Chapter 7 - Reckoning
He quickly gets up and feels much better, standing on a device, designed to float on the ocean (an old Japanese squid boat), but feels, as though he had so much to explore on his massive island of rubbish, if only he’d had a boat. It was both scary and interesting to see what people have thrown away or lost in the ocean.
The squid boat crew were nowhere to be seen, so Sam walks slowly to the bridge and climbs inside through a heavy steel door. He can now hear the engines labouring at full power.
Still no sign of anybody, he climbs the metal stairs to the bridge, clutching the hand rail, sees a military knife wedged behind a pipe near the top step, thinks, “Great, more luck!” and pushes it down his pants’ belt behind him, continuing to move slowly up, completing the stairs without making a sound. Still nobody about, but he can feel the vibration of engines revving unnecessarily. He looks around for engine controls and sees the boat is running on an autopilot along a due North baring. He pushes the “Auto Pilot Off” button and pulls back the throttle lever to “Idle”. Within about 5 seconds, the engines start to calm down until everything is still and silent. Just him, the boat and the island breathing slowly with the ocean.
Sam’s next thought is “food.” He downs half a bottle of water, he finds on the bridge, straight away. “This boat cannot be deserted,” he thinks, as he slides a hatch at the back of the bridge and descends into the living quarters. There’s a kitchen, some closed cabins and a dining area with a table for ten people with portholes to the outside. And still no one about.
“Food…,” he thinks, “…but need to be quiet, they might not give me any.” So Sam starts to forage through the cupboards, the fridge and quickly finds bread, fish sticks and fruit, stuffing it in until he’s satisfied. Placing an apple in each pocket and a loaded 0.38 revolver, he finds in the knife drawer, into his sweaty palm, he thinks, “At least they won’t throw me overboard with this,” Sam tucks the ‘snub-nose revolver’ into his belt to keep the knife company.
The boat looks like people are living there: fresh food, fairly clean, engines running, auto pilot on. Sam resumes his search for the crew. Cabins first, he opens up the nearest with a sign in Japanese, saying “Captain” (with an English translation below it). There are family pictures on the dressing table mirror and Sam finds several pictures of the same middle-aged guy, a westerner, blonde, chiseled features and a small pot belly. “I guess that’s the Captain!” thinks Sam.
Sam leaves the Captain’s cabin, but doesn’t notice a document pinned to the mirror frame, mostly covered in family pictures – it’s the Captain’s Certificate dated year 1991, the name printed says “Mr Deiter Fischer”.
Sam’s working his way back and down through the boat, as he looks for crew members, but still no sign of anyone. He opens the water tight door to the landing deck and discovers seven people laid around in dark tight-fitting protective suits, perhaps divers, still breathing but unconscious. As he gets closer, Sam thinks the suits don’t look like they’ve been in water. They’re dusty and the wind keeps blowing that dust around the deck plate. “These look a bit like soldiers to me, but are not wearing much kit. Wearing small head gear with cameras, lights, gas masks, goggles plus hiking-style boots. They look a bit like pot-holers too, if anything, but what are they doing here?” Sam thinks.
He notices a woman laid there, different to the others, wearing a full clear face mask, and, by virtue of her figure, Sam fancies her. “Megan, eh? Hmmm, very nice,” he thinks, looking over what could potentially be a prize catch.
One of the men splutters into life, holding his head as he rolls a little. Sam steps between the bodies and over to the guy, named “Jes”, according to his badge. “Hey Jes, it’s OK, you’re back on board.” Jes is like Megan, also different to the others, wearing a full face mask.
“What the frick happened? Where the heck are we?” pipes up the mask without Jes moving his lips.
Sam thinks, “Cool device and, erm, that phrase sounds familiar, it’s what I said 24 hours ago.”
“You’re back on board the boat and all OK, take it easy. Do you need water?” asks Sam.
“Jes is OK thanks for asking, please help him up,” says the mask on Jes’s behalf, who’s still half asleep.
Jes starts to mutter using his own voice this time, “No I just had a drink on Ma...aargh,” Jes stops his sentence mid-stream and sits up fully awake, clutching his stomach, and says, “Where are we?”
The mask starts to synthesise another statement, with the electronic equivalent of clearing its throat, “We’re back on Ear…” Jes shouts at the mask, “Shut up, you piece of junk!” and then calmly to Sam, “Not you, mate!” as he pulls the mask off and repeats, “Where are we?”
Sam also has no idea really and all this wonderment is looking familiar. “We’re on a boat on the ocean and, I’m guessing, you’re not the crew?”
Jes shakes his head and says, “So who are you?”
Sam knows that answer, “I’m Sam, I arrived on the ship today. I’m a scientist.”
“What’s your job on here?” enquires Jes.
“I’m not working on here, I just arrived, I don’t know how, I was at my desk…,” Sam stops mid-stream, thinking his answer will sound crazy.
“OK, we need to find Megan,” instructs Jes.
“I already did, she’s over there, I noticed her breathing was OK,” smiles Sam and winks at Jes.
Jes bolts up onto his feet and stumbles across to her. “She’s my fiancé mate. You’re not her type, believe me,” barks Jes.
“Are these your team mates?” asks Sam.
“No, Megan and me are engineers, these guys were sent by the company to check on us about something,” replies Jes as he revives Megan, “but I can’t remember what it was about. It will come to me.”
Sam, Jes and Megan start reviving the other five, who are wearing more traditional pot-holing gear, three guys and two girls, helping them into the dining area. No one remembers much, but all remember something.
Drew turns out to be the leader of the five, he explains what he can: “I was stopping a machine in a tunnel, everything lit up and we woke up here.”
“Woke up here!” Sounds familiar to Sam again, and he chips-in, “Stopping a machine? What were you doing exactly?”
Drew frowns and mutters, “It was a cylinder, a metal cylinder! It was supposed to switch…” Drew stops himself, so Sam butts-in, “I was doing something too, then I ended up here. Actually, I ended up over there on that big pile of plastic, then you guys came along with this boat.”
The team look over to Rubbish Island, mostly port side now. One of them, Kaffey, wearing round John Lennon-style glasses, remarks in his usual half-dazed manner, “We’re at the North Pacific Gyre.”
Drew goes, “Huh?”
Kaffey continues: “We’re at a great pile of rubbish floating at the top of the Pacific Ocean. All the garbage that gets dropped into the Pacific floats up here after a few weeks. The different currents form a Gyre – a circle of flowing water.”
Drew is looking more confused and blurts out: “Get your head out of your butt and explain what grunts understand!”
Kaffey starts to mumble again: “A gyre is a swirling drain, like in a bath,” eyebrows all around the room are moving in unison up and down, looking confused. Kaffey sighs, “a big fricking whirlpool at the top of the Pacific where floating stuff collects?”
Everybody except Sam says together, “Oh!” nodding and smiling.
Kaffey continues further, “It’s now a 1.5 million ton rubbish pile, everything is here: dead bodies, floating cars, food, water, boats, dead cats, houses, floating containers filled with anything that drops from ships.” Everyone looks surprised except ‘Captain’ Drew.
Drew is now thinking about survival. He orders the men to start checking supplies and the women to look for information about what they’re doing here and who’s boat this is. “What’s our status and next step?” he’s thinkin
g.
Women report back first with hands full of documents, thankfully in English, as maritime law demands. Blair, the alpha-female starts her report, whilst Megan thrusts documents onto Drew’s chest and walks out, annoyed at doing this grunt work. Blair begins, “This boat is Japanese, called Ryou Un Maru. It’s a squid boat and the crew abandoned ship an hour ago at most, there’s luke-warm coffee on the bridge. They left just before we got here. Captain’s name was Deiter Fischer, according to the last entry in the log. We’ve also found something strange up there,” pointing to the bridge. Miss Strong butts in, “You won’t figure this one out Sir, erm, I mean, Drew!”
Then Kaffey enters the room, “We’ve got about one quarter fuel left, enough for a thousand klicks, I mean kilometers, plenty of water and enough food for a month.”
“OK thanks, Kaff,” says Drew, “we’re gonna need to find more fuel over there,” as he points to the mound of plastic. “Kaffey, start figuring out how we can search around in there and find diesel,” thrusting a pair of binoculars into his hands. Blair beckons Drew to visit the bridge.
“OK, I want Shaw and Jes to search the ship for the missing crewmen, look in every cabin, space and cupboard, stay together. I’ll be on the bridge with these two. All check radios now and get going. If you find anything – report in. Megan, would you mind helping Shaw and Jes, to keep you busy?” Megan scowls, whilst Drew and the other women leave for the bridge.
Sam suspects something odd about Drew and his team – they act and sound like soldiers. He follows them to the bridge and he’s beginning to learn exactly what happened and it’s something to do with Quantinium. The three walk over to the still-warm cup of coffee and, as Strong points out, a few strange things. It’s clear, something rather odd happened here.
The coffee cup handle is partly missing, but not broken off. More like sawn off then polished perfectly. Also, a section of the bridge console is missing, exposing wires, half switches and lights, as if they were sliced away. Lower down, the bottom of a stool remains, having been cut off at the foot rest bolted to the floor. Sam looks across the bridge at a matching stool on the opposite side. It’s like a cylinder has been placed over the stool and everything inside it has been erased plus anyone sat there.