On the role of religion in marriage. Granny told me that she had not been raised in a religious family, but had married a man who was deeply religious. She adopted his religion to support him and she raised Yolanda like he wanted. She found some comfort in the religion but wasn't the zealot that her husband was. Later she gave up the religion. Said that she found that it didn't apply in the real world. But that was only her experience. She didn't know what the answer was. For her and her family, it had messed them up badly. Could work for others. Wouldn't come back to the topic.
Was it necessary for us to wait until we were 18 to marry? Granny said something that I thought was profound. Marriage shouldn't be dictated by a bureaucrat's rule. She said that marriage was a decision for the two people to make themselves. Nobody could predict how a marriage would work. She had learned that from bitter experience. Age was an important factor, but some young people are old for their years. Some old people are too immature to ever marry. Applying a bureaucrat's rule to everybody was pure horse-pucky. I hadn't heard that term before but guessed what it meant.
Asked her what she meant when she said from bitter experience. It looked like she wasn't going to answer, but she surprised me.
"I thought that Hank would be bad for Yolanda and acted on that thought," she said. "I was terribly wrong." Then, she looked at me and I knew that part of the conversation was over.
"So would you think it would be wrong for me to get married when I was 16?"
She said that it would be wrong if I was the only one involved in that decision.
I said that I knew that. Was working on not being so bossy. Asked it the right way. "Would it be wrong for Will and me to decide to get married when we're both 16?"
"I can't say."
Asked the other option. "Do you think it would be wrong for me.... for us to have sex before marriage?"
Granny thought for a while before responding. "The two of you have to be absolutely on the same page. One can't be agreeing to have sex only to please the other. Plus you have to be true to your beliefs – to how you were raised to believe and to act. I'm probably not the best person to ask because of the way I was raised and how I lived. I didn't have sex until after I was married and I don't regret the decision. You should perhaps talk with Yolanda, because she can give you a different perspective. I don't know what's right or wrong anymore. You and Will have to have this conversation."
Whoa! Did I just hear what I thought I heard?
I changed the subject to talking about our new lives in the compound and we ended soon afterwards. I thanked her for help and for the pearl that she had given to Reese. She grabbed her walking stick – the big bow that she had close by all the time – and limped out to the grass meadow with me. "Perhaps you shouldn't mention to Yolanda what I said. We're getting along now. I don't want to mess that up. Sometimes I need to keep my big fat mouth shut."
And with that, she limped back into her house.
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Chapter 21
From Will's journals: January 2083.
With the Mount Assiniboine transmitter ready, it was time to test the scrambling device that would ensure that only paid customers could view the WZBN content. I headed east to Saskatchewan. Wizard's government contact was waiting for me in Regina and we looked for possible sites for their receiving transmitter. They had only one tall building in the entire city, so it was an easy choice. It took a couple of hours to set everything up and test it. Worked fine. There was nothing between here and Mount Assiniboine to get in the way.
I told the man that the system would be operational on February 1. He asked me to tell Wizard that the Wilizy lease for five Saskatchewan copters was ready. The copters had green and white colouring, but not quite the same green as the Wilizy used. It was Rider Green instead because they had tons of that paint colour around. He waited for me to respond as though this was supposed to mean something to me. He seemed surprised when I didn't clue in.
As for the raw materials we wanted, that wasn't going to be a problem. They would give us as much as we wanted since they had more than they could use. I had noticed that on the way over from B.C., so just agreed with him and started packing up. He called out, Go, Riders, Go as I left which I assumed was their equivalent to Goodbye. I found out later that it was the cry that Saskatchewan people had yelled to cheer their football team on to victory – football being very popular in their province at one time. I watched a brief video clip of football and saw men butting heads with each other like rams do. Widespread brain damage might explain why so few people live in Saskatchewan these days.
The next day, I was off to England to buy some men-of-war with Hank, Wiz, Wolf, Lucas, and Theo. We were all very excited about this; that's all we had talked about when we working on the top of Mount Assiniboine, so we put the slings close to the speed of sound and let them rip. We had to make a little side trip to New York so that I could pick up every rollable solar panel that I could find; these would take the place of the canvas sails. I also loaded up on all the raw materials I'd need to produce more filament. While I was doing that, the boys were loading the entire inventory of New York's deserted Chocoholic Shop onto a filament pallet. I sent the solar panels and filament materials on a northeasterly heading to Europe, and pointed the boys' chocolate barge on its way back to B.C. Hank had been firm that we would not be taking this amount of candy on an operation. The trip across the Atlantic went quickly and we decided to establish our home port high above the Isle of Man in the Irish Sea because lots of ships were sailing in the waters below. Then we went ship hunting.
We found prospects quickly. Few people wanted to own men-of-war because of how big the crew had to be to sail one of the monsters. That wasn't going to matter to us because I'd automate everything that way I had for the first Wilizy ship.
As we inspected the prospects, Hank would judge them on cargo capacity, ease of access to the hold, and how much renovation would be needed to make the ships functional. I'd make sure that the science end of things could be fitted easily. The boys would check every nook and cranny for water, rot, or rat infestations and Wolf would look over the masts and rigging. Wiz would talk to the owner and have him almost begging us to buy by the time the inspection crew was walking in his direction.
We ended up buying two sister ships, which was ideal for us. They were identical in every respect to each other, including the presence of three decks of old rusted cannons. I knew enough about sailing to move both ships out to the middle of the Irish Sea where we'd have a bit of privacy. It took an hour to surround both ships in filament and install the solar panels. Then we went invisible, anchored the ships high enough that the sounds of carpentry couldn't be heard, and Hank and his kids went to work.
I spent that time looking for a source of pressurized oxygen so that we could sling at very high altitudes to Europe and back. Our trip to New York had reminded me of the scuba tanks that the terrorist swimmers would have worn. Perhaps we could use something similar. I talked to a lot of divers and tried on a couple of tanks. These would easily fit within a sling.
I also learned about the bends, which is what the sickness is called if you change the depth of your dive too quickly. Nasty thing. I told the divers I was thinking of building a giant balloon and wondered if I would be at risk of the bends if I flew up in the sky too quickly. They said I would be even if I were taking oxygen with me since I wasn't in a pressurized environment in a balloon.
We were planning to fly at supersonic speeds at high altitude where the air pressure was considerably less than normal. This meant that we'd be susceptible to the bends. I created four safety rules to protect us. First, we won't fly the slings straight up or down. Instead, we'll change altitude gradually. Second, we'll shut the sling's baffles down so tight that we'll essentially be in pressurized cabins all the time we're flying. Third, we'll take extra oxygen tanks in the sling to keep the supply of oxygen stable. Having lots of oxygen will allow us
to continue to descend slowly even if we're at high altitudes. Fourth, I'll determine how high we'd have to fly to avoid creating a sonic boom that could be heard on the ground.
When I returned to the ship, the carpentry work on the Wilizy #2 was complete. I finished off the science in a few hours while Hank and the boys were playing tourists. Then we headed out to a factory in northern France that sold a lot of pressurized oxygen tanks. We'd use this trip as our trial run. Could we buy a lot of pressurized oxygen tanks, load them onto an invisible ship without being discovered, and when we had a full hold, send them home by filament pallets? Wolf said that he had figured out a way to do that without sailing into a port. It was far too risky to do that in a huge sailing ship with solar sails and an improbably small crew.
The trial worked like a charm. Wizard wandered around the plant, asked for prices on the oxygen tanks, looked disappointed and left. We had thought that his lack of French might be a problem, but when the factory man understood how many tanks we wanted to buy, they quickly found someone who spoke English. We played tourist for a couple of hours and went back for a second look. This time, Wizard got the price he wanted. When Wizard asked if the factory could barge our tanks out to a certain location in the English Channel, leave the barge by a buoy overnight, and collect the empty barge the next morning, he acted as though this kind of delivery was commonplace. He spat on the ground, uttered a flurry of angry French words that ended in the word taxmans, and we had a deal. That night, we palletized the oxygen tanks and loaded them onto the Wilizy #2. We could have as easily palletized them and sent them home. I had planted enough invisible repeater stations on our way across the Atlantic to make such freight trips easy. When we returned to the Irish Sea, we left about 40 oxygen tanks in Wilizy #2's hold in case a sling warrior had to replenish his supply, and then transferred the remaining 160 to the Wilizy #3. As a last gesture to Europe, Theo felt that we should stop calling the ships by numbers. It was too confusing. He suggested we call ship #2 Wilizy/Europe and that's what we decided to do.
The return trip home in the Wilizy #3 was slower than our trip over, but time went quickly. After all the carpentry work and my science installations had been completed, I dropped the ship into the water. It was time for an experiment and the boys were keen to determine how high a supersonic sling had to be so that its sonic boom wouldn't be heard. We didn't have to worry about other ships hearing us. We saw no transoceanic traffic whatsoever on our trip. Lucas and Theo raised their slings into the upper atmosphere slowly and paused at different altitudes as measured by the altimeters that I had attached to the oxygen tanks that they were using. Each then did a high speed run with six pinky rings to give them more than enough power.
At first, they were flying too low, but I kept messaging them to go higher and it wasn't long before the boom disappeared. The boys were disappointed that the flights weren't more exciting. They said it was just like flying over the compound. I explained that was because there was nothing visible that high in the sky that would give them a sense of speed. They seemed to understand. Theo suggested that I should always put two altimeters onto the oxygen tanks in case something went wrong with the first.
The boys came down slowly by flying in long descending spirals. Lucas thought that was a better way to get up and down than the "long staircase" approach that I had suggested. Hank asked if the height that we had to fly to avoid the boom would be different if we were over land or over ocean. He thought it would be and he was right. I built all these ideas into our "Remember" checklist that was going to be attached to the oxygen tanks. That was Wolf's suggestion. I discovered that it's a lot more fun, and more effective, to do experiments with other people involved.
By then, Wiz was anxious to return home. He had ordered a large amount of cloth from Japan while we were testing the sonic booms and he had some leads on a source of dye as well. Hank and Wizard would need both of those soon after elements of the Saskatchewan air force invaded Alberta. We christened ship #3 Wilizy/Asia and headed home as quickly as we could.
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Chapter 22
From Will's journals: January 2083 continued.
Hank and Wizard's plans would require sling warriors to be in the air soon, so we didn't have much time to go to Asia and back. I hovered the ship over the compound only long enough for Lucas and Theo to change clothes and talk to their mom. I figured that I could leave the Wilizy/Asia over the Sea of Japan. This would be a good place for the Wilizy/Asia's home port since we'd be picking up the cloth and dye in Tokyo. I'll drop invisible repeater stations along the way so that the cargo could make its own way back. I figured that it would take about 3 days to reach Tokyo and would have been happy to lie in a hammock the whole time. Lucas and Theo had other ideas.
First they wanted to have a contest to see who could sail the ship the furthest distance in 30-minutes. Lucas said that they had tried knotting a rope and throwing the end of it overboard, but that didn't work with a ship sailing through the air. The rope just drooped below the ship. I could join the game if I wanted to, but only if I found a way to determine the winner. So I locked a repeater station into the air, attached one end of a filament to it, and we measured who had pulled the most filament off the ship. I won the first contest as I tweaked the angles of the sails to get maximum sun power. Both boys had concentrated on their steering. They watched me carefully and Theo beat me in the second contest. Lucas didn't have the patience to just set the panels and steer. He was always fiddling with sails, trying to gain an advantage. Competitive kid.
As night started to fall, the boys wanted to play hide and seek. But first they had to negotiate the rules. I saw that this could take a fair bit of time, as each boy was adept at proposing something that would give him an advantage. In the end, they agreed that it was against the rules to use a sling to go invisible or to change hiding positions. The rules did allow the use of a pinky ring light at max. Finally, the hider had to come out if he heard the ship's bell because that was signal for I give up. The person who caught the hider would have his turn to hide next. They were very serious about rules to their games; they even wrote them down and each signed them. I asked if I could play too. They agreed, so long as I signed the sheet of rules but they warned me that I was too big to hide properly.
Theo found Lucas in the first contest, and then Lucas returned the favour. In the third game, I figured that Lucas was 'tween decks, but I couldn't see properly in the semi-darkness even with a pinky ring light. But I did catch a whiff of chocolate, so I followed the smell to where Lucas was munching on a bar underneath a canvas sail that had been stuffed into a tiny locker. Turns out that when we had been back in New York, both boys had hidden a large number of chocolate bars in their packs before showing their dad their chocoholic pallet. Obviously they still had some of their smuggled cache left.
I managed to make them ring the We give up bell by using my sling to fasten myself to the underside of the deck. Both walked right underneath me but didn't look up.
"Not fair," they said.
"Yes, fair," I said. "Rules said I couldn't use my sling to turn invisible. There was nothing about using them otherwise." They had to agree on that.
Lucas created the best hiding place. He refused to disclose it in case we played the game again. Theo offered him a chocolate bar if he told us. Lucas looked at me. I said I didn't have a chocolate bar. "You owe me two, OK?" So I agreed. He showed us how he had been standing on the lip of a cannon that he had rolled forward so that part of it was outside the porthole. He was outside the ship the whole time we were searching inside! He had moved the cannon and lifted the porthole covers in a previous game so that we wouldn't hear the noise. Have I mentioned that Lucas is very competitive?
The next morning, I awoke to the sound of feet hitting the deck. I found the two little chocolate-fueled monsters racing up and down the main mast to see who was fastest. No fair using the sling except if you fell. They offered to let m
e time them, because they were sure they could do it faster once they had more practice. I said that I wanted to race too. So, we decided to share the timing duty. They beat me badly. I was stronger, but they were lighter and more agile. I decided to become a permanent timer because they were razzing me so much about being an ancient. When Lucas started to come down to the deck by sliding down the sails, I decided to end the contest. Have I mentioned that Lucas is ultra-competitive?
During the afternoon they wanted to do some diving, so I put the ship into the water. At first they dove from the little step at the back of the ship. It's about a meter above the water. They'd use their sling to catch up to the ship. Then they wanted to use the cannon that Lucas had stood on. That seemed OK to me. It was in the second deck, and they were only doing a cannonball dive anyway. I became nervous when I saw Lucas eyeing the top of one of the masts and changed the contest to seeing who could eat dinner the slowest while still having to chew. Theo won. Lucas claimed that Theo had won because he himself hadn't tried. These guys are wearing me out.
Nighttime came and it was back to the ship's sailing distance test but this time in a moonless night. I was allowed to go first because of my advanced age. Lucas was far behind my distance when he tried. I had used the feel of the wind on my check to add a little oomph to the dead solar power sails. I didn't share that with the boys though. Theo figured out that I had him beat so he tried to nudge the ship up to a higher altitude. "No fair," I said.
"Yes, fair," he said. "There's nothing in the rules that says I can't go higher."
This was true and he won easily.
Lucas was intent on beating Theo's distance and so he took the ship up as high as it would go. I realized that there was a distinct lack of oxygen at this height when all of us sat down suddenly out of dizziness. We decided not to play that particular game again.
"You know, Will," Lucas said. "You should have bottles of oxygen on the ships in case the Wilizy has to make a speed run some time. The ships are way faster up high."