We’ve been in the open ocean for the past day. Its good preparation for what we’ll be seeing once we get to the Pacific, but it is a bit odd to look around and see nothing but waves. We’re still seeing a lot of other ships though; freighters, oil tankers and cruise ships all heading to the same place we are. Once we head south into the Pacific, those will drop away.
No one goes where we’re going.
I tried to talk to Dr. Stepherson about his project again, but he said he didn’t have time for it. So I wound up talking to Captain Anderson. He was on the bridge with Sara Halpern, the first mate, and Donnie Albert, one of Dr. Stepherson’s students.
I had actually wanted to talk to Donnie, but it seemed he really only wanted an excuse to talk to Sara. I wished him luck; I could see the look she was giving him and knew he was wasting his time. But… I guess when you’re a student, everything you learn doesn’t come from a classroom.
Sorry Donnie, now the whole world knows. 🙂
Anyway, I wound up talking to Captain Anderson. He was glad to speak.
Anderson has been sailing for the University for years; either on the Arkham or our sister ship the Miskatonic. Miskatonic University is one of the few universities that still runs its own research ships, and he likes working for the school as opposed to some larger organization like the NSF or NOAA.
“We get funding from them, of course,” he was telling me. “Lots of schools do. But we run our own ships while they have to charter them.”
“How’d we get so lucky?” I asked.
He shrugged. “Before my time, really. And I remember when Arkham was more than just an older suburb of Boston and Miskatonic was its own University instead of just a satellite campus of Boston University.” He sighed. “At least they let us keep our name.”
I nodded. “So how did we get the ships?”
He pointed at a faded, framed painting on the back wall of the bridge. It was an old picture showing three men standing in front of the bow of a ship; one of them holding a champaign bottle.
“That’s Dr. Armitage, Dr. Gillman, and Dr. Peasley. And not Dr. Armitage who runs the library now, obviously; that’s his grandfather. Or maybe great-grandfather. I’m not sure which.”
“Anyway, that picture is from 1938. Drs. Armitage and Gillman were retiring, and they donated a lot of money to pay for the upkeep of the ships the University owned. Not these, they were still a combination of sail and steam even then, but at the time we were one of the premier scientific institutions on the east coast.” He sighed. “Those days are gone, of course.”
I shrugged. “We still have a reputation. Especially in some areas. And we’re known for being very welcoming of… let’s say ‘less than standard’ theories that have turned out to be true.”
He nodded. “Yes, but that isn’t the best reputation. A lot more of those theories have turned out not to be valid.”
I shrugged again. “Yeah, but that’s how science works.”
He looked back at the picture again. “I wonder what they saw. I wonder what made them fund the University the way they did.”
“Huh?”
He shook his head as if to clear it. “Sorry. Just the ruminations of an old man.” He glanced at the picture one more time then turned to me.
“Those three donated millions to the University. And that was in 1938. We had our two ships, which the government appropriated in 1942 for the war effort. They replaced them with a pair of brand-new ships in 1947. Well… refurbished warships. And we’ve… somehow always been first-in-line to get hand-me-downs from the government since. The Arkham here used to be a NOAA ship; did you know that?”
I shook my head. “Didn’t know that. The Miskatonic used to be a Coast Guard icebreaker, didn’t it?”
“Yeah. We got it two years ago.” There was a pause. “I was its captain for a while.”
I nodded slowly. “You ran the expedition last year.”
He continued to look away. “It wasn’t my fault, you know.”
“Sorry, wasn’t meaning to imply anything.”
He sighed. “Yeah, I guess you weren’t. And the review board said the same thing. I just…” He turned and stared out the front window for a bit.
“I guess I just can’t keep second-guessing myself. I misread the weather, but so did everyone else. But if I had just turned back sooner…”
“Everyone knows that storm had communications all screwed up. And you followed the original plan. It was Dr. Kashan who apparently changed things without confirmation that you had heard from him.”
“He must have thought we did, for some reason. Otherwise, why would he have diverted to the north? North! He must have known that the storm was coming from that direction.”
“We’ll never know, I suppose,” I said. I thought for a moment. “I don’t guess you’d want to talk about it.”
“Is this for that web thing you’re doing?”
“Yeah, the ‘Miskatonic Expeditions’ blog. Dr. Pickman seemed really intent on it.”
“Yeah… Maybe.” There was a long silence.
“It was supposed to be routine,” he said finally. “Dr. Kashan, did you know him?” I shook my head. “Dr. Kashan was doing a study on Arctic ice melt; we were dropping buoys with the plan that they would be caught up in the ice come winter and we would be able to track its movement.”
He paused again, thinking. When he resumed, it was in a lower voice. “He wanted us to drop him and his team off on this island. It doesn’t even have a name; it’s barely a half-dozen miles long and not even half that wide. But he seemed to think it has something to do with the Terror expedition.” He stopped at that. “I don’t know what the Franklin Expedition had to do with his research. No one had even mentioned it before then. But, when we came across the island, Dr. Kashan got incredibly excited. Said we had to put a team on-shore immediately. He said that he and his people would cross the island, possibly spend the night there, and then meet us on the opposite side the next day. We set up the rendezvous point, and I made sure they had all the equipment they needed on the tender before I let them go.”
He sat there for a moment before continuing. “No one expected that storm that came in that night. No one predicted it. NOAA said something later about a ‘Chinook-like weather phenomena,’ but I get the idea that they aren’t even sure about it. The wind forced us to pull back from shore so we wouldn’t get grounded, but we went back in as soon as it dropped off. No sign of a camp. Now we know that they had retreated to where we dropped them off. Or, at least, tried to. We found their camp, eventually, and could tell they had turned back. But we never found any of them. It looked like they had set up camp, then left for some reason. No one knows why. They just… disappeared. ”
He turned to look at me. “Captain Dee is up there this year. Excuse me, Captain Derlyn. They’re supposedly completing the buoy distribution from last year. But, I’ve heard they’re also making some stops at islands near that one; hoping to find where Dr. Kashan and his team went. Though why they would have tried to cross the ice is beyond me.” He shook his head. “I decided I wanted to be somewhere warmer this year. So here I am.”
“Well, I’m glad you are,” I said. “Hopefully we won’t have a lot of winter storms in the south Pacific.”
“As long as we don’t go too far south, we’ll be OK.”
“Sounds good,” I said. I looked around. Donnie was trying to tell Sara about his Shaman from World of Warcraft. It was all I could do not to facepalm immediately.
Donnie, if you’re reading this? Come talk to me. Seriously. I know where you are man; I was you once. I’ll have you ready by the time we hit Manila.
Oddly, when I got back to my cabin to upload this, I checked our web site to pull up some more info on Dr. Kashan’s expedition last year and… Couldn’t even find this blog? Weird.
Finally, I pulled it up on this laptop instead of my tablet. It works… on this laptop. I did a bit of looking; just because I’m in a squishy science doesn’t mean I can’t understand computers.
The Wi-Fi on-board the Arkham is limited. It’s filtered. Even parts of the Miskatonic University sites are blocked. Well… not blocked, just… delayed? Like, three months delayed? Why?
Apparently, this laptop that I’m using has a built-in satellite Internet of its own. It doesn’t look like it, but it does.
Again… Why?
Another question. THANKS, DR. PICKMAN! But seriously, why did you give me a satellite-equipped laptop?
Unless… you knew that the on-board Internet would be filtered. And why would we do that?
If you’re reading this, leave me a reply in the comments. Actually… anyone reading this, leave me your theory in the comments. I mean, I know the reputation we have at Miskatonic. I’ve read the stories that people have written about us. Someone named Loveship, or something like that. Anyway, this is… weird. Let me know what you think.