The Wandering Island Factory (2 page)

He plucked one of the gauges with his finger. The air bubble moved, but the needle didn't.

An island. A floating island. It was something to think about, if only he could watch something more interesting than a gauge.

[Chapter 2]

Jason took his week ashore at a local hotel the company rented for the crew. It was nothing special, but nice all the same. Fortunately, he spent little time in the room. Hawaii was all about bars and beaches that were better than silicone valley.

The sites were something to behold.

He watched as the women emerged from the ocean, their suits leaving little to the imagination. College roommates, he assumed. Perhaps on vacation, but it was difficult to tell from this far away. They didn't quite look local to him. They were all so pretty, but he was waiting for one in particular.

"Gina," he said, getting up to pull out her chair, "Good to see you."

"Aren't you supposed to be working?" she said with a flirt while the waiter was busy with another couple.

"Two weeks on, one week off."

"They got anything built yet?" she grabbed a handful of chips from the table and started dipping them in the sauce.

"So far, it just looks like giant slabs— No, scratch that, it looks more like Legos, except more tongue and groove. From what I've been able to gather, they assemble them like interlocking building blocks into the hundred acres or so flat slab, then I don't know what, but some heavy construction equipment has already started showing up. Cranes, bulldozers, stuff like that. It's all very curious."

"Islands. It'll be the first floating island ever made. I mean, sure, oil tycoons make islands in the shape of palm trees for millionaires all the time. But this is something different altogether. This is totally mobile. It's a brave new world," she said, looking over the menu.

"I don't know, though. I just don't see how they plan on surviving one hundred foot waves. I mean, sure, the thing may hold together, I mean, it's built like a battleship, but what keeps the crashing waves from washing everything off the deck? Some of the concept drawings I saw in the paper made them look just like regular islands with trees and gardens and little grass huts and stuff. I just don't see how any of that would survive a hundred foot wave."

She shrugged, then looked up from the menu. "When the island costs a billion and the landscaping costs a few million to replace. . . "

He laughed, "You have a good point. I guess it's all relative."

"They still keeping you in the dungeon?"

"Yeah. The pay is good, but, it is so excruciatingly boring. I mean, I just watch dials all day long. It's insane."

"I wonder how long it'll be before some pirates decide to track one down and hijack a whole island."

They were still laughing when the waiter took their order.

The mainland loved having the behemoth parked off their shore. First, the crew pumped a lot of money into the local economy. But secondly, everyone's electric bill dropped. The ship was designed to be as self-contained as possible. To that end, it used steam turbines to produce all it's electric needs. But it had an interesting trick. At sea, it burned tons of oil to produce the steam. But why burn oil when its primary function is pumping molten lava through tubes, and part of the process involves rapidly cooling the product before it's pushed out into the ocean. Running at full production, where it was now, it doubled as a geothermal plant and sold, for pennies, its excess power to the mainland. Cooling product this thick meant hundreds of megawatts of nearly free power.

The same engineers that designed the behemoth had turned that kind of mind toward building floating islands. He simply had to trust that they had worked out every little detail.

Either way, they were mostly treated like honored guests everywhere they went. Only a very few protested their presence. Naturalists that equated what they were doing with raping the land. But they were rare and mostly ignored.

Gina favored a small amusement park with bumper cars, games, and two roller coasters.

He liked the giant sourdough pretzels with a cream cheese center.

He woke in his room after a night at the park. She was sleeping in his bed, still fully dressed. He looked over the empty bottles decorating the floor. They had had quite a night. . . too bad he didn't remember any of it.

She was very cute, yet, they had never done anything.

He had met her online through MySpace almost two years ago. They had chatted from thousands of miles apart for the entire time.

She was the reason he pushed so hard for this new assignment.

It was a little terrifying, but he had never actually met her in person before this week. Their first face to face.

She wasn't perfect.

He had idealized her over that first year of chatting. That honeymoon phase where daters are blind to the flaws that are obvious to everyone else had passed without ever physically meeting. He liked her even more now, flaws and all.

She was facing away from him, short hair covering her face. Drool down the side of her cheek. Her muffled little snore was faint and difficult to hear.

Her freckles didn't show at all on emails. Her hair was a little stringy, she smoked a pack a day, her accent and voice didn't come close to how she sounded across computer speakers. She was taller than he imagined, and slightly heavier too. But none of these superficial things mattered at all to him.

Had he met her first in a bar, he would have overlooked her without so much as a polite hi. She just didn't fit his mental image of his type.

But in a bar wasn't how they had met.

They met first through words. Ideas. Ideals.

He moved her hair with his finger.

They had kissed, but just on the cheeks. They had hugged, but seemed reluctant to cross that line once occupied by thousands of miles. She was interested in his boring job. She liked the idea of building boats out of rocks that float.

She was probably smarter that he, but just about some things.

He adored their conversations the most, and perhaps that was for the best.

It was a perplexingly weird relationship to be in. He never would have dated a woman for over a year without her putting out, yet, he had already put in that much time with her. And he was ready to put in more.

He had dated prettier, yet prettier rarely turned out to be everything.

He crawled over her, careful not to wake her, on his way to the bathroom, then to the juice in the fridge.

He handed her a glass of tomato juice when she sat up.

"I hate V8," she said, taking the glass anyway. "But I'd drink anything this morning." She guzzled it in a single shot. She shook her head, eyes opened extra wide, then smiled at him, "Thank you." She handed him back the empty glass.

"You feel like breakfast? They have a breakfast bar here. Don't even have to get dressed. Usually nothing more than bagels with eggs or bacon, and pots of coffee of course."

She started looking for her shoes, "Coffee?!?" She slapped him on the thigh, "I would have started with that."

Something about watching her tie her shoes overwhelmed him. He kissed her on the lips, just briefly, then said, "If you're not careful, I'm going to fall head over heels for you."

She smiled, then kept tying. "I do have a reckless streak."

They went for breakfast in last night's wrinkled and slept-in clothes, smelling of beer, vodka, and smoke.

They fit in just fine.

She surfed, which was new to him. He could paddle a board out and back just fine, but his balance was so poor that he could barely sit on the board, let alone stand on it in the peak of a wave.

Even being a surfing klutz, he still had a ball trying to keep up with her. And she was quite something to watch when she caught a 'righteous wave, dude.'

All too soon, he found himself waiting for a boat to take him back to his personal prison in the belly of the beast he called behemoth.

[Chapter 3]

He sat in front of the gauges, daydreaming about last week.

One kiss. Just one kiss with her had made it all feel magical. He knew she wanted to take it slow. Very slow. He knew her well enough to know why, too.

It didn't matter, he was willing to put in the time.

He couldn't afford to live in Hawaii if it weren't for this strange little job.

He sat up and forced himself to pay attention to the gauges. His job suddenly meant a whole lot more. It directly translated into time with her. He could endure boring, for her.

He invented a routine to keep from slipping up. He opened his notebook and entered a time, then recorded each of the gauges. He pretended like it was an official, adult job. Like it was vitally important. Like he was defusing a bomb or steering the ship. Writing it down made it feel far more important and a lot less boring.

Every five minutes, he added to his list of numbers.

He also got into drinking lots of coffee, and, unfortunately, peeing in a bottle.

He stood on deck and looked out over the ocean side of the great machine. The sound of whooshing steam and pumping water was almost deafening, except in the soundproofed living quarters and control rooms. Everywhere else required hearing protection, a mix of earplugs and headphones. It made it feel like you were in solitary confinement everywhere on the ship, but it was necessary. The equipment was loud, especially when it was running full out.

But he couldn't argue with the progress. It cranked out uniform rectangular slabs faster than anything else, and that side of the ship was crawling with tugs, cranes, and cables lashing and anchoring these carrier-long slabs of floating stone. Jackhammers and backhoes modified with grinders instead of buckets chiseled away at the imperfections, kicking up clouds of smoke and compounding the noise.

It was the other reason they were always located so far offshore. Noise pollution was very real. He hadn't seen a fish in these waters since they started.

Each assembled slab was perhaps six or more acres, not that he was particularly good at guessing what an acre was. A hundred acres, the size of their first order, would be completed faster than he could imagine.

It was impressive, but it also gave him a powerful thirst to be anywhere but in the bowels of the ship while all this history was in the making.

Two weeks later, he was on the mainland again, waiting at the beachside outdoor café like before. Gina approached across the sand with her board. "Sorry, I got tired of waiting," she said, water still dripping down the front of her swimsuit.

"I didn't get in line for the first boat early enough, had to catch a later one."

"Well, at least they have you staying on the same island as me. It's still a long drive, but it's been worth it so far."

He tried to smile, but slumped a little deeper in the chair. "Sorry, I probably should have told you. I thought I could handle all this, but they shifted me to nights. I'm like on no sleep right now." He tried to sit upright, but slouched almost immediately. "I thought I could tough-guy it out for you, but I can't."

She put her damp hand on his, "It's alright. Caught some primo waves. I can get back to them while you get some shuteye."

He slid her the spare room key. "I ordered a burger and some fries, but I don't think I can stay awake to eat them. Especially as slow as this guy is going." He pulled out some money and handed it to her. "You can have it, if you want it. Shouldn't go to waste." He headed for his room.

When he opened his eyes, the shower was still running and a strange duffle bag was by the TV.

A few minutes after the water stopped, Gina emerged with a towel around her head and some fresh clothes on. "You awake?"

"Yeah," he said, closing his eyes and leaning back in bed.

She sat on the corner of the bed, "You sure? Because, you did this once before, and about five minutes later you were dead to the world."

"Yeah, I'm sure."

"I was thinking there's this awesome club that isn't too far from here."

"Jason?" she said again. "Jason!"

He sat up, startled.

She laughed, "Jason, you've already fallen asleep on me three times today. I think I'm going to just go home. It's already ten at night—"

"Oh, I'm sorry." He rubbed his eyes. "I'm being a bad host. I must have been more worn out than I had thought. I thought I was a night owl, but it's just slam— I'm sorry, I'm not holding up my end of this, am I? Stay, we'll get an early start tomorrow."

She smiled, but went to the bathroom instead of climbing in bed.

She came back without the towel.

He staggered to the dresser as she settled in at the chair. "The uh," he said, "the worst part of night shift is switching back to days." He shook a bottle of melatonin, "I'm going to take two of these right now and sleep soundly until morning. I'd love it if you were still here when I got up, but I understand completely if you're not." He swallowed two dry, then went to the bathroom where he wet his toothbrush. "Look, Gina, I really like you, but I totally understand your past. Well, as much as a guy can. I'm really not going to make the first move. We can go at whatever pace you feel comfortable with, or not go anywhere at all.

I loved chatting with you over the last few years and, I think we could have something. Getting this job and getting this assignment was the only way to find any of that out." He put some paste on the toothbrush, "In about an hour, the worst I'll be able to do is snore on you."

She relaxed while he brushed in the other room.

He woke well rested and ready for the morning, now that he was back on days. Well rested or not, he still woke alone.

He sat up and looked around. The bed looked disheveled enough that she may have spent the night, but he could have tossed and turned enough to have done that too. He was disappointed, but not mad.

She had a life here too.

She worked Tuesday through Saturday and was taking classes at the community college, as she could afford them. She was busy. Her friends were here. Her life was here.

He was just visiting.

Perhaps they hit it off better in his mind than in hers.

His assignment would last for a year; he had time. This was early in any new relationship. But it wasn't really new.

It was weird knowing someone so well, but just recently meeting them in person.

He laid and stared at the ceiling.

"Don't push. Back off, you idiot." He put his hand over his eyes.

The door clicked, then opened as Gina came back in. "You slept through breakfast, Jason, those must be prescription-grade pills."

Sitting up, he looked to the door. She had two cups of coffee in a cardboard holder with a bag of— He took a deep sniff. Sausage biscuits. He opened the bag as she handed it to him, still in bed. "Oh, my favorite." He stuffed his face with a monster bite.

She unwrapped one of her own, then set the cups on the nightstand. "Melatonin? That doesn't look prescription."

He swallowed hard, "Nope, it's that hippy stuff. All natural. I was worried about getting addicted and side effects and stuff, 'cause, you know, I take it every day just to keep right on the nightshift. Plus, it's a little cheaper." He crammed another huge bite and quickly chewed it. "I get these really vivid dreams while I'm on it. I used to take a generic Unisom, but it was made from the stuff in cough medicine. It left me feeling groggy and hung over for a few hours every morning." He hungrily finished off the biscuit. "I'll trade vivid dreams for a hangover any day."

She read the back of the bottle. "Vivid, or trippy?"

He reached over her for one of the coffee cups, then sat facing her, as intimately as possible. "I don't really know for sure. I never had really vivid dreams before. It might be trippy," he chased that thought with a sip, "for all I know. It's in the hippy vitamin section of the store."

She leaned away from him, but just slightly so her back rested against the headboard, "So, what's on the agenda today?"

"It's your island."

She turned the TV to the Weather channel. Showers by noon. "We could catch a movie, or something." She checked the other channels.

They ended up just watching movies on TV. And talking. They were very good at talking. They had chatted for years, and he was slow to understand, it was the talking that he found so attractive about her. That made her so different from all the others.