Rain, rain, go away

"Rain, rain, go away. Come again another day." I have been saying that for ten goddamn years now, and then I go into the last few lines of "We All Float On" by Modest Mouse. I know it's stupid and dark, but it is my personal joke that makes me chuckle and keeps me moving for one more day. It is also the first step in my daily routine. Wake up, tell a stupid joke, take a shit, and then on to my chores. Chores, ha! Another dark joke. Like a parent or someone has assigned me jobs. I haven't seen another human being in three and a half years. No, this is just what I have to do to survive one more day.

First, it is a machinery check. The wind turbine is still turning. A constant breeze of five to fifteen knots powers the few electronics I can still use. The shortwave radio is still broadcasting my makeshift SOS that tells people I am alive and what bandwidths I monitor and when I will be monitoring. My jury-rigged gutter system is still collecting the rain, funneling it over an equally jury-rigged waterwheel. Made out of eight oil barrels, the wheel cranks the generator from my formerly diesel hybrid engine. Most of the battery cells have died but that doesn't matter too much. Constant rain means constant power to run the engine, bilge pumps, and desalination constantly. You might think with all this rain, drinking water wouldn't be a problem, but apparently melted comet water is not appropriate for human consumption. It is actually almost as salty as the oceans already were.

Next are the trawling net and the two long lines. I had a full crew when the rains started. Thirty people, bringing in nets, processing and freezing North Atlantic Cod, and for the first few months, business continued as usual. But, as news reports came in and it became more and more apparent that the rain wasn't going to stop anytime soon, the crew stopped coming back from shore leave. That was fine though because gradually there were fewer fish to catch, and fewer ports to stop at, and fewer buyers for that fish. By six months there wasn't a port in the world that hadn't been flooded. By then we were only fishing for the two of us. Myself and my first mate of the last 25 years, my wife, my Sidney.

The trawling net comes up empty as usual. I only catch a handful of fish per week near the surface anymore. No sunlight means no food for fish. The ocean is slowly dying, at least near the surface. The bottom feeders seem to do well. I can usually bring up a sablefish or two. However, I am catching them over two miles down. The way I figure, the sea level has risen at least a mile, more like a mile and a half. The sea still provides food, and luckily Sidney was a stickler for making sure the pantry was full of nonperishable foods and the medicine closet had plenty of first aid and supplements.

I process the measly catch and decide to cook it immediately instead of adding it to the decent stock still left in the freezer bay. I have managed to keep it full over the years since there aren't many mouths to feed, and a full freezer uses less energy than an empty one. While in business, my boat could bring in 5,000 pounds of frozen cod and I plan to do the same if I ever find civilization again. I am sure wherever people are, they will be happy to get food.

I have to bake the fish because I ran out of cooking oil around year four and most of my spices by year six. I do have plenty of salt though from the desalination process, so I packed the few oily fish I catch in salt and used the weight of a full barrel of water to press out a few drops a day of an oily fish sauce-like substance. I don't know if that is how they used to do it on land but it doesn't taste too bad and it does change up the monotonous diet of fish, canned fruit or veggies, and white rice or reconstituted potato flakes.

After the meal, I rerecord the outgoing radio message to reflect the current date and check if any of the monitored bandwidths had recorded anything. About a year ago, I received a signal and tracked it to its source. Someone had a similar setup to mine that was still running even though that crew had died long ago. How long I couldn't say. On dry land, one could guess at how long a body had been sitting figuring on how wet/dry or hot/cold it was, a body would skeletonize in few months to a few years. On this boat, the crew had died below deck which had half filled with water. I had learned the term maceration from an old show on the Discovery channel where the host learned that some taxidermists submerged corpses to rot in water. The host, Mike I think his name was, said it was the most disgusting thing he ever encountered and he was a pro at disgusting things. I agree with Mike. I retched all over myself.

Normally I would scavenge a ship like that, but even with my self-contained breathing apparatus I keep in case of fire, all I could do was wade deep enough to manually switch off the bilge pumps. I wanted to make sure no one else got that particular experience. I stripped my clothes right there on the other deck and dove into the ocean to kick off as much of that stank as possible. Even still, I could smell it on me for days afterward.

After I record the new message and reset the almost always blank recorder, I go back on deck to get the net and lines ready for another round. Gravity does most of the work with the trawling net but I have to watch it as it goes. If there are any repairs I need to make, I stop the release so I can do so before the damaged part dips below deck. Once the net is out, I bait the long lines with bits of the fish that I caught earlier in the day. Sidney would say it is disgusting that I used a fish to catch the same type of fish, but I always responded with, "No this is cod, I am fishing for halibut," and she would respond with, "You were fishing for halibut yesterday." I never did come up with a good response. We were such a good team. After the kids went off to college, she joined me on my boat where she played den mother to the whole crew. She cooked and played nurse, and she was the one they went to when they had a problem with me or the others. I love her so very much. Without her, I would truly be lost.

After setting the lines, I go back inside and check the course and heading. After this much sea rise, only the tallest mountains in the world would be dry. A couple of years ago, I tried the Alps and last year the Himalayas. Currently, I am headed for the Rockies. I sail all the way around the mountain range, broadcasting and listening. I figure if civilization still exists, those are the places that I might find it. The power I get from my water wheel is only enough to run the engines at partial power and I have to stop to pull in the net and lines, so this is taking a long time. I figure I will finish my planet-wide lap in another two years, and then, I guess, I will do it again.

Afterward, I clean up, first the deck, then myself. It is a spit bath only, so as not to tax my freshwater supply. I then take the remainder of the day's catch down to the freezer bay for storage. While there, I say good night to Sidney. She has been down there for seven years now. She had made such a mess of herself that day, but I cleaned her up and put her in her favorite dress. She sits in there, eternally beautiful, cold to the touch but still warming my heart.

After that, I hit my bunk. Another full day is done. "Rain, rain, go away. . . . "