The Wandering Island Factory

by TR Nowry

  Chapter 13

  Pissed, he looked for his keys in the bowl by the door again. But he knew it was fruitless. His car was gone. He checked his empty cigarette box, then crushed it and tossed it to the table where his keys should have been. He needed his morning fix, bad. Frustrated, he grabbed his wallet, slammed the door behind himself, and walked the ten blocks it took to get to the nearest overpriced convenience store.

  It wasn't the first time someone had taken his car and left him stranded. It was a regular damned occurrence!

  It might not have been so bad, but he wasn't even having sex with Gina yet!

  He kicked the first mailbox he saw, then stomped a discarded cigarette box a few feet away. He was angry, very angry, and it didn't seem to be fading away. It seemed to be getting worse.

  He didn't like the situation he found himself in. He hadn't expected to still be in the kissing stage. He hadn't expected to buy a car and only get to use it half the time. He didn't expect to struggle this hard and have nothing to show for it. And he didn't expect to be stranded at home on a weekend with no car and no smokes!

  He coughed in anger, desperation, and withdrawal. He still had another six blocks to go.

  He opened the box in the store, smoked his first in under a minute just outside their doors, then chain-smoked two more on the walk home. There was something just so calming about a good cigarette, in this case, three.

  Hopefully, most of his anger had been over not getting his morning fix. But somehow, he doubted that was the case. Something had to happen with Gina, or he was going to call it quits. He stopped short of the apartment at the bus stop bench.

  He liked her. No, he loved her. He did. They had a lot in common, and he fully understood her reluctance to move their relationship further. Hugging her could change the day for him. But she kept herself at a distance.

  Sharing a car was easy; sharing a bed with someone he loved more now than he ever did before, but that was keeping herself at such a distance. . . that was something he wasn't prepared for.

  He bought a paper from the machine.

  Global warming was hitting, full force. And carbon capping and trading had failed, miserably. Cap and trade had moved jobs overseas, by the millions. It had destroyed America's competitive advantage by pricing energy, a key cost factor in everything, at four times that of China and India.

  Sitting, the behemoth's thermal turbines earned it carbon credits, but even they had pushed up their rates. Ironically, they had been sued by the local power company for undercutting the market, and the legislature FORCED the behemoth to up their rates.

  But, global warming was proving to be a bigger mixed bag than the experts had predicted. Canada, for example, was enjoying an increase in agricultural exports of sixty percent. Same with food exports from Alaska and Siberia, of all places. Even including crop failures in traditional breadbaskets, the world was seeing an unprecedented surplus of food, and India and China were literally eating it up.

  But as with all news worth printing, they found a way to make this good news depressing. Food was at a surplus, which should have driven prices down across the globe, but didn't. Food prices were up because shipping costs had spiked because of automatic 'triggers' in cap and trade. With windmills going mostly silent with a global shift in wind patterns, everyone was burning exponentially more natural gas to compensate.

  Australia had lifted their ban on the Wandering Island's thermal generator designs years ago and was now using a small array of them to power Sidney, instead of the unsightly tidal generators. A shift in rain patterns had solved their long-standing drought problems and seemed to be turning their dusty desert center into rich agricultural land again. Which was good for them, but did little to help those stuck on Hawaii.

  Tickets to leave the island had tripled in price since cap and trade had kicked into high gear. Being near the equator, they had already lost ten feet of coast. The warming was happening much faster than any, except the sun-centric scientists, had predicted. Even so, the carbon-centric scientists had yet to abandon their position. Instead, they doubled down and got, after spending billions on lobbying, even stricter caps on carbon because of the unexpected melting.

  Jason folded the paper. It was all too depressing. He wanted off the island, but there was no way to leave.

  No, actually, there was a way. It was cheaper to buy a boat and sail/drift to Mexico and resell it than it was to buy a ticket on a plane or gas-powered boat. Winds near the equator remained strong and somewhat predictable. And as long as ocean currents didn't deflect them too far, it was still possible to sail along this latitude. But that might not be true for much longer.

  He lit his fourth cigarette and walked the rest of the way home. He could tough it out for one more year. Maybe.

  If he had enough cigarettes.

  With wind patterns changing, so too did the size and pitch of waves. Tidal generators were under producing, same as windfarms, ushering in a new redesign.

  When Jason returned to work, they started on the third generation of tidal generators. These used even smaller slabs that could utilize the smaller waves. They used smaller pistons, an integrated superstructure frame, and about ten times the man-hours to produce the same amount of power. But, because of the carbon tax, it was all Hawaii, and many other states, had left.

  He helped assemble them offshore, just beyond the horizon.

  Every day when they boated back, he watched the gentle waves eat away at abandoned, flooded homes that dotted the coast. Week after week, fewer would remain standing.

  Months of seven, twelve-hour days had taken a toll on Jason, but had benefited his account handsomely. By Christmas, he had saved enough to buy an old sailboat, but had yet to talk Gina into going with him.

  She opened the window, letting the mild winter weather into the bedroom, before climbing into bed with him. She got home late at night and settled into bed at about the same time he needed to wake for work. They had that precious hour together, and he didn't like spending it on arguing, but it seemed like the only thing on his mind.

  "We need to head for the mainland, for the states, while we still can. Hawaii lost another thirty feet of shore since winter. Sailboats are still affordable, if we fire-sale everything and combine it with what I've been able to save—"

  She sat up in bed, "We'll have nothing left by the time we make it to the states—"

  "We sell the boat for whatever we can get for it, then try to find jobs. I still have family, we should be able to get a bus ticket or a train ticket or something like it—"

  "The Mississippi has stayed flooded two hundred feet across each bank. Everything is sinking, Jason."

  "We'll find something. But, we have to move now before the panic really sets in. Next year may be too late."

  She didn't like the idea of leaving everything she knew. But, it was true. If trends continued, Hawaii would have to be evacuated within a decade.

  "They had to add to the anchors that tether the tidal generators again. They seem to have to add another link every day. One of the guys I used to work with. . . they make sailboats out of defective slabs. They aren't yacht pretty, but they'll get the job done and have some resale value. Said he'd let me have one at cost, but just this year while sales are slow. Right now, that's all we can really afford, that or something decades old and wood or fiberglass that scares me more. I've seen his, they aren't bad, sort of houseboat meets barge."

  She didn't do well with change. She hesitated. "I think I'm too tired to think about something like this, right now."

  He tempered his excitement and frustration with his calmest voice, "I've made up my mind on this, Gina. I. . . I just don't think I can stay here. But, I'm very much in love with you. I don't want to leave you, and I don't want to leave your family in a lurch by just selling my car and disappearing one night. I want you all to come with me. I think we can do this, I really do. I'd like to leave this spring." He had clearly upset her, so he cut his argument short. "The
re are plenty of cities and towns that are hundreds of feet or more above sea level. I can google you a list of them after work, but I'm sure at least one of them we can call home." But telling a surfer girl to live inland was a tough sell. "Gina, Gina Gina. . . Gina. I—" but he just kissed her instead. "When it isn't just the very rich who see their oceanfront homes wash away, but when it's happening to everyone, that's when it'll be too late. Come with me this spring. Just, just think about it."

  They cuddled for a while until she fell asleep, and he got up for work.