"Reykjavík runs on geothermal water, fermented shark, and a floor built to be wet"
Siobhan Byrne, Shiv to everyone, is twenty-four, a final-year physiotherapy student from Galway who knows exactly which bones break in which order in which kind of fall. She also can't touch a door handle without a ten-minute countdown. Her therapist has given her an exposure ladder, and rung ten, the mountain on the far side of the moon, is to shower barefoot in a public shower. So in February she flies to Reykjavík, where the sun rises at half nine. She heads for The Steam Room, a converted fish-freezing plant by the old harbour whose black basalt megashower people cross the world to film themselves in. In her luggage are three pairs of shower shoes, a tub of bleach wipes and a sheet of anti-slip stickers shaped like daisies. The night receptionist greets her from a rubber ring. He says the shower attacked him.
Her dorm is called Herring. In it are Joost, a jumpy Dutch triplet travelling alone for the first time, who knocks on concrete to check it's still holding; Amara, a medical student eating fermented shark so she can see the aurora for her late nana; and the Kowalczyk sisters, competitive winter sea swimmers from Gdańsk in walrus hats. The sixth bunk belongs to Lukas Brandt, a barefoot biohacker from Freiburg with eight hundred thousand followers. He believes shoes are coffins and makes a laughing video of Shiv sticking daisies to the bathroom floor. Hekla, the manager, believes in elves a normal amount and has emailed FreeToWander eleven times about the Hub. Bjarni, who gutted herring on that floor from 1978, says it has eaten one a winter for seventy years.
The water keeps changing its mind: golden and steaming one second, glacier-cold the next, then scalding. On Monday night Joost freezes under a head pouring out water far too hot to stand in. Hekla tries to switch off the Enhanced Steam Experience that FreeToWander has enrolled her in and gets a chirpy chatbot. Friday is Polar Plunge and Aurora Night. It's sold out: sixty-four guests will jump into the harbour at midnight in minus nine, then run back to the world's most Instagrammable shower. The skies are clearing. The aurora forecast is excellent. And the floor, according to the Hub, has been conditioned to perfection.
Age: 24
Type: Final-year physiotherapy student and germaphobe
Fatal Flaw: Has mentally fractured every bone in her body, twice
Role: Protagonist
Age: 30
Type: Barefoot biohacker and wellness podcaster
Fatal Flaw: Thinks shoes are coffins
Role: Guest
Age: 26
Type: Third-year medical student
Fatal Flaw: Eats fermented shark in the name of science
Role: Medic
Age: 21
Type: Dutch triplet travelling alone for the first time
Fatal Flaw: Knocks on the concrete to check it's still holding
Role: Ally
Age: 27
Type: Hostel manager and metal bassist
Fatal Flaw: Believes in elves a normal amount
Role: Keeper of the building
Age: ???
Type: Mysterious presence
Fatal Flaw: None documented
Role: Observer
From the Prologue, "Mop Duty"
At 3:14 a.m. on a Tuesday in February, Ragnar Þórsson was losing a ranked match of a game he did not even like, in a building that used to freeze fish, on a night so dark it felt personal.
The reception desk of The Steam Room Hostel was the old weighing station from the days when this place was Frystihúsið Grandi, the Grandi Freezing Plant. It was a slab of scarred steel the size of a small car, with a dial scale still bolted to one end. The owners had kept it because an interior designer from Copenhagen had called it "honest." Guests put their passports on it. Occasionally a drunk Australian stood on it to see how much he weighed in cod.
Ragnar sat behind it on a stool, hood up, headset half on, his laptop balanced on a stack of lost-property beanies. Outside, the wind came off the old harbour and threw sleet at the corrugated-iron walls like it had a grudge against the whole concept of walls. Inside, the building hummed. Old refrigeration buildings never quite stop humming. Hekla said it was the pipes. Bjarni said it was the building remembering.
Ragnar thought it was mostly the drinks fridge.
His character died. The screen went grey. A twelve-year-old in Finland typed something unkind about his mother.
"Andskotinn," Ragnar told the ceiling.
On the wall behind the desk, above the chalkboard that read, in Hekla's aggressively neat capitals,
WI-FI: SteamRoomGuest
PASSWORD: SlipperyWhenWet
CHECKOUT 11:00. QUIET HOURS 23:00. ELVES: RESPECT THEM.
sat the new thing.
It was a white disc about the size of a hockey puck, stuck to the wall with industrial adhesive, a soft blue ring of light around its edge. The FreeToWander Partner Hub. A guy in a lanyard had installed it in October, talked for forty minutes about "guest-experience optimisation," eaten three of the complimentary pastries, and left. It ran the Wi-Fi. It ran the door locks. It ran the underfloor heating, the lights, and, most importantly, the geothermal hot-water system that fed the building's famous megashower, the hostel's namesake, the room people came from across the world to film themselves in.
Hekla had named it Litli Bróðir. Little Brother. Because, she said, it was always watching and it never did the dishes.
The ring pulsed once. A soft chime.
Ragnar's laptop, which was not connected to anything to do with the building, dinged at the same moment. An email notification slid down from the corner of the screen.
FreeToWander Partner Hub · Litli Bróðir
Shower Room: Maintenance Mode activated.
Guest-left running water detected (Head 7). Please attend. 🧽
Thank you for keeping Wanda's spaces sparkling!
Ragnar stared at the little sponge emoji for a long moment.
Fictional reviews of the fictional Steam Room Hostel, quoted from the book.
☠ "floor tested. result: optimal. polar plunge & aurora night is fully booked. risk accepted. ☠" — @HostelReaper
☠ "the daisies are a sensible precaution." — @HostelReaper