Pentober 2026 - Day 12: Tower

Ok so, what is Pentober? Promptober? It's a writing tradition that's been around the web for a while where you write up a short story every day in October based on prompts. Some go for pen and paper, some digital; everyone has their own style. I'll be posting here, and I'll be using the prompts from https://www.topinfiction.com/p/pentober-2026 

House rules are that I vomit-write the story; no planning, just taka taka taka on the keys. I get ONE edit at the end of the draft (if I even have time, lol), then we post it. House rules also say that I get to play catch up and do multiple days separately on one day or combined if work gets wild and I can't write. Get it? Got it? Good! Here we go.

Today, I'm doing something a bit different! I already have a piece about Towers that I've been shopping around to short fiction magazines. I just completed another edit of it. Here is an excerpt.

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Sunrise. Dark, steel blue ocean welled up into murky green waves. Foamy gray curls thundered against the breakwaters. They were the same shade as the sky; the Atlantic and the sky faded into each other on the horizon. From the top of Tower 3, the world was infinite. It struck Louis Bedern as a perversion of the Utter East in Voyages of the Dawn Treader; instead of a wall of water indicating the border to God’s country, there was a wall of gunmetal-tone sky and water permanently out of reach: a barrier to good, dry land.

The timer on Louis’ watch went off; his shift in Tower 3’s lamproom, at the top of the massive lighthouse, was over. He double-checked that the restricted areas were latched and waited to hear the elevator. A moment later a gentle ‘ding’ indicated that his neophytic relief, Deidre, had arrived. 

“Hi, Deidre,” he said, turning towards her.

“Louis! Good morning! I see what light through yonder lantern room breaks,” she flashed a toothy grin at him, full lips stretched across a row of perfectly white tombstones, and pointed a black-painted fingernail towards the lamproom light. Her teak work jacket nearly matched her skintone; she’d look topless if it wasn’t for the orange utility shirt and denim cargo pants.

Louis smiled back, “It’s getting to be a lively one out there. Waves are kicking up, and visibility is dropping. How’s things below deck?”

“It’s the same old shit. Donuts are in the first commissary on the way below water; kelp production is up, so we’ll be eating a ton more of that. Apparently, Tower 4833 just surrendered to the Sulawesi Coalition.”

“The folks based out of Tower 1333? The Europeans?”

“That’s the one!”

“Wild. Ok, the light is yours.”

“Aye, aya,  Skipper!” She winked at him, pulled a donut out of her jacket pocket, and went to get coffee from the communal pot on the other side of the circular room. Louis called the elevator and he was headed down to the lighthouse's commissary for breakfast. He liked getting a bite to each before getting home; he needed the energy and mental clarity to have a good chat with his wife, Dani, before she left for work. They hadn’t seen each other in a while.

It was a long way down. Tower 3, built atop what used to be the Carolinas’ Outer Banks, went down about 1400 feet to sea level; it was nearly as tall as the old Empire State Building before it collapsed into the sea. Louis looked himself over in the elevator’s dull, chrome reflection. 

He was getting old, nearly in his 40s. A few greys were beginning to sprout at the base of his chin; he hoped the red-and-chestnut beard he had would go salt-and-pepper. Bags under his dark brown eyes made his features look heavier, more serious. A long nose, full lips, and a stocky build from years of ocean polo gave him the look of a bruiser. He didn’t like it. He missed the lithe, thin days of his youth, where he looked bright and felt brighter. 

He looked away, feeling anxiety well up, and studied that photo of Tower 3’s lighthouse exterior plastered on the side wall.

The tower’s exterior had a repeated neon yellow, orange, and blue harlequin pattern, leading up to the round, all-glass lantern room. The floors within contained weather monitoring, telecommunications, studio space, and more. It was a restricted area for most of Tower 3’s subaquean residents. The roof was painted in reflective white and topped with a stainless steel statue of Mishipesu, the Mississippian underwater panther-monster. Louis figured the Builders had chosen that because of the football team that used to play back when there was land; that’s not what the official histories said. 

With a cool ding, Louis was at the lighthouse’s ground floor. Sealevel management and meteorologists stepped on. Louis nodded to them as they got on, they nodded back; workers on different floors of the Tower’s lighthouse didn’t socialize, security’s orders. The ground floor was a gigantic star-shaped edifice about three stories high and made of stone, on a base of Roman-style self-healing concrete. It was where any fishing or whaleoil crews launched from if they needed to get to the ocean and where foreign dignitaries were greeted. Therefore, it was the most ornate part of the Tower. There were small patches of soil garden; you could smell citrus, allium, petrichor, and moss. It was a museum, too, decorated on the interior in that old American neoclassical style, and on the exterior in that older Southern Tidewater fashion. Little displays along the walls held art objects from days of yore, particularly wood carvings. 

The elevator started to descend faster. They were in the steel tubing that anchored the Tower to the seafloor, going past the ruins of Kitty Hawk, through the sand, to Tower Habitation Edifice 3, Section 00; THE 300 for short. The facility was a few hundred years old at this point; it was built in the early days of Oceanrise as a research facility and hurricane refuge for locals. It expanded slowly over the first hundred years. When humanity made contact with the Mu-sidians, more rapid expansion became required. 

Two hundred years in, the Mu-sidians decided to flood Earth with enough water to put every continent under ten feet of water at a minimum. We didn’t have the technology to fight back, and as President Haredi said back then, “If you can’t beat them, adapt.” The Tower system was massively and globally expanded. Billions of humans relocated to underwater complexes, hollowed-out mountains, and retrofitted saltwater-proof skyscrapers. Hundreds of millions made it through the flood. Billions died from famine, disease, and general chaos.

He reached B1. The cool elevator voice read out T.H.E 3, Section 00, B1 - Topside Staging. He got off and took a left over to the canteen to pick up his dinner, which was breakfast;  graveyard shifts were never fun, but this was the last one for a while. He’d have two weeks off at home and then it was the early morning shift. The canteen was utilitarian; there were steel trays and a canteen line to the left, and plastic benches and tables filling out the room. He got in line and was dispensed two pollock sausages, rice congee with kelp, and some of the local GMO berries growing in the farm levels. He grabbed the last donut, making a note to thank whoever brought them; good baking was hard to come by. He quickly ate and checked his watch for messages; Dani, his wife, had just woken up. He dropped the tray off and hustled over to the metrohub on the other side of B1.