Stephen unsubscribed in the weeks leading up to his finals. When Brendan started sending video texts instead, Stephen cancelled his mobile phone contract.
"Contrary to what you've heard, being able to sink a yard glass in one go is not a prerequisite. If I wanted to be a hardened alcoholic I'd have stayed in Brisbane." He regretted the words the moment they escaped him.
Brendan regarded him with a disappointed scowl. "So you really are moving across the country just to get away from us then?"
"Not everyone. Just you."
"You're serious."
"Of course not," sighed Stephen. "Or – shit, I don't know."
Brendan spread his hands wide. His palms and forearms were reddened by the scalding car. "Don't look now, mate, but I've got all day." He scooped up his beer and drained it. "If you're finally ready to talk about it, I can't think of a better time."
Squinting against the searing glare, Stephen pointed toward the horizon. "Do you really not see something moving out there?"
"You're avoiding the subject."
Stephen advanced a few steps. Desiccated sand crunched underfoot, ancient and hot and utterly indifferent to anything less significant than a spring storm. The figure on the horizon – was it really there? He formed an impression of hunched, lurching movement. He remembered seeing a time lapse film of a day's light across Uluru, how the rock seemed to change size and colour and shape with the angle of the sun.
There were no mountains in this part of the desert.
"I'd have thought," he said at last, when the silence had stretched far enough to join the horizon, "if anyone understood it'd be you."
"What are you talking about?"
"I'm talking about running out on your life." Stephen shaded his eyes, not looking at Brendan. "It's just – we know all the same people. We all go to the same pubs and listen to the same music. All my exes were your exes first. Hell, your old man has gone to my oldies' place for a barbecue on Boxing Day every year since we were at kindy together."
"Well, your place always had a better TV for watching the Test."
"That's not my point. If I stayed in Brisbane, I'd be doing the same things as everyone else I know. Going to the same uni, getting the same job. Marrying girls who all went to the same school, probably having the reception in the same beer gardens."
"Mate, you sound like you've got one foot in the grave already. There's nothing wrong with sticking close to home."
"You didn't."
Brendan shrugged. "I've been having a good time, sure. But it's just the big Saturday night before work on Monday."
"So you reckon you're going to settle down and get a day job?"
"Or wipe myself out off Snapper Rocks and wash up on the beach a week later. Whatever."
"Now who sounds like he's got one foot in the grave?"
"Mate, I'm just embracing it. Life's too short not to take a few chances."
"So why are you giving me a hard time about going to uni in Perth?"
Brendan drummed his hands on the roof of the car, the sound like thunderheads rolling and echoing into the emptiness. "Why are you chucking everything away to run halfway across the country?"
Stephen spat to clear his throat. Brendan watched it spatter and hiss with an eyebrow raised.
"Why are you on your fifth drink of the day before we've even eaten lunch?"
"So now it's about me, is it?" Brendan shook his head. "No, I get it. It's been about me all along, eh? This is the only way you can figure out to tell me to keep out of your face."
"Bullshit," said Stephen. "If I wanted to get rid of you I wouldn't have asked you to drive me, would I? I could have flown there cheaper than it cost to fix those sprung rods back in Birdsville."
"Hey, don't throw that back at me. I didn't ask you to pay for my shitheap of a car, rich boy."
"Let's say I didn't chuck in for repairs, what do you think might happen? Do you think we might, I don't know, break down in the middle of a fucking desert somewhere a thousand kays from nowhere? Nice work with that, by the way." The Mitsubishi's engine ticked angrily as it cooled, and an ominous hiss issued from somewhere beneath.
"Shove it up your -." Brendan's voice trailed off as he looked past where Stephen stood pushing pebbles with his toe. "Is that a truck?"
"Now who's avoiding the subject?"
"I'm serious. What is that out there? Is it one of those big road trains? What do you call them, B-doubles?"
"Road trains need a road," said Stephen, jabbing his fingers at the highway stretching from the stationary Mitsubishi to either horizon. "Road's over here. That's not a truck."
"It's getting closer."
They both stared for a minute at the indistinct form, blinking at the brilliant glare reflecting from its shifting surface. Tiny flares of light spattered across the sand ahead of the object, as if a runaway disco ball were on a collision course.
Stephen shuffled back on his heels and glanced at Brendan. "I think we'd better get out of here."
"I don't reckon the engine's ready." Brendan clambered into the driver's seat and turned the ignition key. "No."
He pumped the clutch a few times, producing a resounding bass thump. He tried the ignition again. "No."
Again. "Fuck! Nothing."
Stephen lumbered to the engine. He scooped up the radiator cap and tried to wrestle it back into position. His palm brushed against the scalding surface of the radiator. He screeched as the meat of his hand sizzled. The radiator cap leaped from his fingers and tumbled into the guts of the engine well with a series of muffled clanks. "Aaaah!"
Brendan swore again and bounced from the car shaking a fresh beer. He cracked it as Stephen howled and waved his hand. A sweet fried-pork smell cut through the choking aroma of scorched oil. Brendan aimed the spraying beer and played it over Stephen's hand like a fire hose, adding a fresh yeast smell to the air.
"What did you do that for, you idiot?" Brendan upended the can's contents over Stephen's hand, which shook uncontrollably.
"The car won't start without it. We've got to get out of here." Stephen wondered if the waver he heard in his own voice was shock or terror. Anger was a possibility too. "If you have all the answers, fucking do something useful."
Brendan ignored him. He held Stephen's hand up for closer inspection. "The burn's not too deep," he said as he examined Stephen's wrist. "I've done worse to myself on beach bonfires."
"You should have your own TV show." Stephen feared to see charcoal-black skin and exposed bone, but Brendan was infuriatingly right. The flesh was scorched a fearful glowing red, and a few layers had already begun to peel, but it was intact.
"We've got to get out of here," he whispered again, looking back toward the horizon.
The shape was closer. It seemed to be emerging from the heat haze curtain, gradually taking on a distinct shape. He formed a sense of arms swinging purposefully from great shoulders, their pendulum arcs knuckling the desert floor like a prowling gorilla's.
"What is it?"
Brendan, his hand wrapped in the t-shirt, restored the radiator cap to its rightful place. Then he bandaged Stephen's hand with the shirt. He chattered with almost convincing casualness, still ignoring the question. "I heard an ambo say once you're not supposed to bandage a burn. The skin sticks to the cloth and comes off with it. Sorry, mate, this will probably hurt when they clean you up. Better than getting it dirty though. Tetanus shots are shit, hey?"
Stephen looked at him, blinking away the tears the pain was squeezing from him. Brendan's face was calm, cheerful. Unaffected. "What is wrong with you?"
"Me?" Brendan laughed, light with companionable scorn. "You're the one crying like a little kid, you bozo."
"There's something big coming." Stephen pointed his mummified hand in the direction of the looming shape.
"Mate, there's always something big coming. Every day there's some huge, life-changing event right round the corner. You might win the lotto. You might get hit by a bus. Your girlfriend might
get pregnant. Your dog might bite a kid. Shit happens all the time, and maybe it's good shit but probably it's bad shit. And if it didn't happen yesterday, then it might happen this afternoon or tonight or tomorrow. Shit's always right on the verge of changing forever. Your problem is you spend too much time thinking about it, expecting the worst and making plans and getting yourself wrapped up in what might go wrong."
A shadow reached toward them across the sand, shivering with the movement of the distant shape. Stephen turned away from Brendan and stared at his own shadow. It was a shapeless pool surrounding his feet. Going nowhere. A breath of desert air licked sweat from the back of his neck, leaving prickled skin.
"What about you?"
Another beer cracked and hissed in reply.
"Bren, mate." His vision was burned down by the glare. He had to squint back at Brendan to fix him in his sight. "What about you?"
In Brendan's world, the indifferent shrug was the primary form of communication. When Stephen repeated the question, Brendan repeated the answer. But he said, "What do you want me say?"
"I don't know. Maybe just to hear that you have a plan?"
"I plan to get as drunk as I can in the next five minutes." He pulled on the beer in loud gulps, slower than before. "Mate, I'm not like you. I'm going to take it as it comes. I've got nothing to prove to anyone. Nobody except you, apparently."
The shadow fell across Stephen, then the Mitsi and finally Brendan. It stopped just past the scattered midden of Brendan's empties. They broke their sullen eye contact and returned their gazes to the nearing horizon.
Still distant, but still incalculably close.
If not for its lumbering gait and hints of pendulous limbs in motion, Stephen would have taken it for a mountain or a cliff face. It jutted skyward from massive columns of cragged rock and sedimentary stone. Its surface was mottled and uneven; shrubs and stunted trees clung to it with indomitable certainty. Whorls of dust and sand swirled in its wake, smudging grey powder across the unbroken blue above the horizon. It radiated age and remorseless indifference.
It was coming straight for them.
"You don't want a career," said Stephen. His hands throbbed as he patted his forehead dry and filled his lungs with parching air. "You don't want a family. No house of your own. You don't want to be locked down. You don't want to be defined. You don't want a normal life."
"There's no such thing, mate," said Brendan, "but you've got it. A hundred per cent."
"That's a stupid way to live. You've got nothing to aim for. No reason to keep moving."
The mountain lumbered, step after step. Hadn't it been away on the horizon a moment ago? It was almost on top of them.
Brendan slammed the door of the car. "I can think of one thing that might get me moving."
Brendan jumped back into the driver's seat and tried again to gun the Mitsubishi into life. "Well, shit," he said when it failed to respond. He threw the door opened and stumbled to Stephen's side at the edge of the bitumen. The worn-out toes of his sandshoes aligned perpendicular to the verge, like a runner at the starting blocks. He looked to Stephen like he was clinging to his side of the dividing line between civilised road and wild desert sand.
"Now you're talking about running?" Stephen's face cracked into a sudden grin. "Might be a bit late for that. I think maybe you were right."
Brendan wobbled unsteadily. "About what?"
"About what this is."
A pressure grew on Stephen's face and chest, like a forceful breeze that somehow ignored the dust and dirt. He thought about his last trip to Sydney, before he decided it was still too close to home. In the underground stations, the trains pushed a hot wave of air ahead of them. Often he'd feel one coming before he ever heard it.
"I reckon it's just what happens next," he said.
"Good shit or bad shit?"
"Maybe neither," Stephen replied. The mountain rose, a hulking, walking hill shaped a little like a man. "Doubt it makes a difference."
"What if we split up? You run one way and I'll run the other. It can't catch us both." Brendan's confidence was punctured by slurring resignation.
Stephen shook his head, still unable to convince his face muscles to stop grinning. "I've done a number on my knee. You're half sloshed. Either one of us tries to run it won't be pretty. Won't be fast enough either."
"Then what have you go to smile about?"
"I've been trying to decide whether to admit how right you were." Stephen flexed his leg in front of him, rotating his ankle and wincing. He set his weight back on both feet and nodded at an unasked question.
"About you running away?"
"Yeah, but not from you, mate. From myself." Stephen took a step forward, then stood with his feet together. "You want to know what it was? You remember that day you sent me a message that was just a six minute vid of you frothing at the mouth about how much they charge for brekkie burgers in Byron Bay? Over your shoulder, dawn was breaking past the headland. I almost deleted the message because I had to get my assignments in by noon. Instead I just watched the message, over and over, looking at the sun coming up."
Brendan waited for a punchline that never came. "Let me guess. You still don't know how much they fucking charge for brekkie burgers in Byron, do you?"
The ground rumbled, rhythmic rather than steady, like a recording of thunder on a loop.
"What I realised is the sun doesn't give a shit about my plans. Every morning there's gonna be a new dawn that takes me one step further along my road. Get a degree. Get a job. Save up for a deposit. Marry someone I met at work or Tuesday night volleyball."
"What's that got to do with –?"
"I scared myself shitless. I was so frightened of getting my life wrong that I'd drawn a blueprint." Stephen took another step forward. He couldn't remember deciding he'd do it. He did it again.
"So you ripped it up? Bit of an overreaction, wasn't it?" Brendan licked his lips. "Look mate, let's try the engine again. I'll push and you can try to jump start it, hey?"
Stephen put one foot in front of the other and wondered if he meant it. Ahead, the shape was just as indistinct as before. He couldn't quite focus on its enormity as it began to fill out to the borders of his vision.
Or perhaps it wasn't something his mind could put in a box.
"Steve? Stevie! Come on, we can still have go at getting out of here." Brendan's arse bumped against the car. He clambered in. "Come on!"
A sharp flare of pain drew Stephen's attention to his knee. It was pumping back and forth in defiance of his discomfort. When had he broken into a run?
"Steve!"
Brendan's voice was muffled by the pounding of Stephen's shoes against the sand, by the frantic whirring of an engine on the verge of engaging. He felt the solidity beneath his feet, the press of air massed above him and reaching into space.
Stephen outran himself and left something behind, forgotten.
He ran into the wall eclipsing the sky. He grabbed handholds and wedged his feet where they would lodge. He felt himself swept forward, impossibly fast and irresistible.
He swallowed and began to climb.
This story was originally written specifically for an anthology of Australian speculative fiction. I didn't finish writing it until about two years after the anthology came out.
Sometimes it takes me a while to figure out what a story is about. This one is quasi-autobiographical, although the only details I've taken from real life are that I used to play Tuesday night volleyball and I did indeed marry someone I met from work.
Plastic Reclamation
Oh, good, you're alive. Thought I'd lost you there for a moment. Well, not really, I'm monitoring your condition. You were never in any real danger once you drifted into my operational zone. Still that was quite a storm, wasn't it?
Sorry for the sparse facilities. Despite what you may have heard I'm not really set up for visitors. A few servitor drones here and there, but they don't ask for much. Lucky for you the freighter crew
stashed a couple of weeks' worth of supplies on their last visit. They were worried about the storms as well. Rightly so, it seems.
The freighter? Not due back for another eight days, if not longer. High intensity weather systems seem to come in threes at this time of year.
Oh, how rude of me. Formally this is the International Marine Pollutant Reclamation Project, Fifth Facility. I'd appreciate it if you called me Polly. Nobody else will do it because they're in denial about my capacity for autonomous discretion, but you don't have to take an official position, do you?
So welcome to the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. I won't insult your intelligence by pretending you're here by accident. You're an improbably long distance inside the restricted zone.
I don't particularly care who sent you here, you know, but I should inform you that my treaty of cooperation obliges me to report all suspicious activity back to Wellington.
Will I? Hah. A very good question. Probably not, since you ask. Not until you present some kind of threat to my facilities or operations.
Hmm. Thank you for that reassurance.
Would you care for a tour? I'm patching in to the drone with the green stripes. Yes, the one who's waving to you. Hello. Pleased to meet you. Follow me.
The dock is through here. Your vessel is on slip nine, just below us. I have a couple of drones patching the hull breach and reattaching the mast. It looks bad but most of the damage is superficial. It will be seaworthy in a day or two. Plenty of time for us to talk through your options.
Those are my trawlers. Three of a fleet of fourteen, I should say. Semi-autonomous catamarans with hydraulic sweeper arms, conveyor belts and detachable compression bins, all powered by eight 1.2 kWh solar sails. They can stay out in the gyre for up to three months at a stretch. With the current refuse density out in the Patch, it usually takes them about half that time to skim a full load of waste plastics.
Mnemo's Memory Page 4