The Wandering Island Factory

by TR Nowry

  Chapter 22

  The radio warned about an El Nino fueled storm aiming their way, so they fastened down the tarp over the garden and boarded the windows, as usual. It wasn't a category one, yet, but it promised to be more than a drizzle.

  Nathan and Ava played video games through most of it, before the tossing eventually made them seasick.

  "Fresh peas, anyone?" Makayla said, handing out the day's pickings. It only amounted to a handful for each, but the freshness couldn't be denied. And raw vegetables were incredibly flavorful.

  "I've had my eye on those tomatoes," Gina said, "but they all still have a green spot." She sprinkled her peas on her baked fish, then started to eat.

  Jason ate them one at a time, like they were grapes, while Ava and Nathan shunned them and saved the vegetables for after dinner, if they had room left.

  "I like the looks of those two heads of lettuce," Makayla continued, before sitting at their outside picnic table. "If we're lucky, they'll still be good by the time those tomatoes come in. The spinach is weak and wilty. A little disappointing. But I think if a few garbanzo beans come in too, we'll be able to have one hell of a nice salad. A real salad! Won't that be nice?"

  Ava and Nathan picked at their plate while Gina and Jason just smiled, "Variety is always nice."

  Makayla had taken over the garden and it really seemed to be doing her a world of good. This far out, they had to pollinate with toothpicks, so she knew each flower and every bud intimately. It was, or easily could be, a full time job.

  "Who baked the fish today?" Jason asked.

  "I did," Gina said, "why?"

  "Oh, it's almost perfect. I don't know whether it's the kind of fish, the temperature of the little solar oven or what—"

  "I steamed it for the first half, then baked it the rest of the way," Gina said, "I think it makes it, fluffier, I guess. I don't think steaming ever gets it crisp enough, and baking tends to make it too tough, so, I experimented in the middle."

  "Well, good job." He kissed her on the lips, and she, instinctively, pulled back, as she had always done when in public. "Sorry, I didn't mean—"

  She got embarrassed, blushed, then stared at her plate. "It's ok."

  They stared up as the plane made a second, lower pass.

  Jason went to the white roof of the metal box and arranged the clothes drying there to read "We R OK!"

  The plane made a third pass, gained altitude, then headed back toward California.

  "I guess we should expect to have some guests soon," Jason yelled down, "Ava, Nathan, hide the laptops real good or dump them overboard."

  Neither of the kids wanted to hear that, but they had played all the games they had, anyway. They hid them in plastic bags under the garden in such a way that, if randomly looked for, they would fall overboard and sink to the ocean floor.

  Within an hour, a guard speedboat pulled along side and they were boarded for a second time.

  They were searched and grilled about the tidal equipment that had been integrated into their system. But, it was obvious that the pieces had been battered and nearly destroyed long before they acquired them, matching the story they told. They were neither asked about, nor mentioned, the mansion.

  No assistance was offered, but neither were they given a warning.

  After an hour, the guard sped away.

  "Did you get the feel from them that staying out to sea another year was probably for the best?" Gina said.

  "I got that vibe too. They said the ban on coming ashore was lifted, but that the currents were still treacherous during the summer, like we already figured out," Jason said as they waited on the roof for their night show to come on.

  "The guy told me that nobody had returned to the coasts yet. Most of the over land highways to the coast remain flooded, leaving what had been the coast looking more like a string of islands, even worse than what your modified map had."

  "Yeah," he said, "I got that too, just in other words. Said that the jet stream had shifted again and windmills that had been working for years have been down for months. Populations seem to be concentrating around nuclear reactors because, except for the ones that flooded, they're the only things still running 24/7/365. And you can refuel them with a few F-150s and they're good to go for another decade, coal and the rest require several miles of train cars worth of coal delivered every day." He got out of the lounge chair, "I think I remember seeing a list of the states with nuclear reactors—"

  "I think every state had at least one, didn't they?"

  He sat back down, "No, of course, you're right. Just makes me wonder if we might be near a flooded one, that's all. But I haven't seen any three-eyed fish recently."

  "It almost doesn't matter. We go much further west and we'll be off the continental shelf and our anchor won't touch bottom."

  Something broke the silence near the boat. Like a geyser at Yellowstone, it erupted and an explosion of water filled the air with a fine spray. Water drained with a wall of trickles about eighty feet away. It was huge, even in the moonlight, and it broke the surface enough to jostle the boat like a toy in a tub.

  "Oh, my God," Gina said as they stared into the giant eye of a whale. "Look at how close it is."

  "Damn, Gina, I almost wet myself."

  They heard the water slap the underside of the makeshift wooden decks as the whale drifted closer, its massive head nearly as high out of the water as they were, sitting atop the box.

  It gracefully slipped beneath the surface, without so much as a single ripple, its massive tail extending four stories high.

  It could easily have flipped the boat, or cracked them like an egg with a single swat of such a massive wall of flesh. But it left them as it found them, just a little wetter.

  They sailed north to Canadian waters when the weather got overheated by mid summer, which promised a season of unusually active storms that they saw no need to stick around for. Canadian fishermen seemed to stumble across them rather frequently, usually in smaller, privately owned pleasure boats repurposed for this new task. Fishing was a way to make a good living in Canada, and from their many encounters with the locals, it looked like most of the large ports and canneries and such were destroyed with the coasts. All that were left, for now, were small private boats that could be transported by highways and were, hence, many miles away when the coasts flooded. That limited the size of the boats that survived, but those that they encountered also had to be powerful enough to fight the currents around shore, drastically reducing their numbers yet again.

  The Canadians seemed befuddled by the size of their sailboat home, and its Mad Max-like salvaged design. Some seemed to study it with a degree of envy. But they all came to realize, quickly enough, that it would never be useful for their chosen livelihood. It was a devil to steer, couldn't be docked, and would serve them no good to try to steal. It was a marvelous survivor and a rugged ship, but it would make a horrible commercial fishing boat.

  They did, however, often get a chance to trade with these daring Canadians. When they wanted, they could catch far more fish than they could ever eat. Their net was plenty big enough to make a holding pen for their surplus when strung under the boat, pontoon to pontoon.

  "Ahoy, Jason," the man on the speedboat said as he throttled down, "Got a catch in the hole for a trade, Aye?"

  Jason waved the boat over, "Check with Ava, but I think we have a tuna waiting."

  The boat pulled up close and tossed over a line. "I'll be!" he stared down into their net, "It is a tuna. What in the world is it doing around here?"

  Ava looked over at the Canadian, "What you got to trade, Joey?"

  He smiled. "For you, girl, I've got eight pounds of M&Ms, not even past their sell-by date yet."

  Ava jumped up and down at the thought of candy, but she knew a tuna that big was worth a whole lot more. "And?"

  Joey tossed over the bags of M&Ms, "More, Aye? I've got more for ya, pretty girl. How about something to wash it down with?" He tossed over a four
-pound bag of powdered milk. "And something to keep you sharp behind the wheel, Aye?" he tossed over a two-pound can of coffee.

  Ava helped him snag the tuna out of their hold, and gave him two other fish for the trouble. To the Canadian, it was a great deal; he did almost no work and already had hundreds of pounds of fish. Joey had easy access to candy and staples, so for him, it was like buying New York for a handful of nice beads.

  But for Ava and the family, they had no car and no access to chocolate or milk of any kind, and even if they could get ashore, they wouldn't know where to go. But fish, all they had to do is wait for fish to find them. For the family, fish were free, staples were expensive.

  It was a good deal for everyone.

  The family never kept so many fish that it would be worth fighting over, and they never tried to barter the price up but so far. Canadians had banned guns for decades, but that didn't mean that they ended violence and murders.

  Besides, for the family, a bag of M&Ms was worth a fortune, especially in Ava's eyes.

  Joey stayed around a few minutes more, mostly out of a Canadian sense of friendliness, tossed Ava a bag of butterscotch hard candy he had been holding out, waved with his hat, then motored on home while the currents were still favorable.

  Six fishermen in all knew about them. And they seemed to all know each other because they were either the luckiest men in the world, or they coordinated and traded off their visiting days. Typically, a different one would visit every five days, which matched the rate that they filled their hold. It seemed to be working great for everyone, and the Canadians had no incentive to tell anyone about their magic fishing hole, either.

  In just a few months, it developed so that the fishermen would even fill requests for specific items like toothbrushes, clothing, shoes, lightbulbs, socks, and even delivered several boxes of desperately needed feminine hygiene products.