The Rig 1: Rough Seas (7 page)

He could fit two crates into the elevator and then clamber on top of the crates himself and so ride down to the deck he needed to be at. He jumped down when the doors opened and began to roll the crates out. He set the first crate down by the side of the elevator and rolled the second one to the stage. Then he moved the first crate and rode the lift back up to collect more.

When he was done he saw the clock in the Central Plaza read one thirty and he knew he did not have long to set everything up before DJ Medina arrived. But he was beginning to feel light headed and he knew he needed to take a lunch break. He ran into a bakery on the square and got some pastries and coffee and sat down on the edge of the stage. People were passing him without even looking at him. It felt like any city in the world really. Nobody cared about what anybody else was doing in the public spaces. He would not be surprised if they all cared deeply about what their neighbors did in private ones though.

Having satisfied his hunger and thirst, Akhmed began unpacking the crates. There were a large number of speakers, mixing boards, turntables and records. He had a check list and began setting everything up as he had been told. It took him ages to set it up and to plug the cables in. He checked his list again and then looked for the box of records Fatíma wanted him to open. He opened it and then went to set up the cables for the laptop she would be using.

“Hard work?” asked someone in front of him.

Akhmed looked up, shocked that someone was actually talking to him. It was a pretty young woman.

“Yeah...” he answered tentatively. “Yeah, very hard work. Sorry.”

He excused himself and ducked under the table to fit another cable. When he came up again she had walked away. He could see her entering the bakery where he had bought his pastries earlier.

“Excited about tonight's show?” the baker asked her.

“Oh yeah. Looks like a lot to set up.”

“Yeah, glad I don't have to do it.”

“Weird guy though. Looks a bit nervous.”

The baker looked out and saw Akhmed look around the square. “He does look a bit nervous.”

Chapter Thirteen

Stryker was not picking up his phone when Reg called him from the control room. So Reg had gone up to the manager's office, with Dave and Joy on his heels. He was not there. Reg stopped into his own office and began filling in forms on his computer, leaving Joy and Dave alone in the corridor. They walked around there for a while, waiting to see whether Reg would come out again, but he seemed very busy now. So they just kept walking around. Dave began whistling a tune, until Joy shot him a look which told him to shut up. Eventually they leaned into the wall, still waiting for Reg.

“Wish I knew what Stryker is up to,” Joy said, as she slumped down against the wall.

Dave sat down next to her, leaning back into the door to Stryker's office. And he fell over as the door opened.

“Fuck!” he swore and looked behind him. “Doesn't the bastard lock his door?”

Joy smiled.

“How dare you, you complete vandal!” she grinned at him. “How dare you open that door and enter his office with me and try to find out what's going on?”

Dave laughed as well and he got to his feet again. Together they walked in and went to the desk. Dave flicked the laptop open and turned it on. Of course it asked for a password. He ignored it for now and looked at the Smartphone and the tablet. He tutted. They were things he would loathe to use himself because of the operating system and the finger print reader. But though he hated the things, he knew he could not hack them, so instead he began looking around for clues as to what the password for the laptop might be.

“If I could take this with me, I would run a program on it to crack this thing.”

“Hack?” Joy asked him, looking through the personal items and the few papers on the desk.

She saw a business card which looked odd and out of place to her. It had a weird logo on it. She put it in her pocket.

“Crack,” Dave corrected her. “Hacking is the good stuff, testing systems and that. Cracking is breaking into programs, sites, computers, you name it.”

“Ah,” Joy went. “Thanks, that's not superfluous information at all right now.”

“Sorry,” Dave said. “Found anything?”

“Nothing really,” Joy said.

And then she froze as footsteps approached the door through the corridor.

Wes came into the office and gave them a sharp look.

“What the fuck are you doing in here?” he bit at them.

“Finding out what Stryker is up to,” Joy bit back. “More useful than doing all the backup stuff.”

Wes looked angry, but then shook his head.

“Better get down there to help us out, you two. Make sure he doesn't catch you in here.”

“Right.”

Dave got up from behind the desk and took Joy's hand. They followed Wes out of the office and back down the corridor. As they passed Reg's tiny office, they noticed he was still filling in forms.

As they went back down to the lab, they passed the stage in Central Plaza where a nervous looking man was setting up the things for the deejay who was playing that evening. The moment they came in, Dave set himself down at his monitor again and he clicked away the notice that his backup was ready. He opened a second hard drive on his computer and began making a backup of that.

Joy took a box of processed samples and began packing them in a special case for transportation to the mainland. She set herself down next to Dave. After a few minutes she pulled the card from her pocket and gave it to Dave.

“Know what that logo is?”

Dave shook his head.

“No idea. Looks like a family crest or something. You got this from Stryker's office?”

Joy nodded.

“Figured it might be important, but if the name means nothing then the logo doesn't either.”

“Means nothing to me, but maybe right now we should focus on getting this done. And then later we'll worry about it all.”

After a while Wes came and pulled a chair over so he could sit just behind Dave and Joy.

“Want to tell me what you were doing in Stryker's office?”

Dave and Joy looked at each other.

“We think Stryker might be up to something,” Joy told Wes.

Wes frowned.

“Right...”

“There is no need for any evacuation prep,” Dave said. “And we were able to check the shipping logs and found out that he ordered that supply ship to come in from Los Angeles today.”

Wes looked them both over, trying to decide whether they were serious or not. He decided they were.

”Shall we finish this? Then I'll help you guys try to figure out what’s going on here.”

Chapter Fourteen

Akhmed was getting more nervous by the second. He couldn't help it. It was stronger than he was. He tried to keep himself busy, checking the leads and going through the records, but he kept feeling more and more out of sorts. He took out his Smartphone and began playing a game, but that didn't help either.

Eventually, he got up and began walking around. He went into the shopping section of ‘The City’ and was surprised to find supermarkets there, a Walmart, a McDonald's, high end retailers and even an Apple Store. He was impressed. The engineering of the place was impressive. And he recognized the enterprise that would have been involved in getting all those people to invest in the place. In that sense it was a glorious example of human enterprise, but the project had failed. And it had to be stopped before things got worse. The environmental impact could be horrendous and it would never work.

In a corner behind the shopping area, he found three large rooms next to each other. They were the chapels of ‘The City.’ The middle one was marked with a cross, the right one with a Star of David and the left with a Crescent Moon and Star. The synagogue was locked, but the other two were open.

Akhmed opened the doors of the church and walked in. The whole rig was constantly buzzing with the noise of people, but this place was silent. It smelled of incense. There was a large, stained-glass window at the very front of the chapel. Daylight shone through it onto the altar. He walked up to it and looked over it. It was a beautiful place, tranquil and peaceful. He sat down in one of the pews and just looked at the stained-glass window. It showed a scene of Jesus blessing some people. In the background there was the sea, and it fitted perfectly with the light that came in from above and reflected up from the surface of the sea behind the window. It gave the scene movement and life. It completely calmed Akhmed down.

And then he became angry again. In a corner of the window he saw the logo of the company that had built the rig. Another corner showed the logo of the tech billionaire that had been behind it. He jumped out of the pew and stormed out. It was ridiculous that even in that setting they would have commercial logos. He ran into the mosque, knowing Muslims banned logos and pictures.

The mosque had Arabic writing around the edges of the room and he scanned it, seeing no logos or pictures at all. It had a large window high on the wall which provided most of the light in the room. Akhmed took off his shoes and washed his feet and hands, and then he walked in. He sat down in the middle of the mosque with his legs crossed. He looked around and found the surroundings incredibly serene. The room was just white, with the writing in blue around all the edges of the room. He began calming down again and just sat there, meditating, and feeling his nervousness flow away.

Chapter Fifteen

It took another hour before they were done packing everything up. Sheila felt exhausted. It had been boring, hard work and, unlike Dave, she had skipped lunch to help Wes. She sat down on a chair with a sigh when all was done and slumped there.

“And I thought I would be helping research the possibility of another El Niño complex. But here I am doing work I would normally leave to the most junior of my interns.”

Wes sat down beside her. He laid a hand on her knee.

“I think I might owe you dinner for this.”

She tapped his knee in return.

“I think you do.”

Wes looked over at Dave and Joy.

“I know I said I would help you guys, but...”

Dave just waved it away.

“Don't worry about it. Just help us get this lot loaded and we'll leave you to it.”

Joy looked like she was going to protest, but Dave gave her a gentle nudge.

“Think we're going to go to the party anyway.”

They loaded the boxes with samples and documents onto a few carts and went down to the shipping dock. Pillar One was dedicated to docking ships. Supply ships could land on two sides and some smaller boats could sail into the dry dock on the inside of the pillar.

The scientists rarely went down there. Exactly once since they had been on ‘The City’ had Wes and Joy done research from a boat. They had taken one of the small boats from the dock on the inside of the pillar then, where the little boats were sheltered from the surf and the weather.

One supply ship was docked at the Northern pier. The moment they arrived, Dave looked at the registration number and the name and nodded to Joy. It was the vessel on the list, the one it said had come in from Los Angeles. The dockmaster was in the process of placing a broad gangway to the opened gate in the side of the ship. They waited there until the gangway was in place and then brought their cargo on board. As they walked up, two men in suits walked past them and went to talk to the man.

They placed the boxes in a corner designated for it by the purser and then went down the gangway again. The suits had gone and only the dockmaster remained. As they reached the elevator, another few scientists came walking out trailing carts and trolleys full of gear, documents and test samples. Wes pressed the button for the middle deck of ‘The City.’

“There's a bistro close to the offices. We can go there,” he said to Sheila.

Sheila nodded slowly.

“Let's go to my quarters first though. So I can change into something more suitable.”

“You don't really need to.”

Wes smiled at her, looking her up and down. Sheila smiled back at him.

“Yes. I do.”

Dave laid an arm across Joy's shoulder and grinned sheepishly at Wes and Sheila.

“Well, we'll leave you two alone then.”

The elevator stopped at the Central Plaza and Dave and Joy got out.

“Will we see you guys here later?”

Wes nodded.

“Probably will.”

Then he pressed the button for the fifteenth deck, the doors closed and the elevator jetted down again.

Sheila opened the door to number thirty-three and went in. Wes wanted to wait in the corridor, but she pulled him in, saying he should not be silly and just make himself comfortable while he waited. She went into the bedroom and began digging around her suit case, while Wes sat down on the sofa. He could not help grabbing the remote control and turning the television on. Sheila laughed as she heard the thing burst into life.