shape of palm trees for millionaires all the time. But this is something different altogether. This is totally mobile. It's a brave new world," she said, looking over the menu.
"I don't know, though. I just don't see how they plan on surviving one hundred foot waves. I mean, sure, the thing may hold together, I mean, it's built like a battleship, but what keeps the crashing waves from washing everything off the deck? Some of the concept drawings I saw in the paper made them look just like regular islands with trees and gardens and little grass huts and stuff. I just don't see how any of that would survive a hundred foot wave."
She shrugged, then looked up from the menu. "When the island costs a billion and the landscaping costs a few million to replace. . . "
He laughed, "You have a good point. I guess it's all relative."
"They still keeping you in the dungeon?"
"Yeah. The pay is good, but, it is so excruciatingly boring. I mean, I just watch dials all day long. It's insane."
"I wonder how long it'll be before some pirates decide to track one down and hijack a whole island."
They were still laughing when the waiter took their order.
The mainland loved having the behemoth parked off their shore. First, the crew pumped a lot of money into the local economy. But secondly, everyone's electric bill dropped. The ship was designed to be as self-contained as possible. To that end, it used steam turbines to produce all it's electric needs. But it had an interesting trick. At sea, it burned tons of oil to produce the steam. But why burn oil when its primary function is pumping molten lava through tubes, and part of the process involves rapidly cooling the product before it's pushed out into the ocean. Running at full production, where it was now, it doubled as a geothermal plant and sold, for pennies, its excess power to the mainland. Cooling product this thick meant hundreds of megawatts of nearly free power.
The same engineers that designed the behemoth had turned that kind of mind toward building floating islands. He simply had to trust that they had worked out every little detail.
Either way, they were mostly treated like honored guests everywhere they went. Only a very few protested their presence. Naturalists that equated what they were doing with raping the land. But they were rare and mostly ignored.
Gina favored a small amusement park with bumper cars, games, and two roller coasters.
He liked the giant sourdough pretzels with a cream cheese center.
He woke in his room after a night at the park. She was sleeping in his bed, still fully dressed. He looked over the empty bottles decorating the floor. They had had quite a night. . . too bad he didn't remember any of it.
She was very cute, yet, they had never done anything.
He had met her online through MySpace almost two years ago. They had chatted from thousands of miles apart for the entire time.
She was the reason he pushed so hard for this new assignment.
It was a little terrifying, but he had never actually met her in person before this week. Their first face to face.
She wasn't perfect.
He had idealized her over that first year of chatting. That honeymoon phase where daters are blind to the flaws that are obvious to everyone else had passed without ever physically meeting. He liked her even more now, flaws and all.
She was facing away from him, short hair covering her face. Drool down the side of her cheek. Her muffled little snore was faint and difficult to hear.
Her freckles didn't show at all on emails. Her hair was a little stringy, she smoked a pack a day, her accent and voice didn't come close to how she sounded across computer speakers. She was taller than he imagined, and slightly heavier too. But none of these superficial things mattered at all to him.
Had he met her first in a bar, he would have overlooked her without so much as a polite hi. She just didn't fit his mental image of his type.
But in a bar wasn't how they had met.
They met
"I don't know, though. I just don't see how they plan on surviving one hundred foot waves. I mean, sure, the thing may hold together, I mean, it's built like a battleship, but what keeps the crashing waves from washing everything off the deck? Some of the concept drawings I saw in the paper made them look just like regular islands with trees and gardens and little grass huts and stuff. I just don't see how any of that would survive a hundred foot wave."
She shrugged, then looked up from the menu. "When the island costs a billion and the landscaping costs a few million to replace. . . "
He laughed, "You have a good point. I guess it's all relative."
"They still keeping you in the dungeon?"
"Yeah. The pay is good, but, it is so excruciatingly boring. I mean, I just watch dials all day long. It's insane."
"I wonder how long it'll be before some pirates decide to track one down and hijack a whole island."
They were still laughing when the waiter took their order.
The mainland loved having the behemoth parked off their shore. First, the crew pumped a lot of money into the local economy. But secondly, everyone's electric bill dropped. The ship was designed to be as self-contained as possible. To that end, it used steam turbines to produce all it's electric needs. But it had an interesting trick. At sea, it burned tons of oil to produce the steam. But why burn oil when its primary function is pumping molten lava through tubes, and part of the process involves rapidly cooling the product before it's pushed out into the ocean. Running at full production, where it was now, it doubled as a geothermal plant and sold, for pennies, its excess power to the mainland. Cooling product this thick meant hundreds of megawatts of nearly free power.
The same engineers that designed the behemoth had turned that kind of mind toward building floating islands. He simply had to trust that they had worked out every little detail.
Either way, they were mostly treated like honored guests everywhere they went. Only a very few protested their presence. Naturalists that equated what they were doing with raping the land. But they were rare and mostly ignored.
Gina favored a small amusement park with bumper cars, games, and two roller coasters.
He liked the giant sourdough pretzels with a cream cheese center.
He woke in his room after a night at the park. She was sleeping in his bed, still fully dressed. He looked over the empty bottles decorating the floor. They had had quite a night. . . too bad he didn't remember any of it.
She was very cute, yet, they had never done anything.
He had met her online through MySpace almost two years ago. They had chatted from thousands of miles apart for the entire time.
She was the reason he pushed so hard for this new assignment.
It was a little terrifying, but he had never actually met her in person before this week. Their first face to face.
She wasn't perfect.
He had idealized her over that first year of chatting. That honeymoon phase where daters are blind to the flaws that are obvious to everyone else had passed without ever physically meeting. He liked her even more now, flaws and all.
She was facing away from him, short hair covering her face. Drool down the side of her cheek. Her muffled little snore was faint and difficult to hear.
Her freckles didn't show at all on emails. Her hair was a little stringy, she smoked a pack a day, her accent and voice didn't come close to how she sounded across computer speakers. She was taller than he imagined, and slightly heavier too. But none of these superficial things mattered at all to him.
Had he met her first in a bar, he would have overlooked her without so much as a polite hi. She just didn't fit his mental image of his type.
But in a bar wasn't how they had met.
They met
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