[ WP ] It 's 1925 and it has n't rained for 200 years . The only source of water is from clouds . You are one of the best water harvesters on earth with celebrity status , the world is dependent on your work . One harvest , you accidentally uncover the terrible secret behind the drought .

Old Captain Royce breathed uneasily as his Airship, The SS *Cloudshear* drifted through the hazy maze of the cavernous grey cloud. It was silent and there was a certain pressure, an electricity pressing on the back of his neck. His mouth went dry. Like the calm right before an anti-storm. Captain Royce could still remember the last of the great anti-storms before the great drought. It was a horrid thing, that swept across the empty wastes that used to be the Pacific and racked the Old Coast, ripping whole lakes up into the sky, into a pillar of cloud that seemed to stretch right to the edge of space. 
 
 Standing on the bridge of his ship it felt just like that night. The night he became an Orphan, watching his family crumble, desiccated into shrivelled husks. And just for a moment as he sat at under the heart of the storm he could have sworn he saw a dark blot in the middle.Just like the dark spot he could just about see through the thick miasma of cloud ahead of him, growing ever larger as they flew in. 
 
 `` This is the SS *Cloudshear* broadcasting on all frequencies. We have an unforecasted cloud ahead, came out of nowhere. We estimate we are nearly... nearly at the centre.'' Comns Officer Kellan said into his radio set. He waited a moment and heard only the crackly static of dead air as a response. `` Do you read me? Groundside does anyone read me?'' He said, this time, more desperately. 
 
 Captain Royce did not hurry as he took a steady puff on his old pipe, listening to the metronome tick of the clock behind him. `` Switch to radio binary communication, see if we can establish contact with the nearest aerodrome.'' Royce said with that infectious, steely calm that had seen them through the great Cumulus of 1923. 
 
 `` Aye captain,'' Kellan responded immediately. All who could spared a glance to the pudgy young man and then looked up to their captain, perched on the steps up to his chair. He was old now, with a deeply lined and sallow face, cold squinty eyes and red hair that was slowly greying like rusted steel flaking off. But still, he had that Hollywood jaw and chiselled nose that the newspapers had captured a dozen times over on. 
 
 `` It'll be of no use, Cap.'' Evie Hammoda said from her quiet Meteorology station in the corner of the bridge. She still spoke with the slightest twinge of a Japanese accent, her family had walked across the barren basin of whale bones and crumbling coral that was the Pacific wasteland to reach America. She'd tell you about the time they slept under the skull of a blue whale with a smile and a nod, and leave out the time her mother shot a man for a quarter full canteen, right in front of her. `` We've got a lot of electromagnetic interference. From the storm most likely, no one's ever gone this deep.'' 
 
 Kellan gave up on the unresponsive radio set `` No way, there's no storm anywhere near strong enough to block coms. We should send a man out in a rig suit, see if the antennas are busted.'' 
 
 `` Are you volunteering.'' Evie shot back. 
 
 `` That's enough you two.'' Captain Royce said. And just as soon the argument stopped. `` Evie, the calmest spot in a storm is usually the centre. Winds are too strong to fly any other way so we just ride it through, and then try to keep her steady until we can lower ourselves out from under it. `` The Captain explained and then sat back into his chair. 
 
 It was a tense five minutes, slicing through the clouds as they watched nothing but grey drizzle accumulate on the bridge's windows. Then came a noise on the radio. A steady ticking like a clock... or like a heartbeat. 
 
 Finally, the cloudbanks thinned out as they reached the heart of the storm. A silhouette began to form through the veil of clouds, a perfect diamond shape floating there as steadily as if it had been placed by the hand of some mouldering god. 
 
 `` What on earth is that?'' Evie gasped as the great diamond thing came into full focus. It was a glossy, solid black like fine cut onyx with no seams or welds or bolts just one continuous skin of black. Tendrils of the cloud twisted towards the diamond in crooked trails like a fat spider in the middle of its web. Water just seemed to disappear into it, straight through its surface. 
 
 Captain Royce stared up at the diamond with fearful, reverent awe, just like when he was that scared child staring up at the end of his world. It was in that moment he realised was not the world's best water harvester. He and his crew were just scavengers picking at the fringes of this *thing* and its dark harvest. 
 
 Captain Royce looked out at the end of the world and named it a Harvester. One of many. 
 
 

