The floating island was stuck on a shoal. I could actually see the ground below. It looks like I wasn’t the only one to run afoul of this place. On the seabed was the debris of other floating platforms.

“This place will become an island before long,” Jim told me.

“Why do you think that?”

“The winds. They converge on this point from five different directions, and the silt below the water also seems to drift here. I’m not sure what’s down there, but it’s affecting the planet’s atmosphere, along with the underwater currents.”

“Well, we shall call this place the Five Wind Shoals.”

“I suppose I can tell you what I think that platform you use for storage might be.”

“Oh?”

“I think it’s a floating farm. You can go down and scoop up that soil and fill the bins, and if you can find seeds, you could plant them.”

“Huh, that’s interesting,” I commented and stared at the seabed below. Even if I filled the bins with dirt, how the hell would I find anything to plant?

Thump!

Looking over, a small floating tube bumped against my island. In the center of the ring was a flowerpot with a wilting plant. A red fruit or vegetable grew from it that vaguely looked like a tomato, only it had thicker skin.

“Is that a tomato? There was no way that’s a coincidence, right?” I asked Jim.

“Yeah… coincidence,” Jim mumbled, his mechanical brain working overtime. The odds of that happening were so low it wasn’t funny, but the odds of it not being a coincidence were even higher. “What a conundrum. Well, grab that thing! It isn’t a tomato, but I will not argue semantics, so we’ll call it one.”

I snapped out of my dazed and pulled the pot up, inner tube and all. The plant looked half dead, but seeing the plant gave rise to a more significant problem. Scraping soil from the seabed wasn’t an issue, but how was I supposed to clean it? I’d need to flush the salt from it using my fresh water, and it needed to drain out. The flower pot with the tomato plant had decent drainage, but I’d have to leave at least one bin empty to clean the soil and transfer it. In the meantime, the tomato plant would need to go somewhere.

It wasn’t impossible to compost my poop, but that took way too long. It was why I took special care to toss the solid waste. If it wasn’t for the fact it was dangerous, if not composted correctly, I would’ve mixed it with the soil below and use it to help recover its nutrients.

On the flip side, my urine contained a lot of nitrogen and phosphorous, which benefited plants. All that was neither here nor there, but it put some of my problems into perspective. While thinking it through, I opened a few bins and rearranged some things. I moved all my supplies back into the pod and only kept my fish tank storage. I would fill four bins with soil while the fifth remained empty for the clean soil. Once the dirt in the four bins was cleaned, I could repurpose the fifth for storage once more.

Using one of the plastic jugs, I poked holes in it and lined it with a piece of the dead guy’s shirt before transplanting the tomato-like plant into it. The shirt ensured I didn’t lose any soil while watering it. The leftover soil went into the ‘clean’ bin because I planned on using the flowerpot to clean the soil since it had adequate drainage. Now, the only thing left was to dive along the underwater shoal to pull up some of the sediment to see if it was even useable.

Grabbing another plastic container, I dove into the water. Since my island wasn’t moving, I felt the rope was unnecessary. Swimming down, I was careful not to disturb the seabed because the silt was very loose. The slightest touch sent it swirling and ruined visibility. Carefully, I filled the container and swam back to the surface. I lost some of the material because the container wasn’t sealed, and the movement caused water displacement. Still, I retained about seventy percent of the soil.

Luckily, the seabed was only four meters below the surface. After five times, I pulled myself up onto my island and rested. This was one of the few times I used the food tubes to ensure I had the energy needed to continue. The watery mess inside the first bin didn’t look promising.

“How about it? Is this soil capable of growing things?” I asked Jim.

“It is. There is a lot of organic matter in there, but from what I do not know. There is some normal soil and about thirty percent sand. It has a high salinity, but if you use small amounts and cleanse it, we should be able to cleanse a bin within a week. The others will take longer because we’ll use the leftover soil for the first bin to start planting immediately.”

“And the other bins?”

“Weeks? It’s hard to say. We cannot afford to overwork your water purifier. No matter what kind of gain you hope to get, it isn’t worth the risk.”

You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

“Well, that’s probably okay. I only have one plant, anyway.”

“It isn’t quite a tomato, but it should have seeds like one. You won’t be able to eat that thing since we’ll need it to grow more plants.”

I could only sigh in resignation because there wasn’t much choice. Tomorrow, I’d fill in the remaining bins and then figure out a way to salvage stuff from the seabed. The platforms might have sunk, but there were plenty of metal parts.

The next few days went by in a blink because I kept myself busy from sunrise to sunset. After filling the bins, my only concern was that they didn’t have any drainage.

“It’s fine. We’ll just need to rotate the soil and clean it again in about a year. Like we are doing now. By then, we can mix the leftover plants and maybe your waste to create compost. If we haven’t escaped the planet within a year, we can work on longer-term solutions for the soil. For now, I don’t think it’s much of an issue.”

“Fine,” I grumbled.

“Seriously, man. This was a good week for you. Accept it. And… the fruit that thing produces has plenty of vitamin C. Once you start growing it, you can cook your fish.”

Today was the day we cut that plant up since I had clean soil now to plant it. I transplanted the current stalk into the bin, used the leftover soil, and scattered it across the surface. There wasn’t much else to do except bury the chopped pieces and water them.

“How long will it take?”

“To harvest? Since we are using tomatoes as the measure, between two and three months.”

“That long?”

“Well, it isn’t like we have chemicals to speed it up. And I’m mostly guessing because it isn’t an actual tomato. Since the climate is warmer here, it might grow faster. Either way, we should see a sprout within a week or two.”

I knew there wasn’t much I could do here. I wasn’t even sure if I should continue to loot the trash out of the water because there wasn’t much space, to begin with. As I was about to dive back down to see if there was anything worth looting, Jim shouted and woke me up from my thoughts.

“Dammit, Jim. Was that necessary?”

“Yeah, you fucking idiot. Look in the water.”

Looking down, I jumped back from the edge of my floating island.

“What the fuck is that?”

“Looks like we found this planet’s version of a shark.”

It was more like a shark crossed with a spider. It had a dorsal fin but also dozens of eyes that moved independently of each other. The number of teeth was frightening, and there was no way I was getting in that water. To make things worse, after one appeared, dozens arrived not long after.

“Great! I’m glad I pushed myself free from the underwater ridge, or I’d be stuck here forever.” I created an anchor after the third day and took the rest of that day to get my raft off the ridge. Jim found a current stronger than the five winds flowing south, away from the shoal. I was slightly concerned about why a strong current flowed away from the shoal when everything else deposited itself directly into this location.

“Wait.”

“What now?”

“Look.”

Turning my head, I spotted another of the platforms. Well, not quite. It was more extensive, and it had a roof. It looked like they put together six platforms, creating a six-by-six-meter island. The holes on the four corners had beams that held up a tin roof. As it came closer, I saw they joined the platforms with a clip that slid into the matching slots on the frame. It was a better method than using a rope, as I did.

“I can’t let that thing reach the shoal, or I’ll never get it free.”

“Don’t worry, it’s being drawn over, but it’ll hit the underwater current we are floating on. Just be ready to pull up your anchor and toss it onto that thing to pull it close.”

I did as Jim said but needed a few tosses to get the anchor to latch onto one of the four beams holding up the roof. Seeing it up close, I nearly wept.

“Okay, pay attention,” Jim told me. “That shelter is arranged in a two-by-three pattern, so we’ll make the port and bow (back and front) the sides with three platforms exposed.”

“So port and stern will have two of the three-meter sides exposed? Why?”

“The pod is roughly the same size as that platform, about six meters wide.”

“Following you so far…”

“Good. Then if you tie off one of the current platforms on the port and stern side, assuming the pod is at the stern, we can—”

“Tie off the next one on the short or stern side of that—you want to surround the pod with platforms?”

“Something like that. I recommend you tie the garden on the starboard-stern side.”

“What’s the reason for that?”

“You will grow plants, but have you thought how you’d protect them? What if those shit eels want to eat them?”

“Well, fuck.”

“Yeah.”

“Moving these floating things is becoming a pain in the ass.”

“This should be the last time. The shelter was unexpected and probably too big to modify later.”

A few hours later, I rearranged everything, and my chair was now on the port side, alongside the shelter. The other platform was now alongside the pod. Since the pod was circular, there was a triangular gap at the corner where the water was exposed. It wasn’t a big deal, and now I had a six-by-six-meter area where I could practically do whatever I wanted. It was also shielded from the high noon sun, which was even better.

“What are you doing now?” Jim asked, seeing me standing in front of my chair.

“Debating whether to move this under the roof. All these platforms have that whole in the center. So I could move it to any of them except for the garden.”

“It might last a little longer out of the direct sun.”

I nodded and did just that but moved it to the platform alongside the garden. It was still under the roof, and I felt I could somehow use it as an anchor to cover or protect the garden. I didn’t have a firm plan or idea, but something would come to me.

They built the roof of the structure more like a pergola, and the boards were close enough together that I could climb onto the top safely. It wasn’t much, but it gave me a higher vantage point to look at the surrounding ocean.

“Not bad.”

“Huh?”

“We might be able to print solar panels that we can affix to this roof.”

“Is that really possible?”

“Well, the panel’s efficiency won’t be as high as the ones on your pod, but they’ll be effective enough that you could have low-level lighting on your island.”

“Man, that kind of shit would take forever.”

“Dude, all we have is fucking time right now. Anyway, it is no longer worth hanging around here anymore.”

He was right. The shark-like beasts ensured no fish would remain in the area. Besides, I was more worried about what else might get blown toward the Five Wind Shoals.

Author Note: Excuse the crude image, I'll redo it later. I realize explaining the layout might seem confusing with all the port, bow, stern, etc. So I'm giving a really simple image of the layout so you can better see what I'm talking about.

[https://i.ibb.co/WPhGX8t/image.png]