by Ginger Booth
“Um, if you want me to stay put, I can stay put,” I said, without enthusiasm.
“I’ll find you at dinner. Promise.” And with that, Adam left.
“Are you also crew, Dee?” Beth Agrawal inquired politely.
“No…” I explained my lack of status while fetching out dry clothes from my duffel bag, stuffed in a locker.
The privacy curtain was enough modesty for changing clothes. Where to put wet clothes and winter coat afterwards was a puzzle. Tom Aoyama eventually found a spring-loaded rope that extruded from a wall – bulkhead – and his daughter Charity located a matching wall latch to secure the other end of the rope.
Wet laundry hanging from a sagging rope above the miniscule aisle did nothing to improve the space. Periodic announcements from the loudspeaker – and the bunkroom was equipped with its own interior very loud speaker – reminded passengers to remain in their cabins until we were underway. At that time, dinner seatings would be announced.
“I have to go to the bathroom,” Charity inevitably announced.
“Me, too!” I offered eagerly. “Wanna go find it together?”
“Me, three,” said Beth, sighing. Though in the end, she waited for us to get back.
Finding the latrines was the highlight of our several hours together. After that, Tom declared quiet time so we could all take a nap until dinner.
“I hate this place,” Charity said in a small voice, just before I drifted off to sleep. “I wanna go home.”
“Found you,” Adam whispered in my ear.
I jumped. I was in the middle of a computing skills exam, administered under the steely eye of seaman Mandy Nykes.
Adam grinned. “Sorry it took so long. Mandy, can I spring this passenger?” He gave her a wink.
Mandy clucked her tongue and shook her head dolefully. But she said, “Fine by me, Mr. Lacey. She’s not going to pass that test anyway.” That dig was for me.
Sadly, this was true. I had no security clearance. A bachelor’s degree in computer science, and an entire career programming, were in disciplines entirely other than those employed by a nuclear aircraft carrier. So far the morning’s aptitude tests gave me a thin hope of qualifying for kitchen patrol. I wanted hydroponics, but there was no test for that. “Everyone gets one watch a week in hydroponics,” Mandy told me. “My turn tomorrow. I can’t wait! You prefer cleaning, kitchen, or laundry?”
To be fair, Adam did find me during my dinner shift the night before, but only to tell me that he was on watch through midnight, and would have to find me the next day, today.
“How long do you have, before you’re back on duty?” I asked Adam sadly, once we were out of Mandy Nykes’ clutches.
“I’m a civilian. I don’t stand a watch cycle. My systems passed their tests. I can take the rest of the day off,” Adam explained. “Unless they page me with a problem.”
“Nine-man berth, huh?”
“There usually aren’t more than four sleeping in there at a time,” Adam said. “But yeah. Not a lot of privacy. But! Just for today, just for us – there is an empty cabin. Let’s get your gear.”
Moving to my new bunk took about 45 minutes, 6 decks, and several miles of corridor, but it was a nicer room. One of the three stacks of bunks was perpendicular to the other two, making for a wider aisle down the middle. The cabin also featured a couple writing desks as well as lockers, and royal blue sheets. The bunks and desks were painted white, providing cheerful contrast to the sheets and grey bulkheads.
Adam sat at one of the desks, and waved me to a seat on the bunk at his knee. “Better?”
I nodded. “Especially if you’re staying here with me?”
“If I’m invited,” he said with a smile.
“Invited,” I echoed. “I came here to see you.”
His smile grew wistful. “I think… I’d like to get this out of the way first. Dee – you don’t belong here. Do you?”
I blew out a long breath. “God, no. I’m sorry, Adam, I –”
He held up a hand to stop me. “Nothing to apologize for. I never thought you did. But Dee – I do. This is my ship, my project, my life. Our world is crashing all around us, and we’re lucky, you and me. We really are. We both have a place. We have something worth doing.”
“Just, not together.”
“No. I wanted to leave it open, offer you safety if you needed it, in case things went pear-shaped at home. Compared to New York, this is paradise. Your roomies last night were lucky to escape Boston. And they’ll be happy here. But if you can make it work in Totoket…” Adam trailed off, then said, “I’m impressed as hell with what you’re accomplishing in Totoket.”
“But you’re not tempted to leave the ark to join us.”
“Tempted, sure. I enjoy your company. But Dee, there are other Totokets. This ark is a resource ship. A brain trust, labs, scientists, some naval force. We’re not just about saving the five thousand people on this ship. We’re about giving a power assist to places like Totoket. And serving the Navy and Coast Guard out here on the Atlantic blockade.”
“Power assist?”
“Did that drone strike help, on New Year’s?”
“You sent the drone strike!”
“Me? No. I put Zack in touch with someone who needed to carry out a drone test. Technically we’re not in business yet, to intervene. But they have to run their tests somewhere.” He shrugged. “The ark team was grateful for the head’s up on the hurricane. The Navy, Coast Guard, and Marines were furious that we weren’t on the ‘need to know’ list for real weather reports.”
“And what do you do?”
“Plumbing, mostly.” Adam laughed out loud at the look of consternation on my face. “Have you seen the flight deck and hydroponics yet?”
“I haven’t even seen a porthole yet. For all I know we’re still in New London harbor.”
“We’re just south of Martha’s Vineyard or Nantucket, running dead slow while we finish systems checkout. Well, I was hoping for a little nookie first. But come on. Let me show you what I’ve been building the past few years.”
As Adam drew me down another mile of pipe-lined corridor, and three more elevator rides, I sincerely hoped he’d be available to guide me back to that cabin. He pointed out assorted ship features along the way. That went in one ear and out the other. But if the man was in charge of the pipes, he sure had his work cut out for him.
“Here we are,” Adam said at last. The elevator opened to a high-ceilinged cavern. Instead of human corridors decorated with pipes, we’d emerged at the pipe lair, with little walkways through the maze of pipes and giant thrumming machines.
“It’s very nice,” I hazarded. Actually, I felt like a tufty-haired kid lost in a Dr. Seuss book. We were nearly yelling over the sound of the machines.
Adam grinned. “We’re right below the flight deck. This used to house the aircraft fueling system. And down that way, the systems to bring fixed wing aircraft up and down from the deck. We converted this area to water systems. Desalination, sewage reclamation, a lot of the air cleaning systems. This ship doesn’t need to tank up on water in port. It’s water self-sufficient now. And it can operate in closed-atmosphere mode. We sealed it up when we left New London. We’re running in ark mode today.”
“You did all that?”
“Our company did all that. It took years, and lots of engineers. I mostly worked on the desalination inputs and reclamation outputs of the hydroponics system upstairs.”
“Wow. I don’t know why I thought you were like, a chief engineer or something.”
“I was, in the Coast Guard. Small boats. The Coast Guard doesn’t have behemoths like this. This is Navy. But a few years ago, I was transferred down to the Gulf, and I just… It used to be more about Search and Rescue, helping people, in the Coast Guard. Maritime law enforcement, catching smugglers. Then in the Gulf and Caribbean, it got to be more about turning back desperate refugees, killing them outright sometimes. I just didn’t want to do it any more. I put
out feelers. This came up, and would bring me back home to Connecticut. I jumped at the chance.”
I nodded understanding, then gazed around at the machines and pipes and gauges. “So this room is your life work from now on?”
“Nah. The Navy crew is taking over now. They’ll probably transfer me around from ship to ship. I’m one of the civilian resource personnel, now that the ark conversion is complete. I go where I’m needed.”
And as a civilian resource’s wife, I’d be a dependent, like little Charity Aoyama. Maybe they’d let me follow Adam around, and maybe they wouldn’t. At least it was a nice ark, dedicated to being useful to others instead of just saving some rich guy’s skin. Well, that and military might. The U.S. didn’t build a Navy for philanthropic good works.
“So my part serves the hydroponics above.” Adam resumed the tour. We climbed a ladder to emerge blinking into the sunlight of paradise. Cucumber vines dangled down around my head level, from white pipes and tubs running above. Greenhouse girders and glasslike panes stretched beyond that. I grinned from ear to ear.
“Watch your step. Be sure to stay on the grating,” Adam warned. There was some kind of gurgling marsh system running under the grate, with all the food plants supported above grate level. Adam took my hand and gently pulled me, all eyes, through the plants.
I could well understand Mandy Nykes’ comment, how the crew would look forward to working in hydroponics as a treat. Occasionally I spotted the eye-searing lighting systems above, that augmented the short days and thin slanting light of northern winter. It wasn’t much past noon, but the lights were on full blast over the summer crops like cukes and tomatoes. It was toasty in there at the moment, maybe 80 degrees and 60% humidity.
“So the oxygen we’re breathing in ark mode comes from these plants?”
“Not enough,” said Adam. “There are other hydroponics inside the ship, too, but it’s still not enough. We crack water into hydrogen and oxygen. It’s a nuclear ship. We have enough power.”
I plucked a ripe strawberry from a strawberry pillar and popped it into his mouth. “You made a very cool thing, Adam. This is awesome!”
“Thought you’d like it.” He gave me a kiss full of strawberry juice. “You’re going to get us both in trouble if you pick unauthorized fruit.” He sighed. “This ship was a lot more fun before the crew joined us.”
I could imagine. Having the run of this vast ship must have been a blast, like kids let loose in a school during summer break. Adam continued drawing me along until we reached the side of the greenhouse. At last I could see ocean, though the view was obstructed. The greenhouse angled down to end about 20 feet from the edge of the original giant flat-top flight deck. There were the usual assortment of Naval protuberances and contraptions I didn’t understand. But beyond them gleamed the Atlantic, and a bit of island in the distance to the right, maybe a half dozen miles away.
“Martha’s Vineyard, or Nantucket?” I asked.
Adam considered, squinting for some identifying feature. “Martha’s Vineyard,” he concluded. “We’re starting to accelerate, though.” Something caught his attention, and he leaned forward. “There!” He pulled me in front of him, hugging my back to his body, and pointed with an arm held above my shoulder, at eye level. “See it?”
“What am I… Oh!” A whale surfaced, and blowed a spume into the fresh sea wind. “Is it a pod?”
“Mm-hm, humpbacks. They’re out of season. Used to be, April to October was whale season around the Cape. Now they’re unpredictable.”
I turned to look at him, gazing at whales. He glowed. The rich man, the clever engineer, the suits, the playacting and great sense of humor, were gone at this moment. He was in love, at one with the sea.
“What?” he said, not breaking his gaze on the stretch of water where the whales occasionally surfaced.
“Nice to meet you, Adam Lacey,” I said.
He liked that. He hugged me closer and kissed my temple. “I could stand like this for hours,” he murmured. He sighed, as a chopper took off from the deck and wandered past our view.
He rather promptly let go of me to answer his walkie-talkie type device when it buzzed him. Impenetrable engineer jargon ensued while I enjoyed the view.
“Sorry, Dee, I have to go,” Adam said, as he tucked his walkie-talkie away. “The CO2 levels are rising a bit fast down below.”
“Are we in any danger?”
“No, not at all. The CO2 levels are still lower in here than they are out there.” He jutted his chin to indicate the great outdoors. “Maybe 300 ppm on the lowest decks. Earth’s air hasn’t been that low in CO2 since before the Industrial Revolution. It’s even lower here in the greenhouse. In fact…” He crooked a finger to beckon me, and I followed him through a wall of spinach to a pillar of gauges. “Yeah, the CO2 is too low up here, too high below.” He tugged out the walkie-talkie again to share this datum with a colleague.
I looked at the gauge, but it reported partial pressures, not atmospheric parts per million units. I didn’t recall offhand how to convert one to the other, so had no idea what it meant. I studied the spinach instead. I’ve never been able to grow spinach hydroponically. I wondered what they did differently to get such lush plants.
Adam signed off again on the walkie-talkie, but he’d clearly switched into engineer mode. It’s not so different from programmer mode. He had a theory of where the bug lay, and I was a distraction.
“Chief!” he called out, to one of several people we saw lurking in nearby vegetable banks. We walked toward this man, a Navy noncom around our age. Adam introduced us and asked if I could stay with him until the end of his watch in hydroponics. Then, if he could take me below and re-insert me into the new passenger orientation pageant.
Adam wrote down my cabin address for me as well, should I wish to play hooky instead. He said he’d find me there around bedtime if not before, but not to wait for him anywhere. And then he was off to help hunt down someone else’s CO2 cycling glitch.
The chief – Nez, according to his shirt – was amused by it all. He set me to pollinating a bank of tomatoes, peppers, and eggplant, back to back with him down the row. I pollinated my own every day at home, so the task was familiar and soothing, mobilizing pollen on flowers with the flick of a soft dry paintbrush. A hummingbird zoomed by to help for a moment. I didn’t see any bees, sadly. From time to time we ran across a clutch of indicator tabs, and switched ‘Sunday’ to ‘Monday’ to record when the plants were last pollinated.
I tried asking Nez my questions about the greenhouse operation – what shape was the greenhouse to stand up to the ocean winds? what nutrient mix did they use? – but he said he was only here to play bee once a week. His usual duty station was on the nuclear pile.
Descending back into the grey belly of the carrier was very hard.
Aptitude testing was over for the day, so I was passed from hand to hand until I reached a new passenger dodgeball game and could resume following the herd. After the exercise period ended, I talked my way into working in the kitchen, where I prepped salad. Their cukes and lettuce and spinach were excellent, but the tomatoes were pretty vapid. In this floating city of 5,000, I wondered how long it would take me to run across the person who might appreciate hydroponic tomato tips, and let me in on their spinach secrets. Probably not by Wednesday when I was due to disembark, I suspected.
Supper proved that the ark had a large livestock operation somewhere. The veggie and potato and cheese omelets were very good, if a bit on the light side. Another passenger passed on news I’d missed, that our standard rations would be 1500 calories a day for women, 2000 for men. She was rather irate on that point, feeling that the rule should be by mass, not gender. She had some mass to spare, though she was also big of frame.
Before we could leave our assigned mess room – there were many scattered through the ship – there was an announcement horn. A video screen turned on, placed above our heads on the wall – bulkhead – I was facing.
An attractive woman reporter wearing Navy uniform announced that a magnitude 8.7 earthquake had hit Los Angeles. The dislocation on that fault had set off domino earthquakes in other faults near San Diego and San Francisco. Video showed collapsed highways, pancaked towers, and fires raging out of control. No rationed water would be used to put the fires out.
Of especial interest to the Navy, the quakes unleashed tsunamis up to 85 feet tall. Another amateur video clip showed a wave barreling over Hilo Hawaii, which had received no advance warning of the tsunami. Of the ships at sea on the Pacific blockade, one destroyer sank, but most of its crew were rescued. Personnel at the West Coast and Hawaiian naval bases were not so fortunate. Damage assessments were in progress.
The reporter looked directly at the camera, and deadpanned, “A spokesman from the Federal Emergency Management Agency gave a statement estimating 150 dead, with casualty lists incomplete.” More lives than that had ceased in that few seconds of video footage of the drowning of Hilo.
The reporter referred back to her notes, and added, “The most comparable incident in recent history was the 2011 Tohoku tsunami in Japan, which killed 16,000. The 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami killed an estimated 230,000. A 2010 earthquake in Haiti measured only 7 on the Richter scale, with death toll estimates around 300,000.”
She’d gone out on a limb there, calling out the U.S. government on a bald-faced lie. And the news report cut out abruptly. The screen went blank for maybe 30 seconds, and then a fit and attractive 50-something year old man came on.
“For those of you who haven’t met me yet, this is Captain Amatrudo. In light of our mission on Ark 7, and the events on the West Coast, I’m sure you’re wondering whether resource ships such as ours will be released to assist. I have received orders that the answer is no.” Rage set in the lines around the man’s mouth, with words unsaid. “We are to complete our shakedown cruise and return to New London harbor Wednesday morning. That is all.”