by Rick Chesler
“Of course.”
White left Clarissa on the docks and walked toward the building that housed his office. He moved slowly as he contemplated what he had just learned. Not just one dolphin escaped, but three. Not good, not good at all. And when coupled with Coco’s sub incident...He stopped walking, gripped by a powerful thought that he tried to shake off without success.
What if she had been telling the truth, that she wasn’t hung-over or stoned or whatever the hell it is the kids are into these days, and she really did meet up with a large shark down there? That would make the dolphins skittish, wouldn’t it? He started walking again.
There was little he could do about any of it unless he was willing to delay the hotel’s opening until the sub was fixed and the dolphins found, along with the reason for why they’re so spooked in the first place. He was not willing to delay the launch, though. This place was open to the public tomorrow, and it better all go off without a hitch. It would be an international embarrassment of the highest magnitude should these well-heeled guests do anything but come away gushing about what an incredible and one-of-a-kind experience they’d just had. Anything less than that, including a last-minute cancellation due to facility issues, would not please his investors, and he could not afford to pay them back if the hotel didn’t turn out to be profitable.
Coco and Mick would have to get their act together with the sub, and Clarissa would need to figure out those dolphins. He had more important things to do, like welcome the celebrity guests.
Chapter 4
The next morning
James White beamed as he stood, arms outstretched, on the veranda of a huge bure style lodge as an island taxi drove up carrying the hotel’s first guests. There were two of them in this vehicle, travel weary after a long flight from the US mainland to Fiji’s main island of Viti Levu and Nandi International Airport. From there they’d taken a chartered “puddle jumper” plane to White’s private outer island resort haven, and the cab had delivered them here after a short ride from its small airport.
While a pair of native Fijian porters stepped up to carry the luggage, the driver opened the rear door, and a tall American man stepped out, one James recognized from a recent cover of Sports Illustrated magazine. John Rudd, star quarterback for the New England Patriots. And the shapely pair of legs pouring out of the car on the other side belonged to none other than his tabloid-hunted girlfriend, action sportswear model Staci Lincoln. She wore a Patriots ball cap over stylishly cropped blond hair, and oversized designer sunglasses. James walked down to greet them enthusiastically.
“Mr. Rudd, Ms. Lincoln: Welcome to the Triton Undersea Resort! You’re our very first guests to arrive. Please, won’t you come with me to our reception bure for a little refreshment before we take you down to your suite?”
The football player and his girlfriend headed up into the open-air, thatched roof structure where staff waited with drinks in cut coconuts, and a small musical ensemble played island music.
As soon as the couple had walked inside, another cab drove up and deposited six more guests. Saudi head of state, Abdullah bin Antoun, emerged from the vehicle first, followed by his wife. Both of them wore traditional Arabic robes and headgear. They smiled, and looked around slowly at their new surroundings, while their nanny wrangled their three young children from the cab. A bevy of porters descended on them and took their things. Again, James White was there to personally extend a hand.
So it went for the next hour or so, vehicles driving up, depositing well-heeled guests—an NBA franchise owner, an Internet company billionaire, a US senator, a supermodel...After they had been given a suitable amount of time to congregate in the reception bure with refreshments and to acclimate to their new environment, White stood at the entrance to the building and clapped his hands, ever conscious of the bevy of international reporters flitting about the property, shooting video, taking pictures and notes.
They’d been instructed not to disturb the guests, but selected staff, including White himself, were available to answer questions. The reporters were a hassle, to be sure; it was like having to be on your absolute best behavior at all times in your own house, but he knew that the payoff for putting up with the inconvenience was big-time exposure—basically free advertising. Not to mention the fact that the entire staff should be on their best behavior, White reflected. This was it. Opening weekend. Go big or go home. He would not get another chance at this. Indeed, he thought, watching a rock star accept two Fiji Bitter beers from a passing server and hand one to his Japanese girlfriend, it was a miracle he’d gotten this far.
So far at least, everyone seemed to be having a good time. The weather was cooperating, the brilliant South Pacific sun pouring into the open bure, no heavy rain forecasted, and light trade winds. It was perfect. The rest was up to him and his people. White consulted his Rolex Submariner, given to him as a token of appreciation for allowing the watchmaker to be the “official timekeeper for the world’s first underwater luxury hotel.” There would be more guests arriving today, but no more were due for at least a couple of hours. The baggage had been transported to the underwater rooms by now, and so it was time to deliver the guests to their suites. White moved to the center of the room, and addressed his guests.
“Ladies and gentlemen, as lovely as our topside accommodations are here at Triton, I know you can’t wait to see your suites. So without further ado, if you’ll follow me, I’ll accompany you down to the hotel. Feel free to bring your food and beverages with you.”
Excited chatter in multiple languages erupted as the guests followed White out of the reception bure onto a garden path that led toward the lagoon. White spoke quietly into a handheld two-way radio as he walked a little ahead of the guests. He put the hotel staff on alert that the first guests were coming down now.
White led the group past a quaint wooden sign reading Tunnel Entrance, and emerged onto the lagoon’s beach in front of what was truly a marvel of marine engineering. What on first glance looked to be a dock of some sort, was actually an opening into a tunnel that led underwater. As the guests gathered on the beach in front of the opening, a voice issued from an unseen speaker.
ATTENTION...TRAIN ARRIVING IN 3...2...1...
Then a chime sounded, and with no noise at all, a tram-like vehicle glided to a stop in the tunnel’s opening.
“So quiet!” a reporter who’d been allowed to make the trip into the hotel with the guests remarked.
White nodded. “Rubber wheels on a Plexiglas surface, plus it’s a cable-and-pulley system, with the motor housed in a separate building, over there.” He pointed a little ways behind them to a small structure where machinery churned within a soundproofed housing. “The motor’s in there, not in the train, so there’s no noise while it’s in the tunnel. Nothing to detract from the undersea experience. This way, please!”
White led them with an outstretched arm to the tunnel entrance and the waiting train. “As you can see,” he continued, “The tram itself is an open vehicle that rolls within a sealed, Plexiglas tube. You’ll be able to look out underwater as we ride down to the hotel.”
A chorus of appreciative murmurs followed as the guests boarded the tram. Soothing music played, over which a female voice welcomed them to Triton Undersea Resort, “the world’s first and only luxury underwater hotel.” Controlled remotely, the tram started to move shortly after the passengers had taken their seats. Seated next to the reporter, a young African American woman from the New York Times, White pointed to a camera mounted at the front of the train.
“Gives the operators a view of what’s happening inside so they can wait for everyone to be seated.” The reporter nodded, and jotted something down in her notepad.
The tram, with two identical ends, set into motion by rolling in the opposite direction from which it had come. The tube through which it was pulled slanted at an angle down toward the hotel. Immediately, it became a shade darker as the tram slid down into the deep. Outside the tube, the guests
were excitedly pointing at small fish swimming by, their descent into the ocean made more real for having seen them.
The vehicle moved surprisingly fast through the cool, recycled air, and in about two minutes the first energized chatter from the guests broke out as the underwater hotel came into view. It appeared as two huge cylinders situated on the reef floor, and stretching to just beneath the lagoon’s surface, with a long row of pods stemming from a central tube connecting the cylinders. The water was clear enough that from this distance they could see the entire complex. Dense schools of multi-colored fish swarmed around the structure. A squid shot between coral heads. A pair of lobster antennae twitched in the currents at the edge of their coral cave.
The seafloor. Even the guests seemed to know that it wasn’t normal to have a hotel here. They had quieted as the tram drew nearer to their home for the next several days, the realization hitting them that they were underwater, and that this was no theme park attraction. This was the real deal. Mother Nature, modified to support humans where no humans should be. And in style, at that. Chandeliers and Persian rugs were visible through the mostly transparent structure.
The train tube disappeared into the cylindrical structure on the left, the lighting changing to soft LEDs and plasma screens beckoning everyone a warm welcome to Triton. Amazingly, the tube passed through the wall into the inside of the hotel such that not even an airlock was required. James White had battled with engineers over this for years. There would be no “wet room” or industrial type space requiring guests to wait in a damp, confined area while a suitable pressure was reached before the door could be opened. None of that. Just ride the train in, ride it back out, at will. The train tunnel extended from shore all the way down to the hotel, and right through the outer wall.
The tram slowed between two rows of potted palms, well lit with natural light from above, since the roof of the building was also clear Plexiglas or acrylic. The recorded voice informed passengers, “You have arrived at Triton Undersea Resort, your home on the ocean floor. We hope you enjoy your stay! Please exit to your right.”
White added his own voice to the mix. “Welcome everyone! Hors d’oeuvres and champagne will be served now in the lobby. This way, please.” He exited the train, and led the guests toward the sound of live piano music. The distance to walk was short, but it took time with the large group constantly stopping to look out the windows at the stunning reef view.
“It’s like diving without getting wet!” one remarked.
“Like a Habitrail for people!” a child remarked. “This is how my hamster must feel, looking out at the world. Look, shark!” The boy put his hand on the glass as a small reef shark swam a few feet away.
Eventually, the group straggled into the lobby, where a Fijian man sat performing at a baby grand piano. Indian and Fijian servers circulated with trays of more food and drinks, the kind so-called foodies got all excited about. Beluga caviar. Starfruit. Ahi sushi. Free-flowing Moet White Star champagne. Shots of iced vodka. Bottled Fiji water. The food was trifling next to the view, though. The lobby had the largest uninterrupted expanse of windows in the entire hotel. With a three-story floor-to-ceiling height, the reef vista upon which they looked was unparalleled anywhere on the planet. It wasn’t so much like they were looking at the reef. It was like they were a part of the reef.
Sea stars clung to the lower reaches of the windows. These would be scraped off by scuba-diving staff whose job it was to keep the glass clean should any type of marine growth start to impede the view. But for now, the viewing area was clean as could be, and the guests pointed here and there as they walked about, absolutely entranced. Overhead, White pointed out a school of manta rays appearing to fly over the transparent roof. He looked around at his clients. They were mixing with each other, enjoying the food, the setting having the desired effect. This would be a one-of-a-kind experience even for this been-there-done-that crowd.
He was in the process of explaining to the reporter where the kitchen was, when his two-way radio lit up. He wore an earpiece with it so that it wouldn’t disturb the guests, but when he flipped his mic on he could talk softly, and still be heard on the other end.
“James here. Busy. What’s up?”
“We’ve got a problem with the SWAC system. Need you to be briefed at earliest opportunity, over.”
White couldn’t suppress a look of irritation while stared down at the Italian marble floor. When he looked up again, he caught the NFL guy’s girlfriend looking right at him, and he quickly slapped a smile back on his face. Everything’s great! Except apparently the SWAC system. He knew that was the special air conditioning system the underwater hotel had, and that SWAC stood for Sea Water Air Conditioning.
“It’s nice and cool down here, Al. Not sure what the problem is, but can you deal with it?” He smiled as he looked around the crowded lobby. Al’s radio reply came, along with the noise of some kind of alarm that started braying in the background.
“It won’t be nice and cool down there for long, James. Need you back up here to advise.”
Chapter 5
James White rode the tram alone up out of the hotel. He scowled at a sea turtle gliding over his head. This had better be important, he thought, exiting the train tunnel onto the beach. Those guests down there were having a good time so far, though, and he felt comfortable enough to leave for a few minutes, maybe ride back down with the next influx of new arrivals.
He navigated the garden paths at a near trot whenever he was sure no one was looking until he reached a solid building—not a bure—on the edge of the topside complex. A sign in front of it proclaimed, Off Limits Area, Engineering Staff Only. White strode to the door, and unlocked it with one of the many keys on his key ring. He entered the single floor structure, and walked through a hallway to a room he knew the marine engineers who worked in here called “the situation room.” He wasn’t thrilled about having a situation on the hotel’s opening day, but hopefully it was just these nerds being extra thorough, wanting to apprise him about some technical issue that could be bad if an improbable combination of events happened all at the same time.
As he passed through the completely empty building, though, room after room and the open cubicle area totally empty, he knew it must be serious. Even the break room was empty. Usually there were at least two guys in there playing Xbox games. They must all be in the Situation Room, which did not bode well. White turned down one more hallway, and was looking into the open door at his entire engineering staff seated around the conference table, arguing and pointing excitedly at their laptop screens.
There were eight men and two women in the room. James didn’t recall the names of most of them, and he didn’t care. He only needed to remember one, and that was Albert Johnson, his Engineering Manager. This was his circus. James breezed in, and stood at the head of the table, ignoring the empty chair delicately shoved at him by a shy, female Japanese electrical engineer.
“What have you got for me, Al?”
The room quieted as all eyes went to the marine engineer. “The hotel’s air conditioning system stopped working about two hours ago.”
“Two hours ago? So you could have let me know before we took the guests down there?”
Al shrugged. “At that time I thought it would be a minor problem we’d be able to get a handle on quickly. Wanted to run some diagnostics before sounding the alarm, so to speak.”
“Yeah, I heard one over the radio. Literally.”
“Right, that was the temperature alarm exceeding the upper threshold. It looks like the cold water intake pipe for the SWAC system either ruptured, or else has been completely obstructed by something.”
In order to save money on air conditioning costs, which in the tropics are a necessary evil that accounts for a large percentage of all operational budgets, they decided to utilize a somewhat experimental system that would cool the hotel at a much lower cost than traditional air conditioning systems. This SWAC technology relied on sucking cold seaw
ater found deep down in the ocean into a pipe to bring it up into the hotel on the reef, where it could be distributed throughout. The only electrical energy required was for the pumps to suck the water up the pipe. After it had been used for cooling via heat exchangers, the spent, warm seawater was expelled back into the ocean through a return pipe.
Both the intake and return pipes were located well away from the hotel’s reef, both in order to hide the infrastructure so as not to spoil the natural views, as well as to prevent disturbance of sensitive reef ecology by the movement of water and altered temperatures associated with the pipes. The return pipe was placed on the outer reef slope at a depth of about sixty feet. Because of that shallow depth, it was easy to maintain, and Al informed James that his team had already determined that the problem wasn’t with the return system.
“So you’re not exactly sure yet what happened to the intake pipe, is that what I’m hearing?” White checked his Rolex, a not so subtle hint.
“Like I said, it’s either a rupture—a puncture in one spot where the seawater is leaking out—or else the entire pipe structure has somehow been demolished.”
“How could that happen?”
“I don’t know, James. Rockslide? Subsea tsunami that never broke the surface? Instead of speculating, since you appear concerned about the time, what we should do is go down there and have a look.”
White looked up at him sharply. Apparently Al did not like to be challenged in front of his team of super-nerds, even by his boss. “How deep is the intake, again? I thought you put it in with the help of an industrial sub rented from an oil company?”
Al nodded. “Yeah, that’s right. It’s only at 250 feet, though, which puts it well within the depth rating of our own mini-sub.”
“It has a 1,000-foot rating,” one of Al’s engineers, a lanky bald American said while twirling his pen incessantly.
