Macaroni Art in the Age of Filtration by Ryan Cole (audio)

You are listening to a Clark's World magazine podcast with your host and narrator, Kate Baker. Welcome to the podcast for the first of April, 2026. Issue 235. We have been around for 235 issues. Did you know that? You know, every time that I announce the issue number, I am amazed by just how many issues this team has put out each and every month. And you know what? We can't do this without you. So thank you so much for your ongoing support of the magazine, whether it is a subscription, whether it is you go to patreon.com, or slash Clark's World, whether you've chucked a few bucks our way, whether you sent an email, told a friend, voted for us, or a story in any of the awards that are given out by the genre. You guys are amazing. So thank you. So on this day of April Fools, I've got nothing but good things to say. I can't trick the audience that gives me one of the best jobs I've ever had. So thank you for always being there. Our story is titled, Macaroni Art in the Age of Filtration, and is by Ryan Cole. Ryan Cole is a speculative fiction writer who lives in Virginia with his husband and slightly pug child. He is a winner of the Writers of the Future Contest and a graduate of the Odyssey writing workshop, and his work has appeared in Clark's World podcast, Escape Pod, and Cast of Wonders, among others. Ryan has a bunch of stories in Clark's World. Some of them are titled A Dream of Twin Sunsets, which was August 2025, from Enceladus with Love, which was March 2025, and Waffles are Only Goodbye for Now, which was December 2023. So I implore you, after you listen to this, to go look up Ryan here at Clark's World Magazine. So my dear listener, I hope that you can sit back, relax, and let me tell you a story. Verity crawled through the endless dark of the tunnel, the false safety of her colony home now a half mile behind her. All she could see in the dim light of her headlamp strapped to her sweaty forehead, where the low dirt walls, the worthless trash she'd already combed through on her other scavenging trips to the outskirts of the colony. Looking for anything, food, scrap metal, heirlooms that she could use to make a buck, to make it easier to survive in a world that wanted to crush her. Not that she'd expected to have much success, it was rare for her to come back with a stash worth selling. Her parents, while alive, and her grandparents before them had already stolen all the good stuff, back when the colony was still near the surface and the air pumps still worked, and they hadn't had to dig ever deeper into the bedrock, searching for the pockets of clean air underground that were slowly disappearing with each passing year. It's rare that her lung was always quick to remind her of its filter sensors beeping from the plastic over her mouth. Particulate density, high, it announced through the chip that was embedded under her tongue, a voice that only she could hear. As she wished she could rip out and smash with her dirty fist since the day she'd been born, and the mesh mask of the lung had been plastered onto her face. Its plastic reinforced with a carbon dioxide converter that could filter out the gases permeating the tunnels. Dangerous for sensitive groups. And really, when wasn't it? The air was always bad, getting worse every year, polluted by the quakes that were ravaging the surface, the volcanic eruptions that were choking the black skies, creating more cracks for the particulate matter than she couldn't breathe in without a lung to protect her, to seep into the spaces that they used to think were safe, that one day would suffocate the many thousands of people who were crammed into the bunker network. She was forced to call home. But she'd long ago decided she wouldn't be one of those people. She wouldn't be trapped in a box and left to die. So she'd made it her mission to scout every tunnel, every unexplored cave the quakes hadn't torn open, living for the thrill of not knowing what she'd find, hoping she'd stumble on a fresh patch of air, a still pristine cavern where she could rip off her lung and take a great, heaving breath, relying on her own body for the first time in her life. And yet, she couldn't leave. Not without Axel, not without the only living family she had left who would have said, Yeah, go as far as you can. Or, what's wrong with you, Verity? We have to see what's up ahead. Rolling his eyes as only a younger brother can, dashing in front of her with his eight-year-old confidence, the whole world just a one-two punch away from him conquering it. But that was his old self before his lung went bad, and he was thrown into a cell with all the others who couldn't breathe without an artificial organ to filter their air. All for their own good, of course. A quarantine cell that Verity couldn't break him out of, not until she found him an operable lung that no one would ever trade. To do so meant death or a lifetime of solitude, as sure as if they climbed to the tunnels high above and the long abandoned bunkers that were crumbling into ruin. And yeah, she'd considered it, giving him her own, which only made her think of the grit in her throat, the now angry beep of the chip under her tongue, the aftertaste of sulfur when she took a too deep breath that wasn't supposed to be there in a fully functioning lung, clogging up her filter just like it had clogged axles. Don't worry, Verity, he would say, if she ever let him see her fear erasing her doubts with his radiant positivity. On days like today, she tried to channel that hope, the innocent belief that everything would be all right. As far away though, the doubts crept back in. Axl couldn't help her. Instead, she had widget. Thought I'd find you here, he said with a too bright smile, his shiny teeth a perfect foil to his ash caked cheeks, the greasy clump of his black hair, the patchy mustache he'd been trying to grow for almost three years since they'd turned 14. He knelt against the wall, took slow, steady breaths, allowing his lung to calibrate to the air, the particulate matter denser here than from where he'd just crawled, in the direction of the colony. From the cuts on his arms, she could tell he'd crawled faster through the tunnel than he should have, not taking the precautions they'd both learned from his mother before she'd been crushed by the weight of an old ceiling beam. An unfortunate death that was the glue to their friendship both desperate for a life beyond the one they'd been given. Scouting every day, sharing all their darkest secrets, well, except for what Verity suspected he wanted when he tried to hold her hand, even though she yanked it away. Just like he did now, their nose is almost touching the sooty stink of his breath inundating her face mask. I found one, he whispered, his eyes bright with excitement she hadn't seen him show in years, since Axl's lung broke and widget lost the closest thing to a brother he'd ever had. In the ruins of that day, he'd made Verity a promise that he would help her get Axl back. He'd do anything for Verity. All she had to do was ask. But she didn't want to use him, didn't want to lead him on the thought of him kissing her, of anyone kissing her, sending chills down her arms and acid up her throat. Not that she could tell him that break his fragile heart, shatter the secret dream he so obviously held. So as always, she put it off. She tucked it away with the rest of her guilt, the unsolvable problems she was determined to solve one day. She pulled away, put a little space between them. Where? She said, careful to temper her hopes. So used to them being buried by years of disappointment. Widget grinned back. You aren't going to like it. His excitement was electric. Likely thinking this would show her how much he truly cared. And if he found her along, if he could break Axl free. She would give him the answer. He'd been chasing for years. And maybe it was worth it. Maybe her happiness was worth Axl's freedom. Worth seeing him run like he used to as a kid. For Axl, she could do it. For Axl, she would search every tunnel in the world and who cared about the danger. But then Widget pointed to the tunnels high above, the tunnels that had stolen their parents rotting bones. Get ready, he said. We're going all the way to the top. She'd never forget the day Axl was detained, the fear in his wide eyes when he tried to take a breath and no air came through. No chance to say goodbye, to hug him and lie to him that things would be okay. He'd be out of there in no time. But days turned to weeks and she didn't have a plan. All she had was her guilt that he was in there and she was out here with a still working lung she didn't deserve. All she had was a double wall of plexiglass between them, too thick to speak through the filtered air inside it, keeping him alive. Not able to leave to do anything but trace giant letters in the glass hearts and hi, Varities. And the oversized smileys that matched his beaming face whenever she sat down to visit. I miss you. She'd say, even though he couldn't hear tracing the other half to the heart, he would draw their fingers meeting in the middle. A ritual they'd started and hadn't let die. What Verity looked forward to every morning and night, hoping one day the glass would be gone and their fingers could touch flesh to flesh like before. I'm going to get you out. She'd whisper into the silence, a promise she clung to a promise she repeated before she fell asleep as soon as she woke up. It's echo ever present on the tip of her tongue. All she needed was a lung. All she needed was not to die before she could bring it back to him. Verity followed widget up a long unused ladder, her headlamp glinting on the metal walls of the pump shaft that surrounded them. The quickest way up, a continuous route from one bunker to the next. She felt a tickle on her cheeks, what she thought could be a breeze from the dead turbines above. It set off her lung as if she breathed in too deeply. Particulate density, significant. It beeped into her mouth before she could shut it up. She couldn't let widget know the state it was in, how gritty her throat was from the dust. It couldn't filter the poisonous gases. It couldn't keep out. If he knew he'd make her leave, kill the one and only chance she'd get to save Axel or worse, he'd go alone. He'd do it all by himself and Verity wasn't sure if she could live through the guilt, if he never came back. You okay? He called down to her, braced against the ladder from the joe to the quakes. The aftershocks getting stronger, the higher they climbed. I think so, she said, even though she really wasn't only thinking of her parents and whether they'd come here, climbed up the same ladder, believing they were stronger than they actually were. Before the tunnels proved them wrong. But no, she had to focus, had to think of what widget had told her below. You remember Miss Ratchet, he'd said voice low to keep the vibrations from causing a cave in the old woman who's holed up on the other side of the bunker. Verity nodded, saw the paper thin skin and bones woman in her mind, one of only a few people who had ever lived above in the original bunkers that they were traveling to now. Widget had leaned in his smile triumphant. She made me a deal. Her lung when she dies, which is any day now in exchange for an heirloom. A piece of old artwork her granddaughter made for her back when she was alive, drawn with bits of pasta. Apparently it's something really special for her. She had to leave it behind when the tunnels collapsed. She wants to see it again, wants to hold it one last time. Verity had paused, didn't let herself fall into the trap. Verity had paused, didn't let herself hope. You couldn't just give up your lung when you died. It wasn't a gift to just transfer at your whim. It was colony property implanted in the next person who had been waiting the longest, an interminable line in which Axel was at the end, doomed to wait for decades if he followed the rules. Verity and the rules though, they'd never gotten along too well. So she bit back her fear, did her best not to think about widget above, how he looked at her longer than a normal friend should. But really, how would she know? She didn't have any other friends. Those long, stolen glances, a handsome guy to help her, to tell her she was pretty. Those were things she should like, but somehow even coming from widget, they felt wrong. Bitter like the ash that was collecting in her lung. Like they were boxing her in the sling. We're boxing her in the slow suffocation. She couldn't escape. Then a jolt from above the whole ladder shook, which its legs dangled in the glow of her headlamp. I'm okay. Said widget. Sorry. Lost my balance. Verity hugged the ladder, shut her eyes to the dust that was clouding from the ceiling. It was more of it now drifting into the shaft carried by the breeze as it whipped through the pump way more than there should have been since the last round of quakes, only a few moments past. Stays sell, said Verity, choking on the grit. The whole shaft groaned, clanged with the rock bits falling from above, what she hoped to never hear, what she imagined her parents had heard before they died. Her hands started to tremble. Her palms slick with sweat. She looked up at widget, their eyes locked in fear. Hold on. Said widget. Don't move. I'm coming down. He eased down a step. The ladder rungs creaked as he adjusted his weight. Then. Wham! The shaft echoed with an ear splitting crack of stone on stone of metal separating from the rock that held it up. Old bolts bending under year's worth of pressure. The ceiling opened up. A thunderstorm of dirt rained down from above. Before she could catch herself before she could think her fingers lost their grip and Verity was falling. Dirt in her eyes. Ash in her mouth. Every bone ached as she slammed into the wall, sliding down the ladder as it twisted from the pump shaft. She couldn't see widget, just the broken structure of ladder where she'd been standing before. Now half the rungs missing, impossible to climb. She pulled herself up, looped an arm through the ladder rung closest to her face. Widget! She said much louder than she should, but she had to get an answer, had to know if he was safe. Nothing. Only silence. Then high above. Verity. Weak as if it traveled through a layer of broken rock. I'm okay. She said squinting through the settling dust cloud. Saw him crouching in an alcove where the shaft met a tunnel, at least 50 feet above her, that she'd never be able to reach. Hold on. Said widget. Voice filled with relief. Don't move. I'll come and get you. I'll find another way back down. But from what she could tell, there wasn't another way. Just a half collapsed alcove, about 10 feet below her, one of hundreds that connected to the bunker's many tunnels. One, she'd never scouted this far toward the surface. She couldn't hang forever. So carefully she climbed down, braced for each step to cause the ladder to snap. When she swung into the alcove, she rolled in the dirt, cheek pressed to the rock wall that led into the tunnel. Slow, steady breaths, in spite of the now constant beep of her lung, the urgent oxygen level warnings that its overworked filter couldn't keep out the grit. Even when she pulled out a rag from her pocket and pressed it to the mask, hoping it could serve as a makeshift second filter, the beeping slowed a bit, but it didn't fully stop. Which she tried to ignore, waiting for widget to pop into the tunnel, surprise her with a goofy, grinned, too eager hello. But even after an hour, the tunnel was still empty. It was dark and it was cold. And the air tasted rancid and the beep of her lung in her mouth was getting louder, telling her to move to please find clean air. And what choice did she have? So she crept into the tunnel, the pump shaft far behind her, the same way she'd done everything for the last few years. All on her own. For what felt like an eternity? She wandered in the tunnel, avoiding the potholes, tripping over picture frames, battered pots and pans, whatever people had left in the mad rush below ground and hadn't lived to come back for. Which made her think of Axel, the disbelief on his face when she brought him a new lung, all the wild new adventures they'd be able to share. All of it, a fantasy. She'd never be able to go on one of those adventures, not with her own lung. And the shape it was now, it's felt her working double time for each aching breath. What would she do if she ever made it back home? Would she be the one in the quarantine cell forever trapped behind the glass? She tried not to dwell on the obvious answer. Axel would never know about the lung and Ms. Ratched and her macaroni artwork. He would never have to know if Faraday stole it for herself just for now until she found a way to swindle another. Well, a pragmatic solution, not because she was scared. She was older. She was wiser. She was better at scavenging, more experienced in the tunnels, more capable. Right? Faraday didn't feel very capable now. All she'd done was find a pump shaft that hadn't caved in. When she popped out at the top, she climbed into a tunnel with steel thickened walls, burned out light bulbs in the ceiling, and she'd been able to see the glass door that was cracked down the middle. It's right panel missing the entrance to the upper bunker or one of them anyway. She hunched on the floor, hid from the rubble of the quakes on the surface. They shook the bunker walls, dust raining from the ceiling, their echoes creeping from the tunnel beyond the glass door. A dull, clickety clack that inched closer in the darkness. But no, that wasn't a quake. It was bootsteps on steel. It was widget running toward her. The tiny puddle of his headlamp cutting through the dark. He rushed into her, wrapped her in a suffocating hug, close, too close. His mustache tickling her cheek, kept whispering, are you hurt? Are you okay? I was so worried. She nodded, pulled away the rapid beating of her heart, put more pressure on her lung, but he held onto her hand and intertwined with her. And possibly opposite, like oil and water. And he flashed her what she thought to be a reassuring smile to show her. She was safe, which only made her feel worse. Come on. He said, helping her to stand on wobbly knees. He pointed to the door. I think I found a way up. Less than an hour and they were deep within the bowels of the original bunker. Passing by dugouts that used to be bedrooms. They stopped in every alcove, every passageway in storeroom, sifting through the long abandoned trash on the floor. She said it would be up here, said widget on his knees, picking through a pile of old recipe books and a small aluminum box on the low or most level. Did she say what it would look like? Said Verity behind him, slowly combing through the rubble of a half of her collapsed ceiling. Widget didn't seem to hear the quakes drowned her out, filled the hallway with new dust that anchored her lung. The warnings of particular density, significant returning. He tried to breathe through it to fight past mostly clogged filter over her mouth, choking on the gases that it should have kept out. And the room went dizzy, her throat too dry. She lost her balance and toppled face first in the dirt. Verity, said widget, and she was in the room. She was hurt. Verity, said widget, running over to catch her. She pushed him away, crawled over to the wall. I'm fine. She said panting. Widget didn't believe her. You're hiding something, he said, his eyes raw with hurt. Same as he looked on the day his mother died, same as the morning when Axel was taken. I'm only here to help. Don't you want me to help you? Perhaps I'll fetch a question. Of course she wanted help. She needed all that she could get. And at the same time, she dreaded the inevitable end, the moment when she'd tell him how she actually felt. How she didn't deserve him and the kindness he'd given, the selfless devotion she could never repay. None of what she said. Not here. Where it took all of her strengths to just breathe. Then a rumble above allowed crack in the floor. a mountain-shifting jolt that shook the metal bunker walls, the ceiling beam slumping under the weight of the tunnel. Widget shielded Verity, pulled her up to her feet and together they did the only thing they could. They ran. Rocks on her chest. That's how it felt as they dashed to the tunnel. Not as bad as it would be with the actual rocks on top of her if she weren't fast enough. So she bit through the pain, the rattling wheeze, the overwhelming fear that this might be the very last tunnel she scouted. The last time she could remember Axel's silly sweet smile, always making things better when she made them so much worse. She searched as she ran, peeking in the bedrooms on the other side of the tunnel. Widget did the same, too quick to be thorough. Just a one and done glance and then onto the next, chased by the dust clouds at mushroomed behind them poisoning the air. Not a problem for Widget with a functioning lung, but Verity knew she didn't have much time left. Her chest was too heavy and no matter where she looked, she didn't see a box, no glint of aluminum, no sign that what she'd risked would lead to anything but death. Distracted by the pain she tripped on a pile of picked over rubbish, she sprawled in the dirt, then have the strength or the will to get back up. Then she looked over to what she'd tripped on. A small metal box, twice the size of her hand, its latches ripped open by the impact of her fall, small enough to miss. To fit a piece of folded paper, its edges yellowed with age. Hands shaking, she lifted the paper from the box, she unfolded it in her lap, broken bits of dried pasta falling onto her legs. She gave to the pasta drawn picture in front of her, so mostly intact, each pasta piece stuck to the paper with glue. Of a woman in the center, her body made up of broken bits of spaghetti, her mouth a curl of macaroni, her hair drawn in pasta shells smashed into glitter. Beside her was a little girl holding her hand, their spaghetti-thin fingers woven together, who could only be her granddaughter, the two of them standing under yellow pasta sun, a sky filled with fluffy clouds that weren't meant to kill them, an innocent world that only a child could dream up, like the pasta art that Verity had drawn when she was younger. From the long expired food stores her parents had scavenged, pretending that if she drew it, then it could be real. The world that she wanted it right there at her fingertips. You found it, said Widget, leading over her shoulder, likely seeing what Verity saw in that paper glimpsed into the past and answered to their problems, a one-way ticket to getting a new lung. His smile so wide that it crinkled his face mask. She wanted to hug him to jump with excitement to run head first through the dust cloud behind them to see the promise of freedom in Axel's hopeful eyes. But she coughed on the grit. She gagged on the sulfur taste, smothering her tongue. And before she could stand, before she could stop, but her lungs started to scream, beep, beep, beep, in her mouth. And it announced loud enough for even Widget to hear, particulate density, toxic. Not a warning you could hear and live to tell the tale. She'd heard it only once when Axel's lung broke and she'd rushed him in her arms to the quarantine cell. Now she understood how he'd felt that day, gasping for breath where there was only just a trickle. Try to fight, said Widget. She ex-flushed with indecision, frantically looking to each end of the tunnel for a miracle and escape. You can do it, keep breathing. But Verity couldn't do it. Not with her mask on, its filter shutting down, clogged with dirt and dust. Widget scooped her up and he ran into the tunnel. He took a turn that led down in the direction they'd come. But the air was too dirty. They'd never make it to the colony. She'd suffocate first, would be limp in his arms by the time they stumbled home. Not the way she wanted to die, as bad as being stuck in a cell and left to rot. If this was it, this was the end, she was going to die breathing. She'd take the biggest, longest breath she'd ever taken in her life, particulate density bedammed. She folded the pasta art, tucked it under her shirt, whispered to Axel that she was sorry. So sorry. And with her free hand, she ripped off the mask from her face. Her cheeks fully exposed, her lips free to smile without the plastic weighing them down. She opened her mouth, braced herself and inhaled. One, two, three, four. Her chest filled to bursting sweet and sour with the pain light enough to float just like she'd always imagined. Then she coughed, lips bloody from the two sharp grit. Vision, fuzzy, limbs numb and widgets trembling arms as they whisper, I've got you. Hold on, we're almost there. The last thing she saw, the last thing she remembered was him ripping off his own mask, holding it through her mouth as she drifted into darkness. When she opened her eyes again, she was back in the colony, the familiar dirt walls of infirmary cell around her, the ones people live in when their lungs need repair, filled with just enough oxygen to survive but barely. No chip under her tongue, no mask on her face, just a soot stained cloth that was draped over her mouth to keep her from breathing the dirty air. But no, there's a widget beside her on the bed. He pressed his mask to his face, took a long deep breath, then he passed it to Verity, he took the cloth that she'd been using as a last resort filter. He held the mask to her mouth while she quietly inhaled, coughing from the grit, caking her throat. You're long, she said, weakly trying to sit up, but her arms wouldn't listen too tired from the nearest fixation she'd suffered. She fell back into her pillow. Widget smiled back, he took his turn with the mask. What she figured he'd done since she'd ripped hers out, now broken and useless in the bunker high above. Sharing his lung, risking his own life, keeping the promise she'd never asked him to make. You should've left me, she said, holding her breath until he passed her the mask, glad that he hadn't. Yet still, it would've made this a whole lot easier, not added to the guilt that was too heavy to bear. You know, I'd never do that, he said through the mask. And it killed her, but she knew. She knew he was 10 times the friend she'd ever be, worlds better than the parent she'd always tried to be for Axel. Thank you, she said. Her throat dry-scared to say the wrong thing as usual, but Widget had saved her. He deserved to know the truth. After everything he'd done, she could at least give him that. There's something I need to tell you. Don't, said Widget, and he held up a hand, smiled to the pain that heard in his eyes that he'd never let her see. She paused, didn't know what to do, what to say. Really, Verity, it's okay. I'm sorry for pushing you, I already know. I've known for a while, I just, I didn't wanna accept it. After three years, there it was, finally out in the open. The secret she'd hid from him that she feared would destroy him, pushing him away when she needed him most, neither one able to give what the other truly needed. I should have told you, said Verity. Not much of an answer, but she'd hoped it would help to heal the rift she'd let grow. What do you think? Still friends? The right thing for once, she could see the uncertainty leak from his shoulders. He picked up the wide, goofy grin she'd always known, from the days when they were whole. When their parents were alive, and they could run through the tunnels with their arms flung wide, knowing there was always someone else looking out for them. But those days were long gone, they would never return. Not without the artwork they'd gone up to find that wasn't in her pocket. She must have dropped it in the tunnel. The only way to save Axel, now a half a mile above them. Looking for this? Widget dug in his pocket, pulled out a plastic bag as big as his hand. But it wasn't the artwork, no pasta shell memories or fluffy cloud skies. It was a face mask, it's mesh filters white and pristine. Fully operational even after a lifetime of being used. Ms. Ratchet, said Widget to her unspoken question. She had held on until we got back. She should have seen her when she looked at her granddaughter's artwork. Like she forgot I was even there. She didn't last long after that. Varity reached for the lung in his hand, the lung that was for Axel, the lung that could be hers, could save her from the fate she knew was only hours away. Widget couldn't share his lung forever after all. Then she froze, let her hand drop. Axel wouldn't know, but Varity would know, would have to live with that decision for the rest of her life. And even though it hurt, the realization of her future, like a stone on her chest, she focused on Axel. Imagine Tim scouting all the tunnels she discovered, searching for the caverns that were just around the bed. The thrill of the unknown bright in his eyes. You sure? Said Widget when you saw her pull away. A question she feared, a question she wasn't sure she could answer on her own, but with Widget and Axel, she'd never be alone. The family she'd lost right there by her side. She leaned across the bed and took his free hand, nodded through the fear. No regrets. I'm ready. That night, once the rest of the colony was asleep, she looked through the glass wall of the quarantine cell. Axel was in front of her, as innocent and wide-eyed as perfect as ever, overflowing with joy from what Verity had given him. Come with me, he'd said, within the safety of the glass when she'd handed him the lung. She'd wrapped him in a hug and told him not to worry they'd be together again soon, even though they likely wouldn't. Thankfully, he believed her. He didn't see the lie. He snapped on the lung, took his first real gulp of free air in three years. His whole face was happiness. Genuine happiness. Not a laugh just to make her think that things would be okay to give her fragile hope when her own had run dry. And before Axel left, slipping away into the tunnels, he mouthed a silent goodbye. He traced one half of a heart on the glass. A heart she completed, their fingers meeting in the middle. Separated by the glass, but still warm, still whole. His smile, a reminder of all the good left in the world, a good that she would cling to, a good that she would fight for with every last breath. What are your thoughts on the story? You can send me an email. I'm Kate at Clarksworldmagazine.com. We have a bunch of stories coming to you for the month of April. Thank you for being here with us and listening. I hope you'll come back and listen to yet another one until you do. I bid you very fond and hopefully very temporary. Farewell.