#aluminum makes me sad and very very red and itchy

[captainsamuelmorrigan]

I think being allergic to aluminum in one of the states with the largest recycling programs, and where every new hipster-y beverage comes in a little aluminum container is God's punishment for me being really hot and sexy.

[originaldetectivesheep]

A Life of Riley Part 3: The Very Last Place On Earth ch 6

Chapter 5

VI

It was raining again, but it seemed like it mattered less.  It actually mattered less, for what we'd been brought out here for: Simon had finished up his observations when the camera battery ran out overnight, and only got his telescope rained on a little bringing it in in the morning, and now his sky sequences and star charts were with Riley going to the post office on a SD card, and now he was working out a few things in his writeup over on his laptop with Yuping's moral support and a plate of Yuping's chicken curry and mashed taro.  But it wasn't just that that had been bad before, and the rain wasn't making that worse now either.  Sajitha was still in the corner working on her wafer-dosing stuff, but she was using Remy as a sounding board and an arm pillow and not even giving me the stink-eye for noticing, which made everything more comfortable for everyone.  And the curry helped too, and the onion bag of coconuts that Maynard's brother brought over as a thanks for finding him the ramps from the cargo plane that were keeping chilled hanging by the door, and the case of Asahi Pacific Blue that we still had part of sitting under it, left over from celebrating getting the Ceiba down to the beach.

That, actually, was the only part that the rain was maybe making worse: not the beer, but the nuclear reactor that we just left a couple meters inland of the high-water mark sitting on a beat-up, collapsing aluminum sled.  We couldn't get it moved on from there, and getting rained on directly couldn't be good for whatever was inside the housing.  Riley was supposed to be working on that too, up in town, but I couldn't see how we could get it moved off somewhere else, to like the port or wherever – much less find someone who could and would take it back to the United States.  At this point I was just hoping we could get back to the United States sometime, even without the Ceiba – we hadn't heard from Leo even yet after getting back from moving it down, and it was getting to be so long that I was starting to worry like he might have been picked up or something.

I picked up the pack of cards to shuffle through again.  Yeah, nobody was going to take time to play, but I was almost done with my lunch, it was something to do instead of just sitting worrying about Leo, and I was kind of starting to get the hang of how to shuffle through in a damp climate like this.  Something brushed against my leg, and I set the pack down; if the cat was over for pets, that was still something to do, and it'd look a lot less weird and neurotic.  "There you are, Pushkin," I said, petting along his back – the kitty was a loaner from Ernest's niece Maurina, and if she wanted to name her cats after Russian writers, she could do her thing – as he climbed around over my feet.  "What, are you hungry?  There's probably extra curry, but you can't have none till I'm sure Yuping and Simon are done; they're working hard and you already got your food."  Pushkin meowed at me and dropped something by my toes: the front half of a dead cockroach.

"Pushkin – goddamnit – no, no, bad kitty!  You want to eat the bugs, you can eat the bugs, but if you eat the bugs, you got to eat them all up – Maurina's not gonna like it if you come back to her house with bad habits."  The cat picked up the cockroach again, and I nudged him gently away with the outside of my foot.  I was going to have to keep a closer eye on him; people kept cats here to eat bugs and mice and stuff, but that didn't mean it was cool to have one leaving dead roaches in your stuff as presents.  I shuddered, and scooped through the last of my lunch before that went and attracted any more bug attention.

Putting my plate over to the sink, looking the dishes over and wondering if I should start washing and hope Simon would finish eating before I was done, I heard an engine out on the road through the noise of the rain on the roof: the rising hum of a motorcycle engine – of Riley coming back on the Super Cub.  I left my plate where it was and came back to the doorway, to make sure I didn't miss whatever the news was from town.  The others looked up, because I was looking out, as Riley splashed up to the door.

"Hey – it's good news all around, but let me get inside and get this stuff off first."  Riley's sad and worn-out-looking garbage-bag poncho flipped through the air, balling itself up into a corner. "Are you still eating?  I got some musubi at the supermarket, so I'm good – if there's extra you can put it in the fridge or give it to the cat."  Riley bent over and pulled a beer out of the crate, cracking it open with a hiss and a sigh.

"So, just like you guys thought, the SD cards with your observational sequences and some cardboard to keep them flat still fit into the basic rate for a first-class registered letter out of here, so that's done on budget.  I didn't need anything extra."  Riley took a slug of beer as Simon nodded back thanks, and then went on.  "And even better yet, I got transpo scared up for the Ceiba – and it's getting picked up as-is, we won't need to drag it anywhere."

I blinked at that, startled, and Riley noticed, looking over my way. "What?  How?  Who on earth's gonna pick it up?"

Riley nodded, eyes closed.  "Yeah, that's a reasonable question – operationally and logistically.  But, you know, this is a small island, and news travels fast, so when I was in the supermarket getting lunch, the manager came up to me and was like, he'd heard about us dragging some kind of US government equipment out of a plane on the mountains, and if I was all right with the contract, I could get the supermarket's seaplane to come over, pick it up from where it was, and get it back to Majuro or Honolulu and send it on to the States."  Riley could see what my face was doing, and answered my questions before I could ask them.

"Yeah, I hear you: how does the supermarket have a seaplane, what in the shit can land around here and lift the Ceiba, isn't there a catch about getting a Hardtack unit back into the US customs regime – trust me, I asked him all this too.  The supermarket I guess has a Canadian corporate parent, so they have a bigass firefighting seaplane – Canadian maker, you know how Canadians get super clannish about that Made in Canada shit – based out of the Micronesia headquarters in Ponape, rigged out for cargo instead of carrying seawater, and it goes around the central Pacific and solves weirdass problems like someone found an old nuclear weapons test and needs to get it off the beach.

"And…there is something like half, half a degree off about this plane." Riley paused for a moment, taking another sip and like figuring out how the next part of the explanation was going to go.  "I mean, you get a feeling about it, that it's a friggin roving-torpedo seaplane attached to a grocery store and like, shit, right?  I was getting itchy about the contract and what was in it and what wasn't, so I asked the guy to like get me a Facetime with one of the ops on the plane if they weren't like in the air six hundred miles out of Yap, and that did go through, and the dude was chill enough to let me know that yeah, there was shit going on in the background here.  I don't think they've associated us to anything that went on back home, but there's def the US government rolling around in the back here: what they're mostly interested in is confirming that there isn't the atomic jumpstart bolted in Ceiba, and then we can keep the rest of the assembly.  The thing was scratched from DoE inventory sixty years ago and under the salvage laws of the Marshall Islands, which they can't screw with under the free-association compact, we own it free and clear.

"So, basically, we let these dudes pick it up and confirm there isn't a nuclear warhead glued in the initiator, and they'll haul it back to where it can get on a US-flag ship with minimal inspection and trans-ship it back to the lab.  We're getting a deal on cartage, but it's still going to blow a huge hole in the lab budget for the rest of the year.  We're gonna have to get real creative to keep the lights on and keep on working, but we'll cross that bridge when we come to it."  Riley leaned back and took another long drink while we all processed that.

"And even more importantly, there is even more good news: while I was in the post office again paying for the internet credits to Facetime with the airplane dudes, Isaac noticed that I was there and brought out this – fresh off the last plane and probably not more than three days off Leo's desk."  Riley brandished out a slightly flappy airmail envelope, its red-white-and-blue trim bent and fading from the humidity.  "That we got mail is good news already, since it means Leo is not in Leavenworth or Guantanamo or something; the contents is better.  I quote:

"'Hey yo Riley; hope you are doing well, and that you have not killed everyone or permanently damaged your island's power grid.'" Riley looked up.  "That's a joke; Leo's screwing around.  I'm gonna read the whole thing, and you can check after, so you can be sure I'm not leaving anything out.  Anyway.  'Things are doing good here too: nothing at the apartment was on fire the last time I went past the place, and nobody has opened the lab doors since I locked up after you all cleared out.  Note, you probably want to remote-discharge before you even open the door, I had a look at some of the interconnects and I don't trust the metal parts of the door not to be on the circuit.'"  Riley's eyebrows knotted.  "Well, screw him; knock Carolína's wiring to her face, bro, not from thousands of miles away.  We'll see about that when we get back."  I kept shut up; pretty much everyone in this room had worked on tuning the door security at some point, and I wouldn't be surprised if the doors were accidentally carrying enough electricity to burn holes in anyone who grabbed the knob.

"Moving on; 'More positively, I am nearly completely sure that all the feds who were nosing around here the last week and a half are gone.  These totally sketch MiB dudes were coming into Bismarck'ın Evi for a week straight, and now they are not: this would be the first time in recorded history that someone who got addicted to the durum doner from that place was able to kick the habit on their own, so the more likely case is that they are no longer posted somewhere that they can get to it within their lunch break.  You can hurf at that if you like, but just remember that I'm working there now to prop up my own durum addiction, and crap jeez now I really want a doner bad.'  They've gotta be doing something to the sauce in that place.  I don't know how that's even legal."  Riley blinked, cutting the commentary, and went on with Leo's letter.

"'As far as I can tell, you're all clear, and you can come home whenever you're done with Simon's thing.  Please all be safe, and please don't bring trouble home with you and yes I am aware that is a huge jinx but damnit.  Peace, Leo.'"  Riley folded the letter again, and tossed it over onto the table.  "So, that's that; Simon, are we done, or is there anything else you need us to take care of?"

Simon shook his head.  "No; that's why we sent the pics and docs out today.  I'll probably still run the camera on as many clear nights as we can get, but I'm ready to pull out whenever."

Riley nodded.  "All right; what I thought.  I want to stick for these seaplane guys to come pick up the Ceiba, and we weren't able to get onto the next plane east anyway.  I got tickets for the one after, so that's most of a week till we fly out.  Until then, we just hang out, I guess; hope for clear nights for your astronomy and clear days to go to the beach.  Or, if you're really looking for something to do…" Riley trailed off without finishing the sentence.

I cocked an eyebrow.  "Or what?  Is there something else that you're need us to go dig up?  You get the Ceiba out on the seaplane, and then we go find the Davy Crockett for it and take that back as a carry-on on our lap?"

Riley sighed and stared a hole straight up at the ceiling.  "No – not that, and it's not me.  But Isaac's brother's kids got into the comprehensive when he didn't think they would, so they're boarding out at Majuro for school now, and he's short on help, so, if you're really desperate for something to do when it's raining out, or if you wanna make a little extra beer money, like…who wants to get naked and dig taro?"

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