Walking Titanic

My bare feet splosh cold water on the warped, white-enameled and wrinkled metal deck. Crew-quarters. Cheap rig. Well, half-a-bil for eighty-five rooms, a command deck, service facilities, medical, food and whatever isn't low-bill but it's like—total crap. Now, the El Coranone anchored five-hundred yards west, that's prime. Big-payers. Ten-K per package plus room plus this plus that to International waters one-thousand kilometers south-southeast of Newfoundland then twelve-thousand-five-hundred feet straight down to the queen of all shipwrecks, the RMST Titanic.

Shit.

Wind is light from the south-southwest, two knots. Sun is bright. Water, calm. The sky is clear. Me, I'm only here 'cause I work here. I do comm-links above and below. There's also some dives and underwater construction and what extra I can for a buck. Grunt pay for an ex-yeoman. Later today I'm on a service chopper home for two whole weeks off this semi-submersible rig – my rope-yarn Sunday. I squint at the bright, shapeless sun. Eight-hundred thirty hours. Wish I could leave now, but I have to make the trip – down to pick up something below.

Ten-hundred hours. I'm fitted in nice civvies – casual wear. Have to look presentable. I hate this walkway to leave-station. So ghetto. It's so narrow and fenced-in, even top and bottom. They don't want people fishing goods out of the water or dropping stuff in. RMST security is everywhere, as are painfully-obvious undercover DEA and Interpol-types. They have every angle covered for almost any action. Divers are always in, too. International waters. Legal things get complicated here, so someone's always trying something. Off to my right is a sonic buoy. They monitor all comms here. Of course, nothing with radio waves except very-low-frequency works deeper than twenty feet. We talk to below with hard lines and a special Extended Deep Siren setup. Converts radio to encrypted acoustic pulses translated to voice or text on the other end. I did some of that. Me, the dropout. I think it was my experience with the GS that got me the gig here. Better than the docks in Newfie, but this yeoman pay isn't enough. Smuggling? I'm OK with it. I'm not running guns or human cargo. It's all chips or gems or something bill. Maybe once a month I run goods from one of the Gift Shops, below. The juice, though, is getting to be on her and in her - the great wreck.

Today's group is pretty typical of what we get here. Three grey couples who seem to have lots of time and money. Two fams – mother, father, two and three kids. Kids are at most teens. Definitely suburban, forties, so they started late. One has 'em reigned in – no disorderly behavior. The one with three - they're a little looser. One couple my age. Guy looks service – maybe Marines the way he walks. She's a thin little thing. Kind of awkward and aimless. Probably adores the bastard. One lone gal – nothing I would want. Probably hooty by the looks of her glasses. That leaves one guy that keeps towards the back of the pack. There – he's heading towards the fence probably to let me walk by. So I do, sort of slow. He's looking out over the water. Pushed-back black crew cut with close-cropped sides. Tall with tiny eyes. A real sundowner. He's got a dickish carriage and a frame that looks like it could do a marathon in two hours. In his hands are a small camera and a cell phone. Don't think he's had a look toward me yet, though he looks around a lot. My question, the one I'm asking myself is: who's he work for?

OK, so the trip down goes like this: after the walkway is security. They check your comms, players, data cards, all fabrics and materials on and in you, test for residues, and take anything dangerous from you on the list. We then board a tight twenty-seat bumboat sub with one steward and two pilots and make way for the spot where Titanic hit the 'berg. There's no iceberg, but there are several service craft and supply stations for what lies below. Anyways, they jostle the sub and flash these special red lights and yell "We're going down!" Then we dive for her. Takes about an hour. Everything's fitted with pressure-walls so we don't have to worry about compression. The whole trip we have videos and narration and history lessons - the kind of thing that is educational so you know it puts me to sleep. I always seem to wake up for the on-board lunch, though.

Ten-hundred-thirty hours. We descend in a long spiral path to the ocean floor around the hundreds of power, communication and transfer lines feeding Titanic's rebirth. Service lights guide the way down. Not that there's anything to see anyways – just cables and murkey grey water. Dull trip. Kinda like my path. High school. College. Both were a loss. Navy finally took me. It was a good plan – college money, learn a trade. I love the water, anyways. My computer skills and gaming got me a spot in remote countermeasures. Now that was cool! We'd use long-wave radio and sonics to blow GS-300's, a slow-moving porpoise-like torpedo to sink ships. It keys in on a ship's electronic traffic, and, at the right moment, is detonated by guys like me from remote. I never got to go live. I got bored – had to do something else. They thought I was nuts. A non-bilge leaving special ops? I wound up in diving, demolition and construction. At least I was actually doing something, but it sunk my career. Commission? I never plugged into anything, not for too long, anyways. I always did the least I could to get by and always got bored with what I was doing. This - this is my latest thrill. My way back to life. Maybe that's the real reason I'm headed down the Gift Shop.

I scrunch down a little to catch a better look through the small circular polycarbonate window. Shadows off starboard. There's a couple of blue-fin tuna to starboard keeping with the sub. Probably hear vibrations from the service lines. Yep, tuna. Wondrful. Another fifty minutes to go.

The sub dock and Welcome Center sit on the loose hazy ocean floor next to Titanic's restored bow. It's like a dense fog made from mud and bits of debris. Titanic's lit up dull by cruddy brownish lights. Her exterior is cleaned up but a little rough. Submersibles are everywhere – stabbing her with murky yellow cones of light. Some jostle welding torches. Others handle equipment for teams of deep-divers welding and building. There are rig platforms off the Bridge, decks, and...well...a lot of her exterior. And al those cables we wound around the way down. They all end here. Make Titanic look like she's on life-support, coming back to life.

Five years litigation, another five for the plan and funding, and so far eight years to build what we have now in front of me. First we stopped the degradation of her hull and support structures by a critter called Halomonas titanicae. Then swain worked on the hull. To restore rooms and walkways, everything was cataloged, photographed and measured by divers. Then they were cleared out, fitted with pressure wall rooms and rebuilt with as much original stuff as possible. No mannequins, though. No people in the exhibits. We connect the rooms with walkways, then move on. So far ten rooms for tourists plus concessions, the memorial and four external sites. There are eight more rooms for operations and personnel. We collect all kinds of royalties and fees. Ten-grand and more a pop has made the tourist venture worthwhile, they say. And hey: rebuilding allows RMST rights to hidden treasures like the one-hundred-thirty-million in diamonds found in a forward cabin safe.

Eleven-hundred-thirty hours. We made dry-dock, past security and now we're waiting on an elevator to the bow. The Forecastle, famous in that big movie thirty or so years ago, is where the tour starts. It broke off the Titanic when she sank and augured into the ocean floor leading edge down about thirty degrees. It was structurally compromised in a couple of places that had to be fixed before we could refit it to the hull. The actual deck and railings are part of the reconstruction. Her wooden planking is under your feet. You can touch all the original railings and the cargo crane. The capstans, lines and chains are all there up to the windlasses. You can see the Bridge and look all the way up one-hundred-seventy-five feet to the top of the forward funnel. But all around is the blue and murky water lit by the clever scatter lights below. It feels like you're on the deck of the Titanic in the moist cool air of late evening on the darkest of moonlit nights. There's even a little mist in the air, courtesy of saline atomizers overhead. But we're twelve-thousand-five-hundred feet under. The pressure outside is over four-hundred atmospheres—three tons of force every square inch. The trick is we're inside a totally clear triangular pressure-room about sixty feet each side and ten feet high. The magnesium-polycarbide ceramic-fiber walls can take up to 118 Mega-pascals pressure - good up to thirty-thousand feet deep. This is totally shiv stuff. No optical distortion. No seams. Cost one-quarter a mill per square yard. That's close to half-a-bill just for the room. Pressure walls mean inside it can be a comfy one-atmosphere. Add in the hidden HVAC and sound system, partly courtesy of me, a lot of sensors and effects, and you can see why these damn trips cost so much.

OK, I stick with the group for a while. I'm expected to pick up by thirteen-hundred hours. The chopper is topside at sixteen-hundred, giving me lots of time to make the twenty-two hundred hour drop tonight.

Twelve-hundred hours. In the exhibits. Inside Titanic. It's like walking through a historic building or something but its a little bit more constrained. You move through hallways in her lower decks between renovated rooms. It's a little like a hamster trail. The halls have displays and info-stations. The rooms you can walk into. Titanic was a ship on the open sea. There was lots of light and air and noise. They did a good job making it feel like she was still topside. Fake windows have incredible projected images complete with sounds and air movement. There are breezes through the halls. Some cabin doors are slightly open so you can peak inside but the space is no bigger than a closet – they just figured an open door and glimpse of a room would make you feel less shut in. The best part is the reflecting speakers that create localized ambient sounds of birds, people talking, even waves against the hull. Integral canceling speakers remove the echoes and sounds you expect in a closed structure like a pressure room - like a 'ping' when you tap on the walls. There's even a little 'give' to the flooring and slight slight roll to the rooms that you might not really feel but you are aware of.

The third class rooms two decks below the Poop deck weren't all that bad. They remind me of my quarters on the USS Fort Worth - small but not cramped. Everything is made from wood except the white ceramic wash basin and matching water tank above it. The bed is definitely a single but is fitted with what is described as “a suitably plush and durable fabric mattress.” There's also a small dresser and circular mirror. Fresh towels were always in the room. Feeling was at the time that even third class travelers should have some luxury and private rooms. Almost worth the price of the ticket, considering.

Further along, the first class rooms are a little better. Big difference from third. Big luxury. Beds are double to queen with brass-frames and sometimes a canopy. Walls have carved wood paneling. Even the ceilings had work – thick moldings and a center dome like over the Grand Staircase. Paint depended on the room and the occupant. This one here even has a sitting room complete with fireplace and two-seat sofa. One they're working on now has all that plus a chandelier, a private bath, and grand entrance.

Thirteen-hundred hours. Gift shop one. That's my contact behind the counter.