GOD of a man

“When hardships are your challenge, resistance is your test, criticism your motivation, then accolades will become your result.”

Chapter Twenty One: For the future
Dated: 12th November, 2425 and later

Every human life is a story book of adventures in it’s own right, it’s just that a few of us have stories that border the extremes of extraordinaire and most of us live on the fine line demarcating ordinaire from extraordinaire. But then ain’t most of the humans just ordinary next door common men and women for whom life is less of a privilege but more of a struggle? Ain’t it that most of the human race has, since it’s inception in the mind of THE CREATOR, lived a life only to fulfil the most basic needs of food, shelter and sex? When people are not looking for eye popping ridiculousness in their lives how can their live stories be a collection of anything more than the run of the mill struggles? To make your life an album of mind boggling, spine chilling mosaic of victorious campaigns you need to have a bent of mind that does not fit into a blender. You have to be enterprising, fool hardy and quite often, insane. You cannot, you just simply cannot accept the life and its’ vagaries and bounds as such. You have to be a rebel.

Had Steve been an ordinary guy happy to live through his life collecting food for his kind and being the second gig to the leader, he would have never aspired to be the one atop, he would have never been forced to lead and he would have never succeeded in the extreme. Now thanks to him, those who were made a part of this tryst with destiny, they all have stories to tell their grandchildren.

“I am pregnant,” Clara’s words shocked the four men enough to drop their jaws below their knees.

“What? How? I mean how do you know?” Steve fumbled for words while others were still mute spectators.

“It’s GOD’s gift to me, what Frank was telling me in my dream, what I have been chosen for?” Clara exclaimed with a glow and joy writ large on her face.

“Now wait a minute, stop this crap,” Robin got incensed, “You have gone nuts and that’s what it is all about.”

“No, it’s true,” Clara retorted.

“Now Clara, how and when did this exactly happen? We all know none of us can have babies without cloning anymore,” Steve was still the calm influence around.

“It happened the night he,” and Clara broke down.

“The night what,” Andy asked.

“You mean the night Nakata passed away?” Steve asked as Clara nodded her head sobbing.

“Now that’s impossible! I mean it’s hardly been ten twelve days,” Daniel showed his disbelief.

“I know Daniel, but don’t forget I am both a woman and a nurse. I know my body as much as I know medical science,” Clara responded.

“Now I agree with Daniel on this Clara. Even my wife became pregnant before I came over and it wasn’t for a month until we were sure about that,” Steve stated.

“You are right Steve but I have faith too,” Clara replied with a content smile and an unimaginable glow on her face. It was as if she had really been touched by an Angel.

“Blind faith of a mentally deranged person you mean,” Robin commented. But Clara didn’t say a word. She didn’t have to, she had her faith and faith is somehow always above and ahead of science. Science is what is left to do the catch up act.

They all let the conversation perish at that point itself and proceeded for their meal to retire for the day later, the cool sea breeze making their sleep inside their boat comfortable. In the evening everybody got up and had their supper and it was business talk as usual.

“So what gas station do we search and dig now?” Andy asked.

“The more important question over here is, how many do we dig now?” Daniel added.

“Steve, they are right. At this speed and results we may end up digging gas stations for the next three months and still not end up with enough fuel for our ship,” Robin raised the concerns.

“You people are forgetting a far bigger and more important problem,” Steve cautioned everyone.

“And what would that be?” Andy asked.

“I think Steve is referring to our lost sail, am I right?” Robin correctly read Steve’s thoughts.

“Right on your money pal,” Steve used an idiom about a now obsolete commodity.

“Damn you are right. What do we do now?” Andy instantly panicked.

“I think we better look for the harbour area of this city. We are more likely to find answers to both our problems over there than wasting our time digging dust around the entirety of this graveyard of a city,” Steve made a very intelligent suggestion.

Everybody agreed to what Steve suggested and they all sat down to scroll through the Adelaide street directory to look for the harbour area. They finally zeroed down to Port Adelaide and North Haven.

“We saw this area the day we went up north, it’s a bit far from here. We can neither walk that far nor can we waste our fuel travelling daily,” Robin said.

“You are right! We have to move our base to that area. Did you notice any suitable docking spot over there?” Steve agreed whole-heartedly and asked.

“I am sure there will be aplenty,” Robin replied.

“I want to say something guys,” Clara said.

“What is it Clara?” Robin asked.

“I think it will be better if you all moved over to that spot, I want to stay here. My Nakata sleeps here and I can’t leave him,” Clara’s words made everyone silent.

“Look Clara, I know how you feel and we all understand the emotional distress the whole thing has caused you. But Clara, you are the back bone of our whole expedition. You are the one responsible for our food and water. Without your help we all will be lost. It will make our job difficult. You cannot desert us in these crunch times,” Steve pleaded.

“But,” Clara was about to persist with her stand when Steve interrupted her again.

“Clara, thanks to you, we are able to divert and invest all our strength in our efforts to build for the future of the entire surviving humanity. We need you,” Steve stressed upon Clara.

“Steve, I can’t leave Nakata, I love him,” Clara broke down.

“We know Clara, but we are not asking you to leave him, we will return here as soon as our work is finished over there. We are not moving away forever,” Steve tried to impress upon her further, “Clara, think of it, will Nakata love to see you desert us?” Clara shook her head in negative as she sobbed.

“Do it for Nakata Clara, do it for your GOD,” Steve made the final pitch. Clara sobbed for a while but finally agreed. They set on course for North Haven and Port Adelaide area and found a suitable spot to dock. They waited for the morning to begin their search for a ship yard, a street directory being their only guide through the sand mounds. They stopped every now and then to dig up a sand dune to discover what lay buried there. A month passed by but without much luck. They nearly gave up their search when finally on the eighteenth of the twelfth they hit the jackpot.

“Robin,” Daniel shouted atop his voice.

“What happened?” Robin asked as he, Steve and Andy threw away their shovels and rushed to him.

“Look what I found,” Daniel said as he pointed an engraved stone bearing the name of the place they were digging, lying half uncovered in sand.

“North Haven Ship yard,” the engraved words lifted their spirits. They were finally at the right spot.

“Lets’ dig this whole place up,” Robin said excitedly.

“That won’t be necessary,” Steve said, “All we need to do is dig up the raised mounds in this area and that’s it.

For the next three days they dug up every bit of sand that appeared raised from the ground. On twentieth of twelfth they finally found their first buried yacht, then another and then another, in all shapes and sizes, all broken and destroyed by the weather.

“It’s a graveyard of ships,” Daniel exclaimed.

“You are right. But if that is the case, it must be a graveyard of a fuel dump as well,” Robin said.

“It sure will be Robin but the important thing right now is, let’s retrieve whatever shreds of sails we can gather from these broken ships. All the synthetic fibre ones’ that have weathered the storms and destruction to have any existence remaining,” Steve said.

“What will we do of these shreds?” Andy asked as he pulled out from the rubble what appeared to be a torn piece of a sail and showed it to the rest.

“Andy, there’s a very small and simple gadget that works magic with torn fabric, a needle,” Steve replied, “Looks like Clara’s work has been cut out just like ours.”

Everybody agreed with Steve’s suggestion and they spent the next two days pulling out all the torn sails they could and instructed the task of their reconstruction on Clara. Clara started the work of meticulously stripping threads of synthetic fibres from the torn sails themselves and then stitching the rest of them together to recreate many layered but workable sails. Individually the fabrics might have been very fragile but when the same were layered into unison their strength increased many folds. The men meanwhile continued digging in search of a fuel dump that would have solved their problems. Finally after another three days of intense digging spread over sporadic patches of land, on the twenty fifth of twelfth, they finally uncovered a collapsed brick wall with a door bearing a wooden plate with almost faded writing that read “..ump”

“What do you think?” Robin asked Steve.

“Numerous possibilities but the two that appear most convincing at the moment and taking into account the surroundings are, it was either a fuel dump, or fuel pump,” Steve replied, his eyes lighting up at the thought.

“It could also mean water pump,” Daniel said.

“It possibly could but how will we know?” Steve asked.

There was no need for an answer as everybody picked up their shovels and started digging with a never before fervour. Soon they were lifting and tossing bricks away to finally reveal a floor that was littered with destroyed furniture bits and a stairway in one corner, blocked by collapsed structural components. They vigorously worked hard to reveal the passage.

“Wait! Wait! Don’t be hasty! Let some oxygen flow in first,” Steve cautioned everyone before entering the dark underground. After waiting for a few minutes to let the air inside the basement freshen up they slowly and slowly stepped into its’ dark existence. It took them a while to adjust to the low lighting conditions underneath but what they could make out even in the darkness was the outline of drums, drums that raised their hopes, drums that appeared the same as those on The Phantom.

“Yeah!” Daniel, Andy and Robin let out a loud cheer. But Steve was cautious in his reaction.

“Guys, lets first make sure these drums have anything in them at all and then if it is what we need?” Steve said.

Andy and Daniel walked to a drum immediately and grabbed it.

“Damn, it’s empty!” Daniel’s hopes were dashed as much as the rest of them.

“Lets’ try another,” Andy said.

“Empty again,” Daniel said with dejection. They tried and tried one drum after the other but they all were empty. Every drum they picked up was empty. It frustrated and infuriated them all.

“Damn it!” Andy yelled hoarse and kicked a drum lying on the side. “Ouch!” a loud shriek escaped his lips as he grabbed his foot in both hands and hopped around in pain. But what caught everybody else’s attention was the sound the drum made.

“What was that? Check that drum,” Steve shouted as Andy forgetting his pain tried to shake it.

“It’s heavy! It’s full!” the excitement relieving most of Andy’s pain.

“Great, lets’ take it outside and check out what it is full off,” Steve said.

They carried the drum outside in daylight and opened it up. Steve smelt the stuff, looked at the others standing around him and smiled. No words were needed anymore.

They grabbed four drums out of the basement and rolled them back to where Clara and their boat were.

“Merry Christmas!” Clara greeted them with a smile as she saw them returning with the find.

“What do you mean? What’s that?” Andy exclaimed shrugging his shoulders.

“It’s Twenty Fifth December, the birthday of Jesus Christ, the son of GOD. So Merry Christmas everyone,” Clara replied.

“You are nuts. What has GOD against us?” Daniel took a dig.

“He has nothing against us or for that matter anyone. He loves everyone,” Clara was infuriated.

“Relax, I was just joking,” Daniel was happy and not in mood of an argument, “Look what we found today.”

“You mean what HE saved for you and led you to?” Clara wasn’t giving up.

“Will you just shut up and cut your crap out?” Robin was agitated, “We don’t care what you believe but don’t force your beliefs on us. We don’t want to hear your pitch. Don’t preach us!”

There was a momentary silence before Steve relieved the stress in the situation, “Have you finished any of our sails?”

“Yes, I have. Two of them are ready and I’ve started work for the third now,” Clara replied as she led them to the boat and showed them what she had created.

“Are these strong to survive the journey and weather?” Robin asked.

“I am not sure. They look strong enough. But what options do we have anyway?” Clara shrugged her shoulders. Everybody nodded their heads in affirmation.

“Now both our problems are solved, we’ve got fuel as also the sails. We can start our journey back now,” Robin stated emphatically.

“Not yet,” Steve put a dampener on his spirits as well as the rest.

“Why not?” Andy asked.

“We need to figure out a way, make some sort of an arrangement to bring a bigger chunk of people back from Hatsu Saisho. The resources we need for that are available only at this place, not back there,” Steve explained his assertion. Everybody fell silent and into contemplation mode.

“We do need a lot more hands to build something worthwhile to help bring the rest of people over here and you are right, once back at Hatsu we won’t have any resources to do the same. But what can the five of us accomplish anyway?” Robin asked, “Looks like all our efforts and Nakata’s life are going to go waste.”

Steve and the rest were lost in consternation when Clara after a while finally came up with a one word answer, “Trees!”

“Trees? How are trees going to be any use to us?” Steve asked.

“Trees are wood and they can float,” Clara said.

“So how can we use them?” Robin asked.

“We can collect enough trees for the people in Hatsu to work on them and make a boat to transport everyone back here. Perhaps a boat that will have to be oared back, like in ancient times,” Clara said.

“But that will require a lot of trees. How can we transport enough using this boat of ours?” Robin asked.

“We can toe them in a bundle behind our boat,” Steve replied as he understood the value of Clara’s suggestion.

“But that will consume all our fuel even before we can return to Hatsu and we’ll be stuck in the middle again,” Robin exclaimed.

“We can carry extra oil atop the bundled trees for our use and we can definitely help our cause by putting up sails on the bundle. That will reduce the load on our fuel consumption as then the only purpose our boat will be required to serve is to give direction to the bundle,” Clara replied.

“Your idea is brilliant but the problem is how are we going to man those sails?” Daniel asked.

“We can use our motor boat to travel to and from the bundle and our ship to man the sails whenever needed,” Steve provided the solution.

After a lengthy discussion and consideration they all decided it was a good idea to be tried. It took them two months to dig the requisite number of trees, drag them to the shore and bundle them together in waist deep water. The task had to be performed standing in water as otherwise it would have been difficult for them to drag the bundle into the see. The bundle had to be constantly kept tied to the shore with a rope to avoid it from floating away. Their branches were left intact so that they would get entangled and provide cohesiveness to the bundle. Worn out ropes and chains recovered from the shipyard site were used to tie the trees further together. Oil drums were rolled to the beach and pulled with ropes above the bundle and also the ship. The ones’ atop the bundle were tied together with rope pieces. Sails were fitted using cut trees and rope pieces, both to the bundle and also reconstructed on the ship. Everything was ready to sail again and it was already the fourth of March in a new year. Clara by now was indeed well and truly expecting.