It had been a few days since Ainsley had embarked. Life on board was pretty boring for someone whose role wouldn’t start until they arrived at their destination. There wasn’t much to do other than talking with the crew and looking at the sea all day. Ainsley had brought several books to read thorough the journey, but he passed the last few days organizing and familiarizing himself with the laboratory of the ship. It wasn’t as good as the one he had access in the Institute, but it would do for most basic tasks.

Ainsley took the flask he had been using and left it in the sink, then he looked at the clock on the wall. It was almost time to deliver his scheduled report to the Institute. He left the laboratory and headed towards the radio station. It was a small room situated directly under the bridge. It had been added to the ship after it had been brought by the Institute. This, the laboratory, and the substitution of the old steam engine for a modern oil one, were the most striking changes they had done.

The redheaded researcher knocked on the metallic door and entered without waiting for an answer. Inside space was scarce. Most of the room was occupied by a device made of various metal cases full of buttons, dials and switches. He had been told the original idea was to squeeze the bulky equipment inside the bridge, but it didn’t fit. So they had to repurpose a bathroom that had been conveniently situated.

A sailor seated in front of the device greeted Ainsley. “Good morning, Mr. Wilkins. It’s always a pleasure to see you here, thanks to you I can use the radio a lot.” He said with an almost childish smile.

The radio. It was a marvelous invention that let people communicate with each other over long distances without the need of any special medium. It had been created barely a decade ago but its use had spread over the islands like a giant wave washing the shore.

The radio operator enthusiastically pushed some buttons and turned a couple dials. The man really liked his job and every day he would eagerly wait for Ainsley to deliver his messages.

“Good morning, Sherman. Did you catch anything interesting today?” Ainsley asked in a casual tone. The radio operator passed most of his working hours listening to the transmissions caught by the device. Almost all of them were routinary messages sent between islands, or nearby ships sending their greetings, but from time to time he would hear some spicy rumors.

“Not much. It seems during the last high tide the storm pushed a few boats into the streets of a nearby town.” He said with a neutral expression. Then his face lit up as he told Ainsley about his last discovery. “But tonight I realized that the messages travel a lot further during the night. I was about to end my shift when I intercepted a message from Vasterra.”

Sherman was relatively new to his job. Although radios were now common in the islands ships had yet to adopt them at large. Normally, only the largest vessels sailing the open oceans would have one on board.

“Oh. That’s almost on the other side of the world. It must have been quite the strong signal.” Ainsley said mildly surprised. “Well, can you connect me to the institute? I want to get this over with and enjoy the rest of the day.”

“Yes! Give me a second.” Sherman turned a dial and pressed a couple buttons. Then, his expression soured as a faint sound started coming out of his headphones. “Ugh. We have an interference. It started just now, I guess we have bad luck today.”

An interference. They had been discovered just after the invention of the radio. It was normally a localized event, but sometimes it would extend over hundreds, or even thousands of miles, shutting down the communications of several islands and all the ships navigating between them.

Scientists mostly agreed that they were a natural phenomenon. They speculated that the powerful radio waves might be caused by underwater volcanoes or other high energy events. But they had been unable to truly determine its causes because the sources were always located at the bottom of the ocean or deep inside the ice caps.

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Sherman flipped a switch and the sound being played in his headphones started coming out of a big speaker on the radio. It was a fast paced crackling noise that sometimes varied in intensity.

“It’s always the same. We won’t be able to connect with all this noise.”

“Let’s try either way.” Ainsley told him. “If it is far away we may be able to overpower it with our signal.”

Following the researcher’s orders Sherman skillfully tapped the telegraph key and another speaker emitted a series of beeps. The ship’s transmitter worked by coding words into different pulses and then sent them over the ocean in the form of radio waves. Ainsley had seen more modern devices in Victoria that were able to send people’s voices, but as long as he knew they only worked over short distances. That restricted them to communications within the same island or between towns in the same archipelago.

Ainsley and Sherman waited for a response to their message as the interference kept playing from the speaker. Listening to it in the silent room soon started to annoy the researcher.

“It seems they can’t hear us.” Ainsley finally said with a frown.

“Do you want me to repeat the message?”

“No, I will go see if I can get some fresh air. I will come back later.” The researcher said turning towards the door.

“Alright, see you later Mr. Wilkins.”

Ainsley left the radio station and headed towards the deck. The last couple days a storm had been pouring water over the already drenched vessel, but today the weather had finally given them some respite. A few shy sun rays were peeking through the grey clouds on the sky and a flock of seabirds could be seen flying in the distance.

The red-haired youngster approached the bulwark and watched the waves crashing against the ship. There was no land on sight and the monotonous grey waters reflected the color of the clouds all the way to the horizon. Bored, Ainsley turned around and focused his attention on the sailors. Some of them were inspecting the deck while others repaired the damage caused by the storm. To one side a young boy was mopping the algamerate planks that made up most of the floor. It was the same one that had guided Ainsley to his cabin when he embarked.

Ainsley walked up to the young sailor “Hey, boy. How is your day going?”

This startled the boy who almost threw the bucket besides him. “Oh, Mr. Wilkins. Hadn’t noticed you there.” He said as he hurriedly mopped the water that had spilled when he stumbled. “My day is going quite well, but as you can see this job isn’t very exciting. What about yours?”

“It’s boring as hell!” Ainsley exclaimed without a hint of decorum. “And we have barely started our journey. You sailors have my respect for being able to endure it.”

“Well, it’s not so bad once you get accustomed to it.” The young boy replied as he bent down to pick up the bucket. On his turned down neck Ainsley noticed a few silvery scales that marked him as a mix of human and merfolk.

Relationships between landfolk and merfolk were frowned upon. But despite that, it was very common for members of both races to show characteristics from the other. There were few people on the islands who claimed to be pure-blooded, and even less that actually were.

“I bet you thought things would be more thrilling when you enrolled.” Ainsley told the boy. “Maybe you expected to fight some pirates or to encounter a ship-wrecking sea monster.” He gestured with an amused expression.

“Oh, c’mon Mr. Wilkins.” The boy pouted. “I’m old enough to know there are no such things in the ocean. Those are just tales from superstitious sailors.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure.” A coarse voice interjected surprising the two. It was Captain Smolger, who had come out of the bridge. “The ocean is vast and full of secrets. Only a fool would claim to know everything that lies inside it.”

“I have to disagree with you on that, Captain Smolger,” Ainsley said looking at the captain with a slightly upset expression that made clear he didn’t share his opinion. “Science has found no evidence of anything bigger than whales roaming the oceans. Apart from them, the only beasts that can capsize a ship are giant sharks and ictios, but none of them could sink a vessel of this size.”

Those animals were regularly caught by fishing ships, with the whales being by far the largest. They could reach a length of over a hundred and fifty feet at times. Other than them, researchers had only found proof of the existence of giant squids and octopuses whose rotten bodies had been discovered near the coast. Anything bigger was exposed in Victoria’s Museum of Natural History, among the bones of other extinct creatures.

“Hmm, in my opinion the people who claim that are lacking imagination, Mr. Wilkins.” Captain Smolger told the researcher in a calm tone. “In any case, I didn’t come here to chat. I have to inform you that we have left behind the last islands pertaining to the Eastbern Empire. We won’t see more land until we arrive in Saravela.”

They had entered the open ocean. From this point on, these were uncharted waters for Ainsley, who had never left the Taisreign Archipelago.