Chapter 1: A Million Fishes and a Ghost Island

## Synopis

Short Summary:

"Lucky Fisherman" James sets out early in the morning of June 15th of the 3rd millenium. He expects to catch many fishes like he usually does, but once he arrives at his "lucky spot", his compass begins spinning. James sets sail to where he believes is his home but ends up on a stranded island, where he treks through dense greenery and arrives at a small civilization led by an elderly man who introduces himself as Jeff Towel, who claims he also comes from the same place. With the help of his new friends James returns to the Dryland, where a day has passed and the law enforcement begin to set out to search for him. And when he lands back at the port, the elder is recognized by James's close friend, an elderly man named Tom, who claims that Jeff Towel is his ancestor.

Original Chapter:

The sun slowly rises over the horizon and shines its light over the world. This world is different than ours. It is a world divided in half. A planet with one side called "The Blue Zone": a vast ocean, with large roaring waves, with only small islands in the mix. Tiny specs of land with lush greenery and sand in the middle of seemingly endless amounts of the ocean, stretching beyond the horizon, with no other land in sight. On the other side, a monstrous continent with 100 million square miles of land is called "The Dryland," forming a "cap" on the blue and green ( change color as we go ) marble. This is Oberon 52C.

Near a coastal cliff on the edge of the Dryland exists a city with towering skyscrapers, smoking factories, and massive docks with hundreds of boats at the port.

A large fleet of ships approaches the port. They come back with the catch of the morning. Some ships carry massive fish as long as one's arm, still in the nets they were caught in, tied to the end of the boat. Some have large crates of seaweed, bound together by large and thick rubber bands, squeezed tightly into the boxes, and stacked on top of each other into large 3D grids. One ship even had a gigantic whale on its deck, almost big enough to provide a family enough food for their lives.

Another group of ships follows it. These carry salvaged parts of sunken ships. Hulls, masts, decks, and planks come carried on the large vessels. The ships approach and dock at the port. Tall and long cranes pulled the cargo off the watercraft, into the warehouses, and out of the area using trains, planes, helicopters, and trucks.

2 hours later, all the fish and plants had been moved out of the port. Seaweed is transported to processing facilities. The fish are carted off to factories, restaurants, and supermarkets. The whale is dissected under the privacy of a large roof before the meat is transported to the processing stations, the blubber took to the factories, and the bones are repurposed into fancy dresses, umbrella ribs, and hat brims. Finally, the salvaged ship components are moved to the processing stations further into the mainland to be repurposed into newer ships or other products requiring the materials.

One ship has an exceptionally fruitful morning. That ship was a large fishing vessel named the Lucky Lobster. The vessel was driven into a large marina before the owner stepped off the boat. The man is James. And he carries a weight heavier than the massive amounts of fish he catches each morning ( my attempt at a joke ). And here is his story.

James Bass was born at 1:11 PM, January 1st, 2088, at Oceanport Golden Hospital, New Cliffland. He had a pretty good childhood. His father and mother were both fishermen ( or women in his mother's case ), and they instilled the skill of fishing into him from a very young age. When he was 9, he went on his first-morning fishing run with his parents. They came home with staggering amounts of tuna, breaking their personal record, which went on unchallenged for ten years. Over the years, he only got better, his luck and skill contributing to his progress.

When he was 12, he was awarded the Golden Honor for City Support award after catching his millionth fish. He went to Oceanport Elementary School and Seaboard Middle School. He had many friends, the one he was most familiar with being an elder named Tom Towel. He loved to listen to Tom's stories. Tom was from a famous family of warriors, and they owned relics from the past, including a face mask from the pandemic hundreds of years ago.

But everything changed one summer evening when he went out to follow his routine of catching fish. The date was June 15th, 3000: halfway into the new millennium. James had left the port early in the morning when it was still dark and had headed out into the vast ocean. It was incredibly foggy, which was something James noticed. He activated his headlights and set sail onto the sea. James was sailing faster and faster, but unannounced to him, the boy was actually traveling slower. When he thought he only took ten minutes to get out of the regular fishing spot the boy usually traveled to, he actually had taken 6 hours.

While he was out in the dense fog setting out his nets, the world beyond the smog had already begun its day. Children had entered the school and started their classes. By the time James finished catching his fish, a day had passed. And his parents were incredibly anxious. They tried calling him but found he had left his phone at home.

James prepared to return home when something nothing less of a phenomenon happened. His compass started spinning. James was utterly shell-shocked. He looked outside the cabin and saw what he would expect to see on a regular fishing day. He was still facing in one direction. What was happening to his compass? He tried to use his backup compass. It was also spinning. But this was okay, as he was trained to be able to find his way back to land without a compass.

He turned his boat around and began moving towards what he thought was the land. But he was actually heading away from the land, straight into the Blue Zone. However, the phenomenon took a turn. Time slowed down. When James thought that there was no possible way that the distance he had just traveled between his spot and "the land" was this long, 1 second had passed back in the land.

After a while of sailing, James finally saw land. He eagerly increased the power on his rockets when he realized something was wrong. The land was noticeably different from the land he was used to returning to. There were no docks. There were no cliffs. There were no skyscrapers on the horizon, stretching into the clouds. There were no plumes of dark black smoke from factories packaging the fish or burning down the salvaged materials. There was no tall spire of the church that he knew some of his friends went to. In front of him was an island.

With palm trees, shells, and white sand. Beyond the trees was a lush, dense forest. It wasn't a tiny island like he had seen before, as James couldn't even perceive where the tree line stopped. He was confused. Perhaps the boy had ended up somewhere else on the port. But there was no place that he thought he could have arrived at. However, there was a possibility that he had sailed in the wrong way, towards the corner of the island, where perhaps there were forests like these or beaches like these. But this was an island, not the rough ending of a large continent.

James was flabergasted. He stepped off the vessel onto the beach before slamming a few large stakes into the ground and attaching his ship to said stakes. Once he knew his boat wouldn't float away while he was off of it, he looked inside the forest. James, being the curious child he was and having the natural reaction to want to return to safety, trekked into the greenery with his fish knife as a weapon to discover where exactly he was. After ten minutes of stomping through dense plants and small puddles, he saw some light.

As he exited the forest, he saw what was beyond the forest. A village. Not a small one, as a matter of fact. It had large spiked walls, with large log houses inside of the walls ( think Lincoln's Cabin ), and a fire in the center of the village with log stools. As he walked towards the complex, the large front doors opened, and men in contemporary-looking clothes walked out, albeit with furs and leather instead of cloth. An elder with colorful clothes walked out to meet him, with bodyguards around him. They stopped around 20 meters from the front doors, each "party" looking at the other.

The man stared harshly at James, his bodyguards doing the same. James tensed, gripping his fish knife tightly. However, instead of looking upon his form ( as he was still young compared to him ) and saying, "It is not despair, for despair is only for those who see the end beyond all doubt. We do not", he smiled.

"Welcome to our village. The name is Jeff: Jeff Towel. Where do you come from?" he asked.

"New Cliffland, Sire," James stated tensely.

"I happened to come from there too. Is the pandemic still a problem?" he asked.

"What pandemic?" James asked, confused.

"I suppose it has been resolved then," he said with a chuckle, "I was operating a crane when a rather strong wind blew in, blowing me straight out of the crane! And when I woke up, I was here. How much I long to go back to the Dryland. We have been trying to build a boat, but we don't have one!".

James frowned, "I came here in a boat. I was fishing in the foggy seas when my compass started spinning. I went in the direction I thought was the Dryland but ended up here!".

"Fear not, young man!" the elder stated, jumping around with quite a lot of energy for his age, "We have found a way back to the Dryland. But all we needed was a boat. After all, we’ve been planning for 60 years! Now that we have one ( James' boat ), we can return to Dryland!". James and the people from the village boarded his boat and Jeff drove the boat. He ignored the compass and closed his eyes. Piloting the boat just by imagining the course he had to travel. Using the 60 years he had on the island, they had watched the stars move across the sky and using that information, they found out which way to go. By the time they had returned, it had already become the evening of the next day. There were police boats at the dock, said owners of the police boats on a map at the center of the dock.

"He's back!" someone yelled. As he docked, his friends and family ran toward him, worried about where he was. He described what had happened to him the previous day and showed them the people he had met. Suddenly elder Tom ( the man James was good friends with ) pushed through the crowd, staring at the other elder with wide eyes.

"Impossible," he declared, "Ancestor Jeff Towel?"

(c) Kevin and Kenny Yang 2023