The Brave New World - 176 The Mystery of Angel Island

The captain of the boat they were sailing on attempted a smile, It wasn’t a successful attempt.

“It’s a ship,” he said weakly.

“I can see it’s a ship! I’m asking once again: what is this? You told me no one had any ships!”

“I am sure no other colony has managed to build a ship. It must be a government ship.”

“Government? What are you talking about?”

“I meant the colonial administration. Everyone calls them the government.”

“Turn around. We’re going home.”

“But you said – ”

“Turn around! It doesn’t matter what I said earlier. This ship changes everything.”

“You’ll have to move, senor. The sail – ”

“Yes, yes,” Morales said irritably. Keeping a hand on the gunwale to steady himself, he followed the captain to the rear of the boat.

The boat was a large pirogue outfitted with a single, triangular sail and crab claw rigging: two spars joined to form a V. The sail was huge, and could be turned almost through a complete 360-degree circle thanks to the rigging, originally invented by Polynesian sailors in prehistoric times. It made the pirogue a very agile vessel: it was capable of sailing almost directly into the wind while maintaining respectable speed.

The sail was more than just a means to propel the boat. To Arturo Morales, it was a symbol of his own ingenuity and ability to get things done.

Just a little over three months earlier, Arturo Morales was visiting a recycling facility he owned in California. Back in his native Mexico, Morales was known as the King of Trash. He had very consciously chosen that career path upon graduating, with some difficulty, from a rural secondary school.

His graduation difficulties weren’t caused by a lack of intelligence on his part. While his peers threw themselves into looking for jobs, Arturo spent a full month thinking about his next move. He wasn’t satisfied with flipping hamburgers to become, one day, an area manager for a fast food chain. In past days, he would have seriously considered a career as a narcotraficante. However, the widespread legalization of most drugs had seriously eroded the profit potential of all drug businesses while maintaining, even increasing, the unpleasantly high mortality rate that went with the job.

The secret to a profitable career was finding a service or a product which would be always in demand, more – a service or a product for which demand would grow and grow as time went by. After a month of hard thinking, Arturo Morales decided he would focus on trash.

Arturo Morales focused on recycling electronic equipment. Every piece of electronic equipment, even the cheapest mobile phone contained precious metals. Gold was a better electricity conductor than silver, and silver was a better conductor than copper. A computer could contain up to quarter gram of pure gold. The combined value of gold, silver, copper, and platinum in an average cellular phone was well over half a dollar.

After many years of effort, Mr Morales owned a string of companies specializing in the disposal of electronic trash. He was paid to take it away, and the second payoff came when the valuable metals were extracted in furnaces that pumped toxic smoke into the atmosphere. But truly, the amount of pollution they caused was next to nonexistent when compared to the pollution created by tourism.

A single jet full of holidaymakers en route to an exotic destination produced more pollution than a furnace burning plastic around the clock. And this was just the top of the iceberg. For most people, a holiday involved an orgy of consumption in all of its shapes and forms. Popular tourist spots employed armies of garbage collectors that were always falling behind with their work. It just wasn’t possible to keep up with the trash output of someone on a holiday.

Compared to all that, Mr Morales’ chosen business was saintly in its care for the environment. Mr Morales was the proud recipient of many environmental awards, and the happy recipient of numerous government grants and subsidies that allowed him to operate at minimal cost. He was performing a community service! And at the very end of the process, he was paid in silver and gold.

When the catastrophe struck, Arturo Morales was visiting the recycling plant he owned in California. It was located in a former gravel pit just east of Vallejo, on the northern coast of the long, multi-named bay that stretched between the Pacific Ocean and the mouth of Sacramento River. Some of the plant’s imported, Mexican workers were living in shacks erected along the bank of Sulphur Springs Creek east of the plant. They reported a glowing cube had appeared atop one of the hills surrounding the creek. Some babbled about aliens, others – about the second coming of Christ.

Morales was quick to investigate the cube, and reported it to the authorities after a day’s delay. During that 24-hour period, he helped himself to several thousand implant kits from the cube along with hundreds of hiber beds and documentation scrolls. He instantly saw that he had been offered the business opportunity of a lifetime. All the top economic thinkers said that ‘crisis’ and ‘disaster’ were just different names for ‘opportunity’, and they were right!

By January 10th, Arturo Morales had a fifty-strong colony going in the New World. By January 20th, he had implanted over a thousand plant seedlings, and exported them to the New World. The seedlings mostly included food crops: corn, onions, potatoes and tomatoes. They also included one of the most versatile, most useful plants in existence.

That plant was flax. Flax fibers made yarn that could be used to weave fabric; flax seeds were a valuable food. When pressed, the seeds produced what was known as linseed oil, and the crushed mush could be boiled into a nourishing porridge. Best of all, flax grew and matured quickly. It was possible to get three harvests in a single year.

Each flax plant could produce hundreds of seeds. Flax could be planted very densely, and after the first two harvests the Morales colony had enough flax to begin producing linen in quantity. In the meantime, Mr Morales identified another area of importance.

It was clear that in the New World, transportation would be a problem. There were no roads, at least not yet, and there were precious few animals that could be used to transport people and goods. Water transport ruled! A small handful of men and a boat could carry more than a full-sized caravan, and carry it more quickly too, without nightly stops and that whole business of taking care of the pack animals.

King Morales – his people had begun calling him El Rey all by themselves, he was a modest man and would have never thought to bestow a royal title on himself – king Morales was quick to begin the construction of two large pirogues, made from the hollowed-out trunks of gigantic trees. They were almost as big as Viking longboats of a bygone age. Adding big sails made of linen turned them into swift and highly maneuverable craft, easily capable of carrying a couple of dozen people or a sizeable cargo.

As a rule, successful exploitation of an opportunity breeds more opportunities. Arturo Morales was very aware of that fact. He quickly sketched out a plan that saw him expand his colony along the shores of the series of bays stretching all the way to the ocean. When he read about the new Pacific archipelagos in the documentation scroll, he was instantly convinced of their great importance. Why else would the creators of the New World create them, otherwise? He was determined to find out, one day.

King Morales was quick to secure four colonizer licenses the day they became available. He also bought an extra thirty-two colonist licenses. It cost him a couple of the small, 50-gram gold ingots stored at the recycling plant near Vallejos. A third ingot found its way into the pocket of the Vallejos district governor. It convinced him that by a stroke of luck, Arturo Morales’ three cousins were present at the plant when the disaster struck, and that all three would make model colonizers.

Once everything was nice and legal, King Morales launched a series of expeditions to secure an unfettered access to the ocean. Unfortunately, his scouts brought back discouraging news.

There were colonies sprouting all over the place. Angel Island, which figured largely in his strategic plan, was already home to three small colonies. That was the confirmed number; there could be more. Angel Island was a hell of a lot bigger in the New World.

Early the previous day, Morales had boarded La Flecha – the slightly bigger of the two pirogues – in the company of a dozen carefully selected men. He had plenty to choose from: the current population of the Morales colony was nearing two hundred. All of the men were good sailors, and half were also very good fighters. They were armed with bows and throwing spears and bronze cutlasses.

One of the reasons Morales was so eager to colonize Angel Island was the fact it probably had deposits of iron ore. He could remember visiting it back in the old times as a tourist: he had seen rocks with iron ore content on the island’s mountain. There would be ten times more ore on the Angel Island in the New World.

The second reason for colonizing Angel Island was the reason that applied to almost any piece of real estate: location. Anyone with a strong presence there could control both the San Francisco and San Pablo Bay, and thus – the Golden Gate strait leading to the Pacific.

La Flecha had showed excellent sailing qualities, and the expedition made landfall on the eastern shore of Angel Island on the evening of the previous day. One of the newly established colonies was nearby. Its nine dirty, hungry, half-naked inhabitants came to the camp begging for food. Morales ordered his men to unload a sack of corn and a roast goat leg, and graciously gave both to the desperate colonists. They were ready to kiss his feet! He would have no trouble persuading them to join his colony when the time came.

In the morning, he had the idea it might be smart to look for a similar collection of colonists on the shores of the Golden Gate. The pirogue sailed around the southern end of Angel Island, and approached Alcatraz sufficiently close to determine it was still a hell of a place to live, even in the New World. They had to tack back and forth to keep sailing west because of the westerly wind. Their zigzagging course had brought them to within a mile or so of Point Cavallo, a sharp tip on the peninsula cutting into the bay from the north.

And then, just as they were about to tack southwest, the big ship came sailing out past Point Cavallo. A government ship! How was that possible? The colonial government’s capital had to be somewhere on the southern peninsula. That was where the city of San Francisco was located, back in the Old World!

And he’d been repeatedly assured there wasn’t a single vessel operational in the bay! The starving colonists encountered on Angel Island had confirmed that only the previous day. Maybe the location of their colony, on the island’s eastern shore, could have prevented them from observing what was going on in the west.

Halfway down his journey to the rear of the boat, Morales nearly fell over and into the water – the boat began turning very sharply. The gunwale dipped so deeply he got his hands wet. Resisting an impulse to crawl, he edged towards the stern, keeping both hands on the gunwale.

By the time he got there, the pirogue had completed its turn. The wind in its back made it shoot forward, fully living up to its name. Morales looked astern and saw the big ship was turning too, turning in their direction!

He waited until the captain stopped shouting at the crewmen handling the sail, and said:

“I want you to take another look at that ship. Is it chasing us?”

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