Excerpt from ‘Rust on Seafoam’

This excerpt was written by Leia Ostroff in A. E. Osworth’s 12-Month Novel Generator.

Synopsis

To Lita, sitting and waiting quietly for death is worse than death itself. Terminally ill with a disease that killed her family, Lita seeks answers from a falling apart machine called the Godbot. When it shows her something indescribable, she escapes the protective geodesic walls of her hometown to seek out where the land meets something blue.

Leaving the only home she’s ever known, Lita is confronted by a world operated by robots that keep the world thriving, protecting both nature and humans who are kept isolated in individual domed settlements.

In this new land, Lita meets Bird, an overachiever apprentice robot trying to earn its wings. While at times it feels as if the two are speaking different languages, Bird and Lita’s unlikely bond deepens as the two of them defy authority to get Lita to the ocean. Their journey takes them through underground speakeasies, forests full of robotic Lanterns hunting for humans, and insect sanctuaries. Soon the duo is on the ultimate hunt to find The Factory—a sentient floating tower with a horrible secret.

Deeply imaginative and intimate, Rust On Seafoam is a tribute to queer ties that push back against conforming to design. As Lita moves through a robotic land that’s attempting to perfect an imperfect world, Lita’s adventures might just change humankind’s existence forever.

— Archie Bongiovanni, author of Mimosa

*

Excerpt

Lita stalled before the Godbot and thought, This was all Nico’s fault.

The student council pres told her to come visit this thing and really, she could have ignored them. Stayed home. This was just her father’s stupid relic and the truck he chained it to for everyone else’s satisfaction. She should’ve told Nico: I’m not getting better. She could’ve dealt with her father’s garage, counting inventory of all the rare, machine-made tech Out-There until her illness ran course. What was so terrible about keeping a bunch of pen pals before her hands gave out? What was the point of being here, under the scorched and monochrome sun at the edge of her world, alone?

Then came the Godbot’s fritz.

Lita’s chest gave a start. She slid across the floor of the truck, past her tools. Looked closer.

She had it wrong. The Godbot was rebooting . . . It’s what every person hoped for when they came here. A glimpse into a machine’s eye toward a diseased world, exploding with answers.

All was blue.

Lita blinked. Something created a relentless image in the Godbot’s monitor. The pall curbed around what appeared to be . . . buildings, taller and fuller than the ones Lita grew up with, that didn’t house a single person. The blue essence was on the verge of overtaking these structures, so small compared to its sheets. Lita could see a path of powdery sand verging against the swath of moving substance, which also had a little white, and just a patch of green—the rare green you would find cropped in old Colorado feather moss. Floating vessels petered around like copies of the moon when it was a halfhearted crescent. The strange blue surface pulled from the sky and made it deeper. More sensational.

How could it exist? What was it at all?

Lita’s goggles reflected its endlessness, unspoken by anyone, even her father. What if she had a key?

A place to find out?

She dropped her hands from the Godbot’s head.

Quick as she could manage, Lita dealt with the Godbot’s binds to the truck. Loose flakes fell from the Godbot’s underside as the solar panels hesitated with the movement. Lita braced it against her chest and crawled down from the back of the pickup truck.

Next, she slid across the dry ground. Set the Godbot beside some droopy dandelions. Its solar panels made the noise of a tired wind chime.

“You’ll be safe here,” Lita said, and thought for a moment. “Maybe Dad won’t be so sad and lazy anymore, and he’ll try to fix you for everyone. You’re welcome. Thanks.”

Lita’s attention was brought to the truck.

The abandoned vehicle hung over the eroding hillside by a series of ropes as anchors. Its front bumper was suspended in air like it was the queen of this place. By an inaccurate measure, the protective geodesic glass that covered Lita’s home was almost close enough for the truck’s poke.

She would have to remove her mittens for this one.

Her sunburnt fingers snuck underneath old ropes and around the ruined back of the truck. “I hope this is worth it,” she murmured, as the student council pres in her head kept calling her wild for doing this. Crazy. But Lita missed how they said that kind of thing, didn’t she. And that’s why . . .

. . . working the ropes, Lita peeled back old fraying links with the jackknife she used to cut her hair, one at a time. Unceremonious, she waited for the rope to fly away from her hands at the first yank of gravity.

She wasn’t looking when the rear of the truck swung up in an ache. Bumper almost striking her chin, Lita hitched to avoid its lurch.

Ropes jumped.

A thrash

as metal met stone

and parts split in all directions.

*

There was the noise of a landslide, a great glassy cry, the shriek of an alarm overhead foreign to all other nature. Lita’s eyes opened. She saw the long sliver in the protective glass, like a paper cut in time.

She breathed as if she didn’t have to think about it at all.