Reef Mind, page 5
“The coral, I mean,” Bash explained. “Doesn’t it seem smart?”
“It’s a thing. What can a thing possibly know?” Reubens snapped.
“What about you, fireman? Does it seem intelligent to you?”
“What are you on about?” Reubens huffed. “Is a weed intelligent? Is cancer? Get your head out of your ass, Bash.”
I had never considered the earth I lived on to be a separate organism. It was a stage prop, a setting. A nice one, sure, but nothing to think too deeply on. I saw the coral reef the same way, just one part of the background on the vast tapestry of life. But Bash made me consider it, and you, in a different way. You weren’t like an animal or a plant. You could have stepped off a UFO. An alien, either to destroy all of us or to negotiate terms.
“Maybe,” I finally said. “But it doesn’t like us. We’re like ants, and the dirt we walk on is the enemy.”
“See? Yeah. That’s what I think.” Bash talked fast. He peeled dead skin off his arm, let it flutter in the air like leaves. “Did you ever try to talk to that coral girl, fireman? Do you think she was our chance?”
I felt a coldness erupt all over my skin. If the coral could send ambassadors, were you connected to a vast consciousness? The olive branch? But no, it was not that simple, not at all. The sun was getting to me, was what I thought. And to Bash. I thought of you kneeling down. Motioning to the hacksaw. Like you wanted it, like I’d done you a favor.
“She never spoke,” I explained. “You’re overthinking it.”
“Finally, some sanity.” Reubens called back to us. “It’s kill or be killed, Bash. That’s always been the story. That’s the human struggle. Don’t fail us now.”
***
And yet, we were failing. We walked and walked and found nothing. Reubens wouldn’t stop.
Bash trailed behind me. Real slow.
***
The sun grew hotter before it started to set. The prickling, itching sensation on my back burned. I asked if we could rest. The light was violet, our shadows dancing blue on the rock. The heat was held in the stone, making me feel like we walked on cooking coals.
Reubens turned around to look at me, his face contorted with rage. “Bash!”
Behind me, several yards back, was a crumpled figure. I wondered about heat stroke; when was the last time Bash had asked for the canteen? And then I saw that his sunburn had a crustacean sheen in the light, and I felt a burgeoning sadness within my belly.
“Get up!” Reubens shouted. He broke into a jog and then kicked bash in the ribs. The fabric flew up. Small nubs of skin protruded from Bash’s ribs, the start of jointed legs. As he rolled to his side, I saw his hands, how the fingers formed one clawed appendage with a thumb. I felt a sob rise to my throat. Reubens kicked him again. I saw too late that he meant to kick Bash off the side of the cliff.
“Stop!” I could only think of poor Sir. Reubens had blood in his eyes.
I dropped to my knees as Bash went over, the fall of rock echoing loudly. The setting sun flashed bright in my face, blinding me temporarily. Reubens was yelling. Perhaps he would kill me, too. As the spots in my vision blinked away, I realized that something was approaching.
It was you. You were walking toward us, taking our exact path. How long, I wondered, had you been tailing us?
Your body was the same limestone-rigid mannequin, the neck ending in sharp points of sawed off wood. But there was a newly grown head. It was bright red and shone like fresh blood that did not leak, a droplet that had shape and viscosity, with facial features and a moving neck. Your hair was moving, branching up from your head like jellyfish tentacles. Small orbs glowed, a phosphorescent effect from the sunlight.
Your cool fingers brushed against my shoulder as you passed me. Reubens stopped. I saw the flash of a bowie knife in the light. A deep fear pulsed through my brain. The air had shifted. Thick. Greasy.
Sudden shadows fell over the rock. In my mind, I expected to see hot air balloons, perhaps a zeppelin. But this, I had no context for. I had never seen such creatures in my life, nor in the ocean. I was mesmerized. At that point, I had not realized that the ocean’s horrors were only beginning to surface.
Two transparent, coiled bubbles propelled through the air, shimmering in the sunlight. Like giant snail shells. They were larger than cars. They cast rainbows on the ground like glass prisms. I watched one bounce off a rock and head right for Reuebens.
Your expression was an unblinking mask of calm as the grisly event unfolded. Reuben’s head was tilted up, eyes wide, as the thing gracefully descended right down onto him. I expected, for some reason, the pop of a soapy bubble, or for it to bounce. But it was like a sieve.
Lines appeared on his forehead, thin and crisscrossed. He opened his mouth. A sound like someone slurping pudding came out. Blood fountained from his throat. Teeth rained out of his mouth. The bubble ensconced his whole head with a lurch. And then his face sloughed off like a rubber mask. As the bubble descended, it filled with the red wash of blood. A splatter at first, and then a storm as it moved to disrobe the rest of his body. If Reubens was screaming, I couldn’t hear it. His legs, visible underneath the lowering bubble, spasmed before they were engulfed.
My vision blurred. Tears ran runnels down my face. I was on my knees, crawling, helpless. The view below and the sprawl of the landscape gave me a sudden sense of vertigo, of complete and total helplessness. The second spiral thing, this balloon-like creature, sailed over me as if it didn’t notice me at all.
I covered my ears against the gruesome noises. I wasn’t brave enough to jump. The creature that had swallowed Reubens looked like a bloody water balloon. It floated lower to the rock, sloshing. I felt my stomach turn over; I burped. Something clattered next to me, a hail of bones. A jawbone, dry, skittered over to me and then bounced off my knee before coming to a stop.
Rigid, paralyzed by fear and disgust, I started to shake.
You. Your hand.
Your fingers were hard, but gentle as they stroked my hair. I dared to look up. Your mouth opened. Something strange happened, a white-hot flash in my brain. The creatures, the sea butterflies—I now knew the name for these coiled things—would not hurt me. Your language was not heard by my ears, but I understood. The butterflies cleared the area of scrap, of useless things. Filtering out what wasn’t nutritious to them.
I looked at Reuben’s jawbone.
I bolted up and ran. I could not help myself. You could have caught up with me, as my footing was clumsy. I climbed down a shelf, and then another, slipping and scraping my bare arms and sending the clatter of rockfall below. I wish I had not understood anything.
Parents are violent to children, to make them grow.
When I reached flat ground, the sky rotated above me. I dry heaved before blacking out in the dirt.
MATT
I WOKE UP ONCE, hungry, my tongue dry. It was dark and cold. I noticed the absence of insect noise and pulled my knees to my chest.
***
Dawn light slipped through the creases of my eyelids. Water droplets plopped onto the side of my head, rolling down to my nose and lips. But the sky was clear. Something blocked the sun. A pair of knees. Someone was kneeling on the ground, looking down at me. A canteen was set down.
A woman’s voice said, “Hello Matt.”
***
When I woke again it was dim out. There was a blanket draped over my body and something soft rested under my head. The wind carried with it the smell of brine. I realized I was disappointed to be conscious. But there would be no more sleep. My belly groaned.
I sat up to find myself in the shadow of a small trailer. It read, NATIONAL MARINE SACTUARY FOUNDATION in fluorescent letters across the white backdrop. Something about that made me want to laugh. I must have made some exclamation, because that was when Miriam walked into view. She introduced herself at some point, but I’m fuzzy on the details.
Short, wiry, dark-skinned. She was dressed like a gardener. She held a pair of fragging shears in her gloved hands, and a bandanna covered the top of her head. Her large-rimmed glasses, and her grey braids, made me think of a nurturing, grandmotherly figure. This was not what I said to her. In fact, I was rude.
“Who the hell are you supposed to be?”
Her voice was calm in answer. “I’m part of the Coral Restoration Foundation.”
“Oh. Congratulations. I think it worked.” I laughed loudly, lightheaded.
Miriam sat down next to me, unruffled by my behavior. She prepared a plate of dried fruit, salted nuts, and cooked fish. She sat patiently cleaning her coral fragging tools while I ate. A full stomach made me feel more human, made my brain feel less stretched and achy. I didn’t recognize where we were, exactly, as the landscape was flat and desert-like. A few pine trees in the distance were struggling against an outbreak of limestone; coral pipes had grown on one and I swore I saw a small polyp pop out and then retreat back inside.
“How did you know my name?” I asked her.
Miriam looked up then. “Your daughter told me.”
“My—?” I had to swallow against the dryness in my throat. “Right.”
She smiled then, and not unkindly. “The paradigm has shifted. It took me a while to adjust, too.”
I looked at her tools. “I removed several growths in the mountains. They just come back. Have you had any progress?”
Her eyes shone then, her old face crinkling with well-trod smile-lines. “I’m not trying to kill the coral, Matt.”
We walked around the trailer and I saw what can only be described as a garden. Stony corals were planted in rows and clearly cared for. Algae blooms colored several, but others were bare and waiting to be colonized. Miriam’s supplies were in buckets: coral gum to affix growths to rock, several cutting and sawing tools for pruning and fragging. Flanking them like bushes were soft corals of a bright and psychedelic pink, their limbs moving with the slight wind, their branching structure similar to a plant I might recognize, but their blooms fleshier and rubberier. Gorgonians, she called them, and then talked about how easy they were to feed. It was as if we were in the suburbs and she was giving me a tour of the plants lining her walk.
It all started to feel normal. For a moment, it was as if this was someone else’s dream and I was being drafted into it. Miriam smiled at me, and I mirrored it, trapped. I did not know if I was afraid. Confused, certainly. Something kept the fear down, like my senses were dampened.
I asked: “Where is my daughter, then?” This was the first time I acknowledged you.
Miriam waved toward her trailer.
Her trailer was called a “coral bus” by her former—deceased—colleagues. Their mission, in partnership with several universities, was to transport lab-grown corals in the bus to ensure their survival before planting them in their natural habitat. It was a mission of restoration, she explained. “I traveled from Hawai’i to be here, after applying for the research mission. The university where I taught agreed to put me on sabbatical.” She laughed. “Isn’t that funny to talk about now? Sabbatical?” She laughed again.
Miriam was committed to helping restore balance to the ecosystem. I found I admired that.
Before you came to be, when the world was dominated by my kind, there was a crisis. Algae bloom death caused by rising temperatures killed off corals, an essential part of our ecosystem. I understand that it upset the balance of life on Earth, a balance that human beings needed to live comfortably.
I see now, why she was chosen. But more on that later.
Inside the coral bus were more tools and supplies, with rows and rows of shelves containing a coral nursery. The generator had broken long ago, and the temperature was no longer regulated. You were inside, sitting on a bench in the back. Your blood red head turned toward me, but you were resting and gave me no other attention. Puzzled, I stared at you for a long time.
“She had to grow an entire head in a day,” Miriam explained. “Let her rest, dad.” Her hand on my shoulder prompted me to follow her outside again, into the sunshine.
“I cut off her head,” I blurted out, like a child caught in a misdeed.
Miriam smiled warmly and offered her canteen. “Of course.”
Again, the buzzing volume of urgency in my head felt as if it were being deliberately turned down. I looked out over Miriam’s coral garden and focused on a particularly large and yellow soft coral fan. It looked like it had been cast in gold.
It wasn’t that I was able to understand Miriam, so much as see what she was communicating. I found myself standing in the dirt one minute before staring out at the Pacific. I was transported to the view Amanda had, that day on the beach. How she had insisted on her quiet, uneventful day.
There were two surfers, Matt. She pointed and—
—A small boat branded as a research vessel cut through the water in broad daylight. Two surfers straddling their boards saw it, waved. The woman aboard opened a cooler and dumped something into the ocean. It’s Miriam. Her hair is as white as bleached coral. Something with thick tentacles is squirming, splashing. It starfish-stretches under the boat, grows, limbs branching out from the center in a snowflake pattern. Miles and miles below, deep-sea corals ejaculate in response, a storm that rains up to foam and bubble the water’s surface as the surfers are pulled under in silence—
I flinched, lightheaded. “Where did you say you were from, again?”
Miriam took her time before answering. “Hawai’i. I came to UC San Diego to study California’s deep-sea corals. They grow on the continental shelves and canyons in your part of the Pacific. We’d seen unprecedented coral growth around the world, so I was curious to investigate your coast.”
I opened my mouth and then frowned with the sudden onset of a headache. The sensation came back, the seeing behind the words being said.
—Thick rivers of blood drained from an old man’s body as his bones encased him, growing out of precise slits, his mouth open, the sunlight plucking up the algae bloom lining his throat. The tiger sharks deposited him in the water and sailed away on the air for their next victim. He drifted down, down, down until his bones settled on the start of a fringing reef encircling an atoll. The coral ring of human bones grew and bloomed, forming at a record pace, meeting their deep-sea comrades below and then reaching up, up, up—
I felt sick. Miriam.
Miriam did something.
I open my eyes. The water is everywhere, vast and blue. A chain of islands can be seen in the distance. This is Hawai’i. Miriam’s family crossed these waters from the Philippines, and she remembers the stories her grandfather told about the journey. She’d sit in the field while he worked in his large-brimmed hat, and he’d tell her about their ancestors. About how the boat was so small it was like being aboard a splinter in a swimming pool.
The coral is everywhere, too. Under the water, it stretches in all directions. A pulsing brain growing larger and larger still. And there are people down there now, thousands and thousands. I cannot tell how many. They all open their mouths to speak with one voice, bubbles pouring out of the open lips. Miriam dives into the water. Her scuba suit is branded with official university logos. She goes deep, deep down into the dark water, and I see her approach the faces. She inspects them, both of her hands caressing one, then another, looking.
Looking.
She lingers, and so do I. Her grandfather’s face but cast in limestone. A sea fan imitates his gardening hat. She shoves a crowbar into his eye socket, and the shell cracks, a fissure bisecting the face. Something dark pools out of the crack, congeals, writhes. It bleeds black and squirming, fingers grasping to birth itself from his head.
I clapped my hands over my ears. Stop.
The dirt and Torrey pine-dotted landscape of La Jolla rushed back into view. I panted a bit, as if I had actually been underwater. A lightheaded feeling washed over me. Miriam stood next to me, as if we’d only been admiring her garden. My shirt stuck to my skin.
I remembered my phone in my hand, bright and brimming with information, before the internet went down. Hawai’i went first. Nobody could get out. The last flights from there were when? I couldn’t remember the timeline. I was reading articles when Amanda showed the first signs of getting sick. Terms like “heterotopic ossification” scrolled past my fingertips. How did I forget?
The sun felt uncomfortably close. The skin on my back itched. I did not want to acknowledge what was happening, the dream I was partaking in. The dream that was not mine. I forced myself to talk. I forced myself to behave as if I was not having visions. “Right. So you joined Scripps. Sabbatical. Spent time on a research vessel deck crew.”
Miriam smiled in affirmation. “Do not overlook the beauty of it all, Matt. The rapid growth, the health of the air, the life burgeoning from the ocean.” She turned and a pearl of a tear glistened in the corner of her eye.
Miriam sighed, and I flinched. I found that I was close to tears myself. “I need to rest.” I begged her.
“California is so beautiful. It just needed a boost, is all. That’s why I’m here.” She took my hand and squeezed it. “I’m so tired, Matt. But don’t worry. I’ll show you the way.”
MATT
MIRIAM’S DEFT HANDS worked to de-bone a fish. My stomach growled, anticipating the meal. I mentioned the unbidden images coming to me, the headaches. Miriam brushed off my concerns. Finally, she spoke over her shoulder at me. “Evolution shaped our brains, making us what we are. We’re aware, you see. In a way that goes beyond a basic survival instinct. We cry at sunsets. We look at the vast ocean and find it beautiful, right before the fear sets in.”
“You’re scared of the ocean?”
“Everyone is. Because we don’t want to be alone. Life is so hard and so awful that we can’t take it. It doesn’t make any sense.”
“I never felt like that, not really.” I said, squirming in my seated position on a rock. “Before all of this happened, I had a good life. I enjoyed it.”
