The Last Island Read online

  It was in my goodie bag and lovingly I caressed it.

  Check the zipper, check the lock, check the goodie bag, and make sure it is attached to you. Now, hang here and rest.

  I knew that I had to just hang there like what I was—a dead weight.

  It was up to my body to make the physiological gas exchange, now. The gases that had allowed me to survive the dark were toxic in the light and the gases that were life-giving in the light were toxic in the dark. I had to become desaturated from the gases of the dark and become saturated with the gases of the light.

  It had all been calculated before the dive.

  Now, just hang here until the numbers do their work.

  Past exhaustion, I had no physical needs. Past exhaustion, I had no mental capabilities. Past exhaustion, I had no spiritual pleas.

  Was this the state of a fish entrapped in a gill net?

  Keep your mind on the dive. Check your instrument. Go over the dive plan on your slates, again. Practice relaxed breathing. Focus, focus, refocus.

  Just breathe. Just keep breathing. Just keep breathing normally. Just breathe. You know the drill.

  Time only passes when you have a reference to motion in your life. There was no reference to motion in my life other than the near-death experience that was changing into a death experience.

  What, time’s up here. Now, up to the next safety stop.

  The gas exchange had taken place. I freed myself from the line. Very slowly I ascended up the line to the next safety stop. Here I would hang and bleed the extra gas pressure from my body. The extra pressure had to be breathed out in exhausting exhales or explode into a foam of untold trillions of bubbles in my blood at the surface.

  I simply wanted to get out of the water. The temptation was there to simply ignore the thoughts and go with the will.

  What harm would it be this once?

  I knew the answer.

  Death.

  I kept thinking.

  Keep your mind on the dive. Check your instrument. Go over the dive plan on your slates, again. Practice relaxed breathing. Focus, focus, refocus.

  Just breathe. Just keep breathing. Just keep breathing normally. Just breathe. You know the drill.

  You have come this far. This is no time and this is no place to surrender to stupidity. Keep it simple and just keep repeating your mantra.

  I thought.

  It has brought you here. The numbers, the numbers will bring you home. The numbers would bring order to the chaos of the Deep and cut the strings of fate.

  I thought.

  Keep your mind on the dive. Check your instrument. Go over the dive plan on your slates, again. Practice relaxed breathing. Focus, focus, refocus.

  Just breathe. Just keep breathing. Just keep breathing normally. Just breathe. You know the drill.

  The numbers nulled, it was time to surface and exit the water—the hateful water. It, the water, had exhausted me but I had survived its innate natural will.

  Upon the surface, I turned over upon my back. There was no will in my spirit; gone was the math in my brain and there was no energy in my muscles. I was a blob of gelatinous matter floating on the film of the hydrosphere and nothing more.

  The gear of steel and rubber, the gear of numbers, charts, and slates was torn from my body, and it fell and landed where it would. Some landed here, some landed there, and some, because of the force of the rip, returned to the sea.

  Does an escaping slave care where the shackles of his enslavement land as he runs toward his freedom?

  Finally, on the diamond-cut surface of the fiberglass deck I plopped down into a mass of spent life.

  It rested beside me. It hurt too much to look upon it.

  It rested beside me. It hurt too much to put my hand upon it.

  It rested beside me. It hurt too much to think upon it.

  There was no more mantra.

  I could now breathe here without command.

  The Box jellyfish had not taken my breath away. The sea had not taken my breath away. And, I had gotten a last breath in before the season could take my last breath away.

  I stretched out. My arms extended from my shoulders perpendicular to my body. My legs crossed one over the other. From space, it would appear that I had been crucified.

  They that go down to the sea in ships; that do business in great waters;

  These see the works of the Lord, and his wonders in the deep.

  For He commandeth, and raiseth the stormy wind, which lifteth up the waves thereof.

  They mount up to heaven, they go down again to the depths: their soul is melted because of trouble.

  They reel to and fro, and stagger like a drunken man, and are at their wit’s end.

  Then they cry unto the Lord in their trouble, and He bringeth them out of their distress.

  He maketh the storm a calm, so that those thereof are still.

  I prayed.

  The new rising sun began to warm my blood but I was not able to produce even a muscle twitch. I knew that my blood needed water and food but my body was not able do anything other than lie in the new light.

  After all this, this is how I am going to die.

  In the water, there were numbers for and of my salvation but here, here, on this plastic plane feet away was fresh drinkable water and enough high quality food calories to sustain me for days and I was glued to this floor too weak to move.

  What the—

  I felt the passionate rhythm of my beating heart.

  I am no disheartened, washed-up, and beached jellyfish on the shore without numbers and without hope.

  Sure, it had been fun to lie lazily there on the deck spineless and without will or desire— but that was not the deal.

  Thinking back on what my father had said so many times to me as a child, I heard him again:

  “A man is what a man does, son.”

  And, thinking what my mother had often said to me as a child, I knew what to do:

  “Always look the devil in the eye, son.”

  I looked upon it and arose from the deck to eat and drink—joyfully.

  32

  I was encrusted with sea salt but worse, I was enveloped in the smell of the sea. There are no landmarks on the sea surface, unless you count each wave a landmark but that makes no sense. It always seemed so very strange to me that the much curved un-demarcated surface of the sea could be elucidated onto a plane on a piece of plain paper with utmost definition.

  11°22.260′ N x 142°35.589′ E was the compass destination. Of the closest land there was none unless you counted the sea floor that was 35,827 feet below the surface tension at the surface of the last water molecules of the surface sea.

  I opened the navigational charts and made all things ready.

  Captain Jean-Michele Adamah on the LaCross in 1612 first floated over this point and named the waters, Les Rouges Eaux du Pacifique. His thinking was that the ocean was bleeding. Captain Adamah in the age of enlightenment was in the dark about algal blooms. As the Global Ecology and Oceanography teams at the GEOLAB now knew, harmful algal blooms producing the red waters of this area of the Pacific were caused by the heterotrophic dinoflagellate, Pfiesteria, and related Pfiesteria Complex Organisms that released Saitoxin, Domoic Acid, and other generated brews of toxic death. The Red Tide was a universal tide of death. Perhaps, all the blood in the water was what the captain saw under his ship.

  In 1781, the British National Geographic Society, in order to correct this misunderstanding—and to correct all things French—deemed it their proper duty to give the waters an English name. The name given to the area was the Red Pacific Waters. Much neater, more reasonable, and not French, were all excellent reasons to rewrite history—indeed.

  In 1856 the sailing American missionary and thoroughly anti-British evangelist, the Reverend and Good Doctor Adam David Moses, renamed the area the Red Sea of the Pacific for the United States Navy on his third charting expedition of the South Seas.

  Today NOAA, the N
ational Oceanographic and Atmospheric Association, and the AGU, the American Geophysical Union, have taken all the color from the sea and call this area not by the surface waters, but by the unique spot it has on the planet.

  I thought about its name as I moved through the waters toward my destination.

  It is the end of the line of the alphabet of named names and now, on the map I am navigating by, is called the simplest of all last-named names.

  The spot I was heading for was The Z Hole.

  What could be more colorless, what could be more meaningful, and what could be truer. The Z Hole was at best, elite in simplicity, truth, and description.

  There were enough stores on hand to make a comfortable and safe voyage but all the rules of reason would have to be observed in order to stay within the parameters of precaution.And thus I set out. 11°22.260′ N x 142°35.589′ E was the compass destination.

  Damn the torpedoes, full steam ahead, I thought.

  Admiral Farragut was correct.

  One small boat versus an unending ocean, one man versus unending time was the drama. There was no fear, there was no joy, there was no gratification, there was only the job.

  I kept remembering what my mother had said to me thousands and thousands of times.

  “Time and tide wait for no man.”

  I soon had a more refined understanding of her wisdom. Tide is the time.

  I wondered on that empty surface above the full ocean base, Was my tide running out?

  Why would this thought occur to me once I was at 11°22.260′ N x 142°35.589′ E?

  What the—

  The sun was directly overhead so there was no shadow upon the face of the sea and there were no clouds in the sky, no countenance in the air. And, this was the strangest part of it all. The sea in gradations of light goes from bright to dim to dark—from horizon to horizon or from surface to depth. But, in temperature there are warm surface waters, a thermocline demarcation line, and then cold water. The warm surface waters and the lower colder waters never integrate to produce a tepid sea.

  The sea was not red, and then suddenly the sea was as red as sweet, oxygenated arterial blood. There was no gradation from pink to red; there was no red, and then there was deep red.

  How many Pfiesteria Complex Organisms did it take to produce this blood-red tide since a single PCO organism contains an almost invisible red hue?

  I tried to think.

  There must be more PCO’s here than there are stars in the sky. It was the only answer.

  What a horribly wonderful conclusion.

  I was in a red pool of death. Only the fiberglass hull of my ship was between my life and my death. I could not drink, I could not swim, and I could not even reach into the red and maintain my life.

  In my head, I played with the math. I knew the classical laws of Newtonian acceleration. With a little remembrance, I used the temperature, pressure, and humidity of the Ideal Gas Laws that I learned in high school to calculate the density of the air. Gas constants were always a joy to engage in as a student in Mr. Fenstermaker’s classroom. The water was so much easier. It was 1000kg/m3. That was not the absolute truth. But, what is 3.5% in the scheme of things? 1000 was a perfect number to use.

  Contemplating these absolutes, I thought about my new possession—it.

  It was so very simple and that was what all the others had failed to understand. Here, very alone on the sea, I understood it. I could possess it. Or, it could possess me. And, I wanted to possess me. The fall through 35,827 feet of air was easy to calculate. The fall through 35,827 feet of ocean was incalculable. It would float. It would flutter. It would fall. It would drown in the undivided waters of the red sea.

  There was no ceremony, there was no afterthought, there was no regret, and there was no prayer as I tossed it in into the deep red. I stepped back as I tossed it for I did not want any splash of blood to hit me.

  It floated. It fluttered. It fell. I did have the hydrophone turned up to the maximum and the splash was explosive. The flutter was a fading swish. Then, even at maximum, there was just silence.

  I ignited my engines.

  As the wake expanded into that perfect “V” of divided foaming sea, I was free of it. And, the world was free of it.

  33

  11°22.260′ N x 142°35.589′ E, once the center of my wake, was now a point that had fallen off the curve of the earth. All the PCO’s had dissipated—for “disappeared” is such a poor empirical word. The engine was running most effectively as my ship skimmed along the surface for, after all, on the ship was one item less. The throbbing sounds of the boat engine and the hum of propellers was a gospel hymn to my ears.

  I could push it to better than thirty knots but then I would not have enough fuel to reach the island. I reduced speed but I did not cruise. I was exhausted past the point of all need for food, water, sleep, and soap but all I wanted to do was eat, drink rest, and wash. So, maybe a little more speed could be applied.

  What the—where did that swell come from?

  I thought about its origin.

  What the—

  There was a second swell, a third, a fourth, and then some racing water beneath my boat. It caused my boat to race along at faster than its possible top-rated speed and with each swell I rode a little higher upon the ocean’s film.

  The only moving air was that which I was creating by pushing through the atmosphere.

  What was that sound?

  It was not the efficient sound of the engines or the propellers. And it was not the sound of the sea—which I knew. The hydrophones were transmitting a low and deep sound of something angry as if a great leviathan had been wounded and was bleeding to death from a great open wound. Because it was screaming in the sea, its pain became a universal background cry of pain for the cry was vibrating each and every molecule of water in each and every direction—and the sound of its pain was out-racing my boat. Soon, the sound dimmed and faded out. The beast must have made a last cry and died.

  Then I thought, I have never heard a birth cry. Maybe, it was a leviathan giving birth. I did know that PCOs cried neither in dying nor in giving birth.

  I turned the hydrophone off. I turned the marine radio off. I turned the short wave and the sea phone off. In effect any device that had an on/off switch was turned off. I was electrically disconnected from the universe.

  34

  There it was, The Last Island. There it was, the outline of the top of the island. But where was the coast and what was that dark line beyond the high-water mark?

  What the—Am I on the right island? Have I navigated incorrectly by dead reckoning and made landfall on another island by mistake?

  I answered myself, No. You are too good for that and besides, it is the Last Island, just look.

  But, there was something amiss in my muddled brain.

  Had the toll of the voyage exhausted me to a state of misperception?

  No, I thought.

  Water always falls downhill. It is the ultimate truth. I began by following the outgoing tide and, in doing so, floated backward in time.

  Those swells in the ocean were swells that reached 35,827 feet down to the floor of the sea. Those swells had out-raced me by five hundred sixty-three miles per hour. Those swells had reached the Last Island as tsunami waves and had eroded the shore away as a fisherman removes scales from his catch of the day. The debris of man and nature were simply piled up as so much junk at the inner-most places where the wave is removed of its last energy. The incoming tide had in effect raised the sea depths to the surface in a series of rising waves and, as water always falls downhill, the sea bottom and the sea wave fell upon the island. And, in doing so, scoured it to the island’s coral base.

  A goldfish bowl had been knocked to the floor and the goldfish were flopping, fighting, and dying in fright. That is what I saw as I navigated without a wake through the floating debris field that had once been the Last Island.

  The Last Island was largely decimated, but not
destroyed.

  I set foot upon the shipwrecked island. I was a pitiful and ragged pirate coming ashore on a desolate island which contained no buried treasure.

  “11°22.260′ N x 142°35.589′ E.” It was the Deacon’s voice.

  I knew no wave had enough energy to wash him away.

  “Yeah, I know—and it makes sense,” I replied. Then I continued, “How about John Henry and Manta?”

  He answered.

  “It is all about humanity and organization. John Henry and Manta are doing what they do best: she giving aid and comfort and he constructing out of destruction; they are both good people. Better people than you or I.”

  He was correct, of course. I never knew him to be wrong.

  To the Deacon and me, life was a controlled experiment where one side had to equal the other side. To John Henry and Manta life was greater than the sum of its parts where one side had an infinite value and the other side was larger than infinity.

  “Got something for you,” the Deacon said.

  “It came in on the tide and was deposited at the doorstep of the LION. You have to come with me.”

  We walked over broken things and people. He talked. I listened. He was the Deacon and I was his disciple.

  He stopped. He reached into a sea-worn old goodie bag. He pulled it out.

  “Here it is,” he said as he handed it to me. “The sea does not want it.”

  What was that expression upon his face?

  “You wanted it. Now, here it is. I do not want it.”

  He just stood there taking the measure of my manhood.

  “All the others who wanted it,” I said. “I was not one of those who wanted it and now—I have it to keep as a treasure.”

  “It is harmless and incorruptible. It has no power over you—unless you choose to donate the power of your life to it,” he said.