A few days slipped by, and my stash of salt was slowly increasing. It wasn’t enough to preserve much of anything, and I had to remove another panel to create another pan. In this one, Jim recommended I rub the fish down with salt. Then I place it in the pan with a brine using filtered water. The process wasn’t that hard, but it was tedious and took time to cure.
The issue was the shit eels. They were on the deck every morning and only left the salted fish alone because I stacked the water pan on top of it.
“You need to do a smell check every morning. If any of it goes bad, you might lose it all.”
“Is there a better way to do this?” I asked, finding the task was a pain in the ass.
“There is another method, but you’d need to bring the fish into the pod at night until it’s dried out. After it’s cured, you need to store it in a container underwater to ensure it’s dry and the temperature stays below a certain level.”
“What’s that method? I’m sure I can find more containers.”
“It’s the drying method. You can filet the fish and lightly salt them. Use some of that wire to hang the filets from those mooring lines. That method will basically ruin the flavor and might not taste much better than those nutrient pastes.”
Thinking about it some more, I believe that method was best. The trick was to seal the fish so it didn’t stink up my pod. The plastic bags would work, but those were getting low. I wasn’t even sure why I had saved all those bags.
Bong!
The floating dock shook as something struck the pod from behind. I hadn’t been paying attention to my surroundings because they were pretty depressing. But now my head was on a swivel like a damned owl. As we drifted, I finally saw it—another floating dock. This one didn’t have a horizontal surface like the one I was on. It was the same size—two by three meters. The difference was that the dock was divided into six compartments or bins 40 centimeters deep (1.3 feet).
Grabbing a rope, I brought it to the current platform and wasn’t sure where to secure it.
“Jim? Which side should I tie this off to?”
“First, let me teach you a few nautical terms since cardinal directions don’t work. Let’s assume your pod is astern or at the back of our ship. The side you fish off of could be called the bow or the front. Facing the bow of your ship, the left side is port, and the right is starboard. Did I go too fast for your organic brain?”
“Nope, I got it. It’s the same shit used on my spaceship, so stop being a condescending dick.”
“Anyway, rearrange the current dock. Put the smaller side against the pod. Then attach the new dock to either the port or starboard side. At some point, we can create clips you can slide into those holes so you won’t need to use rope, but you’ll need to wait for the bigger printer, and you need more polymer—er, trash.”
“Hmm,” I nodded and quickly undid the current mooring. Turning the floating deck, I tied it off again and then put the new thing on the starboard side. It was a right-side dominant thing. The two floating platforms were almost identical, except one had compartments instead of a deck. Sadly, I did have to cut some more roped to tie the two platforms together.
Exploring the new space, I found the compartments had durable plastic bins that came out. The best part was they all had small knobs on the bottom of the four corners and looked like old-fashioned square cauldrons. Anyway, each container had dimples on top of the four corners allowing me to stack one on top of the other. Removing a bin exposed the water underneath.
It was the best find yet. The more I thought about it, these bins had all kinds of uses.
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“Fuck curing fish. I can just catch them and stow them in here.”
“Maybe. I don’t think that’s what those are for.”
“Oh? What are they for?”
“I will not say anything for now,” Jim laughed. “But hey, if it rains, you’ll have plenty of fresh water—maybe enough for a bath.”
“Dammit, Jim. Stop keeping secrets.”
“It’s not really. Don’t worry. If the scenario arrives, I’ll tell you what I think. For now, it’s not even worth mentioning.”
“Regardless, one of these things will be for fish.”
I took a bin to scoop water into another compartment until it was completely full. With two rows of three containers, I chose the outer middle of the platform. There wasn’t any particular reason for the choice except I didn’t want the compartments closest to my chair in case the water sloshed out of it.
“You spot it yet?” Jim asked.
“Spot what?”
“Feel along the frame on the long side of the platform. I think each compartment has one.”
“One what? Why being so mysterious today?”
“Just fucking do it, you damned blood sac!”
I sighed and felt up under the lip of the compartment and found something really was there. Pulling on it, a roll-top lid appeared, and I could seal the bins. That was interesting, and I finally had a way to deal with the stupid shit eels. Like Jim said, along the frame on the long side, all six sections had their own lid. Another benefit was that I could walk on them, but they didn’t have the smooth surface of the floating dock. It wasn’t pleasant on my bare feet, but I’d probably get used to it—not that I had much choice.
Regardless, now that I had a bin filled with water and I could start my little fishery—okay, that might be taking it too far. Raising fish sounded like a lot of work, and these were my idle days, so fuck that. I spent the next few hours fishing, but it was slow going since it was the middle of the day. Only a few nibbles but nothing worth mentioning. Only as evening approached did I finally hook something.
I should mention I’ve lost as many fish as I caught. It was a pain to get them on the deck without a net. Still, patience usually won out, and it wasn’t difficult to hook a few fish daily. Yanking hard at the last minute, the fish came out of the water, and I stared at it in shock. It legit had teeth and a ball-like body. The damned thing was creepy as fuck.
Either way, food was food, so I did what I usually do, pressed my knee on it and punched it in the face. The punch wouldn’t kill it but stunned it, preventing the fish from flopping around. Gutting it was what did them in. This time I retrieved my hook and tossed the thing into the bin filled with water.
Eventually, it recovered, swam around the bin a few times, and then jumped out and back into the ocean. It popped out of the water and turned around to look at me. If it could speak, I was sure it was cursing my bloodline to damnation.
“Haha!” Jim burst out laughing. “He just told you to fuck off. What an indignant fish!”
“Since that fish doesn’t exist in your database, name it the Indignant Piranha.”
Sighing, I went back to fishing. That was a dumb mistake that even beginner anglers wouldn’t have made. I should have shut the lid on that thing, but I was too excited to have a way of storing live fish. Baiting the hook again, I tossed it out into the calm waters.
“Hey, idiot. I came up with something you might like.”
“What is it?”
“The pod essentially has electricity, even if it’s minor, and the battery’s charge is used up fairly quickly.”
“Is that what you are wasting my time on?”
“Shut up and listen for once. I was able to hack into the internal systems—not that it was something to brag about since the pod is fucking ancient. I can use one of the working display screens to show you some things.”
“Like?”
“How to modify your laser cutter so we can recharge it. Using those wires you cut out, I can show you some schematics to reconfigure internal modules and turn them into a charging station.”
“And we have the parts for it?”
“Yeah. I don’t even need to print anything. But if you fuck up any of the welds or cannot follow directions, then you’ll destroy the cutter, or pod, or both.”
“You can do all that, then how about creating a communications array?”
“Am I a fucking magician performing party tricks at a children’s birthday party?”
“Why are your comebacks so long? Did you really need all the performing tricks bullshit?” I shook my head as if disappointed, but internally I was laughing my ass off.
“Fuck you, Bones!”
“Answer the question?”
“You lack the pieces to fix the communications. In fact, it might be better that way. Blackeye will notice the moment you try to send an off-planet message. After we finish the printer and get enough resources, we can probably work on rebuilding the radio.”
The rest of the day went much like that. Small discussions and me fishing and living my best idle life. By the time evening fell, I’d already caught another fish. This time, it went in, and the lid closed immediately after. The bags of fish parts and heads went into one of the bins with my fishing gear. Stowing all that stuff inside the pod was no longer necessary, which was a good thing.
Instead of fish, today I sucked down a nutrient tube before heading to bed.
“Every day’s an adventure, right Jim?”
“Seas the day.”
Sigh.