ehowton ◾ Research Station Vacation (Reply)

GBZ, Parker, Zach, and myself left my mother’s house for a research trip/vacation to a neighboring island. We were going to put up over the weekend in a small cabin on one of the islands. We walked quite a distance over grassland, then through a small town, through some dirty, occupied underground tunnels complete with shops, then finally over some rocky terrain to the coast where we loaded up our gear into small, one-person boats. We crossed a very short distance to a close island, hiked up to the cabin, and unloaded. It was a tiny, two-room place with a kitchenette. Parker began her research, GBZ retired to the other room, and Zach and I set up our gaming computers.

Soon however, an expected storm hit, and it was much worse than we anticipated. We decided to leave - immediately as it turned out. GBZ came out of the second room all bleary-eyes wanting to know why the cabin was shaking so violently, and we told him to grab his stuff. Zach and I were watching the boiling sea and the enormous waves trying to figure out if we would even survive the short traverse in the boats. That’s when we saw a funnel of water right outside the window. Things got pretty chaotic right then and there.

We started yelling for Parker, who never answered us, which was just silly in such a small space. Zach and I exchanged looks of humorous exasperation - there’s no way she couldn't hear us in such a tiny place. Zach disappeared behind the short panel which slightly obscured the kitchenette and returned with Parker’s lifeless body. She must've been thrown when the storm first started shaking the cabin. Zach’s eyes were full of pain and he laid her on the floor. I blinked, unable to comprehend what I was seeing. “She’s dead?” I asked? He just pointed at her neck where there was a visible abrasion. Zach wandered off, filled with emotion.

I remember thinking, “Well that’s weird.” I yelled at Zach, “Did you check for a pulse?” I placed two fingers on her neck and there was a strong pulse. She wasn’t dead, just knocked out. What a knob he was. I woke her, explained the situation, and the four of us grabbed our gear. Only…I knew I couldn’t save both my desktop computer, and my Xbox, and suffered a small crisis trying to determine which was more valuable.

The desktop was a secondary computer I’d recently put together using less expensive parts, and there wasn’t a lot of data that wasn’t already backed up, so I grabbed the Xbox. The waves had receded to the point we could actually walk across the rocks to make the shore without trying to man the small boats. Some of our gear was stashed outside so we put on what was salvageable and made our way back to the mainland. It was cold, and wet, and I’d lost my warm NUSA Infiltrator Jacket during the storm as it was secured outside, but must’ve been torn loose and blown away.

We got home well after nightfall, exhausted, but safely back at my mom’s which was equally as small, and had been hit less severely. My desktop was there, outside, having been blown all the way back. The capacitors still lit some LED light dimly on the case, so I was hopeful it could be salvaged after drying out. We joined my mother around the table indoors and regaled her with the tale of what we’d just experienced.