I wake up to a sunrise lighting up a band of gold along the edge of a beautiful blue sky. I feel a moment of confusion and wonder where I am, then look over at the deck chair next to me where Evan is still sleeping. That’s right, we’re out at sea. It’s for some project, I think. A task pops up reminding me to look at my to-do list for the day. Looks like we’ll be building three junk collectors. Yeah, remembering now, the garbage patch cleanup project. I pop up to the bridge deck and check on where we are. The navigation system shows that we’re still another half hour to the build site, so there’s plenty of time to grab something to eat.
Down in the cabin, Andrea is just emerging from the bedroom. I hope my footsteps didn’t wake her. I hit the head and brush my teeth. Andrea is pulling juice from our makeshift icebox. It’s just a cooler with some bots in it working full time at sucking up ambient heat. Every once in a while they pop out and charge other bots until their battery is low again. The pastries that someone packed for us are good, if a little stale today. They probably won’t be worth eating tomorrow, so I have two. We eat in silence until Evan stumbles in.
“Morning,” he rumbles, grabbing a box of the orange juice.
“Morning,” I say with a smile. I feel great today, not sure why.
Evan gets out the satellite phone and gives Louise a call. Louise, I remember her now. She’s my sister. She talked to the legal team and they said they’ll look into something. I’m not sure what. Whatever it was, it couldn’t have been too important. I didn’t even make a task to remember it. I’m having a little trouble following the discussion, but that’s probably normal. Otherwise, everything is going great back at home.
Once we’re done with the call, Andrea takes me and Evan each by the hand and pulls us out onto the main deck. She forms some bouncing plastic balls of various sizes, probably made from some detritus that we passed. She starts them jumping in a staccato rhythm, bouncing against the deck. Each one hits at a slightly different pitch and soon she’s established a nice beat. A tuneless melody comes from somewhere and she beckons for Evan and I to join her in some stretches. We comply, and soon she has us doing her full morning exercise routine with her as the sun continues to rise and the bright blue ocean gets even more beautiful. We’re nowhere near as flexible as she is, and after the first five minutes my muscles are burning. Ten minutes later, I’m ready to collapse. Evan doesn’t look like he’s doing much better.
Fortunately, a ding from the bridge deck tells us it’s time to get started on our first build. I’m soaking in sweat, but I’ll have to shower later. I take time to chug down the drink that Andrea offers me and Evan before I dig out the control panel from one of the boxes and get started on the functional core of the new platform. My index pulls up schematics as I need them and it’s not hard to follow the instructions. Evan and Andrea pull up a couple of the boats following ours and start disassembling them for materials, which I eagerly grab up to grow both the platform and my cloud. Step-by-step instructions continue to pop up in my console as I work, making the tasks simple. I wonder if I wrote these or if someone else wrote them for me. They seem familiar, but I honestly couldn’t say.
I’m not sure if it’s the invigorating workout, the beautiful weather, the good company, or knowing the project is saving the world, but I just feel fantastic today. I smile all the way through the first platform build. I don’t even mind when I have to disconnect most of my cloud to set up bots to maintain the thing. I can always make more.
“What’s got you so happy today?” Evan asks as he comes down from setting up the course to our next site on the bridge.
This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.
“Not sure man, just loving life,” I answer as I pull my deck chair over into the shade.
He pulls the other one near mine but keeps it in the sun. Andrea disappears inside the cabin.
“So, are you ready to hear about my date with Valerie yet?” he asks with a grin. “I’ve been sitting on this for days now and I’m tired of waiting for you to ask.”
“Oh! I totally forgot about that!” I sit up and turn towards him. “Yes, tell me all about it, please! Sorry I spaced it.”
“I understand, brother. If it was anyone else, I’d be all kinds of offended, but with you I know it’s not something you can control. Anyway, we took one of the nicer cars from Father’s collection up to Vegas. Have you seen his car collection down in the garage under the residence? I’m not a car guy, but he had some great models down there.”
I seem to remember that I had looked there at some point, but I’d have to dig through my log to check and I’m just enjoying the story. Something about the mention of Father makes me sad, but I’m not sure why. I’ll have to look later. Evan goes on about the concert they went to, the fancy dinner at a rotating restaurant that looked out over the city, how they held hands as they walked along the strip. He’s so happy, and I’m so happy for him.
“So on the way back, I put on some music. We were talking, it was romantic, and she says she spotted a falling star. I didn’t see anything, but she told me to pull over so we could see if any more, like a meteor shower or something. So I pulled over, and we got out and walked off the road a little ways. You know, so there wouldn’t be as much light and we could see better. But after a minute, we weren’t looking up anymore. I leaned in, then she leaned in, then we kissed.” His smile almost splits his face in half. “And then we kissed some more. I think she might have given me a hickey. She’s so awesome, Noah!”
“Good for you man! So you really like this girl then? What was her name again? Valkyrie? Valentine?”
I’m messing with him, and he gets it. He laughs his deep, rumbling laugh..
“So yeah, we’re official now. Girlfriend and boyfriend and all that. Can we bring her along when we do the Asia trip? She already speaks Vietnamese.”
We’re taking a trip to Asia? Cool.
“I don’t see why not,” I answer. “Although we might want to poll the other sibs coming along to make sure everyone is OK with it. Have you talked to any of the others about it yet?”
“Yeah, I checked with Marc, Louise and Andrea already. You know, cause they all asked how the date went. They’re good with bringing her if no one else objects. Louise said it would be a great idea to have someone with some medical training along, just in case. I just need to get Chad on board now. Andrea was cracking some funny jokes about how much first-aid I’ll need from our new on-board nurse, you should have her show you.”
As if on cue, Andrea pops out from the cabin. She’d been heading this way anyway, and just managed to time it right. She waves her hands and a little holographic Evan starts getting a series of more and more embarrassing injuries starting with a stubbed toe and ending with a snake bite on his backside, each of which a stick-figure nurse tends to with an increasingly sad look on her face. It’s hilarious and we’re all roaring with laughter by the time she’s done.
A timer ding comes from the bridge deck. Ten minutes to the next build site. We just have time for a quick lunch before it’s time to work. We each pick out cans of food and warm them with our bots. The canned spaghetti reminds me of when I was really little, back before Mom learned how to cook well. I can’t remember her very well. I start taking a look at my index entry for her, but before I get more than a couple of lines in I get a sudden overwhelming wave of sadness that stops me for a moment. Then Evan starts cracking more jokes about medical services he’ll need on our Asia trip and I let it go. There’s plenty of time later to catch up on what I can’t remember about myself.
Time to build. Andrea handles putting together the core this time, so Evan and I get the easy bulk work. What a great day, even with the growing soreness from the morning’s workout. I just feel so good. Maybe I should live on a boat and do this all the time.