Darwin's Bastards

by Zsuzsi Gartner

  Southern Cross Cables to NZ, Hawaii, Fiji, and U.S. mainland

  Australia–Japan Cable

  Indonesian Sea-Me-We3 and Jasuraus links

  Papua New Guinea APNG2 link

  PPC-1 and Sanchar Nigam links into Guam

  Hawaiian Telestra links

  Gondwana link from New Caledonia to Australia

  Intelsat

  Inmarsat

  SingTel Optus Earth stations

  Went back to my wretched portside bedsit for a vodka hit. I tried going online, but of course the Internet was out. So I lay back on my bed and attempted to ignore the smell of tuna sandwiches while staring at a map of Southeast Asia. For the first time ever, I looked at the Philippines. I looked at the word over and over.

  Philippines

  Philippines

  Philippines

  Philippines

  Who the fuck was Philipp?

  Went back upstairs to the bar at the stern of the Luxurious CBS Yacht and everybody was getting hammered. At sunset the tech guy received a weak signal from somewhere and apparently the American air-force base in Guam was nuked by we-know-not-who. Nukes all over the place, like Chinese New Year. Even meek little Auckland, New Zealand got whacked. Nuking New Zealand is like nuking Narnia—and not at all sporting of whoever launched the bombs.

  Debate raged as to whether or not we should tell the contestants about world events; we decided, in the absence of anything else constructive to do, to continue shooting. For the night we agreed to leave the contestants unobserved and incommunicado. They’re so used to having their every whine recorded that the absence of cameras will be very disorienting indeed. Let them sweat it out, for once.

  I returned to bed, passed-out drunk.

  Woke up with acrid vomit rising up my throat and into my sinus cavities. Right, I’d bought six Ambiens from Jerry, the guy with Asperger’s down in the editing suite. I’d forgotten the most important maxim of life in the media: booze + pills + full stomach + sleep = rock-star death. Cliché or not, I really thought I was going to accidentally drown in my own vomit there on my cabin floor, but was able to gargle and sneeze and get everything out just in time. This made me happy not only because I continue to be alive, but also because it was Bug-Eating Contest Day, when contestants eat technically nontoxic but nonetheless motherfucker local insects. Whoever eats the most in two minutes wins a saccharine DVD of friends and family members rooting for them back home. Fucking Americans. Family this, family that, Tell Mom I love her, I love you all so much—they’re like children. Maybe we should show them a satellite clip of Auckland, New Zealand roasting in a landscape of radioactive magma instead.

  To get us all in the right mood, Autistic Jerry showed us some YouTube clips he’d saved on his hard drive of people at home using their blenders to make insect smoothies.

  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SWIBp0IrXEE

  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1AzYmJiVDqU

  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v= srsDMKo9k

  Hi Lisa!

  How are you, Sweetie? We miss you here back home, but we know you’re down there being the best Survivor ever. Are you eating enough? Are you outwitting, outsmarting, and outlasting everybody? Have you had the bug-eating contest yet? Bleccch! How can you people do stuff like that? Well, anything to win! Not much to report. Schooner here really misses you, right Schooner? Looks like Schooner’s not in a talkative mood today. Where’s Lisa? Where’s Lisa? Talk to Lisa! Just go on winning your game, sweetheart, and know how much we love you and miss you—and if you don’t win the million-dollar prize, we’ll still love you, right Schooner?

  Bye Sweetie

  Love you

  Our bug-eating shoot was interrupted when I tripped over a root and got an avocado branch javelined directly into my right calf. I took the chopper into Tarawa along with three CBS execs intent on flying home, which, given that the northern hemisphere is most likely a glowing charcoal briquette at the moment, didn’t seem to be too swift a decision on their part. But as it turned out their choice to flee was moot. When we arrived at the airport, even a cretin could see that nobody was going anywhere; planes were strewn all over the tarmac like children’s toys on a playroom floor. It had just rained, and the tarmac didn’t look wet so much as it did like a big dog had pissed on it.

  We landed over by a huge mesh fence at the airport’s western edge. A passing Air Pacific flight attendant, the luscious “Teehee,” just in from a long haul from Singapore and a bit frazzled— hair sticking out in all directions—told us to stay near the helicopter, and this did make intuitive sense, as on the other side of the mesh were maybe a hundred tourists with duffle bags and hastily packed luggage pleading to get into the airport and onto any flight they could.

  I stayed in the chopper, injecting myself with morphine; my Spidey senses were tingling and I wasn’t planning on going anywhere I didn’t have to. The CBS execs, on the other hand, made the mistake of going into one of the corrugated zinc Quonset buildings that turned out to be the customs and immigration shed; they weren’t allowed back out. Our pilot, Alan, had been smoking a cigarette out on the tarmac when the execs started screaming. He sprinted back to the chopper, and within thirty seconds we were airborne. “There’s no way you want to be down in that rat’s nest, mate,” he said to me. “And if you ask me, there’s not going to be many flights to Brisbane for the next hundred years. Be a mate and reach into that bag over there and get my bottle of cognac. I could use a little lift right now.”

  As I looked down I saw a quartet of Air Nauru flight attendants throwing conch shells at the angry mob on the other side of the fence, the shells shattering as they hit the fence’s metal weave, turning to chalk.

  Is there ever such thing as a mob that isn’t angry? Or would one simply call that a “crowd”? Is an angry crowd de facto a mob?

  Flight 311: Nauru-Honiara-Brisbane

  Departs Nauru: 06:45 Delayed

  Arrives Honiara: 07:30 Delayed

  Departs Honiara: 08:15 Delayed

  Arrives Brisbane: 10:30 Delayed

  In my absence, the Luxurious CBS Yacht polarized into two factions: fuckfest upstairs, gloom and tears and snivelling downstairs. Needless to say, as soon as I got back I was upstairs gorging on a feast of muscle relaxants and pity sex. Thank you, avocado branch, for rendering me fuckable in the eyes of comely production assistants.

  The only bad news was Dan “The Danimal,” our L.A.-based cameraman, hanged himself from the beams of a ridiculous bamboo contraption designed for tomorrow’s archery rewards challenge. Battle scars or not, tomorrow I’m on day-camera duty.

  HOW TO CALCULATE YOUR TOTAL DAILY CALORIE NEEDS

  STEP 1: Multiply your current weight in pounds by ten if you’re a woman, or by eleven if you’re a man. This number represents your basic calorie needs.

  STEP 2: Multiply your basic calorie needs by your activity level— 20 per cent (or 0.2) if you sit or lie still for most of the day, with little or no exercise; 30 per cent if you walk less than two miles per day; 40 per cent if you are somewhat active, doing activities such as dancing, doing a lot of work in the house or garden, or taking exercise classes; and 50 per cent if you’re actively involved in a sport or you have a job that requires a great deal of physical labour, such as construction work. The resulting number reflects your activity-based calorie needs.

  STEP 3: Add your basic calorie needs from steps 1 and 2, then multiply this sum by 0.1—these are the calories you need for digestion.

  STEP 4: Combine the results from steps 1, 2, and 3: This is your total daily calorie need to maintain your weight!

  Well, here we are. The contestants found out about whatever it is, nuclear war or what have you, and our resulting inability to communicate with the rest of the world. To their credit, they figured it out by noticing a change in crew behavior (pasty over-boozed poker faces; an amplified air of not giving a shit) and the fact that there were fewer of us (B-camera crew, set-dec, and props department, plus half the s
ound staff on a two-day mini-holiday, all incinerated in the Guam Hotel Nikko).

  There were the eleven of them and eight or nine of us standing at the edge of a glorious sapphire lagoon when it came out. The contestants looked like they’d been clubbed.

  Then there was this eerie minute where nobody spoke, which lasted until the two chickens that had escaped from the previous week’s reward challenge began taunting us with their cackles and shrieks from up in the palmetto scrub.

  Couldn’t wait to return to the Luxurious CBSY.

  The LCBSY is gone. Ray and I got into our Zodiac near sunset, having talked down a slim majority of the contestants, then circled the island to where the yacht ought to have been only to find that it was not there. We could have gone searching for it, but when the sun goes down in the Pacific it’s like an off switch.

  We ended up overnighting on one of the tinier islands, both of us starving. Upon waking, five yacht bodies had washed ashore in the night: Asperger’s Jerry, two production assistants, the chef, and the lone CBS executive who’d stayed behind. Things are not going to get better here.

  There’s a part of me that loves the prospect of lawlessness, I have to admit.

  Kiribati is a constitutional multiparty republic, and the Kiribati government works to respect the civil and human rights of its citizens. There are only a few areas in which problems remain, but in general, Kiribati’s laws provide effective means of addressing individual complaints, although there have been some reports of extrajudicial communal justice.

  We were going to bury our fellow TV comrades but then decided, why the fuck bother? The sand crabs and the gulls will give the corpses a swift and environmentally friendly end.

  Food for Ray and me is a different thing. We spent a few hours trying to decide whether we should go to the Swallowers’ campsite, where we’d left the gang of twenty—or if we should avoid them altogether. As far as we can estimate, there’s zero food on any of our surrounding islands (islets, really) unless one of the sound technicians has a granola bar tucked into his knapsack. The nearest inhabited island is a good hour away by boat, and going there would eat up all the gas in our Zodiac. And with gas currently being the most precious local commodity, it’s doubtful any of the Kiribatese will be coming to visit or pillage our sad little society here. We are, pardon my French, totalement fuckés.

  In the end Ray and I decided it would be fun to do a quick cruise past the inhabited island just to remind them that we have a Zodiac and gasoline, whereas they have nothing—certainly no survival skills. I think one or two of them know how to light a fire, but that’s it.

  So anyway, after our deeply satisfying strafing of Loser’s Island, Ray and I discussed that old TV show Gilligan’s Island, where six essentially clueless people plus one intelligent professor assembled a reasonable facsimile of civilization from palm fronds and whatever drifted into their lagoon. Surely all of them should have succumbed to rape, buggery, murder, cannibalism, and suicide long before they cobbled together a small Club Med-ish village.

  Fucking TV.

  It’s now three foodless days later, and the skin surrounding the interim stitches on my calf is starting to turn all purple and yellow. There’s some bloatiness happening. Worst of all, I can’t muster the energy or sense of purpose to wank. Before nuclear war my thinking used to be along the lines of, “Sure, right now I’m wanking, but this is just a pale substitute for some genuine bonking I hope to do in the near future.” But with no possible bonking available in the near—or distant—term, the sterility and pointlessness of wanking is all too apparent.

  And did I mention boredom on top of the starvation and wanklessness? Half-jokingly Ray suggested we Zodiac to the International Date Line and go back and forth across it and hence go back and forth in time.

  On January 1, 1995, the Republic of Kiribati introduced a change of date for its eastern half, from time zones -11 and -10 to +13 and +14. Before this, the country was divided by the date line. A consequence of this revision was that Kiribati, by virtue of its easternmost possession, the uninhabited Caroline Atoll at 150°25 west, started the year 2000 before any other country on Earth, a feature the Kiribati government capitalized upon as a potential tourist draw. The international time-keeping community, however, has not taken this date-line adjustment seriously, noting that most world atlases ignore the new Kiribati date-line shift.

  One more body washed up (or the remains of one)—Lee-Anne, the makeup woman whom we were able to identify only because the sea creatures who’d nibbled away most of her didn’t like the taste of her hippie chunky wood necklace.

  QUESTION: What is “grave wax”?

  ANSWER: Grave wax is a crumbly, white, waxy substance that accumulates on those parts of the body that contain fat— the cheeks, breasts, abdomen, and buttocks. It is the product of a chemical reaction in which fats react with water and hydrogen in the presence of bacterial enzymes, breaking down into fatty acids and soaps. Grave wax is resistant to bacteria and can protect a corpse, slowing further decomposition. Grave wax starts to form within a month after death and has been recorded on bodies that have been exhumed after one hundred years. If a body is readily accessible to insects, grave wax is unlikely to form.

  During last night’s storm (which we spent beneath the upturned Zodiac, thank you) Ray and I were jokingly discussing who among those left on Loser’s Island would be the most delicious to eat, and then suddenly the discussion turned serious, which was frightening. My kidneys have shrivelled into little raisins, and my calf is beginning to resemble beef jerky. Our one conclusion is that we wouldn’t touch Third Blonde with Implants—something just too unappetizing about those two silicone blancmanges.

  So tomorrow we go.

  We woke up to a spooky sight: a U.S. battleship drifting past the island, the USS Ronald Reagan. At first we thought we were rescued, but after some waving and halloo-ing we dug out our binoculars and saw that there was nobody on deck. And then it got caught in a swell and, over the course of a half hour, turned 180 degrees, and we saw that its starboard side had been scorched or melted or something-or-othered by a nuclear blast. Anybody onboard would have been irradiated to pieces on the spot.

  And then . . . and then it drifted away, off towards Antarctica.

  USS RONALD REAGAN

  Aircraft carried: Ninety fixed-wing and helicopters

  Motto: “Peace Through Strength”

  Nickname: “Gipper”

  Displacement: 101,000 to 104,000 tons full load

  Length—overall: 1,092 ft (333 m)

  Length—waterline: 1,040 ft (317 m)

  Propulsion: 2 × Westinghouse A4W nuclear reactors

  4 × steam turbines

  4 × shafts 260,000 shp (194 MW)

  Speed: 30+ knots (56+ km/h)

  Range: Essentially unlimited

  Complement: Ship’s company: 3,200

  Air wing: 2,480

  The next reward challenge was to have been something involving archery; if nothing else, the citizens of Loser’s Island are armed. And yes, I’d prefer not to be shot or have the Zodiac’s neoprene skin be compromised. So yes, we were wary as we neared.

  Through binoculars we could see from a quarter mile away that there was nobody visible near the main camp. We circled the island 90 degrees, cut the engine, and scrutinized not just the beaches but the shrubbery and the trees. Nobody. Ray said they all must have passed the point where they were awaiting rescue and moved inland, and I said he was a simpleton, my point being that there’s nothing in the middle of these islands but nasty scrub, tarantulas, and spiky plants. Our ultimate conclusion was that even if the Losers were lying in wait with their bows and arrows, they’d keep us alive to see if we had any news.

  The presence of insects in a corpse is critical in estimating the time of death over longer time periods. Flies quickly find bodies, and as their life cycles are predictable, a corpse’s time of death can be calculated by counting back the days from the state of development of inse
cts within said corpse. Weather conditions can sometimes vary results, and identification of specific maggot species can be difficult.

  Here is an example: If a body is found in an air-conditioned building (68°F) with second-instar larvae of Lucilia sericata feeding on the corpse, we can calculate that those larvae had moulted from their first instar in the previous twelve hours. Because the eggs take eighteen hours to hatch and the first instar takes twenty hours to develop, the most recent time the eggs could have been laid would be thirty-eight hours earlier, if the larvae had just moulted. If they were old larvae, about to moult into their third instar, the most recent time of death would be fifty hours prior to the discovery of the body.

  Remember Jonestown? I certainly do, and I imagine the initial investigators on the scene must have felt something akin to what we did upon beaching on Loser’s Cove. From five hundred feet away? Paradise. But once you’re on land and walking towards the encampment? Carnage. To be specific, carnage mixed with camera and sound equipment. And unlike Jones-town, where bodies were kind enough to array themselves in neat rows, here everybody seems to have simply died wherever, like puppets when the hand is removed. And also, unlike Jonestown, the sixteen bodies at the camp seem to have been murdered. Some by strangulation, some by machete—although it’s hard to tell if they were killed here, or if the bodies were dragged over. The rains have washed away that sort of evidence.

  By using sticks in the sand, we tried to determine if there were any others still out there. In our minds it had always been twenty of them here, cast and crew, but on close inspection the number was actually seventeen. Which meant there was still one survivor. By laborious deduction we determined it to be Michelle, the Brunette Slut, who at that moment might well have been within an arrow’s reach of us.

  I said, “Ray, maybe it’s best we nab some of this camera equipment and take it to a different island. I’d bet the footage has stories to tell us.”

  “Righty-O,” he said.

  The presence of footage offered, if nothing else, the prospect of relief from the crushing boredom of island living, although I did wish the camp had had some food to pillage.