Reef Rats 

by SmokeAndOranges

There's something about sifting through everything a society once threw away that puts a different perspective on what you choose to keep, admire, or plunge your hand after through a mountain of dusty garbage the size of a small municipality.

The wheel of a once-motorized toy car tumbles past my hand as I chase something shiny into the side of Midden Six. Sev tells me I've got metal detectors for fingertips, but that's not the trick behind a good salvage. Not really. Spend a few years out on the Middens and you start to see another layer over everything around you: a kind of theoretical manifestation of potential that isn't physical, but might as well be.

We call it Reef Eyes. I don't know where the term originated. We've been here for four hundred years, and the Reef'ra community—refurbishers—is as old as that if not older. The etymology of our own dialect is one of the few things we've never tried to reconstruct.

"Gotcha."

My hand closes around the shiny thing, by now tumbled out of sight beneath a pile of dusty, cracked plastic. I withdraw my find. It's a cube of some kind. Plastic, I think, but the durable type that's held its shine over the four hundred years since the Duruvian society went down like a house of cards. We've been living off their refuse for centuries.

I take the cube in both hands and turn it over. It's segmented on each side, its whole body made up of eight smaller cubes each the size of my fingernail. On its next turn, it falls in half. I'm now holding a two-by-eight plank of cubes. A quick eye tells me it's supposed to do that, so I wiggle it again. The plank splits down the middle and folds sideways to make another plank, freeing two more hinges to fold the whole thing back into its original cubic formation. A smile creeps across my face. Sev will like this.

Sev is currently wandering aimlessly over the trash piles one hill over. I push myself to my feet and join them. "Close your eyes."

They fix me with a suspicious look. "Why?"

"You'll like this one. I promise."

"The last time you said that, I ended up with a cockroach the size of my hand making for my shirt sleeves. Give me one reason to trust you."

Okay, that's fair. I throw in a winning smile for good measure. "It's two days past your birthday? I don't prank people on their birthday weeks. Also, the time before that, I found you that marble, remember? The one you used for your last commission."

It's a strategic mention, and I emerge victorious as Sev sighs and extends their hand.

"Eyes," I say.

They squint at me one last time, then close their eyes. I drop the cube in their palm. A frown creases their forehead as they close their fingers around it. You can tell Sev's an artist just by watching them interact with the world. They give the cube a full turnover before asking, "Can I open my eyes now?"

"Yup."

They do, and their frown redoubles. They turn the cube over, just like I did, and yelp as it falls in half. I grin. That was one reaction I was hoping for. Sev looks distressed as they attempt to reverse the alteration, only for the cube's worn hinges to take them through the full cycle: cube to plank, plank to other plank, other plank back to cube. Now holding a cube again, Sev stares it down with an expression equal parts flustered and impressed.

"It'll keep going forever," I say. "Try it."

They do. Once they get the hang of it, they can send it through the cycle in either direction, over and over, until it cycles back around into a perfect copy of itself.

"That's cool," they say, and I know them well enough to know they mean it. "What is it?"

"Infinity cube. Dawson has one; we use it as a reference for those folding storage containers Minny got famous for. You know the ones she makes out of old buck drive casings? Same principle. It's rare to find one in good condition, though. We think they were kids' toys."

Sev fiddles the cube through its cycle again, then offers it back to me.

"Want to borrow it?" I say. "See if it's any use for your latest commission."

They look at it for a moment. "You know what? Sure. Why not."

"Not much luck today?"

"No. This is why I hate logos. You?"

"Not bad, actually." I size up the day's haul. Three bags is pretty good for an afternoon, and most of it is smaller stuff. I should have enough to last me a week or two. "Also, I might need to borrow that back at some point if Dawson's out of town and I need another reference. I like how they make the hinges on those things."

Sev just nods. There's something distracted in the way their eyes rove the trash hills. I can tell they're stressed.

"Is this one paying rent?" I say quietly.

I get another nod. "And it's corporate again." They wince. "From Verolime."

A nail lodges sharp in my throat. I force a smile past it. "You've got to eat."

The words ring hollow. I don't envy their moral quandary. Sev and I met in school and kept in touch after we parted disciplines, them continuing into graphic design, me joining the ranks of Iephus 392's Reef'ras for my first apprenticeship as a mechanical refurbisher. More than a decade later, we both struggle to pay rent, and the company who just commissioned them isn't helping. But that's just life on Iephus these days.

"Anyway, it's getting towards seven," I say. "We should start packing up. You got everything you need?"

They check their bag as much by habit as for anything they have in there. I can tell from the slack fabric that they haven't found much. "I'm all good, I think."

"Great, you can help me carry mine."

We say the same thing every time. It's not scripted, but the exchange is worn into both our minds like wheel ruts after years of the same: Sev accompanying me out to the Middens while I gather raw materials and they poke about the piles in search of inspiration. They've come with me more often in recent years, as trade returns trail living costs across most of Sambaquis, and most of their big commissions turn corporate.

I've heard logos are particularly demanding. Big companies on Tannobel want theirs to be original, but not too original, preferably carrying a touch of that old Duruvian feel without dipping too close to Duruvian logos themselves. Those are held in trust by the Iephus Heritage Department. Reef'ras at least have the advantage of being able to file off any logos we don't want to deal with. Sev's not so lucky; they've been stuck on this particular commission for days.

We return to my bags together. I poke Sev's bicep as they sling one over their shoulder, metal and wire thudding against their back. "See, keeping you in shape, too. Can't have you holing up in that dark little apartment all the time. Fresh air is good for you."

They huff out a laugh, and I count the joke successful. I shoulder the remaining bags, and we set out across the Midden together. The Sambaquis skyline lies low on the distant horizon, veiled in dust and smog. A planetary economy founded on Reef'ra work is many things, but clean is not one of them. Only Tannobel can convince itself otherwise.

There's something meditative—even spiritual—about walking the Midden trails beaten in by generations of Reef'ras before me. It's a legacy of pride, skill, and hard work that pulses in my chest like a second heartbeat, warm against my own. Midden Six feels particularly intimate. It's smaller and farther from the urban core than the rest, and it's mostly household refuse. Toys, furnishings, and personal effects, all preserved since the Duruvian days by Iephus's dry climate and cloud-shrouded sky. Scavenging here feels more like archaeology. A peek into the personal lives of an otherwise vanished people.

It's also very productive when I'm looking for inspiration myself. People keep the weirdest things in their houses. Not that I'm one to judge.

It's a twenty-minute walk back to the Midden gates. The whole place is quiet today. I only see two other Reef'ras out on the piles, and even the Midden Administrative Office only has one rover parked out front. The office itself looks abandoned. Today's a ten-day evening going into a long weekend, to be fair, but the MAO isn't the only place that looks copied out of a Duruvian ghost town. The new Verolime regional headquarters tucked between it and the stabilized trash pile behind is just as empty.

A bitter taste rises in my throat at the sight of the building's recently cleaned windows and patched-up walls. I keep hoping the old place will collapse and put an end to the project, but it keeps ticking along, a little more developed each time I take this route. There's a new sign out front today. It's empty, waiting for the logo commission sitting on Sev's desk. I don't want to resent them for it. I look away in search of distraction instead, and find it as we crest the last hill between the MAO and the Midden gates.

"Von!" I call.

The person at the bottom of the hill looks up sharply. I wave, and he raises a hand in return. It's a lot less enthusiastic than the last time I saw him.

I cast an eye over the broader landscape as Sev and I make our way down. The Midden gate isn't actually a gate: just a checkpoint marked by a convergence of paths and a little gatehouse perched on a salvaged concrete pad. Von's wearing his gatekeeper's hat today. Its stark, police-style coloring makes his white face look ghostly, and his snowy hair peeks out from under the hat brim like misplaced insulation. My eyebrows draw together as we get close enough to see he's not smiling.

"Hey Roxie," he says tonelessly. His eyes skip past us both, not meeting mine. "I'm going to need to see your collector's permit."

"Seriously?" I give him an incredulous look. "Since when?"

"I'm technically supposed to be asking every time."

"With that face, you just had me thinking Tannobel ordered another sweep or something."

"Sorry."

I dump my bags with a huff and pat down my pockets until I track down the battered yellow card. I'm glad I have it on me. I normally stash it in a zippered pocket in my other pants and then forget about it until my next trip to the trade market. I extract the card and slap it in Von's hand with little ceremony. He waves his scanner bracelet over it until a beep clears me to leave with my haul. Von hands back the card. Then he extends a hand towards Sev.

"They're with me," I say. "I just needed help carrying the bags today."

Something flickers in Von's expression. "You know they need a citizen's pass for that."

"I've been coming here for eleven years, and I've never seen that rule enforced. Is this some new regulation?"

"Something like that."

He's dodging my questions. I peer at him for a moment longer, then pick up my bags as cover for a more careful look around. The sky behind us gives me my answer.

"Sev?" I say. "Pretend to show a pass. Von can override the scan if he knows your citizen number."

"Don't get me in trouble," says Von.

"Dude, help a friend out. Aren't we in this together? I'll make it back to you, I promise. My ma's making pasteles tomorrow. I'll bring you some."

Von's forehead pinches tight. I don't know if he's going to take the bribe.

"And I can make you a new watch face," I add. "I know yours cracked a while ago.'

That does the trick. "Fine," says Von, and extends his hand to Sev again. "Fake a card, and give me your citizen number. And don't make me regret this."

"Thanks, V," I say as relief weakens my aching arms. It's not enough to undo the tension tangling my insides. "I owe you one."

He doesn't reply. Just fake-scans Sev's citizen ID and jots down the number in the margins of an official-looking notepad. He waves us both through the "gates" without another word.

"What was that?" murmurs Sev as soon as we're out of earshot.

"There's a drone over the Verolime building."

They blink. "Are you sure it's not from the MAO? You've said they do stability surveys with drone cameras."

"Sev, I know what the MAO drones look like. I helped build them."

They risk a glance back the way we came.

"Don't look," I say, as the tension racks up another notch. "You'll make us look suspicious."

I don't like talking to Sev like this, but a Verolime drone could be bad news in at least a dozen ways, and Sev's less used to being covert than I am. We might have some things in common, but at the end of the day, I'm a Reef'ra, and they live and work in a quiet, safe apartment in the residential core of Sambaquis.

"What do you think they want?" they say.

"You tell me. You're the one who's working with them."

"They haven't told me anything about surveillance. I just know they want closer access to the Middens' supply chains."

I snort. "Sounds like surveillance to me."

"For what? Cobalt smugglers?"

"They deal in high-end tech for rich people on Tannobel, Sev. What do you think they want? I'd bet you a black rover sprocket their next ad campaign is going to be something along the lines of 'ethical resource acquisition' or some other bullshit excuse to micromanage Reef'ra activity. You know what happened last month with the Row 19 raids."

Sev shuts their mouth again. I know I'm being harsh, but stress makes my words run faster than I can filter them, and my motivation to filter them on this matter is lacking at the best of times. The gouge it dealt to the Reef'ra community is still bleeding-raw. Row 19 is—was—the most notorious comp Reef'ra alley in Sambaquis. They gathered there, pooling brilliant minds to work wires and circuit boards into things that could think and churn and calculate just like old computers. I'm pretty good, as Reef'ras go, but comp Reef'ras are on a whole other level. The last time Sev saw one at work, they called it the tech version of necromancy.

Many of those people had their own side projects, too. Experiments and concept-proofs, always in the interest of gaining back what was lost with the Duruvians. Most weren't illegal, strictly speaking, but some of them could turn dangerous. Reviving old networks in Duruvian systems sometimes turned up viruses, self-replicating glitches, or misplaced overrides just waiting to cross wires with whatever systems they were patched into. The comp Reef'ras on Row 19 were the best at those patches, and the best at sandboxing any damage they might stand to do. They knew what they were doing.

They also didn't mean anyone harm. All Reef'ras have a pact that we'll never fight Tannobel antagonistically. It isn't worth it when our richer and stronger sister planet still holds so much sway over Iephan law, politics, and infrastructure, not to mention our entire economy. But mistakes happen. An Iephus-made computer program backfired and wiped a company's data on Tannobel a little over two months ago. It turned out to be their fault, but the media drummed up hysteria about Reef'ra tech. Some public figure floated the word terrorism, and that was that.

The Tanno government ordered a sweep of Row 19. Comp Reef'ras lost anything from weeks of work, to their whole workshops, to their salvage or refurbishment licenses. Some ended up in jail. Others were banned from tech-heavy parts of Tannobel. So many projects were confiscated, it'll take the comp Reef'ra community years if not decades to rebuild.

After that, it wasn't much of a surprise, really, to see companies like Verolime dropping offices on Iephus. Any corp with its headquarters on Tannobel can buy its way around our planet's rust-pocked regulations and put up as much security and surveillance as it wants. It's in their financial interest to send their customers photos of "clean" Reef'ra supply chains. Whether they get those through ethical means or not isn't a Tanno concern.

Sev and I walk in silence back to the parking lot where I left my truck. Out here past the gates, the edges of the Midden thin to drifts of trash, swept to the sides of a road that's more cracks than concrete. Its surface is indented with its own variant of the Reef'ra trails on the Midden: wheel ruts left by generations of haul trucks. Duruvian ones from the city ruins under Sambaquis, and Reef'ra ones in the opposite direction.

"Watch for 'bels," I say as the parking lot appears at the end of the road ahead. Sev grips their bag tighter. We might have gotten past Von, but a Tanno official or Tanno-backed police car anywhere from here to Sambaquis could still waylay us and ask to see Sev's nonexistent permit. If that happens, Von will be in trouble, too. And I don't want to think about what the fallout will be for me. My eyes and heartbeat both skip around as we reach the parking lot. It's empty except for my truck, a rover whose owner I know is out on the Midden, and a shiny-looking car. I hold my breath until I can read the registration number. "All good. That's Emmaeus's."

Sev and I breathe out together.

We sling my bags into the truck. Sev makes for the passenger door, but I've got one more thing I need to see to before we leave. I check the sky for drones. It's another pact among the Reef'ras that we all pretend we can't build cameras as strong or as small as we actually can. It means any drones we make can't spy on us from any farther away than we can see them. And as far as we know, we're the only ones who make drones.

I think I'm in the clear. I circle round the front of my truck and run a finger down the trough between its hood and windshield. My fingertip meets plastic. I pluck out the chip of trash, and my heart stops dead. It's red. I close my fist around it to keep my hand from shaking. My other hand finds the collection of odds and ends in my pocket as I walk to Emmaeus's car. It's the work of a moment to slip a white plastic chip and a bent nail into the same spot beneath his windshield. Thank you. On my way home right now.

Remote communication technology with a bigger range than radio is one thing we've never managed to revive. This twin planetary system just doesn't take well to satellites. Reef'ra codes are as close as it gets.

"I'll have to drop you off quick today," I say as I rejoin Sev. They give me a questioning look, but it's safer to keep mum until this proves to be a false alarm. If it's not, I'll cross that bridge when I get to it.

My speedometer needle creeps over the speed limit of its own accord all the way back to Sambaquis.

Sev hops out when I pull up in front of their apartment block. They pause before closing the door behind them. Their worry hasn't abated. "You don't have to tell me what it is, but is everything going to be okay?"

"We'll find out," I say with a tight smile. They nod once and shut the door. As I pull away, I see them flash me the Reef'ra code for good luck: a circle over their heart like they're bolting it in place for me.

It's another half-hour before I swing into a parking spot along Row 3 on the other side of the city. There's no time to unload. I sling my haul bags into the back seat before locking the vehicle, then make tracks for the sounds of Reef'ra work that echo and ring from the next street over. Late evening already feels like night. The dismal buildings of Sambaquis swallow half the light that makes it past the clouded sky.

Dawson meets me seconds after I knock our pattern on the fourth workshop door. "Roxie? Oh, thank god. We need your arms."

Minny's workshop is packed down halfway already. Teph drops another box in the hidden chamber beneath the floor, then swipes her sweat-damp hair out of her eyes and throws me a Reef'ra greeting sign.

"Who got the news?" I ask.

"Finn on Row 4." Dawson's dark skin is streaked with the iridescence of grease marks. "The 'bels are gathering in a warehouse on Fifth and Skyview. We don't know yet where they'll strike, but if the raids are to judge..."

"Here's at risk," I finish for him. "Let's do this, then."

Practice makes perfect. It also makes speed. None of our group's work is illegal, either, but that doesn't stop us having our own underground community complete with whisper networks, secret meeting spots, and support clusters that do anything from work on larger projects together to hide one another's tech if a workshop gets raided.

We pack the last, most valuable boxes into Dawson's truck. I've only just secured the cover on them when Finn tears into the parking lot at a dead run. "Roxie!" he cries when he sees us. Everyone stops dead. Finn's already pale, but I swear he's lost all his colour. "They moved," he says. He's halfway crying. "It was a feint. They're headed for your Row instead."

The 'bels take everything.

We always said we wouldn't fight. Not antagonistically. And we kept our word.

Our planet was the dumping ground for Duruvian society until they found out the hard way that there were only so many resources in the universe. The immediate universe, anyway. Which made making things that couldn't be broken down again kind of a shit idea. That didn't stop them burning as much fuel just to reach the next stars over as they managed to bring back with them, until the two reached parity and their whole world collapsed.

There's a strange irony in Tannobel's obsession with everything Duruvian. Like they could become the great society before them if they only replicated that Duruvian look and feel. Their architecture. Their tech. Their logos. Their habit of treating Iephus as a trash can for everything they couldn't care less about, even if that trash can sustains them.

It's funny the ways we find to cope. Reef'ra lore has it that a Tannobel technocrat was the first to refer to a group of refurbishers—just "Reefs" at the time—as Reef Rats. It was meant to be derogatory, but the Reef community refurbished the name with the same proud tenacity they apply to all their work. No 'bel could escape it after that.

Sev showed me the logo they sent back to Verolime after my workshop was gutted along with all of Row 14. They didn't use Duruvian symbology. They went back older. To our own roots. To the people who collapsed our own ancestral planet four hundred years ago, and sent our great-great-great-great-great-great grandparents to the stars in search of somewhere else to land. They landed on Iephus just as the last Duruvian survivors abandoned it.

Sev sent back their commission money, surrendered their apartment, and moved in with me. Instead of a completed logo, they sent Verolime an icon of a snake eating its own tail.

None of us were working on anything dangerous. But when the 'bels raided Row 19, they took home a quarantined computer program whose Reef'ra knew it had gone rogue, and had prepared it for destruction. The 'bels unpacked it with their spoils from the second round of raids. No Reef'ra was on hand to warn them. No Reef'ra was allowed.

Tannobel released that program onto themselves.

Sev catches a ride with Dawson and meets the rest of us on Midden Six. It's always been the farthest from Sambaquis: far enough that the dust-choked sky over the city clears a little, opening a window into space after the sun sinks red over the horizon.

Tonight, that red remains in the sky. Iephus and Tannobel are a two-planet system, spinning so close that they've both warped into egg shapes from the mutual pull of gravity. Their fates are as inseparable as the space elevator that bridges them.

Tonight, Tannobel is burning.

"Oh look, there's another one," says Emmaeus, pointing to the edge of the green-brown-blue mass that occupies the sky. Dawson reaches past him to grab a snack from our pile. Minny holds out a hand, and he passes her one, too.

I lie down to find Emmaeus's viewpoint. "Where?"

"That little island just off the coast of Sennekiv. What's it called? I don't know what it's called. Another tech hub."

"They really infected all of those, didn't they."

"No kidding. Look at it go."

The island is aglow by the time Teph pilfers the last of our snack pile. There's a city on that coastline, if I remember the geography our Tanno-made school curriculum made me learn. I hope they managed to evacuate it.

Sev hasn't said anything in over an hour. I sit up again and shift to their side. "What are you thinking?" I murmur.

"I don't know." They look down at their hands. "This, I guess."

They still have the infinity cube. There's a faint click as they break it open. Cube to plank. Plank to other plank. Other plank back to cube. I watch in silence as it tells me what their words can't, or won't, or maybe there just aren't words for this. They send the cube through another cycle. This time, they hold each form for a moment as though wondering what it would be like to stay there before the cube does what it's always done, and cycles back around into a perfect copy of itself.