Chapter 3: The Salvager's Paradise and the Ship's Ghost

## Chapter 3: The Slavager's Paradise and the Ship's Ghost

Short Summary:

At the Salvager's Paradise, salvager Timothy discovers a naval vessel dating back to the 25th century. The name of the vessel is the S.R.A. Homefleet, who participated in the Watery Wars before being sunk by enemy bombers. As he and his two friends, siblings Sebastian and Olivia start working on salvaging the ship, many supernatural events begin happening. Sebastian and Olivia return home early and as Timothy drives away, the ship's canons, which hadn't been disassembled yet, seems to turn slightly towards the left room, where Timothy's most prized possesion sits in. A brown case with the letters JNATBWB.

Original Chapter:

Oberon 52C was a planet with many beautiful locations. The Jefferson Falls was beautiful: a towering cliff over 2 miles tall, with tons of water spilling off the side. Jefferson Falls was a "must-see" location for the East Coast of the Dryland and on the Top 5 Locations of the East Coast by VacationSupporter. The Golden Beaches was what it sounded like:  a long beach near the North side of the Dryland, with mysterious golden beaches and a popular location for whale-watching. And, of course, the Ratava Spires, a famous landmark with towering, thin mountains covered in greenery, is well-known for being the most recognizable location in Semaj Noremac's Ratava. The Blue Zone had plenty of landmarks too.

For example, the Whole Blue, a section of the sea approximately four nautical miles East of New Cliffland, is famous for its abnormally large sea creatures and their many attributes. For example, the whales there had no blubber, the fish there had no bones, the eels "came seasoned," and all food there came sterilized.

The Golden Archipelago is a chain of uninhabited islands around five-hundred miles from New Cliffland. The Archipelago was known for its scenic waterfalls, beautiful caves, and its inhabitants, known as the Immortals, as the animals there never died and were the best of their kind: the birds had beautiful multi-colored plumage, butterflies large with brilliant colors, frogs non-hostile yet with vivid yellows and greens, and even jaguars with distinct spots and long tails.

But there was one place not known to many, and to those who knew it, they called the Hidden Gem or the Salvager's Paradise. It was a hole around eight miles long and a mile deep at the center, with water moving towards the middle at the East and up, out of the hole at the West. The water around it flowed naturally, but the second it reached the edge, it started flowing towards it. And at the inside was a salvager's dream. Inside the hole was hundreds of crashed ships piled on each other: ferries, sailing ships, fishing ships, and more.

To the outsiders, it might have looked like a heap of trash or a calamity but not the salvagers. To salvagers, it was a massive heap of potential material. And one of those hopeful salvagers was a man named Timothy Smith.

Timothy was a 23-year-old salvager. He had a good reputation back at the Dryland. Timothy was well-educated and had a caring family. He was working towards a degree in mechanical engineering. And he loved doing the one thing he loved. That thing was salvaging ships. He had liked the idea as a child. Salvaging ships, to him, was being able to take something seemingly useless and turn it into something extraordinary. He had a method for how he did his job.

He would sail to the Salvager's Paradise and take home a ship. He attached his tugboat to the vessel and pulled it back to his dock at the Iron Valley, a city in the country of Coastria. He would push it into his "shed" and drain the floor before starting to work. First, he did research. He wrote down the keel number of the ship and researched its history. He discovered who owned it and what it was before it crashed. He then added this file to a website he created called Crashed and Found. He would harvest everything except the things that were not harvestable. He worked with two other people. His friend from school, Sebastian Belch, and his sister Viola Belch. All the wood and the beams made up the infrastructure he disassembled using his gear and sold. Timothy had just come home from another day, tugging a wrecked battleship called the S.R.A. Homefleet, a destroyer he found lying on the side of the pile. He sat at his computer and began researching. The ship, Timothy found, was in service in the year 2504 during the Watery Wars until it sank because of enemy bombers. He studied the vessel until it was morning and drove to school. He attended Charles Green Mechanical University, where he studied Engineering and History. His day went well. He finished a few assignments and got some work done on the ship research while at school. When he returned to the shipyard later that day, he began disassembling the ship. A few hours later, his friends joined him in decomposing it. By night, they had finished dissecting the vessel and were ready to disassemble it.

"Good job today," Sebastian remarked, lifting a can of Valley Rain to his lips.

"Yeah," Viola replied, sticking to water for the drive home.

"How much do you think we made today?" Timothy asked, leaning back in his chair.

"A few hundred dollars or so," Sebastian replied, throwing the Valley Rain bottle into the trash. He and Viola returned to their car and strapped in.

"See you tomorrow!" Viola yelled before driving away. Timothy closed up the shop for that day and sat in his car before speeding away toward his apartment. He tallied up the materials he had gathered today and made a list so that he could sell them to the metal workers at the factory.

Steel - 9,000 Tons: 18,000,00

Wood - 100 Tons: 258,000

Other Materials - 100 Tons: 100,000

Total: 18,358,000

They would start disassembling tomorrow. A few weeks later, they had finished deconstructing the ship. They had used heavy construction equipment to pick apart the hull and infrastructure before selling it to buyers on the web. All said and done they made a good profit. Life was good.

(c) Kevin and Kenny Yang 2023