Leanna O’Regan sat opposite the zippered entrance at the far end of the orange, conical inflatable raft, which would bulge inward with each slap by the man outside, dangling from its edge in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Leanna was scowling, wrapping her arms around her knees and pulling them closer with each bellow from the man outside demanding to be let back into the raft.

“Leanna! Let me back in! Let’s talk! What did I say?” the man shouted at her, revealing a tremor in his voice from being immersed in the cold ocean water. “C’mon! I can help you!”

“You’re a liar, James!” Leanna shouted back, “You know nothing about the California Independence Movement!” She pulled her long back hair over one shoulder and rested her chin on her knees, closing her eyes and ignoring the increasingly desperate pleas outside the raft entrance. Her head nodded as she fought off falling asleep, and she opened her eyes drowsily to look around the dark interior of the raft. She could see James’s wet, light grey uniform laying flat on the undulating fabric floor of the raft, and she crawled over to it to start feeling through the pockets on the jacket and trousers. Not finding anything, she left the uniform on the floor of the raft and continued crawling over to the entrance of the raft, where James had stopped slapping the zippered cover and yelling at her. She put her ear near the wall raft to listen if he was still hanging onto the edge of the raft outside, and could hear his ragged breathing and chattering teeth.

“James Stockard, give me a good reason to let you back in,” she said quietly, “because I have a lot of reasons to leave you out there. But what’s the use, really? We’re don’t have much hope of getting rescued.”

James coughed, and answered her from the other side of the orange fabric, “They’ll come looking for us and take us back to the QuadriStar. I’m sure as hell not going to plead for clemency on your behalf, traitor!”

“Ah, so the pretense is gone now, is it? I knew you were a spy,” Leanna said, “You wanna know what gave you away?”

“I dunno,” James answered weakly, “I’m not a spy; the QuadriStar recruits are all trained in basic surveillance and interrogation techniques. We are expected to keep tabs on each other and to report anything to our superiors as long as part of our tour of duty on the battleship.”

“Yeah, yeah, sure. Anyway, you described attending a CIM organized secret meeting. That is not how we operate. We teach the principles of the Cooperative through private discussions with friends and family. The Movement grows through invitation of those who show a readiness to understand its aims. We don’t coerce or pressure new members; the Cooperative originally grew as people were willing to join and freely stayed. How can you fight for freedom if you don’t encourage and foster freedom of expression and movement? We’re not hypocrites,” Leanna said sternly.

“Huh, I bet you’re true to your CIM principles until you meet someone who disagrees with you,” James said, “like you throwing me out of the raft, case in point!”

Leanna sighed, “I didn’t throw you out. I locked you out, big difference. You willingly left the raft.”

“Only because I thought you were in trouble! Look, I actually care for you, and I wasn’t lying about that CIM meeting I went to in San Francisco. How could I know it wasn’t authentic?” James said, and then added, “I have some doubts about the actual purpose of the QuadriStar; I’ve seen some things that make me think it was designed to be much more than a warship to fight in the SEA war.”

Leanna reached over and unzipped one side of the flap covering the entrance to the raft, and peeked out to see that James had pulled his torso out of the dark, cold water, so that only his trunk and legs were submerged. He was using both of his hands to keep himself lifted out of the water, so all he could do was turn his head to look at Leanna through the slit she opened in the entrance. The night sky was brightening to the east, and a slit of early morning light fell on Leanna’s face. Seeing that James couldn’t move without falling into the water again, she unzipped the other side of the entrance cover, so it was completely open again. She leaned out and scanned the lightening horizon and said, “I suspected as much myself about why the QuadriStar was built. What did you see?”

“Are you going to let me in? I’m freezing out here in my underwear!” James shot back. He let go of the rim of the raft with one hand to try and swing over to the entrance of the raft, but instead slipped down the angled side, falling with a splash into the ocean. Leanna grabbed his free hand, and helped James lift himself through the entrance. He rolled over onto the floor of raft and stretched himself out, relieving the cramps from hanging onto the side of the raft for so long, extending and retracting his arms and the fingers on his hands.

Leanna stayed sitting at the entrance, looking at James in the morning light from the shadows inside the raft. “I’m waiting, James. What do you know about why the QuadriStar was built?”

James stayed laying out flat on the floor of the raft, and looked up at the point of the conical raft’s roof as he spoke, “The QuadriStar is nuclear-powered, which is not unusual for a large warship, but even for the a huge one like the QuadriStar, the nuclear reactor at the center of the ship is large enough to power a small city, and the reactor’s output far exceeds the power needed to run the ship. The reactor also is air-cooled and water-cooled by large turbines surrounding the reactor. I only know this because there was a test run last week to run the turbines at full speed, and from my post in the bridge, I could see the uncovered air and water turbines. It was incredible to watch! The clouds above the ship parted, and the ocean churned and began to revolve around us!”

*** This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental. ***