FREE   on   the   SEA 

ARKON CH-03 Routine & Rumor

With no free beer and pizza on this cold Saturday night in December, Logan and Tango wandered about the fantail food court and picked up some spicy Mexican food and joined their friends Jack and Bonnie at their table.

"Wow!" exclaimed Bonnie upon sighting Tango's maternity blouse, "Congratulations." "Well, I still have another 6 months." said Tango, "We filed an application with the Personnel Department 4 months ago and they checked our genetic records and said we should be okay. "Also we filed an application for the next vacant cabin one deck higher and 6 by 3 meters,"  said Logan, "since we're going to need more room for the baby crib." "Bonnie and I discussed babies last year," said Jack, "and we decided to adopt a three-year-old from the Arkon nursery."

"I saw on a news clip where the floating city of Babylon arrived on station early 4 weeks ago," said Logan, "and the video tour showed much higher superstructure than ours and the interior looked more like a cruise ship with a lot of casinos." "I saw that too," said Jack, "it looks like it's 1000 km southwest of Monterey Bay." "Well, we do have two malls and two casinos." said Tango, "That's not chopped liver!" "That news clip reminded me of something else," said Logan, "We don't get much news from the interior of America anymore, just the east and west coast occasionally." "You're right." said Jeff, "I was talking to some Honduran crew members who moved to Manila in 2021 and they said drug gang warlords from Mexico had already taken over southern New Mexico and Arizona."

"A friend of mine got an encrypted email from her brother in Vladivostok," said Tango, "He wrote that with all the Chinese shipyards busy the Russians are building a small Fleet of eight steel hull clipper ships to make a cargo loop from Vladivostok to Vancouver, San Fran, LA- Dago, and back to Manila, Japan, China, Korea, then up to Vostok. With eight ships, one should come into Port about every two weeks. He is going to join as a navigator." "Besides the profit potential," said Bonnie, "every Seaport will have some rumors and intelligence from the interior." "I'm sure the captains will talk to each other and after a few loops they will pick some local to be their agent in each Seaport," said Logan, "Maybe some bed and breakfast inn on a main road coming into the seaport from the interior." "I think they might even swing by here if we had one or two 20-foot containers of product," said Jack.

"Aha!" exclaimed Jack, "that might explain something we overheard at an informal reception to the new climatologist and his wife, a marine biologist. They said the Chinese government, which buys alot of our climate and ocean data, was sponsoring a new climate research vessel called the Arkon Star. It wouldn't be as long as some of our modules but it would be wide enough to be stable in a big storm. The plan was to cruise up and down the east coast of North America from the Arctic to Nicaragua in Central America. Besides ocean current velocity and temperature they would observe sea ice conditions and offshore marine ecosystems. I wouldn't be surprised if they also had an agent on an incoming main road to some seaports." "So depending on the season," said Bonnie, "they might swing by here and Shangri-La on their way back to the Gulf of Alaska."