Since so many varying accounts have been circulating of what happened during my visit to Nightshade, please allow me to set the record straight. First of all, I was curious to see the place purely because of its architectural novelty; I had no intention of getting involved in the fraught politics between Nightshade and the Sunny Days Collective. But even more than curiosity—though who would not be curious to see how they managed to build a farm underneath a lake?—I was there to meet Ezra.
Ezra and I had struck up a friendship through the virtual portal of Parley, a game I’ve played competitively since I was a teen. After more than a year of playing together online, we decided we simply must play in person. We might have met up at one of the regional tournaments, but when he suggested I visit Nightshade, where he lived and worked, how could I say no?
I arrived by train at precisely 11 a.m., the only passenger to deboard at this stop, and messaged Ezra that I was there. While I waited for his response, I inspected the large mural on the train platform’s wall, an artist’s rendition of Nightshade: water contained by a false glass lakebed above and painted figures tending big leafy plants and harvesting plump mushrooms from the soil of the true lakebed below. A sign beside the mural explained that Nightshade was named for the peppers, potatoes, and eggplants that comprised the company’s primary crop base and made the bold claim that Nightshade’s transformation from an irrigation reservoir to this unique setup had revitalized the river—leaving out the controversies that surrounded the construction, of course.
Ezra sent back a celebratory emoji and then, I’ll meet you at the staircase.
I hooked the straps of my bag over my shoulders and walked. The train had delivered me practically to the shore of the lake, its bright, sparkling blue sharply contrasting with the pink-orange sand of the surrounding desert buttes. From a distance, the water gave the illusion of vast depth. But a few steps closer, the artificiality became apparent. Instead of a natural shore, the water lapped gently at a glass wall, more akin to the pools at a zoo or an aquarium. A staircase burrowed down into the earth at the lake’s edge.
I imagined the builders of this place like the prairie dogs that scampered on the other side of the train tracks, digging into the earth to create a hidden community. As I descended, the glass and water gave way to stark industrial concrete walls. I had once visited an old nuclear bunker in Arizona, a barely visible hatch leading to a vast underground network of ancient computers and protective layers of steel and concrete. The stairway down into Nightshade gave me a similar claustrophobic sensation, and I wondered if I’d spend the whole trip hunching under low ceilings and feeling like I was in a cave.
A thick, metal door greeted me at the bottom. Unsure how to proceed, I rapped my knuckles against the silver surface.
After a long moment, Ezra messaged me, Hold up, there’s something weird going on.
Hold up, there’s something weird going on.I’ve been told that some leaked security camera footage shows me doing something on my phone during that time, but I assure you I was only checking email, a process that was laggy and incomplete due to the connectivity issues Nightshade was already experiencing.
A moment later, Ezra popped open the door with the same grin and exclamation of “My dawg!” that he always greeted me with online. His face was endearingly familiar, yet something appeared different about the lines of his features when not filtered through the camera. He was shorter than expected, although nearly everyone seemed short compared with my lanky frame.
He realized just how tall I was when he clapped his hand against mine and pulled me in to try to tap our shoulders together, but we managed the awkward half-hug all the same. The door closed behind me, and I felt even more like I was inside a bunker.
The lake was suspended above us, a liquid sky contained by glass...evidence of a truly human hubris, an attempt to reverse the natural order of land and water.I’d hardly had time to take it all in when an androgynous person holding a tablet marched up to us, announcing, “There are no public tours today.” I opened my mouth to explain my visit, but Ezra beat me to it.
“Ash, I told you I had a friend coming to stay for a couple of days. This is my friend Gavin. He’s the best Parley player in the state.”
I grinned at the compliment, though it wasn’t earned.
“That’s the weird game you’re always yapping about?” Ash asked.
I started to explain how Parley came from a foundation of chess but mixed in elements of modern trading card games, utilizing a unique set of pieces and cards that meant no two games were ever the same.
Ignoring me, Ash scrutinized Ezra. “You overrode the lockdown to let him in?”
Ezra dipped his head. “Yeah.”
“You shouldn’t have done that.”
“What was I supposed to do, make him wait out in the desert?”
Ash met Ezra’s defiant expression with a cold and steady gaze. “We’re in the middle of a major security breach.”
“Is there danger of a flood?” I asked with alarm, looking up at the watery ceiling.
A vision of destruction filled my mind: silt and sand spiraling through the water, leaves and branches torn free, floundering with nowhere to root. If the lake crashed through, we’d be trapped like lizards in a bucket. In my mind, I tumbled through the water, drowning along with Nightshade, stretching out to the other drifting bodies but never able to reach them.
“The opposite,” Ash said and stalked away without another word.
“Sorry ’bout that, dawg,” Ezra said. “Don’t even worry about them.”
Still nervous, I hooked a thumb toward Ash’s retreating form and asked Ezra, “Do you know what they meant?”
Ezra waved a hand as though batting away a fly. “It’s nothing. We were due for irrigation this afternoon, but the cyberattack or whatever shut the columns down.”
When it was clear I still didn’t understand what he meant, Ezra pointed out a bulge of glass that ringed the top of each column. Natural sunlight shone through the only parts of the ceiling unobscured by water.
“You’ve seen the drone pictures where the lake looks like a cornhole board?”
I hadn’t thought of it in those terms, picturing the perfectly round whirlpools throughout the lake’s surface more like a hole-punched paper. But I knew what he meant.
He slapped a palm against the outside of the closest column. “That’s these. Valve drains water into them. Water generates electricity on the way down, then collects at the bottom. When it’s time for flood irrigation, boom, open this door, and the lowlands get a good soak.” He gazed up at the thirty-foot column, concern creasing his face. “Works great ’til it doesn’t work at all.”
“It’s an interesting system,” I said honestly, though I remained skeptical about the necessity of the technological component. Sunny Days uses flood irrigation as well, with a system of acequias that has served the farm for a couple of centuries now. “I do hope it’s fixed soon.”
“Oh, Ash won’t rest ’til they get it figured out. Come this way, I wanna show you something...”
He led me through spinach and kale patches, around bean trellises and beet sprouts, until we arrived at a podium where a mosaic of graphs populated a large screen.
He tapped my arm and said proudly, “This is brand new.”
“What am I looking at?”
“We’re monitoring the mycorrhizal network, VOCs, stuff like that. Basically, we can see how the plants are talking to each other and sharing nutrients.”
I nodded with appropriate awe, though the technology wasn’t new to me. I’d fielded a proposal to introduce the same thing at Sunny Days. While a segment of the collective had been as excited about it as Ezra, the majority had decided it was nothing more than a costly gimmick.
“Like this?” Ezra stabbed a finger at a diagram of indecipherable colored lines. “These lines right here, dawg, those are the leeks.”
“Pray, dawg,” I said, the attempt at slang awkward on my tongue. “Tell me, what is a leek?”
He laughed. “You don’t know?”
“I’ve heard of them, certainly, but I’ve never indulged.”
“We’ll fix that. You hungry now?”
“Not yet. But…” Several other workers passed by just then, eyeing me with the same suspicion as Ash. “Maybe we can continue the tour after the breach has been resolved. If you’re not too busy, I’d love to get started on a game.”
“That is why you’re here,” he agreed.
After a brief stop by his residence—more of a treehouse than an apartment—to drop off my bag, we claimed a table in a community area and set up the board and cards.
Parley could be played both in person and online. For me, in-person gameplay added a dimension impossible to replicate in virtual space, not to mention there were physical cards at stake to be won or lost. I’d brought with me a deck of the newest, flashiest cards.
While Parley is riveting to those engaged in the battle, it does not make for the most exciting of spectator sports. But as we played, we gathered quite the audience. Nightshade workers in coveralls stood around us chewing on their lunches; young parents watched with children squirming on their shoulders; an older couple pulled chairs up to the table as if they expected to be part of the game.
Indicating the families around us, I asked Ezra if he’d grown up here.
“Nah, they didn’t let kids stay here then. Since we bought out the bosses though, some people want to have their families around, instead of commuting back and forth. Let the kids grow up around a little nature, you know?”
I glanced up at the infrastructure around us, still doubting this could properly be classified as nature. But the kids seemed happy, chasing chickens through the fields and digging in the dirt with sticks. I set down a card to prepare my next attack, which removed several of Ezra’s key pieces. He grinned at me.
“Par—” He moved a piece and set it down with an authoritative thump. “—and ley.”
The crowd tittered and clapped, and I looked with dismay at the destruction he’d wrought upon the board, tracing back where I’d gone wrong.
“Well done,” I said and handed over the cards he’d rightfully won. “Another?”
Before we could set up a second round, Ash came blustering up to the table and plopped their tablet directly in the center of the board.
“You…” They stabbed a finger toward the screen. “Sunny Days Collective sent you here.” My awkward official portrait looked back at me. I’d always hated that picture because of the way it cut off the top of my head.
Ezra stood up like he was about to confront Ash, but then his eyes dropped to the screen and narrowed in suspicion.
“Gavin, that true?”
Hearing him use my name instead of “dawg” felt like a fracture in our friendship. He’d never asked where I worked, and I’d never volunteered the information, not out of malice but to avoid the very conflict that was brewing here. I knew that the two farming operations had been at odds for years over water allocation. Since I’m a financial analyst and not a farmer, not even an official member of the Collective, I’d considered myself above such quarrels. The look on Ash’s and Ezra’s faces, however, made me realize how personal this rivalry was to them.
I swallowed and raised my hands in supplication. “I don’t deal with the crops. I’m just their numbers guy.”
“I don’t deal with the crops. I’m just their numbers guy.”“And you just happened,” Ash said, “to show up here the same day we’re hit with a cyberattack.”
I goggled at them, trying to make sense of the accusation.
“He just got here, though,” Ezra said in my defense. “Remember, I had to override the lockdown to let him in.”
Ash remained unconvinced. “He could have been carrying a virus that attacked our network the second he was in range.”
I set my phone on the table and waved my hands over it. “I’m no spy. Look for yourself. I have nothing to hide.”
Ash eyed my phone like it might jump up and bite them. Then someone else came up and spoke into their ear in hushed tones. Without a word, Ash snatched up their tablet and stalked away, throwing one more suspicious glance over their shoulder at me. My mood for the game ruined, I started to pack up the cards and board, fitting each piece into its designated slot in the case.
Ezra gripped my arm with surprising strength and guided me out of earshot of the others who lingered in the area, leaving the half-packed game on the table.
His voice was so hushed that I had to lean down to hear him clearly. “What, exactly, did you do?”
I stepped back, surprised that he didn’t believe me. “Sunny Days didn’t send me. No one even knows I’m here.”
He screwed his lips up to one side and lifted an eyebrow. “I’ve seen the way you bluff and feint in Parley.”
“Listen, it wasn’t me,” I insisted. “But it wouldn’t surprise me if Sunny Days did decide to strike back at Nightshade.”
“Dawg.” Ezra infused so much disappointment into that term of endearment. “Why?”
“It’s just that this place takes more than it gives.”
This statement incensed Ezra more than I expected. “My family ate off this land for centuries! Then it gets too hot, too dry, nothing growing no more. It was either build this or let the whole damn region die off.”
“My family ate off this land for centuries! It was either build this or let the whole damn region die off.”I shrugged. “Other farms found different ways to adapt. Sunny Days, for example, used to be a corporate factory farm…” Passersby glanced curiously at us, and I tried to lower my voice to keep our conversation more private. “But now, they’ve transformed into a collectively-owned regenerative farm.”
“That’s no different from us, dawg!”
“It’s different because their practices look back to the old ways rather than always grabbing for the latest technology the way Nightshade does.”
I tried to explain some of the other ways the farms differed, but I admit I didn’t know enough of the details to make a convincing argument, especially since some of what I’d seen here had already challenged the assumptions I’d held about Nightshade.
“Why do you hate us, then?” Ezra asked. “You do it your way, we do it ours—who cares?”
“I don’t hate you,” I said, exasperated. “But the way you do things here causes issues downstream. We’re all part of the same river, you know.”
His anger seemed to dissipate while I shared the frustrations I frequently overheard from members of the Sunny Days Collective about the water restrictions to which we are beholden and my own frustrations when Sunny Days takes more water than they’re allotted, and I have to handle the fines.
“Appeals to the Water Conservancy are always denied because they prioritize the needs of Nightshade over ours. If the authorities always side with you, then Sunny Days will never be able to expand.” I looked toward the fields, searching for a metaphor Ezra might understand. “It’s like… Nightshade is a large tree that sucks up all the water and sunlight, and Sunny Days Collective is the starving little sapling in its shadow.”
Ezra shook his head, but he didn’t seem upset anymore. In fact, he was laughing at me. “Dawg, you’ve already forgotten about the leeks.”
I blinked, caught off guard by the apparent change in subject. “What?”
“The network,” Ezra said. “When the soil’s healthy, then everything’s connected. The plants, they don’t steal from each other like you said. They talk to each other. They make sure everyone gets fed.”
“When the soil’s healthy, then everything’s connected. The plants...they talk to each other.”“So… what are you saying?”
“Come on, I’m gonna give you a proper tour. You’ll see.”
Before said tour could commence, a horrible creaking and clanking sounded from the closest column. Everyone nearby spun toward it and took a step or two back.
Ash trundled toward us again, and I was already sorting through how to further convince them of my innocence when they announced, “We’ve got drone footage now.”
Ezra and I shared a significant look, and I could tell this new development had reignited his suspicions. We crowded around the screen along with several others. Since I was at least a head taller than everyone else, I stood behind them and was still able to see.
“Is that a dead bird?” someone asked.
“It’s plastic,” Ash said. “Big plug o’ plastic trash, probably mixed up with fishing line and other trash. It clogged a valve, and the whole system automatically shut down.”
Relief flooded through me. “So it’s not a cyberattack after all?”
“Not this time,” Ash said.
“Who’s dumping plastic in this day and age?” someone asked.
“Probably debris that gathered as it moved downstream,” Ash said. “The stuff’s still everywhere.”
“So now what?” Ezra asked.
“So now we knock it free,” Ash said.
“And send it further downstream?” Ezra said, indignant. Apparently, I’d gotten my point across, at least somewhat.
“Send it?!” Ash checked their temper and said in a calmer tone, “If we can get it unstuck from the valves, it’ll pop out down here.” With the side of their boot, they tapped a panel in the column, which I presumed would open up to release the offending mass.
We watched the drone footage on the tablet as one of the farmers took a boat across the lake and attempted to dislodge the plastic from up above. The plug fell partway but then caught again, setting off a whole new set of alarms. Ash handed their tablet to someone else, grabbed a two-by-four, and climbed the metal rungs on the outside of the column. The rest of us stood at the base, watching while they climbed and then yanked open a hatch door.
“All the technology and intellectual innovation that went into building this place,” I said with a chuckle, “and the solution still comes down to the fact that humans are monkeys who can use a stick.”
“The solution still comes down to the fact that humans are monkeys who can use a stick.”Ezra tapped me with a friendly elbow. “A real Sunny Days type solution, yeah?” The way he said it told me that he didn’t mean that as an insult.
After a few minutes of poking the two-by-four around the inside of the column, Ash descended.
“I couldn’t get it. It’s so close. If I could reach just a few inches more, I’d be able to knock it free.”
Everyone turned to look at me, the biggest monkey of the group with the longest arms. I swallowed thickly. Only a few moments ago, these people were sure I was their enemy, and now they wanted me to help them? I was used to being asked to grab something off a top shelf, but this was a significantly bigger request than that. The climb was thirty feet or more, and I was an office worker, not a farmer and certainly not an experienced climber. Yet I thought about how, in Parley, when I found myself besieged on all sides, the only way out was to trade in all the cards and transform the pawn into a different piece. Perhaps making this climb would convince Ash I had not come here with ulterior motives.
I sighed. “Should I sign a liability waiver or something?”
Ezra pulled on the rope and climbing harness that Ash had just extracted themselves from. It was tethered at the top, so high I could barely see where it attached.
“You’re not gonna fall, dawg. You got this.”
It was a very long climb, made all the more difficult by having to keep hold of the two-by-four. I’ve never had a particular fear of heights—I was used to towering over everyone around me and looking out the windows of my skyscraper office—but I’d never made a climb like this with nothing but a rope for security. Only a few rungs up, my hands shook, and my head swam with vertigo. Even looking up felt dizzying, the water above me disorienting my sense of scale, the sunlight shining through the glass rings warm and blinding. The harness around my hips pinched in uncomfortable ways.
Finally, I found myself near the top, the bulging ring keeping me from reaching the true ceiling. Ash had left the maintenance panel open. I peered inside. The mass of plastic peered back, bottlecap eyes and six-pack ring teeth, a true monster from the age before. At least, that was what it seemed to my frayed nerves. Leaning into the delusion, I fancied myself a monster-slayer, stabbing the two-by-four at the beast’s heart.
My long arms reached the mass easily, but it took a couple of stabs before it broke apart. Part of it fell free, plummeting down the inside of the shaft. From below, I heard a whoop of celebration as the trash landed. I adjusted myself on the ladder rung, hung on precariously, and took one more stab at what still clogged the valves.
It broke free, but so did I, losing my grip on the ladder rung. My cactus leather shoes slipped free of my footing. Ezra tells me I let out an inelegant squawk that echoed through the entire farm, but I don’t remember that. I recall only the sharp jolt of primal fear that lanced through my chest and watching the long journey of the two-by-four as it tumbled end over end toward the ground. Then the bungee rope caught me with a jarring tug. I swung at the end of the rope like a bundle of herbs hung to dry. My backside thumped inelegantly against the column, and I spun, scrabbling for purchase on the ladder rungs but unable to grasp them. After a couple more swings, the rope slowly began to lower. I gave up and hung there, letting myself drop from the ceiling like a spider.
Ezra patted me on the back once I touched the ground. I sank to a seat, grateful for the damp soil that stained my pants. “Good job,” said Ash, helping to free me from the harness.
“That’s probably the closest you’re gonna get to an apology from them,” Ezra commented.
To be honest, it felt like enough.
After a dinner of leek and potato soup, we headed back toward Ezra’s living quarters, which were set off from the crops, though not by much. It was getting dark by then, and no electric lights turned on to replace the fading sunlight. Instead, tubes of bioluminescent algae snaked around the walls, casting everything in a soft, green glow. The plants needed to sleep just like the people, Ezra explained, and electric lights disturbed both cycles. Ezra snored happily in his bed while I struggled to make my tall frame comfortable on his couch. Moths flitted in and out of the open windows, occasionally alighting on my nose or fluttering about my feet.
The next day, Ezra led me through the fields, describing how they were designed on permaculture principles to make the best use of the irrigation. He introduced me to everyone whose paths we crossed. They were quick to boast that Nightshade maintained all the benefits of indoor farming without the massive energy deficit and all the benefits of traditional farming without the vulnerability to weather and pests. Others showed me how their aquaponics system recirculated water, requiring very little input from the lake, and created fertilizer they used throughout the rest of the fields.
The older farmers, some of them members of the Elders Council that made decisions for the community, insisted that the construction of Nightshade had required cooperation and changes that had revitalized the entire river. They told me about the days before, when the reservoir had almost dried up, leaving nothing but a fetid algae-ridden pool contaminated by agricultural runoff.
“And look at it now!” they said, and I did. I looked at as much of it as I could in my short visit.
“So?” Ezra asked after it felt like we’d trekked across nearly the entire hundred acres.
I had to admit that much of what I’d observed did not match the ire my colleagues directed at Nightshade. The two operations had much more in common than I’d realized. I looked up at the lake overhead, still planning to argue how unnatural an arrangement it was, but stopped short. The watery roof effectively served as a massive sun shield, not terribly different from the way Sunny Days Collective grew crops beneath an array of solar panels. I chewed on my thoughts, completely unprepared to express them.
“What we’re missing,” Ezra said, “is a bridge between us. After the river was flowing again, each farm just did its own thing and found its own way. We forgot that we all need to work together.”
We forgot that we all need to work together.“I didn’t come here as an ambassador,” I said.
“No, but maybe that’s why you’re really here!”
I suggested we play another game of Parley. He won most of the rest of my cards this time, but I was happy to trade them for the time in his company.
Before I left, Ezra asked me again about taking up the mantle of liaison between Nightshade and Sunny Days. I made no promises but told him I’d think about it.
Never did I make the claim, as some are saying, that I intended to sue Nightshade. The fall was nothing but a momentary scare, and the only things it damaged were my preconceived notions. For, you see, I left Nightshade thinking all I’d gained was an anecdote to share at social engagements. Yet as I go back to my world of spreadsheets and financial models and office gossip, I find there’s a part of me still dangling from that rope, looking down at this place that feeds so many, that never would have existed without cooperation from the generations before ours. Every time I see a Nightshade label in a store or restaurant, I recall the taste of fresh leek soup and the enthusiasm with which Ezra guided me through the crop fields.
There’s a part of me still dangling from that rope, looking down at this place...that never would have existed without cooperation from the generations before ours.I hoped Nightshade might remember me simply as the man who dislodged the plastic clog. However, in writing this account, I realize there’s more I can do.
I can’t claim I know what’s best for both places, but I’m submitting this account along with my application to officially become part of the Sunny Days Collective because I hope it will clarify my intentions. Once I can cut through the grumbling and the rumors, I want to learn more about how the farm actually runs, how the people and the plants support each other. Then perhaps I can help to rebuild the washed-out bridge between Nightshade and Sunny Days.
Maybe Nightshade does depend too much on their tech and flashy architecture, but maybe Sunny Days has been a little too skeptical of some of the new tools we could implement. We monkeys with sticks could learn something from the wisdom of the potatoes and the leeks, finding mutual benefit beneath the soil.
