Outland: Chapter 18

The cold spray flew up in my face, causing me to reel back and almost fall on the slippery ground, if it were not for my grip on the railing.  The unpredictable movement of the waves had not ceased to surprise me like that.  Tasting the salty residue on my lips, my stomach churned, and I quickly leaned over the edge to dry heave, swaying back and forth on my heels the whole time.

“What are you doing out here?”  The call came out, just barely audible over the sound of the water.

“Grabbing something.”  I hoisted the plastic bag over my head, filled with my various maps.

“Can’t it wait?”  Johnathan, the first mate, pulled at my long sleeve.

“I don’t want the let the opportunity pass.”  I quickly followed after him, shoes carefully treading against the ground.

Stepping inside, I pulled off the lift vest and heavy coat, both mostly soaked.  “You have to understand…”  I caught my breath.  “That mech is my home.  Everything I own is in there.”Continue reading “The Expanse”

Outland: Chapter 17

I never ended up seeing any other active ports along the coast like that man down in Los Angeles had told me of.  I fully prepared myself to take time travelling underwater to avoid any more of the same situations like I did down there.  Luckily, both for my sanity and the speed of our progress, I never was able to spot any more telling lights in the night.

I could feel the cold outside start to penetrate Gulliver’s metal skin.  For the first time in almost a year, I opened up the mechanical access panel to turn the knob on the boiler to high.  It had been set on the lowest setting to simple be able to heat water for drinking and the occasion shower, but never enough to send hot enough water to circulate into the cockpit’s radiator.  I knew it would decrease the efficiency a bit, by my teeth chattering at night from the near hypothermia told me it would be a necessary thing to do.  Despite that, my blanket became a permanent installation around my body as I sat inside the cockpit during the day.  I cured the fact that none of my old work uniforms had proper, insulated long sleeves.

Long stretches of water were bordered by tall cliffsides that stretched up even farther than the rising tide.  Rather than be pushed around by the chilling waves, I chose to pilot Gulliver up top, despite the often thick foliage that we had to push our way though.  Many of the trees were taller than Gulliver himself, and the undergrowth was dense and rich.  In a way, it was mesmerizing, like some sort of scene out of a sci-fi movie where adventurers find themselves on a strange planet that is inhabited by nothing but trees.

When the sun eventually set, however, I learned that it was increasingly more difficult to spot any lights on the horizon.  My fears were confirmed one night when sets of lights flickered on somewhere on the other side of a patch of trees.  Startled, I grabbed the controls and stopped Gulliver abruptly.  If it hadn’t been for his own systems taken over, we could have possibly toppled over.

“Andrew, I must stress that you must take care while performing such an action.”

“Sorry, Gul.  I can’t risk any other run-ins like the one down south.”

“I understand.  You see lights?”

“Some just came on out there.  They’re probably on some light sensor or timer by the look of it.  There’s a lot of them too.”Continue reading “A Way”

Outland: Chapter 16

I could already tell that the days were becoming shorter.  The daylight hours were comfortable and cool, but the maps I drew out each night seemed to dwindle off short of the distance I was used to.  Occasionally, rain would cut our travel for a day or more, with anxiety taking a hold of me.

The coastline slowly became more green and lush in comparison to the almost desert-like landscape of down south.  The few remaining signs of any human life seemed swallowed up by the overflowing landscape.  It wasn’t long, though, before I could start to see the leaves of the trees starting to take an orange brown color at their tips.  Even worse, overcast skies would threaten rain, and take time out from when we would be able to have the solar array active.

“Gulliver, how many hours of sunlight did you record yesterday?”  I awoke one day to the rising sun poking through the dense fog.

“According to the current cycle of the sun rising, we should have had 7 hours and 46 minutes of sunlight yesterday.”

“And we spent about three of those hours, after I awoke, to continue charging.  It’s frustrating.”Continue reading “The Cold Air”

Outland: Chapter 15

The next day took us farther up the coast.  I began to see the first major areas of land that had held people at one point.  The rubble of what once would have been a city was scattered around the ground, obscuring old dirty roads, cracked almost beyond recognition.

Back down in South America, I had seen many small settlements that had been destroyed.  There had been many fishing villages, villas, and other settlements sitting at where the old sea level had settled.  By the time I had passed by, there were little more than foundations or piles of rock.  Sometimes farther inland, or up on cliffsides, more intact bits of cities still lingered, but obviously abandoned or in disrepair.  This place was different.

After the shift, many massive waves hit the shoreline all the way up the coast.  I couldn’t have imagined they would have come this far, but evidently, they did.  Even now, the ebb and flow of the waves against the shore deposited bits of debris of what once were buildings—painted slats of wood, old signs, chunks of plastic, old clothes, and other indescribable bits of other manmade objects.

Inland, a few choice buildings still stood, but just barely.  I could tell by some of the signs around that I had arrived in the states.  Perhaps this was San Diego or another city nearby?  Whatever it was, it seems that nobody had ever cared enough to come back here.  Even deep inland, where the waves had eventually stopped, seemed deserted.  The lights I had seen the previous night were definitely farther up the coast.Continue reading “Authority”

Outland: Chapter 14

As the sun dipped behind the mountains one night, I could see various lights begin to pop on somewhere several miles up the coast.  Despite a little bit of light left, I had Gulliver stop.  Quickly moving about, I made sure to turn all the lights inside and outside off.  Before shutting the shutters on the cockpit window, I stayed up and watched the lights in the distance.

“Gulliver.”  I hunched over in the chair, watching eyes fixated.

“Andrew.  Perhaps you should sleep?”

“I’m worried Gulliver.  There’s people here.”

“Do you think they are good people or bad people, Andrew?”Continue reading “Lights in the Night”