Ryan picked up a pink wetsuit. "How about this one?"
Bill looked back over at Ryan, "Ah I was hoping we'd get to test this one, this one is crazy. We're going to need to get on the boat though to test it properly."
"Well what does it do?"
"I told you I'm not going to tell you. The surprise will be worth it.
The group boarded their boat and headed out to deeper water. Bringing many of the other suits with them including Ryan's selection. The boat stopped far enough from the land that you could only see a sliver of it on the horizon.
"Ok Ryan suit up. This one is kinda fast acting." Bill said.
Ryan put on the pink wetsuit, though it was more of a coral color. It looked like a normal wetsuit but it covered the feet and had a built in belt with a button looking device on the front.
"Now when you get into the water your going to want to press the button on the belt." Bill said as he fixated an earpiece on Ryan's ear.
"I figured as much." Ryan replied "Anything else I should do?"
"Have fun!" Bill said. Then Ryan Turned around and jumped into the water.
The salt filled Ryan's nose and mouth. "Are you sure I won't need like a scuba tank or goggles or anything?"
"Just press the button already."
Ryan obliged and smacked the button on his front. Immediately after doing so Ryan began to sink down into the water. He soon discovered the cause of this was that his feet had changed shapes from, well, feet shaped to perfect spheres. They seemed to be made out of solid steel since Ryan could feel their weight. While plummeting down the two orbs merged together followed by the rest of Ryan's legs. He looked like some sort of punching bag from the waist down. The whole of his legs seemed to be getting heavier and heavier as he zoomed down to the ocean floor at an accelerating rate. It didn't take long for him to reach the bottom, as it wasn't too terribly deep, and stop with a sudden thud, kicking up sand and dust all around him.
"Ryan, have you reached the bottom yet?" Ryan was still holding his breath. He knew he couldn't breath underwater and he dared not say a word into the earpiece in risk of drowning. "Ryan, If you've reached the bottom click the button again and you'll be able to breath."
So Ryan was right he couldn't breath. He then promptly smacked the button again only for the suit to engulf his head in a thin membrane with an air pocket. "Okay jeez I could've drowned! What the hell is this thing anyways?! Why am I weighted to sea floor?!" Ryan yelled. "Just give it a second to kick in.", replied the voice on the other side.
Right after it was said Ryan noticed something down below. "You might want to get somewhere comfortable for this next part." Ryan watched in awe, and in horror, as his lower half began expanding outward. Not like a balloon, but rather like millions of small vines. They continued to grow outwards in every direction. The vines even started growing up Ryan's torso. Ryan felt like his body was covered in fire ants, but only his lower half. Curiously, he reached out his hand which was still unchanged and touched one of the viney structures only to discover it felt hard and rocky.
Ryan pulled his hand away as quick as he placed it there. He felt an itch on his fingers and discovered they too where growing the rocky substance. "What is this stuff?! What's happening to me?!" Ryan yelled back into the microphone.
"What you are wearing, Ryan, is a suit we specifically designed to repair damage done to coral reefs. Those growths are "Polyps" they are the microscopic organisms that make up coral reefs."
"Is it supposed to be growing on me?" Ryan asked.
"No, rather the opposite. They're supposed to be growing in you and out of you. They aren't growing on you, they are you. You are the tool to build this reef."
There was silence over the microphone, "What!" Ryan belted. "This can't seriously be the most effective way to build a reef. I mean you have the nano technology why not just make it some pod you drop in the ocean instead of sacrificing me!"
"Well first of all Ryan, you are not a sacrifice. You will be back on this boat as your normal self in a while. Secondly, you are freaking out. It's supposed to feel good. Become one with the ocean."
"That sounds super pretentious man." Ryan replied bitterly.
"I'm going off headset. So you won't have anyone to complain to."
"Wait no don-" It was too late. He was already talking to a wall.
Ryan settled down as he looked around him with his arms bobbing to the sides of him. The fingers on his left hand, the one he touched the coral with had began shifting and growing into a single appendage. A stalk would be a more fitting description as it had began to branch off and looked more like a tree as time progressed. Ryan focused and discovered he could feel the growth. He could feel the microscopic tentacles of the polyps and the water flowing in and around him.
Ryan could both see and feel the coral, no not the coral, see himself growing over various rocks and other features around him. They began taking intricate shapes. Forming pillars, tables, trees, sheer masses of bulk, all of them living breathing organisms that where just simply an extension of Ryan. He then felt a tickling feeling in various places all over the network that was his body. Various plant life; sea grass, kelp, algae, anemones, all started growing at accelerated rates all over Ryan. Ryan realized that the plants where too making up his composition, as he could feel them flowing in the current as if it was his hair.
Ryan was still relatively unchanged from the chest up, say for his coral arm. That was all about to change as he stopped breathing. Ryan realized this was probably due to the fact that his lungs where now made of coral. He didn't panic, he just simply let the changes overtake him. The membrane formed around his head began to deflate to the point it became skin tight, like a vacuum seal. Ryan's arm resting at his side began to change into coral material, sticking to his hips so as to the point his right arm became one with his torso. Ryan's body continued to stiffen from the bottom up. Soon the whole of his head; his throat, tongue, eyes, and brain, all became a pinkish polyp.
Ryan's vision vanished, but he could still feel. He felt like his torso was bloating up, becoming bigger and bigger. He couldn't really describe it except that he felt like any given two points on his body where growing further and further apart. Soon enough Ryan's torso became a massive spherical pile of coral reef. It was at this point that Ryan's vision slowly came back, but it was far different than before. It was almost as if Ryan had complete vision from every single point of his reef body. Ryan began to feel a new feeling as well, as if parts of him where dislodged and floating around, disconnected from everything else. Just then he saw objects floating around him, in all sorts of places, but he could also see from these floaters. That's when Ryan realized they where sea creatures! Fish, plankton, other small sea invertebrates born from him. His mind and soul was in every cell of every creature in this reef.
Ryan had no idea how this was possible; how one boy and a special suit could create a whole ecosystem. It seemed to break every law of physics. He could feel the world around him alive. He himself had never felt more alive. Ryan felt himself growing. He felt himself eating He felt himself being eaten. He felt himself reproducing both sexually and asexually. He felt himself giving birth. He felt himself being born. He felt himself even die and decompose. This whole ecosystem, growing at an accelerated rate, every plant, every animal, every microbe in the reef, was Ryan.
Ryan felt like god, like he was the yin and yang, the alpha and omega. All of this may seem like too much of an overload for a human brain, but Ryan was not a human, he was a reef, hundreds of plants, hundreds of fish, and he could feel all of them.
Just then Ryan heard a noise that seemed to come from within his very being. "Alright Ryan the test is complete."
It was the earpiece. Somewhere in this oceanic jungle he still had a connection to the boat floating above. Ryan had no means of speaking back to the crew, but if he could he would ask for a just while longer. "We are on our way to come retrieve you."
Ryan noticed a splash in the water near the boat floating above him. A person in a different specialized wetsuit, one that seemed to convert the wearers hands and feet to large flexible flippers and their limbs to thin rubbery stalks, began swimming down to the reef.
Ryan just wondered though,"How do they plan to get me back up there when my body is now sprawled out over four hundred thousand feet of sea floor?"