary city overhead. The midpoint of the first support frame lines up exactly with the blue line on the rope labelled 60ft. I grin. This is going to be easy. Fun, even. I yank on the rope to pull the magnet free of the door, but regret it when the harsh clang of metal on stone echoes through the tunnel much louder than I'd expected. Risa yelps at the sound. Can't you be careful? She hisses as I finish dragging the magnet in more carefully. Sorry, I snap back, annoyance, easily outweighing guilt. If I have to go back for it every time, we'll be here all day. Still, I tug off my gloves and set them and my pack on the ground while I swap out the magnet for the metal stake we carry for spots where there's no metal to hold a magnet. It takes more work to place, but it's what the masters use out in the periphery, and the lighter weight makes it less noisy. I turn to glare at Risa, but find her already walking away, scanning the walls and ceiling. I grumble under my breath and drive the metal stake into the packed dirt floor at the center point of the support, angled so that I'll be able to tug it free from the far end. Then I grab my pack and set off after Risa, letting out rope behind me. I stop short where she has paused to consider a section of the wall, her pencil tapping restlessly against her notebook, her hands unsteady. Had the noise bothered her that much? How can someone who has spent two years training as an apprentice still be scared of the training tunnels? I pretend not to notice her unsteadiness and look up at the tunnel wall. The stone there seems to have shifted. It certainly looks like a weak point in the structure. I reach up to trace the line that distinguishes it from the stone next to it. It's a decent blend, but after a closer look, it's clear that it's been mortared into place. I snort. I hadn't thought about how they would make things look like weak points without actually risking instability. Risa doesn't comment. Distance. I roll my eyes and walk the rope to the turn in the tunnel, making sure it's taut before reading off the measurement at the corner. She crouches to check the placement of the weak point on the line before starting toward me again, sketching in the sections of the tunnel as she walks. I yank on the rope to pull the stake from the ground, and she braces for a moment, relaxing at the much quieter strike of the stake against the packed dirt. I finish winding up the line to plant the stake again, and we repeat the process. We go on like that for two hours, with Risa sketching out the path we're following and me taking measurements, both of us absorbed in the smooth pattern of the work. There's no further sign that Reese is in any way bothered by being in the tunnels, and I shrug and pretend the strange moment never happened. Now and then she mentions that we're approaching a building in the Overcity, and we stop to look more closely at how the transparent sheet of the city map overlays the map we've been making. Each of us does the calculations for where new supports should be installed. We compare answers and if they don't match, we repeat the calculations from the top until they do. This is me and Risa, though, so every calculation matches exactly. I find it strangely irritating. Eventually, soreness across my left palm makes me pause. I look down to find the skin there, rubbed raw where the rope pulled across it each time I wound it up. I'd never put my gloves on after swapping rope ends. I grimace at the damaged skin and reach for the gloves in my tool belt, but the only thing in their pocket is the magnet end for the measuring line. Ugh. I look down at the pocket in disgust, then turn and stare hubward back where we had come from. How had I been so stupid? What? I dropped my gloves. Stupid, stupid, stupid. Win. I turn off my headlamp, then remove my helmet to wipe at the forehead sweat that's made my head itch for the past hour. Unfortunately, there's no way to avoid answering at the first support. I'm not so rude as to remind her that it was because of her outburst. Things are going well and I'm not going to be the one to ruin that. Risa doesn't answer, but she does make a faint acknowledging sound before shuffling through the map pages. Every support, existing or proposed is identified by how many feet it is from the safety door. Our most recent addition, where the instructors had blocked half the tunnel with debris mocking up a partial cave in, was at 2,671ft, or possibly 2670. It's the only one so far with a measurement that doesn't fall on an even 10. The break in the pattern was probably the only reason I noticed my stinging palm, but now it means 2,670ft to backtrack and get the gloves. Then another 2,670ft to walk back before we can continue without having to stop every 15 or 20ft for measurements. Doubling back for the gloves shouldn't take more than half an hour, but it would be half an hour without any progress. What if I just leave them? Be more careful winding the rope. I'd have to slow down for that, too. I stick my helmet back on my head, but don't bother pulling it down snug. Instead, I drop my pack roughly to the ground and squat next to it to look for the medkit. Whether I go back for the gloves or not, I should wrap my hand before it gets worse. Yuzman, risa says. I spin around to glare at her, annoyed that she even got to her med kit before me. She stands there holding out her gloves.
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Right.
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I shake my head and let myself fall back onto my butt to sit cross legged. Closing my eyes, I take a long slow breath, wondering when I had gotten to be so touchy. Time for a break, she suggests, setting her bag down and dropping her gloves on top. I laugh bitterly, then remove my helmet again. I set it on the ground next to me and lean back to lay flat on the cool dirt floor and stare at the tunnel roof somewhere past my feet. Risa sits against the right hand wall and digs through her pack, water sloshing in her bottle as she takes it out to get a drink. If I had a different partner, we would have probably taken a break an hour ago and I would have noticed the missing gloves when I rechecked my equipment. Sighing, I stare up at the stone overhead. Why did they put us together? You don't know either? I laugh and force myself to sit up. I guess that puts us in the same node. She looks up from the map pages set out on the ground in front of her, faintly amused. What's so funny? I ask. It's Rifter slang. She snorts at whatever expression I'm making. No nodes above ground, she says before looking back down at the maps and tracing a finger along the lines of her sketch.
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I go back to my pack for my water bottle and medkit, then scoot over to lean against the opposite wall while I take a few sips. What does Sophie say then? For this? That we stand facing east, she says, the path of her finger pausing as she erases one of the lines and draws it in again. Toward the mountains? I ask, trying to remember if there's anything else of interest to the east of Nerisin City, toward the unknown. If it's something we both know, it's the west, you know. To the homeland. For a moment she looks embarrassed. To the sea, rather. Ah, I say, as if I understand whatever surfy knowledge she's referring to. I've seen maps of the surface, obviously, though not many of our pre cryo ancestors homeland. There isn't much value in a Rifter learning the surface geography of a place four generations removed. My granny kept a lot of old traditions, risa says, sounding like she's apologizing for something that should have offended me. She picks up the map pages and taps them all against the ground as if they hadn't been perfectly aligned already. No old traditions in the Rifts, I say. Risa makes a face. I think you'd be surprised. I'm not sure what to make of that. So I turn my attention to pulling a roll of bandages from the medkit and wrapping it around the raw skin on my hand. Well, for now we stand looking east. Then, I say, considering the mysterious will of the instructors. She goes back to the beginning of what we surveyed and adds more weight to the lines that indicate the walls of the tunnel, a careful widening and darkening that is the sort of thing that makes her maps the best. Unknown but discoverable. If it's unknowable, we say we face the stars. It sounds very grandiose, but then surfies have a tendency to overcomplicate things. Do you think you'll go back? I ask. I don't know, she says, her pencil stopping for a moment as she sits there staring at the map. Some do just come down for training. As much as the Serfies don't understand people who live in the Rifts, they value engineers and architects who know what's going on under the city. Rifters shoring up old tunnels doesn't do much good if reckless construction overhead caves them in. I guess I need to see if Rift life fits, she says, staring off down the tunnel, drawing, hand dropping to her side where the pencil taps idly against the ground. Or if I fit. I'm not sure if she means outgrowing the tunnels or not having the skills to work them, though she's clearly better than most of the apprentices studying with us. The fact that she's in training with the Rift grown apprentices and not in the Serfi training group is proof that she indicated wanting to stay below after training. I'm not sure why she doubts it now, unless her family made that decision for her. That happens sometimes too. I don't realize that I'm fidgeting with my bandages until Risa tosses her gloves in my direction. Here, she says. It will hold the bandages without needing a pin. It's hard to argue with that. I grab the gloves and pull them on. My left hand feels strange and bulky, but it will do. Risa has turned her attention back to the maps, the transparent city layer set over the pages of the one she's been sketching. The measurements we've taken already have the tunnel map traveling off the bottom edge of the original page, then off the right side edge of the second. Our path should be working around to the left soon to finish out the loop back to the training node. I get to my feet and put my helmet back on, starting to feel restless now that the conversation has lulled. What were these tunnels anyway? I wonder aloud as I look at the maps. Reza is adding subtle details to these Tunnels are the only ones where the turns aren't built into nodes for stability. They've been used for training for generations, but no one had ever quite figured out what they'd first been built for. Risa shrugs. Is it strange that I find them comforting sometimes, up on the surface? She pauses and shakes her head, clearly embarrassed. Never mind. I ignore the words she clearly didn't mean to say. Going to check the numbers again, I say, grabbing the measuring line and heading hubward. The layout of the nodes and tunnels in the central system make it clear that people lived and worked there in pre cryo days. They're arranged as spokes around the Hub, with cross branches connecting commonly accessed areas. Each turn and intersection occurs at a node not much wider than the tunnels themselves, but much better supported. Even out in the periphery they'll find tunnels where pre cryo supports have failed and tunnels have collapsed, but every single node they've found has been intact, whether navigational or residential. And even where tunnels have partially collapsed, they know that if they keep digging straight through, they'll reach a node eventually. When the Homeland Monument at the edge of Nerisan City fell into the Hub back when Grampy was a kid, it had taken very little exploration of side tunnels. After the debris and damaged Hub safety doors were removed to find the residential nodes built off the main tunnels, most of the larger nodes were still recognisable as kitchens and hydroponic farms and garden patches. A little farther from the Hub, they found bunk rooms still containing remnants of mattresses and bedding, many with half preserved corpses still in the beds. Best the early Rifters could guess, the pre cryo people had gone underground when the weather went wrong, but their power sources couldn't last forever. Without the air filtration systems running, it wouldn't have taken long to poison those who were left. The thought makes me shudder as I re measure the location of the debris pile. I still have it as 2671, I tell Risa, angling my headlamp up towards the ceiling a little so I don't blind her. If we made a mistake earlier on, the last turning point would have been off as well. She looks back toward the debris pile, then toward the unexplored passage ahead, nods and gathers her things to get back to work. At 3,213ft, we start seeing a trickle of a stream flowing hubward along the left side of the tunnel, a crack in the waterproof ceiling on the wall somewhere ahead or another intentionally placed feature for us to find. It has to be the latter. Zeff and Torin went through yesterday, and even they would have noticed that. If it were a real issue, one of the instructors would have dealt with it right. The little trickle widens as we go, and Risa carefully notes the changes as we approach the next turn in the tunnel. I wave a hand toward one of the decoy supports the instructors had put in as I pass it, unrolling the measuring line. They gave this one water damage, probably to go with their stream. Risa waits there while I continue forward, but before I reach the corner, I hear her boot scuffing the ground. There's sediment in the water, Huh? I ask, not because I didn't hear her, but because the words don't make sense. The water isn't moving quickly enough to erode the packed floor of the tunnel. The sediment must have come from somewhere else. I turn and walk backward the last couple of paces, watching her crouch to inspect the stream more closely. Looking down at my feet, I frown at the gray white marks on the floor where the water has shifted paths and left sediment behind. She was right, but that doesn't make sense. I swallow the end of the sentence as the sound of my voice in the tunnel changes. The echo is different. I reach the turn, but before I can pull the measuring line taut, I notice the shine of light farther down the tunnel, a reflection of my headlamp. I turn and freeze, then adjust the angle of my headlamp to see better. Risa. Water. A lot of water.
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And that was Rift Work, Part 1 by C.W. maurer. About the Story the author has this to More than any other story I've written thus far, Rift Work was written for my younger self. As a tomboyish teen, I read just about every Girl with a Sword book I could get my hands on and was always a little disappointed not to be able to find many girl does science books to balance out my sci fi and fantasy reading habits. So it was a real joy to embrace my engineer girl roots to write this in hopes that another teen looking for stories about girls doing science might have one more option out there to pick up. One of the things I loved about this story was the importance of the math. We see a lot of stories about scientists who struggle in science fiction stories. We see a lot about laborers who struggle in science fiction stories dealing with deep space mining, exploring flooded out tunnels. But we don't see a lot of stories that show us scientists in the field doing math or laborers displaying the math they need for their jobs. And since I wasn't the greatest math student, going from a failed test problem into a life or death situation in the tunnels is terrifying to me. This is a two parter, so we'll talk more about the story in next week's show. Escape pod is 100% audience supported. We count on your donations to keep the lights on and the servers humming. We pay everybody on our staff, Plush readers, narrators, Twitch moderators, but we need your support to keep doing so. Go to escapeartists.netsupport EA to see all the available donation and subscription options including Patreon, PayPal, Ko Fi and Twitch. You can also support EscapePod for free by rating or reviewing us on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or whatever your favorite app is. Whether you've been a dedicated fan of EscapePod for years or just started following the cast, thanks for tuning in. Escape Pod is distributed under Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial no Derivatives License. Our music is by permission of Daikaiju. Hear more from them@daikaiju.org that was our show for this week. Our quote comes from Tom in school you're taught a lesson and then given a test. In life, you're given a test that teaches you a lesson. Thanks for listening. We'll see you next week with Part two of Rift Work. Stay safe, stay kind and have fun.