Chapter 6 - Adrift
Sam wakes with a burning sensation on the back of his neck, as if the desk lamp has decided to fall on him whilst he was asleep. It’s breezy too, as if the window is wide open. Opening one eye, he sees, he’s still at his desk and looks up. He’s outside and above is clear blue sky, the sun beating down behind his collar. Looking down at his desk, there’s a 1 centimeter cube of metal in front of him, still warm, as he touches it. He tries to remember what it is, but can’t, “Might be important,” he thinks, so picks it up and zips it into his pocket.
“What the heck happened, where am I?” he thinks and takes a look around. He’s sat on a pile of rubbish, mostly white plastic. “Looks like I’m at the recycling centre,” Sam looks behind him and sees a calm sea, right to the horizon. “OK I must be dreaming this – I’m sat on a pile of rubbish in the ocean,” thinks Sam, as the sea breathes beneath him.
“This can’t be possible,” he moves slowly and climbs above his desk, higher onto the pile of rubbish, reaching the ‘peak’ about 60 feet up and surveys the scene. He’s at the edge of a massive rubbish island of plastic, the ocean behind him and this crazy island in front, with white looking mini-mountains, mounds moving up and down with the waves. Sam thinks he’s still dreaming, so lies down, closes his eyes and waits to wake up, but he falls asleep instead.
Opening one eye, lying flat on his back, he’s never seen stars this clear, he can see the Milky Way, Ursa Major and Orion’s Belt. “Well it’s an Earth dream,” he thinks and sits up, spitting some plastic out of his mouth. “This is a dream, surely,” he feels a definite bigger surge now from the ocean below that’s making him feel sick. “Am I asleep on a water bed?” he wonders, “but I don’t own a water bed and my last memory was at the lab.”
In the star light he can see he’s still sat on top of a pile of plastic floating in the ocean. He slaps his own face and decides to urinate in the gap between his legs, he sprays the bottom of his trousers to force himself to wake up. “I’m awake, definitely awake,” he mutters, feeling his wet ankle. He slaps himself harder. “OK I was in the office a few hours ago, working on the Quantinium device and now I’m here, floating in the ocean, the Northern Hemisphere, according to the stars, but how, where and when?” Sam can’t remember much right now, apart from his lab work and he was playing with some metallic components at his desk. He retrieves the 1cm metal cube from his pocket and looks at it. “The test piece!” He realises what happened – a dimensional transfer did take place, but he went too, with half his desk.
“OK well, I’m here now, on the ocean and I need to build shelter at first light, until I figure out what went wrong, maybe later I’ll build a raft.” Sam will have no shortage of materials on his little scrap heap island. There are bags, bottles, toothbrushes, nets, loads of rope, planks of wood, barrels, boxes, plastic sheets, baths, doors, even unopened drink and food containers. Everything he needs to survive and escape is here, he just needs to work carefully to find what he needs and get home. “I need to make sure I don’t fall into the water, I hate the sea, I could get trapped falling in, find it difficult to climb out and there will be sharks, it’s warm out here,” Sam worries.
He starts to climb around his trash mound and decides to look for plastic bottles – they are useful for raft building and may contain water. Getting on with his first task, he starts having some success and quickly finds a couple of bottles with an inch of fresh water still inside. He sniffs the contents and swallows each, replacing the caps. With plastic bags everywhere he quickly fills two with bottles and goes back to his ‘base camp’. He decides to create a raft of bottles, which he can also use as a floor for his new ‘totally rubbish’ home. To join them, he needs some rope or tape though. There are plenty of old nets and bits of rope about, but nothing to cut them. “I could use plastic bags and tie them together,” he thinks on his feet.
Sam soon realizes, that he can weave plastic bags, containing two or three empty bottles, keeping them together and the handles can join one bag to another. He quickly finds dozens of bottles and manages to collect enough water for two days. There’s no end to the plastic bags, so by nightfall he’s weaved himself a nice little platform to sleep on, that’ll float if needs be. Sam knows this will not stand up to the power of an ocean voyage though, so he’ll need rope and nets to bind it all together, and maybe some wood to keep it straight.
Satisfied with his day’s work rummaging through his mountain of trash, he falls asleep exhausted and hungry, but watered, on his bed of bottles.
It’s 3am and still dark. Sam’s awakened by hunger, staring at the Milky Way and knows, he must find food at first light, or he’ll get weak, unable to complete his raft and, eventually, starve. He’s going to look for tins and packets of food, but he knows, most of that will be heavier and at the bottom of the rubbish pile, near the ocean.
Finding a couple of tray sized pieces of plastic, Sam makes a pair of ‘snow shoes’ so he can walk on the more delicate rim of his island looking for food. With a couple of lengths of rope, he fastens six bottles to each foot and starts his expedition. He can see all kinds of boxes and things floating, but how they move suggests they're on or near the surface of the sea. He keeps trudging around his mound and, as he nears the edge, can feel his footing giving way, “It’s too thin to walk on here,” thinks Sam. He needs a boat or at least a sheet he can slide on.
Returning to base camp, he finds a plastic bath side and takes it back to his stash of bottles and bags, maybe later he’ll go surfing around Rubbish Island. There’ll be a problem getting his belly-board in and out of the water though, each time he’ll need a rope to pull himself onto the pile of rubbish, he’ll also need a place that’s less inclined to launch and return on his load-spreader. As he looks for rope and food, a familiar sight catches his eye. An old kitchen cabinet, washed high up onto the bank, is revealing its contents. Some soggy bags of flour, sugar and pasta, all moulding around the edges, but beggars can’t be choosers. Sam starts to load up his lab coat with produce and notices a draw open without contents.
“A cutlery draw!” he exclaims, with the basket half out of the draw, but empty. “The knives must be somewhere here,” Sam looks about eagerly and notices something glint in the morning sun. He treads carefully so as not to dislodge the prize further into the rubbish pile, “barrgh, it’s a piece of tin foil.”
He looks up, sees something even more interesting and begins to breath quickly, stepping back slowly towards base camp. “I hope they’re not pirates,” he thinks, as a trawler chugs towards his position, “but anywhere is better than here.”
Sam staggers to the top of his mound begins to wave both arms as if he’s trying to take off, shouting, “HEY, HEY, HEY!” but there’s no need, the boat is heading straight for him – at ramming speed! Sam can’t believe his luck, the boat will hit just below his ‘base camp’ and he’ll literally be able to walk onto their bow deck from above. The steel boat’s bow looks about twenty feet above the ocean, but his camp is 20 feet higher than that. He starts to move down as the boat hits, moving his entire world several feet North, propelling Sam down and seemingly South, rolling him onto the deck with other items of rubbish and his new raft of bottles, but he’s safe.