Port Townsend, Washington
was full of manuals, but Hank’s attention flashed to the inside of the cupboard door. A battlefield tablet colored in survival-orange made Hank laugh and he detached the Velcro and drew the device off its charging station. Its label read DON'T PANIC! He thought, someone has a sense of humor. Now it was clear why the graphic of the yacht's name looked so familiar. It came from the cover of a book he had read a long time ago. Just below DON’T PANIC in small lettering was the play on words that made him smile. THE HITCHHIKER'S GUIDE TO THE GALAXSEA.
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy was the go-to-book—the one with all the answers—found within Douglas Adams’ quirky five-book-trilogy of the same name. The science-fiction comedy had been an enjoyable distraction for Hank as he sailed around the world for the first time. He was certain that in this tablet, he would discover the digital manuals for the boat and every system aboard. Hank wasted no time and turned on the device. Multiple lines of text appeared, asking the same question in a dozen different languages. Followed with a Yes and No button. A soft voice asked, “Is this an emergency?”
Hank selected the No button as he whispered the word, “No.” His face appeared on the screen, and an instant later the iconic sound of a camera clicking broke the silence. A good headshot of Hank hovered on the screen for a few seconds while the voice said, “Please, continue holding this device while I verify your identity.”
The photo shrunk and lodged itself in the upper left of the screen. The screen went dark and lit up again, showing a retinal scan which also downsized into a tile and parked itself next to the photo. A green arrow checked the corner of Hank's picture while a little yellow triangle with a question mark lodged across the picture of the network of blood vessels of his eyes.
His fingerprints flew up into the space beside the picture with a green check in the corner. The device must have captured the fingerprint when he pushed the On button. Then, in a buzz of activity, the whorls of every finger touching the waterproof case flew into the area beneath his picture. A confusing collection of recordings flowed over the speakers.
Several voices overlapped at first—just babble. The number of voices dropped to two and then just one. The speed was faster than normal conversation but slow enough to understand. At first, it didn’t sound like anybody he knew. Then he recognized his own voice. Or at least he recognized the conversations he had just had, being broadcast at about two times the actual speed. Each word singled out, and the interval compressed to eliminate pauses creating a staccato progression, “big-doc-burger-side-chowder-hi-nadia-that’s-pretty-name-as-matter-fact-do-no.” The audio file flew up into its place beside the other tiles. A green check showed in the corners of every tile.
Several other pictures of Hank joined the top line. The ones Willy took on the dock appeared, including body scans. The near naked images flashed across the screen slow enough to see what had been in his pockets and how thin he was. These images pixilated as they shrunk into the mosaic. The employee picture, the one Joan claimed she hadn’t put on the website, appeared. But he didn’t have time to think about that when the picture of him after he was pulled off his doomed boat showed up. A half dozen pictures, including military IDs and a couple of promotion headshots, followed. The picture the community college took when he completed his GED was the last image. It received its green check in the corner and then things got interesting.
His height showed up, his weight registered and then the tool performed a body composition analysis. Body fat at six-point five percent. No wonder one pint of beer got him buzzed. That realization didn’t stop the ongoing examination. Little green checks showed up as fast as the data points filled the screen. Hank recognized a long strip of biometric data. With the technology he held in his hands, it didn’t seem possible, but the results appeared accurate. Pulse rate, respiration, blood oxygenation levels all seemed plausible to collect this way. But then, a real-time recording of his heart’s electrical rhythms blipped across the screen. Since he spent most of his adult life in healthcare, he knew what it took to set up a 12-lead ECG. Somehow this clever device did it without attaching leads anywhere and still returning an electrocardiogram that any cardiologist would approve of. Before Hank pondered the how-the-heck moment, another finding distracted him.
His blood type flashed before his eyes and shrunk to join the rest with a green check in the corner. At first, he assumed it had come from his records. Blood type was available to just about everybody in the military, but then a complete blood analysis followed with an up to the minute timestamp. The test including red and white cell counts, hematocrit and glucose levels. Hank let out a whistle, sat down, and lowered the pad into his lap, removing his hands. He concentrated on the small red dot of blood dripping out of his left index finger. He hadn’t felt a thing.
A soft female voice said, “Henry James Gunn. Thank you for your cooperation.”
The screen shifted from the developing mosaic and took on the look of a professional curriculum vitae with a good headshot. There were no green checks, but across the top, a slender green banner read Crew Member: Henry James Gunn - Verification Complete.
“My name is Ava. What would you like me to call you?” The voice was goddess-like. Not loud, but crystal clear and it came from no particular location but seemed to fill the room.
“Hank is fine.”
“Hank, I noticed you became somewhat agitated during the ID verification and health safety procedures. I am sorry if the testing surprised you. I detailed the process in the documents you signed with Willy.” There was a brief pause. “I find many people don’t read contracts. Would you like me to read the documents you signed?”
“No,” Hank answered. Reading legal fine print was tedious enough, but to have it read aloud would be torturous. What’s done is done. Those documents couldn’t contain anything more surprising than what he’d just been through. Besides, in a few days, he’d be off this yacht.
“You will find a signed confidentiality and security agreement in your inbox. Please, review your information for accuracy. In the meantime, do you have questions you would like me to answer? Or would you like me to tell you about the GalaxSea?”
He was brain-dead-hungry, but he managed a smiled and asked, “Can you tell me what the answer to life, the universe, and everything is?”
The voice took on a rich warmth and even a slight chuckle. She answered, “Why, that’s an easy one, Hank. The answer to life, the universe, and everything is forty-two.”
“Oh, that’s right. Okay, now I’ve got a tough one for you. Where’s the best drinking water on this boat?”
“That is a tough one, Hank. Let me see.” The computer responded with a flirtatious tone, “Would you like my answer now or in seven and a half million years?”
Hank had never had a humorous conversation with a computer before. He guessed some of this banter about The Hitchhiker’s Guide was programmed, but the cadence of her voice seemed effortless as it followed the course of the conversation. Hank replied, “Now would be helpful.”
“You will find bottles of Mountain Valley Spring Water in every refrigerated space on the boat. For example, the small fridge in your cabin. Will that suffice?”
“Yes. Amazing.”
“Thank you, Hank, but you can just call me Ava.”
Hank got up, put the pad in place, and ran his fingers through his hair. Rapid adaptation was something he was good at, and it looked like this job would suit him well. How could it not? He’d need all his skills to adapt to a witty AI, an incredible sailboat, and a charismatic billionaire with his kids. He strode into his own spacious cabin with a wide grin.
The bottled water satisfied his thirst, but he was still hungry. He whispered, “Ava, can you hear me?”
“I can,” the computer answered in a soft voice, matching his.
“Can you tell me about the GalaxSea?”
“Would you like the simple sales brochure, the version with so much detail you’ll learn what company manufactured the graphite nanotubes, or something in between?”
“How about the sales brochure with the spec sheet?”
Ava was going on about the tensile strength of the shrouds when Hank said, “Ava, that’s enough on rigging. What is the mast's height again? I must have been spacing when you said that.”
“No worries. The mast is ninety-eight feet and three-eighth inches tall. Mainsel is 984 square feet…”
Hank wasn’t sure he had ever heard a computer get a colloquial pronunciation right, even sailors mispronounce mainsel as main-sail. He leaned against the wall, automatically ducking his head but there wasn’t a need for that precaution in this sizable boat. He closed his eyes and tried to listen closer. The voice, with a hint of a Celtic accent, was so very pleasant that he became lost in it and didn’t care what she said. Her words were not only in the room but coming from beside him, just to his right. Hank turned and looked, He thought. I need to eat something.
The sound of light footfalls attracted his attention. It had to be his dinner coming aboard. He raced up the companionway to help Olin and the twins. There was no activity on the cockpit deck or on the dock. He walked aft between the large carbon fiber steering wheels into the rose-colored dusk of evening. Nothing. After looking around and listening for several minutes, he gave up, but then he caught the slightest movement. Way up on the bow, a deck hatch closed. Now seemed like as good a time as any to follow Olin’s invitation to poke around. Hank moved along the starboard side deck, checking the rigging and lines as he made his way forward. He made it a point to avoid the hatches above the rooms occupied by the two older children. When he reached the hatch that closed a minute before, he tested the large handle attached to a keypad, but it didn’t budge. The darkened acrylic lens that formed the hatch returned only a poor reflection and blackness.
“Ahoy, Hank,” Olin called from the dock as he walked past with the twins.
It always amazed Hank that people around boats talked like this. A language he had been born into, but his nautical manners had the edges blasted off while in the Marines. “Ahoy,” Hank replied.