The Last Reef by

  Gareth Lyn Powell

  This story was first published in Interzone 202, illustrated by Vincent Chong. It is currently on the longlist for the British Fantasy Award.

  ###

  A lone quad bike rattles across the frozen Martian desert, kicking up dust. Riding with the wind at his back, Kenji Shiraki has been on the move since first light. In his oil-stained, dust-covered white insulation suit he looks strangely out of place, conspicuous. Above his breathing mask, his wary eyes scan the horizon, looking for trouble but finding only emptiness. Apart from the domed town up ahead, a few hills beyond, and the faint glow of the Reef’s skeleton, there’s nothing to disturb the brooding desolation. He passes through the vehicular airlock into the town’s atmospheric dome, and rolls up Main Street with one hand resting on the handlebars. Most of the shops and stores are boarded up; pet dogs sleep in the shade, chickens fuss in the scrub. Suspicious faces watch him pass; there hasn’t been a visitor here for months. Midway along the street he pulls up and kills the engine in front of the town’s only surviving hotel.

  Less than 24 hours, he thinks as he swings his leg off the bike and stiffly climbs the hotel’s wooden steps. The Glocks in his pocket bump against his thigh like animals shifting in their sleep. The feeling’s both familiar and reassuring. He pulls off his mask and takes a sip of warm water from the canteen on his belt, rinses the all-pervading grit from his mouth, and spits into the dust.

  “I’m here for Jaclyn Lubanski,” he says.

  The desk clerk doesn’t look up. His face is sweaty and soft, like old explosives gone bad. “Room 5,” he says.

  #

  Lori Dann answers the door wearing faded fatigues and thick desert boots. She looks gaunt, eaten up, as if something in the dry air’s sucked the life out of her. She’s surprised to see him, and then the surprise gives way to relief and she seems to sag. “Thank God you’re here.”

  He pushes past her into the room. It has plastic floorboards and rough plaster walls. There are unwashed clothes by the wardrobe and a couple of dead spider plants on a shelf; their brown leaves rustle in the air from the open window. Through the dirty glass, on the side of a hill beyond the flat rooftops of the town, beyond the dome, he can see the edge of the Reef. It seems to shimmer in the white sunlight. Jaclyn Lubanski lies on the bed, facing the window. She looks awful, vacant. There’s a saline drip connected to her forearm. A thin fly crawls across her cheek and she doesn’t seem to notice. He peels off his dusty thermal jacket. “How is she?” he asks.

  “She has good days and bad days,” Lori says. She fusses with the edge of the cotton sheet, rearranging it so that it covers Jaclyn’s chest.

  Kenji waves a hand in front of Jaclyn’s eyes, but there’s no response. “Does she even know I’m here?”

  #

  When Jaclyn eventually falls asleep, Lori takes him to a pavement café that consists of nothing more than a couple of cheap plastic tables, some old crates and a hatch in a wall. She orders a couple of mojitos and they sit back to watch the shadows creep along the compacted regolith of Main Street. Overhead, a flaring spark marks another ship from Earth braking into orbit.

  “Don’t take it personally,” she says.

  Kenji takes a sip from his glass; it’s iced rum with crushed mint leaves, a local specialty. “Does she ever talk about it?”

  Lori shrugs. “She says a few words now and then but they don’t generally make a whole lot of sense.”

  In her pale face, her eyes are the bleached colour of the desert sky. The corners are lined with fatigue. Over a couple more drinks, as the stale afternoon wears towards a dusty evening, she tells him everything. It all comes pouring out of her, all the loneliness and the fear. She’s been trying to cope on her own for too long and now she needs to talk. “We came for the Reef,” she says.

  #

  The Reefs started life as simple communication nodes in the interplanetary radio network. When that network somehow managed to upgrade itself to sentience, it downloaded a compressed copy of its source code into every node capable of handling the data. These individual nodes, like the one on the edge of town, drastically altered both their physical form and their processing power, individually bootstrapping themselves to self-awareness.

  “It happened in a hundred places,” Lori says. So far, she’s not telling Kenji anything new. Similar outbreaks and crashes have plagued humanity for years: dangerous but manageable. After a while, they tend to burn themselves out. The artificial intelligences involved evolve with such blinding speed that they quickly reach a point where they lose all interest in the slow external universe and vanish into their own endlessly accelerating simulations.

  “In almost all cases, the AIs disappear into a sort of hyperspeed nirvana, intractable and untraceable to humanity. The difference with this one is that when the main network crashed, it stayed here and it stayed active.” She describes how she and Jaclyn were on the Institute team that first approached it, how they sent in remote probes and discovered that the structure was still filled with life; how they dug a deep trench in the rock at its base to see how far it had penetrated; how they slowly became hypnotized by it, obsessed to the point where they wanted to do whatever they could to understand it, to sense the thoughts that drove its obstinate need for survival and growth, to find the deep underlying reason for its stubborn existence.

  “Jaclyn was the first to touch it. We were wearing pressure suits but they were no protection.” Lori looks away. “It sucked her in. We thought we’d lost her.” She describes how the Reef also swallowed the rescue team that went in after, how it processed them and spat them out, how some of them came out changed, rearranged by the rogue nanotech packages that had shaped the structure of the Reef itself. Some looked ten years younger, while others were drastically aged. One woman emerged as a butterfly and her wings dried in the desert sun. Another emerged with eight arms but no mouth or eyes. Some came out with crystal skulls or tough silver skin. Others came out with strange new talents or abilities, impenetrable armour, or steel talons.

  After word got out, every disaffected nut or neurotic within walking distance wanted to throw his or her self into the Reef, hoping to be transfigured, hoping to become something better than what they were. Some emergents reported visions of former times and places, of great insight and enlightenment. Others came out as drooling idiots, their brains wiped of knowledge and experience. Some came out fused together; others were splintered into clouds of tiny animals. No two incidents were exactly alike.

  “And Jaclyn came out comatose?”

  Lori finishes her drink. “At least we got her back,” she says. “A couple of them never came out.”

  Kenji stretches; the quad bike’s left him stiff and in need of a shower. “So what’s actually wrong with her?”

  Lori shrugs. “Nothing; at least nothing any of the doctors around here can detect. Physically, she’s in the best shape she’s ever been in. She could run a marathon.”

  “But mentally?”

  “Who knows? We can’t get any response.”

  “Has she said anything, anything at all?”

  Lori pushes at her forehead with the heel of her hand; she looks exhausted. “Only fragments; as I say, she comes out with the odd word here and there, but nothing that means anything.”

  Kenji checks the time and finds there’s less than 19 hours left. He takes a deep breath, and comes to a decision. Then he reaches into his pocket and pulls out one of the Glocks. He holds it loosely, resting on his leg. Lori slides back on her crate.

  “What’s that for?”

  #

  He was in love with Jaclyn, but she was always at war with her body, trying to stave off the inevitable decline of middle age. In between expeditions and field assignments for the Institute, she exercised two or three times a day. She couldn’t bear to be inactive. She lived on coffee and vitamins and in the early hours of the morning he often found her in front of the bathroom mirror, checking her skin for sags or wrinkles.

  On one of those mornings, a few days after her return from an expedition to Chile, she broke down in his arms. She still loved him, she sobbed, but he represented everything she hated about herself. He was comfortable in his job, he showed no ambition. He dragged her down, held her back. So she was going to leave him, for someone else. Someone he knew.

  #

  “I guessed the two of you were an item, even before she told me,” Kenji says, fast, before the old bitterness reasserts itself. “I’d seen you exchange glances during mission briefings, brush past each other in corridors, that sort of thing.”

  He pushes the Glock across the table. It makes an ugly scraping sound. Lori’s hands flutter in her lap like trapped birds. He can see she wants to speak, but he cuts her off.

  “I think she was in love with you because you were everything she wanted to be, and everything I could never be.” He leans across the table. He’s thought about this for so long that it feels strange to actually say it. He finds himself tripping over his words, stuttering. It’s almost embarrassing. “You were young and fit,” he says, “you were reliable, and you had ambition.”

  He turns the gun so that the grip faces her. “And this is for you.”

  #

  They walk back toward the hotel as the sun reddens in the western sky. Lori keeps stumbling and limping as she gets used to the weight of the Glock tucked into her boot.

  “In the morning, I’ll show you how to fire it,” he says.

  She stops walking and looks at him, chin tilted to one side. “You’re quite sure about this?”

  He taps the thigh pocket where he still carries his other pistol. “There’s more ammunition in the space beneath the seat of my quad bike, and a shotgun taped under the fuel tank.”

  She scratches the back of her neck and puffs out her sunken cheeks. “You know, back there, I thought I was in trouble.”

  They reach the hotel and pause on the porch.

  “I was angry for a long time,” Kenji admits.

  They’re silent for a couple of minutes, and then Lori folds her bony arms over her chest. “We’ve been stuck here for a long time.”

  He leans on the porch rail; he can’t look at her, he feels unexpectedly and acutely guilty for not showing up sooner.

  She looks down at her boots, and taps a toe against the wooden floor. “I was so pleased to see you when you arrived,” she says. “I thought someone had finally come to help us. But when you pulled out that gun, I really expected you to kill me.”

  He pulls his jacket tighter, feeling a sudden chill; now that the sun’s gone, the temperature beneath the dome’s fallen sharply. “Six months ago, I might have.”

  She stops tapping and turns abruptly. He follows her up the stairs to the room. Jaclyn’s still asleep in front of the open window. She looks peaceful, like a corpse.

  “So, what changed your mind?” Lori whispers.

  #

  A few days after leaving the Reef, some of the changelings (as they became known) made it back to civilisation. A few turned up on chat shows, others in morgues. Some were feared, others fêted. Slowly, word spread from town to town, from world to world. And as the tale spread, it grew in the telling.

  “There’s a machine,” people would say to each other breathlessly, “that can transform you into anything your heart desires.”

  Kenji – always the sceptic – first realised that the rumours were true when Joaquin Bullock called him into his office and asked him to go and take a look.

  “The Institute’s panicking. They’ve thrown a cordon around the site and they’re talking about sterilising it. If we can get in there before that happens, there’s nothing to stop us taking whatever we want,” Bullock said. “I just need you to go in first, sneak through the blockade and have a general scout about, and tag anything that looks useful.”

  Kenji didn’t like the man, although they’d worked together for several years. Back then, Bullock was the youngest executive manager in the regional corporate office, but he’d become fat and soft and conceited. He was arrogant, but the arrogance was a smokescreen covering something scared and weak and vicious and decadent.

  “What’s in it for me?” Kenji asked. For the last ten years, Tanguy Corporation had handled the security contract for the Institute, protecting their researchers from local interference and industrial sabotage on a dozen sites across the solar system. If they were now thinking of breaking that contract, they must expect the potential rewards to be worth the risk. If they were caught, the penalties would be severe.

  Bullock gave him a damp grin. “You’ve worked with Institute researchers. You know what to look for. And besides, you’re one of the most reliable people we have.”

  Kenji shifted his feet on the office carpet. He didn’t want to get involved, didn’t want to play guide for a squad of hired grave robbers. There were too many risks, too many ways a mission like this could go wrong.

  Bullock seemed to read his doubts. “Do you remember your little transgression in Buenos Aires? If you do this, you can consider it forgotten.”

  Shit. Kenji sucked his teeth. Buenos Aires. He thought no one knew. “That was self-defence,” he said.

  Bullock snorted. “You’ve got six days.” He passed a fat hand through his thinning hair. The implicit threat in his tone seemed to chill the room. He tapped the virtual keyboard on his desk and transferred a folder into Kenji’s personal data space. As Kenji scrolled through it, he came across Jaclyn’s name. Just seeing it felt like an electric shock. He read on, heart hammering, mouth dry.

  He felt Bullock’s eyes on him. The man was watching him closely, waiting for a reaction.

  “If you can’t handle this, Shiraki, I’ll find someone else who can.”

  #

  They sit facing each other on the rug by Jaclyn’s bed, wrapped in blankets. Lori gives him a look saying she still doesn’t trust him.

  “How did you get past the Institute’s cordon?”

  He swivels around and lies flat, looking at the beams on the cracked plaster ceiling. The hard floor beneath the thin rug feels good after being hunched over the quad bike’s handlebars. He can feel his spine stretching back to its natural shape. “I got a shuttle to Hellas, and then I came across country. We’ll have to go out the same way.”

  Lori shifts uncomfortably. “Do you mean to tell me that after everything we put you through, you came all this way to rescue us?”

  Kenji yawns. He’s very tired, and his eyelids are heavy with rum. He suddenly wants to sleep so badly, he doesn’t care whether she believes him or not. “The fact is, the Institute’s planning to sterilise your Reef, from orbit, to prevent it spreading. Before that happens, every corporation with a presence in this system is going to try with all their might to get their hands on that Reef, or anything it’s touched.”

  “Like Jaclyn?”

  “Like both of you.” He pauses for effect, hoping his words convey the same anxiety he feels in himself. Artefacts and technologies left behind by the burnt-out nodes are highly prized and sought after by governments and big businesses alike. As a security advisor for Tanguy Corporation, Kenji’s worked on Institute sites from Ceres to Miranda. He’s been involved in skirmishes with corporate marauders, intelligence agencies, and freelance outfits, all of them determined to snatch whatever crumbs they could without having to bid for them in one of the Institute’s annual patent auctions. This Reef’s potential commercial value – because it’s still active – is sky-high. The corporations that have been biding their time during the Institute’s embargo now have nothing to lose, and everything to gain, from salvaging whatever they can, using whatever methods they deem necessary to recover samples before the orbital strike.

  It’s like the last days of the Amazon rainforest, all over again. And it’s a strange feeling. A few weeks ago, Bullock could probably have talked him into a job like this. But now, with Jaclyn involved, he’s torn. If he can deliver it to Joaquin Bullock, the Reef out there will earn him more money than he can comfortably imagine. As it is, he has a nasty suspicion that he’ll have to run like hell while the Institute destroys the damn thing, and cover his tracks, if he wants to save whatever’s left of the woman he once loved.

  Lori crosses to the dresser and pulls the Glock from her boot. She lays it gently on a folded bandana in front of the pitted mirror. “So we’re expecting company?” she says. “That’s why you’ve given me this?”

  He nods. “They could come at any time. Could be corporate snatch squads or a full-scale military incursion, it’s hard to tell. All I know is that there were a lot of people at the port this morning buying desert gear and ammo boxes.”

  #

  He sleeps fitfully on the hard floor. They’ve left the room’s solitary light bulb on and there are repeated brownouts and power cuts during the night. When he does manage to sleep, he dreams of Jaclyn, how she used to be, before the Reef.

  He dreams of a hotel they once stayed in, on Earth. Their room had the clear, fresh smell of the sea. Stunted palm trees outside the window rustled in the breeze; gulls squabbled on the roof. The floorboards creaked in the room above, and the pipes clanked when someone decided to run a bath. They put bags of ice in the sink to chill the bottles of beer they’d smuggled in, put Spanish music on the stereo. Jaclyn showed him how to dance, how to sway in the evening light. When he held her close, her white hair smelled of ice and flowers, her dark eyes held him spellbound. He was in love but he was also a little wary of her, afraid that she’d one day cripple him by leaving.

  “You still love her, don’t you?”

  They’re loading supplies onto the quad bike in the cold dawn light. He drops the air tanks he’s carrying and scratches at the stubble on his chin. He feels groggy and sore after a disturbed night.

  “Life’s a disaster,” he says, “we have to salvage what we can.”

 

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