Chapter 9: Cruising

I quickly fell back into the shipboard routine over the next week. To give my days more variety I had split my daily exercise session into two. I started in the morning with a vigorous and sweaty session on the magic treadmill. In the afternoon I did a second more meditative yoga or Pilates session. I also had a set time every evening which I would spend reading. Sometimes this ‘reading’ session was more of a ‘sip scotch and stare at the fake fireplace’ session.

I had tried a few games with Naomi but soon soured on those as the machine was too smart at the skill games and I could not stand to see her limit herself to give me a chance. I ended up getting hooked on solitaire one night and playing into the early hours of the next morning. Luckily, Naomi was a lenient captain and gave me light duties the next day.

We did add a bit of fun to the magic treadmill. Naomi fabricated a set of polarized glasses that allowed me to view the screen images in full three dimensions. The A.I. then provided me with a full set of faux weapons which worked very much like the real thing except that they fired no ammo. I was then able to simulate running, sneaking, stalking, skating, and skiing ... the whole gambit, while armed and shooting at various enemies and targets which appeared in the surrounding viewing screens. The screens could track the hits and misses, and the digital foes reacted accordingly.

It got real when the A.I. added an outfit that gave me feedback. A ‘haptic suit’ she called it. Now, when I got hit by the enemies I felt it. My first go with the suit about knocked me on my ass when I got shot. After a bit of cursing and yelling on my part, Naomi dialed down the power and it became much more fun and exciting. I had so much fun that the battle runs and the other games like it became my normal morning ‘vigorous’ workout.

My mood improved so much that Naomi got to work on more simulation games. She promised a full-motion seat in a spherical screen bubble which would shake and roll me around and give me the feeling of driving a tank, or an armed dune buggy, or even flying an airplane. It sounded like a blast, but it would take a few days as she had to reroute a few items below the floor plates in the ‘rec’ room.

That work was needed to provide more room for the ‘fun sphere’s’ movement base as the ‘rec’ room lacked the height to install the unit fully above the deck. She had offered to place it in the salon or the forward workroom, but I wanted to keep it out of the salon and hated to get in the way of any repairs or fabrications taking place in the workroom.

One morning I woke up and saw on the wall display that it was May 4th. A lead weight hit me, and I slumped back down into bed. It was Abby’s birthday. Ever since her accident, the anniversary of this day had hit me hard. I felt tears form in my eyes and knew they were from a combination of missing her, which was normal, and from guilt when I realized how seldom I thought of her these days.

I wondered if my subconscious somehow sensed that the death of my child had happened more than nine centuries ago and felt the separation in time. I had slept for all of that except for a few waking months so the wound should have been as fresh as it had been back when I lived alone in South Dakota. But, it was muted somehow.

For a moment I suspected it was more of that damned mental tampering by the machine. But, when I thought about it, I did not think it was her that had muted my emotions of those memories. I think I just knew that I was now different. I felt different. I was in a new body, in a new time and doing new things. My subconscious was compartmentalizing the eras I had lived.

I rolled over and buried my face in the pillow. I felt like I was betraying the memories of my daughter and my wife. The A.I. must have realized why I wasn’t waking up as I normally did because the wall images stayed muted and dim. After ten minutes, my berth door opened and Ohmu entered carrying a tray. I smelled bacon and eggs. I rolled over and sat up. The smell helped get my mind off my sorrows. I saw that she had a carafe of coffee and a small glass of juice on the tray also.

“Joan, I wish there were a way for me to ease your burden on this day of memory and sadness. I do not and cannot fully understand what you are feeling but I will make one observation which may help. You are alive and have more life ahead of you.”

She paused for a moment letting me digest her words before continuing, “This life can be as rich as you wish it to be. You can have joy and companionship again. Although you can never have the family that you lost, you can have a new family.”

Again, she paused, maybe sensing my doubts.

“None of your past or your memories of your family need be forgotten or replaced, but they can be joined and shared with new memories just as strong and rewarding.”

The black robot then poured me a cup of coffee and set the tray on the bed beside me. As she reached the doorway to leave, she paused.

“You are a sentient being. You have the power and resources to make your own destiny. You must wield this power and set your course forward in the best way possible. Anything less would be a waste.”

The obsidian humanoid mobile unit left the room leaving me with much to think about. Her words and the food shifted the mood of the room. This was reinforced when the A.I. slowly morphed the images on the full wall screen to show a sunrise shining on a scene of a freshly mowed and immaculately landscaped yard. I saw the perfect gardens in the background and the meadows beyond filled with grazing wildlife. I smiled and began eating.

“Thank you, Naomi. I get what you’re saying.”

A week later after my morning workout and shower, I was eating a snack of a fresh orange that I had picked from the tree growing in the corner of the salon. Naomi was giving its daily briefing. I learned that tomorrow Nautilus would be passing the Cape of Good Hope. Well, actually we would be over a hundred nautical miles offshore of the cape as we were staying far off the continental shelf to leave us plenty of water depth to maneuver.

I would love to have gone closer and done a bit of sightseeing, but the risk was just not worth it. Not when the slightest hint that we were here might bring countless fusion bombs dropped from an orbital station. The machine had unlimited resources and no reason to be timid in its response. It could boil the waters with high powered sonar beams if it wished and damn the whales who would be driven insane.

Also, the southern passage around Africa actually had a bit of enemy A.I. traffic as there were a few vessels moving on the surface. Some were transporting items between various destinations. Others were engaged in biologic work doing surveys of water life. A few more were still doing ocean clean up as there were dumps off the continental shelves of all the old major population centers. I had learned that the waste served a dual purpose as the reduction machines considered it a valuable feedstock and an easier source of certain scarce elements.

Our problem was that these vessels had no problem using active sonar and radar to scout the waters for floating debris or to monitor their own aquatic drones as they sniffed around the ocean floor looking for sources of contamination. This meant we had to go slower and sometimes far out of our way to avoid them. I learned much about how the layers of water affected how far we would be detected from their probes.

So, our already slow and steady journey was at times, even slower. It was two days later before our course turned fully east and even a bit north. We were approaching the Indian Ocean. Naomi and I had looked at the various islands remaining between us and Sri Lanka. We’d agreed that we would stop and do a bit of scouting on the island of Mauritius which was about 2,200 nautical miles ahead or around nine days of travel. We’d be passing southeast of Madagascar in a bit over six days and the former French island of Réunion a day or two later.

The reasons for stopping at Mauritius were twofold. The first was we wanted to work with the monkey and the jackal, our other two bio-drones. The second was that I needed another break from the submarine. I know that sailors on subs used to go for months at a time in the past but try doing it alone and without much surface time. The new swiveling spherical simulator and the magic treadmill helped and were great diversions but they were no substitution for being outdoors.

A few days later, after sunset, we were going to surface Nautilus to allow Naomi to scan the airwaves and satellite signals for new data. When we approached periscope depth, I could feel the motion through Nautilus’s hull. There was a storm overhead and a big one. Naomi raised the photonics mast and the view was interrupted by huge waves. We decided to delay the attempt and instead sank back down deep where the running was again smooth.

Later while I was lounging in the salon Naomi had informed me that she had detected the storm by our listening arrays before we had made the attempt to surface. I was curious so she showed me the acoustic signatures. I then received a brief lesson on how our sensitive acoustic detectors worked and was impressed. It was entertaining to hear the various whales and other underwater lifeforms as they chattered about.

Friday evening, three days later, the surface conditions were calm enough to allow the boat to surface. I was dressed in a warm outfit because of the cool night air and spray. We were still making five knots, so I went up in the sail instead of the lower landing deck as waves were occasionally sweeping over much of the hull. The skies were solid overcast clouds and there was an occasional light drizzle, so we had no fear of being detected from orbit.

—Joan, I am detecting a great deal of data transmission and communications between remote units coming from Madagascar to the northwest. I am also detecting some transmissions coming from Réunion Island ahead.—

“Do you have any idea what is going on?” I asked.

—Some of the communications involves various construction projects on the larger island. I am unable to synchronize with many of the transmissions as our position to too far away and many originate over the local horizon. The heavy cloud cover permits the safe deployment of a high-altitude aerial drone. I have set your goggles to protect you from the glare, stand by.—

I was about to ask her what she had meant when I heard a clank and a groan from the deck behind the sail. I turned around and was searching for the source of the noise with the night vision in the goggles. I had just spotted the small circular hatch cover standing open near the aft end of the port sponson when ... Whoosh! ... a small missile launched. I jumped halfway out of the sail but at least I had not been blinded. I recovered and looked up as the surrounding seas and cloud ceiling above was lit up brightly by the bright white exhaust of the missile.

Before it penetrated the clouds, it flared and then sputtered out. The small rocket casing at its rear detached and fell back towards the sea off to the portside of the boat. The upper stage of the missile continued to climb but now with only a steady drone and the smaller blue flame of a jet type engine. Soon, that stage disappeared and entered the clouds above. I had just witnessed our boat launch a missile.

“Thanks for warning me you blasted machine,” I grumbled.

—intense cardiovascular stimulation is good for your body, Joan.—

My beating heart slowed down a bit.

—The drone will remain loitering above the cloud level at altitude for over an hour monitoring the enemy A.I.s transmissions. It will then land on the deck and be retrieved by the Ohmu unit using the starboard deck hatch. I will then process the data it has obtained.—

I stayed on the sail for another ten minutes before heading below. While I passed through the workshop compartment I paused at the fabrication area to look over the gear Naomi was producing. The main item I was eager to see complete was a new augmentation and camouflage suit. This was one of the items we wanted to test on Mauritius. It was intended to provide multiple types of camouflage as well as boost my strength and endurance.

The suit was an all-black jumpsuit with a black facemask hood. When worn, the suit would mask my body’s heat by absorbing and transferring the heat to a large block of paraffin phase change material in the backpack. There was also a large power capacitor to drive the thermal pumps. The suit was good for around two hours in the cool of the dark and a bit longer in the heat of the day.

On top of the thermal camouflage, the black coloring was photo reactive and would change like a cuttlefish to mimic the colors and textures of anything in the nearby area. It could not do anything about shadows but Naomi had been instructing me during my yoga and Pilates sessions on certain forms to assume while standing or sitting to mask and disguise the shadows cast by my body.

The final function of the suit was that it had a small amount of synthetic musculature woven into the suit. This would give me a bit of an endurance boost but mainly compensated for the weight of the suit and the heavy mass of the thermal sink and the energy storage capacitor. Overall, we were hoping the suit would have enough power and thermal absorption to allow for two hours of operation. After that, it would have to be connected to a robust power source to both recharge the capacitor and cool and solidify the phase change paraffin heat sink.

It seemed the face mask was done. It looked like a ski mask but without any mouth, nose, or eye holes on the front. Inside, there were built-in goggles and a flat respirator that received cool fresh air from a chest unit below and channeled the hotter exhaled air down and around the back of the mask and into the backpack. I did not put the headgear on as it needed the lower suit for power.

I set the mask down and saw that the gloves and footgear were also completed. They were also black and looked like my other gloves and footgear except these had thermal connections that interfaced with the suit. The gloves also were a bit thicker because they had a bit of the synthetic musculature to increase grip strength.

It was after 22:00 when I finally returned to the salon. I saw Ohmu heading up to the starboard sponson and its deck hatch which must mean that the high-altitude aerial drone must be due back. I debated on going up there to help or waiting here. I decided to risk getting wet from the chance that the deck hatch would get swamped and followed the little black unit up to the airlock chamber.

There, I waited at the base of the deck hatch ladder as Ohmu climbed and opened the deck hatch. She got the hatch opened and climbed up onto the deck. A bit of seawater came in the hatch and I regretted not having my goggles with me. After a few minutes, I saw Ohmu lean down the open hatch and lower the aerial drone down to me. The drone was a streamlined shape about the size of a golf bag.

I got it down to the deck and looked up in time to see Ohmu lowering a pair of wings, each about a meter long. The drone must have detached its wings to fit in the hatch. I got the wings and set them by the drone and waited in the red-lit chamber for Ohmu to climb down and reseal the hatch. We then used a wall-mounted hose and nozzle to spray all the seawater off each other, the drone and the chamber interior. The drainage discharged into a scuttle in the floor to be pumped overboard.