Upgraded

by Peter Watts

  The woman was talking. “IV drip stand is in the closet. I want to get the location on Alexis before we have to chase her across the country.”

  Lan took a breath and loaded her program into working memory. She said goodbye to herself and let it fly across her core.

  The girl opened her eyes. A woman sat in front of her, looking somehow angry, and a series of letters that the girl couldn’t really understand flashed in the upper corner of her vision. The girl cocked her head to the side.

  “Your eyes are blue,” the girl said. Her brows were raised, eyes wide. “Azure. Cyan. Indigo. I knew those once.”

  Fusion

  Greg Mellor

  Glen walks down onto the bright sand. The tide is receding but he can still see waves pounding on the reef in the distance. Above the spray the sky is streaked with long white clouds. The backpack digs into his shoulders and he adjusts the straps and steps onto a rocky plateau fanning out from the headland. Colorful anemones shrink from his shadow as he leaps over pools left from the tide. Strange hermit crabs retreat into shells. There is a silver patina blending with the ancient rock layers that he hasn’t noticed before. It’s almost geometric in its structure but he doesn’t stop to ponder such mysteries.

  The plateau soon narrows down to a thin land bridge stretching out to the horizon. He sets off at a fast pace, striding from stone to stone. The faint mechanical tick in his breathing provides a comforting tempo. When he estimates he is halfway across he pauses to take a drink from his canteen. Out here the ocean is flat and mirror-like. The wind surges in humid gusts and the glare is intense and he curses out loud for forgetting his hat. Sweat beads on his forehead. The alloy skin on his right hand expands and flexes with the heat.

  There’s a ledge here on one side of the land bridge where the rock is flaky and dry and the washed up seaweed smells of decay. A man is sitting on the ledge facing away from Glen. He’s dressed in tattered rags and his arms are tanned like leather. His hair is gray and long and windblown.

  You don’t have much time, boy, the stranger says without turning around.

  Glen realises that the tide has changed. Clouds are rushing in from the north. Shading his eyes he glances east along the path ahead. The horizon is murky above the land bridge and he can’t see much at all except for the tales in his mind’s eye of lands across the water. He turns and looks west along the path he has traveled. The headland is a small brown lump blending into white beaches either side. He remembers a time on those vast sands when a whale washed up to shore. Its hide was covered in blotches and barnacles but there had been no sign of abnormal growths. Some living things, he knew, were still fully natural. He had waited for hours by the leviathan’s side, small and safe beneath that ancient eye, listening to the waning hammer blows of its heart. When he returned the next day the beach was empty and he felt that something had been irretrievably lost from the world.

  He looks now at the stranger’s back, wondering if the man is indeed full flesh like the whale. Then the stranger turns as if sensing Glen’s unspoken question. His face is alloy and reflects the sky. Terrifying mutated eyes bulge out on stalks.

  Be careful what you wish for, the stranger says.

  Glen quickly shoulders his pack and runs east and doesn’t look back. A cross wind threatens to slow his progress and with it comes sand and leaves from some place along the coast. He soldiers on, head down against the stinging particles, boots scraping against the rocks. The sky darkens with the onrush of the late storm pushed south from the tropics. Waves begin to pound the land bridge and shower him in curtains of water streaked with fading rainbows from the last light of the sun.

  He stumbles in the gray, clothes sodden and water curling off his chin and alloy hand, which feels warmer than the other. Lightning strobes across the sky and he sees the corpse he had tripped over. Hollow eyes in a grinning skull. Legs bent beneath its body with one ankle snagged under a rock. Alloy ribs exposed where sea denizens had stripped the full flesh away.

  He sings a song from the nomad camps. It’s an old song that is part lament, part celebration of the transformation of flesh. It blocks out the shriek of the wind and the crash of the waves. It doesn’t block the memories.

  See, Lizzy says.

  She holds up a fish Glen just caught in the shoals. The creature is struggling for air, its mouth opening and closing stupidly. Glen watches in disbelief as she guts the thing with her morphing hooks that substitute for fingers. She eats the flesh.

  He shrieks in disgust. Stop. You can’t eat it. Tell her, Mum. I was going to throw it back in . . . Lizzy!

  Mum sits on the sand with her legs tucked up against her chest and her hair shining bronze. She says nothing and continues to scratch at the metallic lumps protruding out of her cheeks like small tusks.

  You were always holier than thou, Lizzy says between mouthfuls of raw fish.

  We have to preserve nature.

  Not anymore.

  Tell her, Mum. Please.

  Mum sighs. Leave your sister alone, Glen. We have to eat.

  Lizzy sneers. Yeah, leave me alone, holy boy. Think you’re gonna find the angels across the water one day? Well no one from round here ever made it. What makes you think you’re any different?

  Sounds of the storm filter back in. He sprints now, as much from the past as the surging elements. His lips tremble with cold and fear. Before he knows it the ground changes and he’s running up a slope covered with wild tussock grass and broken gum trees. He reaches out and grips a shattered tree trunk. The ocean behind him covers the land bridge in large swells. Waves break at odd angles and surge up to his feet. He kicks against the ground and crawls higher until he finds the shelter of a tree. The sky howls and darkens under the full force of the cyclone and he hugs the tree with all his remaining strength and wonders if the very earth will be uprooted and flung into the sky.

  By evening the storm twists away as quickly as it came, leaving the sound of the waves and the faint tick of his cooling alloy and the voices of the dead still stirring in his head.

  At some point during the night he sleeps.

  In the morning the sky is a blanket of gray clouds with red underbellies. Sunshine slants through in patches as if hesitant to bring warmth. The ocean to the west is a dull gray expanse carved with white tops. The ground he is on forms a wide promontory rising to misty heights to the east. There are things shining up there but he can’t tell whether it’s water falling off rocky outcrops or something else. Ice?

  The rations in his pack are soaked and spoilt. He pulls out the rope and the knife and bandages and spare clothes and lays them out on the grass to dry. He quickly stifles the idea of going back to the shore to catch a fish and instead finds some wild berries and fills his canteen from a freshwater pool that appears to have formed during the storm.

  Afterwards he packs and continues up the hillside. Sunlight casts the mist aglow and lifts his spirits as he walks. The incline steepens but the ground is solid and his legs are strong. Alloy not flesh. And still no sign of mutation even after fifteen winters. He wonders at that. His Mum blessed him for it. His sister hated him for it. The thought dampens his good mood and by evening he’s tired and hungry. He makes a fire on a small ledge from twigs and eats more of the berries. The remains of old camps litter the ledge and he speculates as to how many pilgrims have ventured here in search of answers. Then he remembers the stranger with the eyes and he holds his hands closer to the fire and wonders if there really are answers to be found at all.

  The embers dwindle in the small hours and mist cocoons his location. In the gray predawn the air currents shift to create a gap above. Stars glitter through. From this vantage point he can see a black expanse rising in the east like a void that fills him with dread. It’s as if something had wedged a blade into the earth, taller than the mountains of his dreams.

  The mist coils back over and try as he may he can’t unravel the knots tightening his gut.

  He lies awake until morning.


  His eyes are gritty and his mind is full of tainted memories. He hikes until the mist clears to reveal a plateau littered with rocks. There is a broad cliff with wispy waterfalls at the end of the plateau. At the top of the cliff, the land slopes back into crumpled terrain covered by a sprawling favella. There are green pastures and animals in pens on the outskirts of the town and mirrored dishes that reflect harsh sunlight and create spots across his vision. Above the favella the land steepens to the ominous blade peak he had seen during the night.

  He sees movement out along the plateau. A pack of wild dogs is chasing a girl dressed in black. She carries a bow and quiver of arrows slung over her back. She clubs one of the dogs across the snout with her bow but another one manages to get in close and mauls her ankle.

  Glen races forward and waves his arms and claps his hands.

  Hoy!

  The pack turns as one. They sniff the air and growl and bare yellow fangs. Glen pulls out the knife. Every instinct tells him to run but he holds steady as the dogs lope toward him. The first one is taken clean but its momentum snaps the knife from his grip. He rolls to one side as the second dog clamps its jaws onto his alloy arm. Up this close Glen can see that most of the animal’s fur has transformed to metallic spikes. He kicks the dog hard with as much power as he can muster. Once. Twice. The thing falls dead without a sound, its head and ribs crushed.

  He spins around ready for another attack but the girl takes down the three remaining dogs with arrows. He watches through the silky lens of adrenalin as she limps up to him. She’s older by a good three winters, has an air of confidence he hasn’t got in this strange country. Her hair is dark and plaited and her face is hawkish and her legs are long beneath the black leather. She is by far the most beautiful thing he has ever seen.

  Thank you, friend, she says. What’s your name?

  Glen.

  I’m Rose.

  He’s not sure what to say at the way her pale eyes rummage into his soul as if seeking some immediate truth.

  Better get that wound checked, she says.

  He realises his shirt is all torn. The alloy along his forearm is punctured and oozing blood laced with black.

  Ditto, he says pointing to her torn trousers where her natural ankle is raw and bleeding freely. The rest of her alluring white calf is exposed but unscathed.

  He looks away.

  She laughs. Come on, we should leave. There are worse things up here than mad dogs and lost boys. She winks at him.

  Glen retrieves his knife and Rose retrieves her arrows.

  He points at the strange looking peak.. What kind of mountain is that?

  It’s not a mountain.

  She leads him to the foot of the cliff where a manmade staircase takes them up around the waterfalls. About half way up they find a cave. The roar of the water is like a balm and stops his thoughts from spinning. He fills their canteens while Rose cleans the bites on her ankle. She lets him apply a bandage. He’s self conscious with her closeness and the way her soft skin glows in the faint light. He shies away when she reaches to his wounded arm.

  What’s the matter?

  Nothing.

  She grabs his sleeve and yanks it up and gasps. You’re a healer, she says, brushing her palm across the unblemished alloy.

  He shrugs and pulls his sleeve down. If that’s what you call it, he says. Some days it feels lighter and stronger than flesh. Sometimes it feels like a phantom limb and it makes me think I might become a ghost that was once human. Maybe that’s what the angels are. Fully cybernetic. No need to eat or drink. No need to claw every day to survive.

  Her look is serious. You wouldn’t be the first to think like that.

  He shrugs again.

  What about your legs? You smashed that dog pretty hard.

  I was born with them. They feel different to the new parts. He taps the alloy beneath his trousers, knowing now he would never have made it across the land bridge with natural legs.

  She holds his hand. You should consider yourself lucky.

  Why? I hate knowing this plague in my veins kills everyone around me sooner or later.

  I’m sorry, she says. We’ve all lost family.

  Now he feels bad.

  There’s no need to look so gloomy, she says and stands tentatively on her ankle. Come with me.

  They pack their gear and he follows her out of the cave and on up the stairs to the top of the cliff. After a short march across grassy knolls below the favella, they come to a narrow ledge jutting over open sky. Rose crawls out onto the ledge and waves for Glen to follow. He approaches cautiously and peers over the ledge. Wind billows up from two kilometers of open air and thumps into his lungs and he whoops out loud. Rose smiles and he notices the telltale sign of emerging mutation along her neckline. A pattern of veins like a tattoo scrolling from her ear lobe to her shoulder and down along the top of her chest and beneath the drawstrings of her leather top. He knows she has noticed him. She points to the scenery far below. There are green fields laced with silver. Farmsteads and lanes crisscross the landscape. The ocean curves away to the west and south.

  My home was down there, she says. All these lands were once beneath the ocean they used to call the Pacific.

  The name sounds strange to Glen. He follows her gaze to his left along the southern face of the blade peak. She was right; it’s not a mountain at all but a wedge of land rammed upwards with incredible force. Whatever caused it is out of sight on the eastern face, but Glen can see its impossibly long shadow angling across the farmlands. He works it through in his head, begins to picture something long and straight-edged jutting out of the earth at a shallow angle.

  The mutations are worse the closer you get to it, Rose says.

  So you don’t know what it is?

  No, she says. There’s so much knowledge lost. Some people call it the splinter. I heard an angel once call it the star bridge before he died. Others just call it home.

  He feels suddenly nauseated and rolls on his back and closes his eyes. The sun is pale and strangely distant and doesn’t warm his skin.

  The favella is surprisingly clean. A patchwork quilt of shanties and corrugated sheets and steel salvaged from the industrial epoch. There is technology here. Shining solar dishes provide power to the township and a dam and pipes capture the rainwater off the peak. There’s an orchard with fruit trees and a stockyard with some cattle and sheep. A modest trade of breads and leather and pottery exists. Glen meets new friends and is welcomed as one of their own, but before long he knows this is a ghost town. The mutations are mostly advanced and horrific, though there are a few like him and Rose who have yet to manifest abnormalities.

  On the sunny days he forages with her along the highlands where the wild fruits and grains are threaded with delicate traces of silver. He moves into her shanty and accumulates things that might be useful for the journey ahead including a spike hammer and a tent and a thick woolen jacket. Despite the desire to keep moving forward he still finds himself settling into a disturbingly comfortable routine. Rose calls him a real homemaker, but he shrugs it off until one day in the middle of his sixteenth winter, as they lay talking before the open fire, she takes his hand and presses it to her breast. He stirs and is suddenly forgetful of the world. From then on the days turn into weeks in the warmth of their shanty as storms churn down the coast that used to be called Queensland.

  The alloy spreads across Glen’s skin during the winter. His left arm is transformed and his spine feels supple and stronger. The mechanical rhythm in his breathing seems to smooth out considerably and he wonders whether it’s the thin air or something else going on inside.

  On a chill day when the rain drums on the corrugated roof and forms copper-colored stains in the mud, he makes his way to the evangelist. Much of the township’s solar power feeds to the hut and when Glen steps inside he has to hold his sleeve to his nose. The hut is filled with the pungent smell of weeping sores and metallic growths covering the evangelist’s chubby l
imbs. Bundles of cables form a throne of sorts, connecting monitors on the evangelist’s limbs to stacked boxes that work some old magic of computation. Tubes full of blood and other fluids lead into pumps and devices that whir softly in the background. Shelves around the hut are covered with charts and baroque mechanical devices and instruments.

  The evangelist’s breath wheezes in and out through a mask. There are broken cities to the south, he says between the click of his respirator. Sydney. Melbourne.

  Glen had heard the legends. Is that where the equipment comes from?

  Some of it. But that’s not the real reason why you’re here, is it?

  No, Glen says glancing at the throne of cables. Is there a cure?

  Ah, the evangelist says. I’ve been trying for years to figure that one out. But I’ve since come to the conclusion that it’s the wrong question.

  What do you mean?

  There is no cure. I’ll give you that for free. Besides, a cure would assume we are dealing with a disease.

  Glen frowns, now uneasy with the conversation.

  The evangelist smiles and coughs up phlegm. Oh, come now, there’s no need to be coy. I think you already knew it or at least suspected the truth is not always so simple. I’ll never be an angel but that won’t stop me trying to control the spread of this wondrous thing in my veins. Then I’ll be like you.

  Glen chooses his next words carefully. You know about my abilities?

  You’ve done well to hide it this long but that doesn’t stop the rumour mongers. Your secret is safe with me but at some point . . .

  What’s the price?

  The evangelist clasps his sweaty hands together. Cables move as he moves. The pumps stir more fluids. A sample of your blood, he says.

  Glen turns and walks to the door. Before I leave. I’ll give you some before I leave.

  The evangelist points to some equipment on a bench. Take those. You’ll need them. But then again, maybe you won’t.