Soft Edges

This powerful story by Elizabeth Bear, which combines hard SF with mysterious, deadly events along a particular coastline, is making its investigative debut online this weekend.

~ Julian and Fran, August 24, 2025

In August, Sunday Morning Transport authors Naomi Kanakia, Jim Kelly, Meg Elison, and Elizabeth Bear share stories from far and wide. As always, the first story of the month is free to read.

We are grateful to our paying subscribers, who allow us to keep rolling throughout the year. If you haven’t already, please consider signing up or giving a gift subscription.

---

Soft Edges

by Elizabeth Bear

The storm surge retreated over the course of Thursday afternoon. Carmen found the body Friday around lunchtime. After that, she didn’t want her ham and cheese sandwich anymore.

Very few people who have just found a body feel lucky, but she knew she was lucky. She had only found the one corpse. It hadn’t been a bad storm, by modern standards, but dozens of people were still missing from the hurricane. This would not be the only victim to turn up in the mesh. If she were unfortunate, it would not even be the only one in her sector.

She put that thought away. At least this person had died in the storm, she told herself. It wasn’t as if anybody had done it. There wouldn’t be media outcries and demands that somebody pay.

Carmen called the paramedics. The paramedics called the police. The police called the medical examiner.

Carmen, standing on the embankment above (she had not gone close, which she felt was a perfectly sensible response to a bloated, drowned body), felt her stomach flip and turn over, and the creep of anxiety in her gut.

The medical examiner called a homicide detective, and Carmen calmed herself enough to call her boss. She let them know that she wouldn’t be making it back to the office that evening.

“Sure,” she was saying into her phone as a round detective of medium height, with slim braids over their shoulders and a shield worn pendant on a cord, walked over. “I’ll finish the walk-through inspection before dark, if I have time, and get you a report by tomorrow. Right, gotta go. The cops are here.”

She hung up just as the detective stopped in front of her. That dark rose pantsuit was cut so well that Carmen felt envy. Since when did cops wear pink? The identification badge read Q. Gross: a great name for a homicide detective.

Gross—what did the Q stand for?—extended their hand. “You’re the engineer?”

Carmen shook it. “Carmen Ortega, she.”

“Quinn Gross,” the detective said. “Also she.”

“I wish I could say it was a pleasure to meet you.” The cop had a serious personal charisma that upset Carmen’s expectations of immediate dislike. She’s still a servant of the prison-industrial machine, Carmen reminded herself. That she’s a charming person doesn’t mean that she’s a good one.

A flicker of a smile curved Quinn Gross’s lips. “Tell me about this thing.”

Her gesture took in the wide bay and estuary beyond the walkway, the water still roiled brown and flecked with debris.

“The mesh?” Carmen walked to the safety wall and looked over. The body had been covered. People in blue jumpsuits stood around in varying attitudes of boredom and irritation. One—in a gray suit—looked up at Carmen and Quinn and frowned.

Quinn waved. Carmen thought that was probably the ME, because whoever it was looked back down, head shaking.

“Do you need to go down there?”