Carry That Weight / Victor Fernando Ocampo

At the crack of dawn, the two brothers left their habitat. Carrying their waterproof phones and open-mesh baskets made from recycled plastic, they walked almost barefoot on the non-slip edge of the platform’s enormous starfish arms, towards where the Sargassum beds lay.

The blue-green sea was calm that morning, still weighed down by the wind.

The young men walked rapidly, the older one was two or three steps ahead, while the younger, more awkward boy, was trailing in his wake.

The sun advanced just as quickly as the two had walked, banishing the shadows away from everything save for the dark mountains in the heart of the distant Quezon mainland. Contact lenses automatically formed over the boys’ eyes, reducing the glare and blocking the sun’s harmful UVA/UVB rays.  

Eventually, the two brothers reached the boat pier at the end of the platform. The older brother stopped to check his phone.

“Is the satellite overhead, Kuya Berto?” the younger boy asked.

“It’s always overhead,” the older one answered, as he activated his garbage-collecting basket and threw it into the water. As soon as it landed, the bulbous, sea-squirt-shaped device began hunting and sucking up microplastics. “Better get yours ready, Lucas, or you won’t get paid.”

The younger boy carefully placed his basket on the water and switched it on. It made a sad, wheezing sound before powering down.

 “Do you ever clean the filter?” Berto asked. “It looks like we’ll need to replace it.”

“I had so much homework last night. I forgot.”

“Right. I’ll let it go this time—again—but you really need to be more responsible,” Berto said. “Every carbon coin we make can help Papa get better. They’ve just cleared quarantine. His surgery’s tomorrow.”

“I know. I’m sorry.”

“Just watch my basket,” Berto said, as he took of his wind breaker and shucked off his shorts. “I’m going to check the Sargassum beds.”

The smaller boy watched as his brother fished out a pair of smart goggles from his shorts pocket and clipped his phone to his wristband. Berto’s body was dark and tightly muscled. He seemed naked save for the skintight nanotech body suit that kept his body warm and protected it from the sun’s radiation.

“You’re not using a rebreather?” Lucas asked.

“I’m practicing for the free diving competition in May,” Berto said. “The prize is one full carbon coin.”

“I won’t tell Mama and Papa, if you won’t tell them about my basket filter.”

“Deal.”

 

Berto dove into the dark waters. A special sensor on his phone immediately ran diagnostics on the water quality around him and on the health of the sargassum forest that hung vertically from the bottom of their platform. The information he collected was sent to a satellite overhead, where a SEA-DAO contract paid them carbon tokens if their produce improved the water quality in their section of Tayabas Bay.

The young man went down past five meters, then eight meters before pushing himself even deeper until he reached the very edge of the seaweed blades at almost 12 meters deep.

 

At the heart of the ocean, Berto felt free. In the darkness of the depths, he could let go of everything—his father’s illness, his mother’s depression, their never-ending money problems, the tax pirates that constantly threatened their savings, and poor, lost Julia. He especially did not want to think about her. Instead, he concentrated on overcoming his urge to breathe until he became completely aware of his body and the infinity of where he was, until he was entirely lost in the moment.

Meanwhile, at the far edge of the pier, Lucas was starting to get worried. Eight full minutes had gone by since his kuya had disappeared under the water.

Suddenly, Berto broke for air near the boat slip at the middle of the floating dock. He clung loosely to the swimming ladder for several moments and then vaulted up, vigorously shaking off the seawater that rolled off his nanotech suit. The material was so thin that Lucas could clearly see the tattoo of the Bakunawa dragon hidden on his brother’s back.

Berto straightened abruptly and in the moment he seemed to stand on the horizon, his head touching the endless sky. Judging by the way his brother swaggered back, Lucas knew that everything was alright. 

“Your basket’s full,” Lucas reported. “That means more money!”

The boy beamed, he knew that once they returned to their habitat, another smart contract would interact with the basket, auctioning the microplastic for more carbon tokens.

Berto smiled weakly. Despite the SEA-DAO contracts that he set up, he knew that they were still quite a long way off from earning the credits their parents needed.

“Every little bit helps,” he said, as he slipped his shorts back on and zipped up his windbreaker. He folded his goggles back into his pocket.

Lucas was happy, and when that happened, he became quite chatty. He searched his mind for something interesting to say to his brother. Then he remembered the bagis, a rare megamouth shark with a huge bounty on its head. Berto’s hidden tattoo had reminded him of it.

“Did you see anything strange down there?” he asked excitedly. “Any large sharks with big glowing mouths?”

The younger boy knew everything about the strange, planktivorous creature with an extremely large mouth on its fat, bulbous head. He and his friends talked about it interminably during free periods at their Metaverse school. Lucas knew all about its habits, its mystery, and most of all, he knew about how it had eluded scientists for years. The reward for the decades-old IoT sensor data that the bagis carried would be enough to pay for their father’s treatments and sustain their family for a year.

“Will you stop it about the bagis?” Berto said. “Look, a few people thought they saw it once, years ago, and no one’s seen it ever again. Honestly? I think it’s a myth. There was never any ping back from its IoT black box.”

“But two people died because of it.”

“A megamouth shark eats plankton,” Berto said, now mildly irritated. “I heard that story too. Supposedly, those idiots were tax pirates. They killed each other trying to get the sensor bounty. That data on ocean currents would be pretty valuable.”

Lucas was about to say something but he spied a small dark shape looming on the horizon.

“Kuya, look!” he shouted.

The proximity klaxon on their phones roared to life.

“Pirates!” Berto said. “Get back to the habitat, now! Get ready to submerge.”

“But what about you?”

“I need to stay and engage them.”

“Why?”

“Do as I say!” the older brother commanded. “Go!”

Startled into action, the younger boy ran back to their quarters like some fleeing, flightless bird.

 

A small motorized paraw appeared in the distance and advanced towards the boat slip. As the double outrigger sail boat came nearer, Berto spied a familiar scruffy figure sitting on the banka. He was smoking and drinking something from a small metal cup. Berto stared at the young man’s cigarette as it unwound its skein of blue-grey smoke into the unpolluted air.

“Hoy, Berto!” the man shouted.

“What do you want, Isko?”

Berto’s nanotech suit automatically formed a mask that covered half his face. 

“Is that any way to treat a dear friend?” he said as he moored the paraw against the pier.

Isko seemed to be the same age as Berto but taller and brawnier. He jumped onto the platform and walked towards the brooding young man.

Berto fixed his stare upon at the newcomer. Isko smiled and took another drag from his cigarette.

“It’s that time of the month again.”

“We don’t have enough credits. My father just had another operation in the mainland.”

“Is that so?” Isko said. “Indonesia’s Hainuwele Clan has been encroaching more and more into our territory. Have you checked your farm for ransomware lately?”

Berto said nothing.

“The Ching Shih have also been detected here in Quezon. The Ching Shih,” Isko repeated. “You know, the ones your sister Julia hacked with that spectacular Shamoon-style exploit? I’m sure they’ll be out for blood if they find you guys. We can protect you and your family, you know. But you need to keep up your subscription fee. Your Papa always paid it but someone cancelled the SEA-DAO contract last week.” 

“Don’t say her name,” Berto growled.

“Careful, Berto,” Isko growled back. “Julia was a proud and valued member of the Pintados. She wore the Bakunawa with pride. Don’t forget how your family got the coin for this vertical farm in the first place, and she’s why mother’s so lenient with you.”

“The Pintados got Julia killed,” Berto retorted. “She came back to us in pieces. Mama’s never been the same since.”

Isko sighed and took Berto’s hand. “Let’s start over again, shall we?” he said softly. “Sit with me, please.”

The two men squatted on the floating pier.

“Why did you cancel our SEA-DAO contract?” Isko asked. “Luckily, I intercepted the report before the AI auditors got to it.”

“Thank you.”

“Apart from breaking the contract, that’s a week without the Pintado’s threat intelligence data.”

“I put perimeter buoys. I was going to renew.”

“The Ching Shih could have already found you.”

“Papa’s dying,” Berto said. “I needed to funnel all our tokens for his transplant. The Philippine government’s barely functional. We needed to pay so many bribes just to get him a surgery slot. I really had no choice.”

“You could come back to the Pintados,” Isko asked. “I always thought you were a better tax pirate than your older sister. Mother will still probably let you trade code on the Haradhere Exchange in Somalia, if you want to.”

“I’m the eldest now, my family needs me,” Berto said. “Someone has to manage this farm, especially when the off-season typhoons hit.”

“My booster’s updated. I want to see your face.”

Berto swiped away his nanotech mask.

“I’m sorry but you still need to pay the back taxes,” Isko insisted. “Do you have any alternatives?”

“Lucas and I salvaged a large tank during the last super-typhoon,” Berto said. “We’ve converted it into an anaerobic digestion chamber to make biogas from the sargassum. I think we made enough fuel to pay for this month, if you don’t mind accepting in-kind payment. If that’s not enough, we also collected a lot of industrial salvage from the trash gyre off Pagbilao Grande.”

“The biofuel will do. I’ll send over a robo-paraw with a tanker to collect tomorrow,” Isko answered. “You’ll need to write up a new SEA-DAO contract with an in-kind clause. Your folks are exposed in Manila. Better check up on them.”

“I will,” Berto said softly. “Thanks.”

“Are you sure I can’t get you to come back to us?” Isko asked.

When Berto didn’t answer, Isko lit another cigarette and returned to his paraw.

Berto watched as his friend’s boat disappeared into the distance. He heard an old song from the Beatles’ Abbey Roadplay on Isko’s torrent stream and fade into the wind.

When the paraw was gone, Berto stripped back down to his nanotech suit and returned to the water. This time he stayed under for a full eleven minutes.

 

Along the dock pilings, a hidden security drone took advantage of Berto’s absence. It stopped recording and swiftly flew towards the family habitat.

When Berto returned to his quarters, he found Lucas waiting impatiently, arms crossed and his face crumpled with a mix of worry and anger.

“Who was that guy?” the younger brother asked. “Why were you so friendly with a Pintado?”

“He’s an old classmate,” Berto said defensively, “We interned together after open university.”

“I’m 15, not an idiot,” Lucas retorted. The younger boy sent a drone cam still from his phone to all the media tiles in the room. It was a close-up of a Bakunawa tattoo on the strangers back. “He’s a Pintado. So are you.”

“Not anymore. It’s complicated,” Berto answered. “Why were you spying on me?”

“Really?” Lucas cried out. “I got worried when I couldn’t access the outside camera feeds. You locked me out of the system. I tried to use Julia’s cracker to brute force your password but your encryption’s too good.”

“So you sent a security drone to spy on your kuya?” Berto said, his voice rising. “You need to stay out of this. I’m trying to keep you safe.”

“You lied to me. Do Papa and Mama know?”

“Yes.”

“You all lied to me!” Lucas yelled. “Ate Julia was murdered because of the Pintados!”

“Ate Julia was their best hacker,” Berto said softly. “The Pintados didn’t kill her.”

“What?”

“She was murdered by the Red Flag Ching Shih from the floating city of Kwongchow,” Berto explained. “Her biggest hack brought down their Red Flag DAO and transferred a third of their tokens to the Taiwan Autonomous Zone.”

“I read about that in code school,” Lucas said. “But I don’t believe you. That was an anonymous attack. I don’t remember reading anything about Pintados being involved. Well, there was some chatter on the pirate boards.”

“Julia was that anonymous hacker,” Berto said. “That’s how we got this farm. It’s also why she was murdered on her way to Somalia. I was supposed to be on the same airship but I got into a fight with the son of the Pintado’s Lakambini. I should have been with her. I could have protected her.”

“But you didn’t.”

“I don’t want to talk about it… not right now,” Berto said. “All I know is that I don’t want to lose any of you again.”

“I can take care of myself.”

“Probably.”

“No more lies, kuya.” Lucas insisted. “No more secrets. Did the Ching Shih go after the Pintados?”

“No, Ate Julia made it look like a lone wolf attack. They had murdered Kuan-lin the year before. Remember him, her fiancée?”

“I do. But that doesn’t mean they won’t come after us too.”

“I’m sure they will. Eventually,” Berto said. “But, I’ll deal with it. I’m the eldest now. Papa’s too sick and Mama needs to take care of him.”

“No,” Lucas insisted, “You need to keep me in the loop. I need to share the burden too or we all die.”

“I guess you’re almost as old as I was when I joined the Pintados. I suppose I should have told you.”

“I suppose?” Lucas asked. “No more secrets!”

“No more secrets.”

“Show me your tattoo.”

Berto unzipped his windbreaker and turned off the skintight nanotech suit that covered his muscular upper body. He turned his back to show the serpent-like dragon with a looped tail and a horn on its nose that was tattooed like a black ink painting on his dark skin.

“When were you recruited?”

“Ate Julia brought me in during my sophomore year of uni. I helped create the modular virus she used to take down their DAO.”

Lucas traced the tattoo on his brother’s back. “Large mouth, fat, bulbous head,” The boy mumbled. “I wonder if pre-historic megamouth sightings became the Bakunawa myth?”

“What? No. Megamouths were only discovered in the twentieth century,” Berto said. “What the hell does the bagis have to do with our situation?”

“Discovered is such an awful, colonizer word,” Lucas mused. “In any case, we need credits for Papa, right? You’ll use up all our biogas to pay the Pintados. That’s our immediate issue. The sooner they get back home the sooner we can harden the farm against the Chinese pirates.”

“Oh God, you’re in one of your obsessive phases,” Berto said. “I really can’t deal with this right now.”

“Just trust me, please.”

Berto said nothing. He got up and made himself a cup of sargassum tea.

“Please?”

After a few more minutes of silence Berto finally spoke. “Sigh. What do you want to do?”

Lucas pulled up the code he was working on and sent it to the largest screen in their habitat.

“I found a database from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution with data on every known megamouth sighting since 1976. I cross-referenced that with the nearest deep water area where there’s a known Bakunawa legend. Then I wrote a predictive algo to plot where it may appear next. The bagis has a wide range but it travels very slowly, only about 2 km per day. According to my calculations we are due for another sighting right here in Tayabas Bay. I’ve been making small adjustments to the farm’s drift to steer us on an intercept course.”

“Go on.”

“So I repurposed a couple of your perimeter buoys to ping the frequency of its telemetry black box and… listen!”

All the media tiles in the habitat rang with the same loud “ping”.

“Fuck!” The older boy spat out his tea.

Berto fired up his system and began hacking into megamouth’s tracker.

“The bagis’ IoT device is ancient.” The older brother said, “It still uses insecure and flawed design protocols. Give me a few minutes.”

Lucas got a rag to clean up his brother mess. “Are you in?” he asked.

“Bingo!”

The two brothers cheered as they downloaded decades-old data on ocean currents, water quality, and climate information.

“Do you want to do the honors?” Berto asked.

“Yes, Kuya,” Lucas squealed with delight as he sent the data to an American Smart Contract satellite. After a few minutes of verification, it sent the full reward credits to their family’s crypto wallet.

Berto hugged his little brother tightly. “I think we can pay off the Pintados, renew our protection contract, and still have more than enough credits to pay Papa’s medical bill.”

“We should call Mama and Papa,” Lucas added.

Berto ordered his terminal to contact their mother’s phone.

“The party you are calling is not available.”

The brothers tried calling six times but their parents remained unreachable.

Berto messaged his mother over the Pintado’s secure satellite link. There was no response.

“Keep trying,” Lucas said.

“Maybe there’s no connectivity in the ICU. I’ll let the system keep trying.”

“Can you ping their phones?”

“No.”

Berto closed his eyes and wrapped his arms over his head.

“What are you doing?” Lucas asked.

“I’m calling a friend for help.”

Berto let out a deep sigh and asked his terminal to connect him to Isko.

“What do you want, Berto?” Isko’s scowling face appeared on all the media tiles.

“I need your help.”

“You have a lot of nerve. I already helped you out today.”

“Please,” Berto pleaded. “I just need the Pintados to check if my parents are safe in QC.”

“Why should I help you? You didn’t want to help us.”

“Isko, please.”

After a long pause, Isko sighed and said. “Fine, but you owe me. Again. Where are they, exactly?”

“They’re at the ICU of St. Luke’s Hospital in Quezon City.”

“Okay,” Isko said. “Let me make a couple of calls and get back to you.”

The son of the Pintado’s Lakambini hung up. Less than five minutes later he called back.

“Berto,” Isko warned. “You need to get out of there! Something’s happened.”

He sent a couple of news reports on the media tiles. Most of them ran the same horrific story.

Breaking News: 14 killed, 75 wounded in bomb attack

at the St. Luke’s Hospital in Quezon City.

Philippine military officials say a drone attack of unknown origin hit the top three floors of the St. Luke’s Hospital in Quezon City that together killed 14 people, many of them at the Intensive Care Unit of the 650-bed hospital. The bombing was staged as the government grapples with the highest number of mutant coronavirus infections in Southeast Asia, as well as the growing number of militant breakaway Autonomous Pirate Zones around the region.

 

“You need to get out of there Berto!” Isko repeated. “Without our threat data your system’s probably compromised. The Ching Shih killed your folks. They’ll come after you next. Please leave, now!”

Before either brother could react, the children’s song Baby Shark suddenly started playing across the entire habitat.

“Fuck!” Berto screamed. “What the fuck is that?”

“I rigged the system to alert us once the megamouth crosses our perimeter,” Lucas said, as he shut down the jury-rigged alarm. “I’m sorry.”

The younger brother began to cry. “Mama,” Lucas whimpered. “Papa.”

“I can send a paraw to get you both,” Isko said. “Pack up your stuff. I’m sorry about your folks. I really am, but you can mourn later.”

As Berto and Isko were talking, Baby Shark started blasting from the speakers once again.

“Fuck!” Berto shouted angrily. “SHUT THAT OFF!”

Lucas stopped crying. “That means there’s a second shark coming our….”

Berto pulled up the farm’s storm LIDAR. The proximity klaxons on their phones also started to blare urgently.

“That’s not a shark,” he yelled.

He grabbed his younger brother and quickly shoved him into an emergency pod just before a large explosion tore through their habitat. A second, larger explosion destroyed their biogas facility.

“Berto!” Lucas screamed as the escape pod rocketed underwater towards a pre-programmed route to Pagbilao Grande.

The water rushed into the mangled habitat, along with a wall of hard metal rain. Berto was swept beneath the cold sea, through deadly currents swirling with torn seaweed and aquaculture debris. The young man’s body became numb. But just before the moment when he completely lost muscle control, he felt a violent kick strike him on the face.

He rolled underwater and crashed into an oyster-filled support piling. The shells sliced through his windbreaker, but his nigh-indestructible nanotech suit kept his skin from being torn to pieces. 

When his reflexes returned, he sucked in his belly and the taut webs of air in his body slackened. Eventually, the sea buoyed him up to the surface.

A sharp pain pierced his ears. Berto felt like his skull was bursting, but fear and adrenaline kept his mind clear.

For a moment Berto wondered if it would be easier to just sink back to the depths and never resurface. Everything he and his family had built—had died for—was lost.

Then he remembered Lucas.

The young man turned over and began to swim towards the habitat’s wreckage.

He spied an intact server unit floating in the water. Berto felt for his phone in his pocket and started salvaging all the data he could. With comms gone, he could neither upload to the cloud nor call for help.

The sun had already set and the sea was turning inky black.

Suddenly a bone-white beam of light swept across the water’s surface. Berto was about to wave for help when he realized that he didn’t recognize the boat’s make or model. Two burly men emerged from the galleys and started burning the floating debris with a flamethrower.

The young man knew he had only one option to survive. He took an enormous gulp of air and dived down as deep as his injured body would take him. Six meters, eight meters, he kept swimming until he returned to the dark heart of the sea, nursing his grief and anger like talismans.

 

At the crack of dawn, Lucas finally located his brother’s phone. Isko and his men had to cut through Berto’s nanotech suit which had formed an emergency re-breather cocoon around his body.

Later that morning, Berto sat at the prow of Isko’s paraw, staring at the ominous gray squall forming near the mainland.

“I’m coming back,” he whispered as he sipped sargassum tea from a metal cup. “I managed to salvage this.”

Berto produced a small bottle with a germling of Sargassum aquifolium from their vertical farm.

“Oh, and Ate Julia’s modular virus,” he added grimly. “Lucas and I are going to fucking wipe the Red Flag Ching Shih from cyberspace.”

He reached out for Isko’s hand. “Sit with me?” Both men stared into the distance. The blue-green sea was calm that morning, still weighed down by the wind.