|
||
|
|
|
Adrift
Day after day went by out in the middle of the Sargasso sea. I stayed well out of the shipping lanes, and saw no other boats. The ships always use the current that defines the boundaries of the sea to save fuel, and plowing through the sargassum (brown seaweed) that covered the surface was expensive. So I wasn't all that surprised that I didn't see any other boats. I had turned off my internet connection, and my communications equipment. I knew if I had it on, it would be like a beacon the Navy or the Coast Guard could use to come and arrest me.
I also kept the boat motors off and drifted. It was easy to trap the little fish and eels that lived in the seaweed. I had a big store of rice. And I learned how to clean and cook seaweed. I got my drinking water by boiling it. I had some power through solar panels on the deck. And I could grow some vegetables in my liitle plots I made while seasteading off of L.A.
In other words, I could make a subsistence living, but that was about it. I needed a real life, or eventually I would go insane.
In order to make a plan, I would have to find out what was going on in the world. But I couldn't just fire up my communication equipment, or I knew I would get busted.
So I rigged one of the little subs to carry the satellite link box to a location far from the boat and then turn it on. The sub was programmed to follow the ocean current of the Columbus Gyre along the southern edge of the sea, and then use it's own power to push it to Cuban waters. It would then surface on the southern side of the island in a lesser populated area not far from the town of Manzanillo. I figured that starting communications in Cuban waters might make the Feds think that I was in Cuba, and that was one of the few places that they couldn't just barge in and search. And the fact that I would be several hundred miles away at the time would keep them from having a clue as to where to find me.
I had rigged the sub to start a laptop rather than a crow. The laptop was programmed to work through the satellite connection to begin downloading my email, and webcrawl for any news that could be found mentioning my name. I also rigged it to do multiple searches for an attorney that was an expert on international criminal asylum. I wasn't hopeful, but I thought that having legal representation might be a way to get me out of this mess.
Then the sub would start up again, round Cuba and head northeast along with the current. I would then pick it up again several hundred miles out to sea when it started to ping using it's low power RFID tag.
It worked. I retrieved the sub and the laptop and started poking around to find out my status in the real world. My story had died down in the news, which just made sense as it had months now, and there were no new porn videos of hot actresses hitting the net. I was surprised to learn that there was now a thing called the "Jenkins Test" that was named after me. It was a method of sweeping the walls for cameras that transmitted on the frequency that mine did. It seemed to be all the rage now for high end hotels and celebrity homes. I instantly knew several ways that I could beat the test, but of course I was stuck out on a boat in the middle of the ocean so it hardly mattered. And I had absolutely no interest in recording people screwing ever again. That phase of my life was done.
My email address was not hard to get since I had used it with a bunch of different websites selling the porn videos. So as I exepected, my inbox was full of offers for interviews, a few crackpot book deals, and a bunch of agents and lawyers offering to represent me. There was also a couple of fairly bizarre notes from people claiming to be with the FBI and Interpol asking me to turn myself in. But the most bizarre emails were the few that claimed to represent the CIA or KGB, offering me money and a safe haven if I would turn over my crow technology. There is no doubt that my flying crow was years ahead of anything anyone else had developed, but it was impossible to know which offers were real, if any of them.
I poured through all the downloads ravenously, but all in all, the information didn't really help me much. I was still listed on the Interpol wanted list, and my status was still listed officially as "red" (most wanted) for computer and organized crime.
After a few days I dropped the sub back in the water with instructions to head back to Cuba. The sub only averaged about 4 nautical miles an hour, so it would take three weeks to get there, and another 3 weeks to get back. The laptop had instructions to contact a few lawyers and ask for their help. I picked lawyers that specialized in representing people accused of international crimes, and asylum law. I avoided the ones that represented drug lords, because I figured that there was still an open contract to have me killed from the Malrone family, and they weren't likely to forget me so quickly. I figured a lawyer in the pocket of the drug lords would just try to turn me in for part of the bounty.
But there were a bunch of lawyers now that represented African and Asian pirates. Catching ships was still a lucrative business, and the lawyers that did the negotiations and represented people that were caught were well versed in the kind of thing that I was up against with Interpol. So I picked the most prominent few of those and offered to wire them money from my bank accounts to represent me. I also asked if they could help get me asylum somewhere, because they had to be familiar with some countries were the law wasn't so tight.
So the sub went to Cuba again, and started the laptop, and it sent the offers. I instructed it to wait around a few days and pick up the replies before heading back to me, this time out in the middle of the dead calm Sargasso sea.
All of the attornies replied, saying that they would be happy to evaluate my case for a few thousand dollars and let me know what they could do for me. I picked a couple of the ones that seemed to be me the most willing to help with asylum, and had listed information as to possible countries. So I sent the sub back yet again and wired them the money. I had the sub wait a couple of weeks for a response on what they could do to help me before returning again.
The wait was maddening. Yes I was keeping myself pretty safe from arrest out in the middle of nowhere and very far from the communication equipment, so even if the sub got snagged by the Cubans or caught enroute they wouldn't have me. But I was driving myself crazy spending weeks without really getting anywhere.
Next Story: What Ever Happened to Me?
Comments Posted: No comments have been submitted for this episode |
|
|
|
|
||
 |
||
|