Chapter 7

The waves crashed against the sandbar, the ground under Ben dry and sticking to his body. The air had a distinctly fishy smell, and so did he. His lips were dry and his eyes felt sticky when he forced them open.

The sky was purple today.

Ben shut his eyes and tried to get comfortable, then abruptly opened them and shot up when he remembered what he'd been using as a pillow. The giant green fish that, in the light of day resembled a bladed tuna with a horn and spikes, shone brightly in the sun. The air around the alien tuna had just the faintest whiff of a fishy smell; it wouldn't be good to eat for much longer.

Ugh, a man's gotta do what a man's gotta do, but this man’s gotta find a better place to get some sleep tonight. His shark bite hurt, but had scabbed over and wasn’t bleeding. His entire front was chapped and sore from pretending to be a motorboat. His utility pocket was half full of sea-water and raw fish. Yet, he could barely feel any of that for one, simple, reason.

Ben smacked his lips, his tongue not quite moving as frictionlessly as it should through his mouth.

“Water,” he croaked, looking out at the ocean and feeling the urge to laugh. He walked out to the edge of the small beach he was on. His skin felt like jerky, rubbing against itself in an itchy, painful way.

This was horrible. Ben couldn't believe he'd had a fantasy about having sex on the beach, he now realized what a remarkably uncomfortable experience that would have been.

He walked out far enough for his feet to be submerged and dipped his index finger into the water, then brought it to his mouth.

“Salty. That's just not going to work, buddy.”

Ben scanned the sea for a fin and saw only flat ocean all the way to the horizon in all directions. He cupped his hands over his mouth, making a crude amplifier.

“Oi!” Ben shouted, his voice coming out as a weak croak at first. He coughed then tried again, “Oi! Short Bus, you out there?”

Moments passed, then a fin rose from the water moving along at a lazy pace.

“I'm here, good morning, Ben! How did you sleep? Did you see the announcement? The Apocalypse! Just like on Earth!”

“I slept as well as I could, and yeah, I saw it. It's troubling,” Ben said honestly, “but I need to find some water, and soon.”

“Water?” the shark replied, clearly indicating the entire ocean with his tone.

“I can't drink that,” Ben said simply, “it'll make me sick.”

“Drink?” the shark said, again, his tone indicating a clear lack of connection to the concept.

“Yes, I need fresh water,” Ben said, reaching around his brain for something Short Bus, a shark, would be familiar with, “No salt, like the kind in a river; oh! Like the kind that pours out into the ocean from land, where the rivers empty into the ocean!”

“Do you mean an estuary?” Short Bus said, a hint of reprimand in his tone at the insult to his intelligence.

“Yes, an estuary,” Ben said with relief, “is there anything like that around?”

“No, but I imagine you were looking for land when I found you passed out, right?”

“Right,” Ben affirmed.

“I've yet to see land, but you were not heading towards any. You were headed towards the deep ocean, away from land, Ben. These are strange waters to plunge into, mark my words.”

“How do you know I was going the wrong way, if you haven't seen any land?”

“I'm a shark,” he said, “do you think I can't tell my face from my caudal?” Ben gave Short Bus a blank look and despite the distance between the two, and the fact that Short Bus was underwater, he seemed to be able to tell. “Caudal, my back fin Ben. My head from my ass, that's how a human would say it.”

“Oh, r-right,” Ben said, coughing a little, and suddenly feeling insecure about the fact that a shark might actually have a better vocabulary than him. Ben wasn't stupid, he just hadn't had much chance to be smart the last five or so years, what with him being a manual shovel operator/technician and all.

“It's inherently obvious which direction a continental shelf is standing,” he said, and Ben realized the shark was calling him stupid by using a bunch of big words. The fucking shark was shit-talking him. Ben couldn't help but smile.

“Oh yeah,” Ben replied, stretching with his arms, “just like how it's intuitively obvious how to pick something up with my hands, excuse me, my phalanges. Fins are ok too,” he said too quickly, then started stretching his hands and wiggling his phalanges in what could be considered a total dick move kind of way.

“Quiet you,” Short Bus said, then said more quietly and to himself, “just you wait, I'll get some damn arms, and then you'll all see what a shark can do.”

“Ok, but seriously,” Ben said, the feeling of being painfully dry, itchy, and thirsty eroding his good humor, “you know where land is? Better yet, any kind of freshwater at all?”

“I know which way land is, but I don't know how far,” Short Bus said, “how urgently do you need water?”

“Very urgently,” Ben said with extreme certainty.

“I'm fortunate to have found this sand-bar,” Short Bus said, sounding concerned, “there's nothing around here for a long time, and I don't know this ocean well at all. Are you sure you can't just drink what's here?”

“No! Not unless I-” Then, Ben stopped talking.

“Ben?” Short Bus asked, “Not unless you what?”

“Call me stupid, you overgrown tuna,” Ben muttered to himself, “Short bus, what's down there, on the ocean floor? Is there anything I could use like a really shallow, wide bowl? Scratch that, is there anything I could use to hold water at all?”

“I'll look,” Short Bus said, and his fin dipped below the waves.

The sun was brutal, its light felt harsh on his skin, and the sand above the water was dry already. Ben, having nothing better to do, went over to the enormous fish and started trying to figure out a way to get something useful out of it.

He reached into the hole he'd made and started, with more care and awareness than the previous night, removing messy handfuls of meat and storing them in his utility pocket, enough for a few meals.

When he'd first started using the utility pocket in the ocean to propel himself around, it had felt like he was able to hold an unlimited volume of water; now, in a survival situation, he was suddenly aware of how precious every cubic inch really was. It was a big space, true, but it also wasn't a big space.

The unrelenting sun pounded down on him, and there was no shade to cool himself anywhere, no relief. He sagged down, looking out at the ocean with the mixed feelings of longing and frustration. Longing, because if he was swimming in the water, at least he would be cool. Frustration, because if he was swimming in the water, some monster could snatch him up before he even knew it.

The sound of the waves crashing against the shore should have made him mad, but instead had the opposite effect, calming him with its hypnotic rhythm.

What if, Ben thought to himself, the reason people were put into a calm, trance-like state from sound like this, was that it made them want to stay on the beach?

He imagined it like this: A group of primitive humans emerged from the jungle and explored for a while, and then came onto a beach. It was strange, and they didn't like it, so they went back to the jungle and all got eaten by panthers or something. Then, another group did the same thing and the cycle repeated over and over again, till someone had the mutation that made them stop and listen to the waves for hours and be like 'Well, this is nice. I'll live here,' and then discover how much food was on the beach, and how much easier life was next to an ocean.

Ben looked up from his half-delirious hallucination, scanned the horizon for a fin, and tried to dive back into the fantasy. Nope, he lost it, right about the part where he impressed some really good looking female with all the food he had in his palm-leaf hut; the good part.

“Wish I had a palm leaf hut,” Ben muttered, “or some damn shade- wait!” he said, suddenly excited. Ben opened a utility pocket the size of a CD about a foot over his hand and looked for a shadow with eager eyes.

“Fuck,” he said, when he didn't see one, then he tried bringing it closer and closer. Eventually, when it was about two inches away, it did cast a shadow, but only a faint one. Then Ben got the bright idea, pardon the pun, to try and capture the sunlight with his utility pocket to get some shade.

It failed, the only thing he ended up storing was air, which he ejected as a compressed gust, frustrated. The sand scattered from the blast, and Ben didn't have anything better to do, so he started filling up the utility pocket with as much air as he could, then blasting it out; like a kid with a balloon.

First, he went gently, pushing around a few grains of sand. Then, he went harder, then harder, then finally pushing it until his mind hurt, which was his logical limit.

His limit right now was about as strong as a small air compressor; strong, but not useful in a fight. He might be able to go harder, but it wasn't going to be unless he had to.

Ben soon reached peak boredom. What is peak boredom? Well, first, Ben grabbed a handful of sand and dumped it into the utility pocket.

Then, he started ejecting it, one grain at a time, based on the color of the grain of sand. Soon he had a tiny pile of black sand, a tiny pile of white sand, a tiny pile of slightly pink sand, and a very tiny pile of miscellaneous debris. There was also a pile of tiny white salt crystals. Ben smiled, gathered up the tiny pile of black sand and the salt, then yelled and destroyed the area like a kid will do to a sand-castle.

He must have spent two hours doing that nonsense! His brain hurt both from the mana usage and from the sheer focus he'd needed to do that. When the sand had gone into the utility pouch, it had appeared like a big lump, and if he'd ejected it, it would have come out as a big lump.

Even so, if he focused on it long enough, he became aware of its composition to a certain degree, and after that it had been a matter of fine mental control to start sorting through the mass of very tiny pebbles.

Ben immediately began examining the salt-water, feeling a surge of excitement as he did so. What was matter anyways but a bunch of atomic-sized pebbles! All he had to do was find the salt pebbles and separate them from the water pebbles! Genius! Ben had a crazed, manic expression on his face, his mind turned entirely inward as he focused on the water. Deeper. . . deeper. . . he saw little bits of stuff here and there, flecks of plant matter. Deeper. . . but no matter how deep he went, he couldn't seem to find the salt. Further, when he came out of it, his head felt like it was going to split in half.

"God, that would have been easy," Ben said, falling backwards onto the sand, trying to ignore the pain. He practically sobbed when he saw the fin circling the sandbar, which was getting smaller as the tide rose.

“Short Bus, you great beautiful fish. Did you find anything?”

“Yes, I believe I have,” he said, “but that's the good news. What I found is not very deep, for me, but I cannot grab it with my mouth. It's completely out of my reach.”

“Ok,” Ben said, voice positive, “show me where it is! I've got arms, remember? Phalanges!” Ben started wiggling his fingers like a crystal-meth junkie doing jazz hands. Dehydration makes utter fools of us all.

“All right,” Short Bus said, “I'll show you. Come out into the water and follow after me. You can hang on if you like-” he said, but was interrupted by Ben jumping into the water, gathering a pocket full of ocean and jetting himself past the oceanic native.

“Come on, slow-poke, move your caudal!”

“Ha, slow?” Short Bus roared, telepathically of course, and surged forward, eight thousand pounds of pure marine predator keeping pace with a hundred and ninety pounds of magic-propelled land monkey. His fin cut the water and made white waves, and Ben pushed himself even harder, the need for freshwater overriding the logical part of his brain, the gamer part of him, that was constantly trying to balance optimum mana usage against speed and-

Who cares! Ben thought. He'd slow down when he was tired, and he'd speed up when he wasn't. It hadn't been very long, but due to its critical role in his survival, he was quickly eroding the barrier between the utility pocket and himself, and starting to just think of it as a new limb. A very useful new limb that let him race great white sharks and sort sand with superhuman precision.

Ben pushed it, the water chapping against his sunburn, bare, injured chest, but the thrill of speed and the race was powerful enough to override. First, Short Bus was merely content to keep pace, but Ben had awoken something in him, and his powerful body surged forward, trying to get ahead.

Ben was panting, and he could tell Short Bus was approaching his top speed. He could, he thought, leave it all behind, burn hot and win this stupid race.

Ben slowed down, laughing, catching his breath as Short Bus blasted past him.

“Ha! None are faster than me!” The shark crowed to the heavens, and started circling Ben in a wide, friendly arc. “Do you need to catch your breath, lord human? Because I can do this all day!” he said, then pumped his tail and began moving faster, before slowing down again.

“Yes,” Ben said, happy despite losing, “I do need to catch my breath. I think you have me at a disadvantage here in the water. I'd definitely beat you on land,”

“No,” Short Bus practically sniffed, “I'd win there too.”

Ben caught his breath, then began following behind the shark at a reasonable pace. It must have taken them fifteen more minutes across the open water before Short Bus slowed down.

“It's here, there's a reef about. . . I'd say, forty, fifty feet down? There are some large, empty clam shells down there, but I can't even get close.”

“I'll hold onto a fin, just dive me down there as fast as you can and I'll zip in real quick, grab it, and you can pull me to the surface. Easy-peasy.”

“You'll see,” Short Bus said, and slowed down enough for Ben to catch up and get a good grip, “Deep breath, down we go,” he said, and they dove.

It's worth it to really understand what that five or ten seconds worth of experience looked like, to really picture it in the mind. Ben saw his arms, his familiar arms and his familiar skin resting atop the classic light blue characteristic of a Great White Shark, that very famous fin. His hands were gripped around the dorsal fin, the one on top, the one most people only see poke above the water before they get chomped.

The ocean water, reflecting the color of the sky, was a light purple, the waves playing across it and reflecting the light like a billion amethysts from horizon to horizon. The moment was frozen, and then Short Bus started to angle down, and Ben felt himself being drawn into the depths of the abyss. His vision, which had been dominated by the bright sun and the purple glow that suffused everything, tilted, and was submerged in darkness.

It should have burned, or been more uncomfortable than it had been, but he kept his eyes open. Down they went, too fast to be comfortable, and Ben already felt his lungs starting to feel tight.

He couldn't believe he hadn't seen this from the surface. Across the abnormally high ocean floor was a massive coral reef, a festival's worth of color stacked high and all around.

“There,” Short Bus thought at him, and Ben saw something that looked like a lumpy dome of coral. They approached it at high speed, and Ben's lungs were starting to seriously burn. He tried to tough it out, looking at the dome, and finding it was hollow. Inside of it some sort of bio-luminescent something that allowed Ben to see various large clams scattered about, as well as a few empty shells.

It was too much, and Ben started slapping Short Bus's side. Immediately they angled straight up. Ben started releasing his air in bubbles, and it took everything he had to hold on as they surged up. They burst through the surface, and Ben began to gasp, taking deep breaths and then coughing.

“I told you,” Short Bus said, “there's just no way.”

“Again,” Ben gasped, doing something completely new with his utility pocket. The, by-now, familiar black disk with its familiar purple tendrils appeared at the top of Ben's middle finger on his right hand. The utility pocket was again about the size of a CD, and it passed through Ben's hand, which vanished as it entered. The utility pocket's purple tendrils seemed to grab onto Ben's skin and fuse with it, leaving him with no right hand.

Ben then created a second utility pocket about five feet away, and frowned.

“What?” Short Bus asked, watching the display with obvious interest.

“I'm supposed to be able to use this thing like a portal,” Ben explained, “hang on, let me try this,” he said, then pulled his hand from the first pocket. He connected the two pockets and put his hand through.

It worked, and his hand appeared five feet away, disconnected from his body.

There was, of course, a problem.

Ben got to, for the first time, feel the immediate and sharp effect of using a large portion of his mana all at once. It was a headache, but the worst part of a headache without any of the buildup to get used to the idea of being in pain for a while. Then, he pulled his hand out from the connected portals, and the pain doubled.

“Ow,” Ben said, in shock from how he'd gone from dehydrated and exhausted to being in sudden and intense pain.

“I smell blood,” Short Bus said, and Ben felt the blood dripping from his face.

“Well that didn't work,” Ben said, holding onto Short Bus and waiting to recover.

He was breathing hard, thinking. He needed those damn shells, and he'd like the clams and whatever else of value he could grab down there. His hope in coming out here was that he could either just grab whatever he needed, or use a utility pocket portal and reach it, either with his hands, or by scooping it up.

He could, he admitted, probably pull it off given enough time underwater to examine the problem; the real problem was that by the time he got there, he was already burning for another breath. Short Bus was, unfortunately, right. There really was no way.

But I'll die if I don't get them, Ben thought. Even if he did get them, he wasn't sure if his dumb-ass scheme would even work. But he was positive he would die, for sure, if he didn’t try.

Ben took another deep breath, cursing his need for air. He created another utility pocket and stared at it, because it was his only tool, and he hadn't even scratched the surface of what it was capable of.

The System had said every Plus item was equal in power, even if it wasn't equal in apparent power. That meant this little tool was equal to an item that granted wishes and was basically a demonic kingdom in a box.

Was the utility pocket intelligent? Ben hadn't asked, and it didn't seem true, but there was something going on with it. The more he used it, the more it seemed to. . . enmesh with him, like whatever it was, was getting all enmeshed with his neurons and starting to become automatic.

With what strength he had left, which was very little, Ben created a small pocket a few inches above his eyes and began to suck in air until he was close to full.

Then, without conscious thought, he ran a hand over his mouth, palm to fingers, like he was smearing something on his face, and in a way, he was. A utility pocket was attached to his cheeks, his chin, and to the bridge of his nose.

“I cast underwater breathing,” Ben said, his voice almost vindictive, like he was talking to death itself and telling it no. Then, he let go of Short Bus and dove, a second utility pocket forming at his feet and doing something it hadn't done before; it took in water on one side, and pushed it out the other, all from one utility pocket.

Ben went underwater like a torpedo and took his first breath, strangely unsurprised to find that it worked the way he thought it would. He took a breath in, and air came in, he let his breath out, and he pushed it back into the pocket. It just worked, and it felt so natural Ben couldn't even get excited about it. Like he would have been worried if it didn't work the way he thought it would.

Soon, he was at the dome again and grabbed onto the coral to keep himself from floating to the surface. It was a big area, he hadn't appreciated that the last time he saw it, about the size of a two bedroom apartment. The coral had formed in such a strange way, almost like a lattice had guided it, and Ben could clearly see into parts of the interior.

He climbed along the perimeter, peering in and looking for an entrance large enough to squeeze through.

“Ben, over here,” it was Short Bus, and Ben jetted over, aware that he had only a few minutes of air. He'd just run out of the completely fresh stuff and was starting to recycle old breaths.

Short Bus was circling a small hole that went into the ground about three or four feet away from the dome.

“I think this is an entrance,” he said with enthusiasm. “You just crawl in here, and come out in there, I can smell it, the two are connected!”

“Is there anything living there?” Ben thought at the shark, and he seemed to hear it just fine.

“Doubt it,” he said.

Ben shrugged, because he really didn't have much choice either way.

He angled his body so he was upside down and scrunched his face at the feeling of water going into his ears (great, now he was going to get an ear infection), and crawled into the underwater tunnel, pulling himself along with his hands instead of using a jet; no need to kick up a bunch of silt and get blinded.

It was claustrophobic, pitch black, and it scared the shit out of him, but eventually Ben made it to the other side of the tunnel; and because he was already on the verge of death, he wasn't stupid enough to pop up like a whack-a-mole.

Ben, very slowly, poked his head out of the entrance, just enough to get a line of sight on what he needed. The shells were not far, and if he'd wanted to, he could have reached out an arm and grabbed one. He did not, instead, he began stealing everything his utility pocket could comfortably reach, one pocket at a time. He got a few shells, which were quite large, bigger than dinner plates, as well as a few living clams.

There was more treasure in that dome, Ben hadn't seen what it was, but there was something shiny in that way that spoke to the greed in his very human soul. Treasure wasn't going to keep him alive, not today, at least.

Ben crawled out of the tunnel, feeling physically and mentally exhausted. The air he was breathing tasted gross, and it wasn't doing much for him anymore.

“Get me out of here, Short Bus,” Ben said, feeling weary, but still grabbing onto the shark when he swam by, and hanging on as he was dragged to the surface.

Ben's utility pocket mask came off, and he breathed sweet, sweet air.

“I'm all outta gas, could you drag me back to the sandbar?” Ben asked, and Short Bus just started swimming.

He blacked out but managed to keep his grip, then woke up again. He blacked out like that a couple of times.

They made it back to the sand-bar and Ben crawled, thankful for the still relentless sunlight that scorched everything, turning his little spot of land into a desert in the middle of the ocean.

He dragged himself to a good position and dropped the shells into a pile, sorting them till he found one that would work immediately for his purposes.

He angled it so it got maximum sun, filled it with a thin layer of water, then sealed it with a utility pocket shaped like a dome.

The purple tendrils gripped the edge of the shell, looking like some sort of future-gel. Ben knew that though he couldn't see through it, the sunlight was not obstructed or made any less hot by the utility pocket's presence.

Ben allowed the pocket to start taking in air and willed it to have a gentle suction. The shell, which had been resting on the sand, jumped a little.

Ben drank the sight in and wished it was water, the strange, large alien shell with a strange, alien black dome over the top of it. He knew it was sealed, and that the inside of it was a vacuum, he'd just sucked all the air out. He knew exactly how much air it was, too. He could feel it in his brain.

He sat down, cross legged, eyes glued to the sight, waiting. Praying. Cursing that this was his best shot, his only shot. Then, it happened.

Ben shut his eyes and took a quiet breath in. Many humans in the past have taken the exact same breath, the breath that means it's all going to be ok, the breath of quiet satisfaction, of gratitude.

The water inside the shell was evaporating, and the water vapor was being collected by the utility pocket. Ben felt the tiny, insubstantial wisps of water vapor inside his, what, his inventory? Too crude a word.

He still had some work to do, he had to cool the vapors and condense them before he had precious, life giving distilled water. But that was no challenge, he knew how he would do it.

Ben would have cried, but he didn't have the water.

At least, he didn't have it yet.