Entry 3

Mavis Island — Camp Life 1

After dinner, 1900.

I’m starting to adjust to life on Mavis Island Research Station. It took a while for me to get my bearings. I can’t believe it’s already been three weeks in country. My coworkers and I are settling into a routine both at Base Camp and out on missions.

I’ve adjusted to my bunkmate CJ’s nocturnal comings and goings. He talks in his sleep a fair amount, which doesn’t keep me awake, but I can’t help but listening when I haven’t managed to get to sleep yet. He stands and sit, stands and sits repeatedly, sometimes. There are all sorts of recurring names in his mutterings, such as a woman named Eleanor who he seems to be afraid of or intimidated by.

He keeps telling someone named Chad the same instructions for his motorcycle, but Chad apparently can never remember whatever jargon CJ is telling him. I think the dog he calls Bartok is real, but I don’t want to ask, as I don’t want him to know I can hear his sleep murmuring. It might make him feel sheepish.

CJ is a skilled Journeyman Desolomer and I believe he’ll make a great replacement for Jacky after she graduates. And he’s a funny kind of guy when he’s not in the field. Whenever mail comes around and they call his name, he hops up no matter how tired he is and says, “CJ Lee, that’s me!”

He studied abroad in Germany in undergrad, where he developed a passion for mustard. At the Mavis Island Base Camp mess, whenever he inevitably needs more mustard, and I’m nearest a bottle of it, he shoots me with finger guns and says, “slide me some of that golden goodness, brother!” I think him being the oldest sibling when his parents got in the accident turned him into part leader and part cheerleader for his family.

The amount of knowledge I have about vehicular maintenance could fit a hundred times into CJ’s knowledge on the subject. I warned him I’ll never be turtle man again, but I tag along when he’s working on the Mitsubishi to try to learn more about standard field vehicles. It all sounds like Greek to me. I have no idea what a darren fluctuator is, or a demi-groton. Where I should mount the redantic wolfspill when snow is on the forecast is a mystery to me, but I’m at least learning how to calibrate the Jess needles after ignition. CJ is a good and patient teacher, which is saying something considering I consider myself to be just as bad a student.

Just like me, my bunkmate gets up every morning when the bugle recording crackles through the tinny camp speakers at 0430. I’m glad for this, because when I was overseas for a while I had a glue pot of a roommate who needed me to get him up in the morning and then followed me around like a hungry stray dog. CJ hops out of bed and slides into the shower shoes he places under the bunk in the exact same spot each night. “Water is good, water is wise,” he sings in baritone on the way to the showers.

The undergrad who knew everyone’s names when I returned that first night after the filbospheric churn of September 19-20 is one of the students CJ has TA’ed for. Her name is Penelope Farris-Washington. She’s just an eager learner who wanted to be up to speed on the new team of researchers coming to Mavis Island for the fall ‘09 expedition. CJ said she got a C+ in the first class she took with him, but an A- in the last one. That’s solid improvement. I have no doubt his teaching skills are to thank, not that she isn’t putting in the hours.

At breakfast we usually have some combination of bottom oats, sea salt and lemon kettle cakes, and assorted mangos and junipers. They did not forget to order the matcha, thankfully, and traditional Mavisian gertis gertis tea is in abundance. It has a kind of honeysuckle aroma, but is more coriander on the tongue.

It’s a strange morning drink, but I’m starting to get used to it. The skin lesions I developed on that first night on Cape Stanwell are starting to heal, finally, and the Mavisian employees swear the gertis gertis tea is to thank for it. They tell me it’s a “hair of the dog” kind of remedy.

After breakfast I generally review some of the barks we got on the first night. Of course, the lab back on the mainland will review most of those and do a wholistic study, but I enjoy putting a few under the microscope and taking notes. I managed to get through a whole canister already, and made all kinds of observations.

For instance, when a high-polarity carbonalturer extracts filbospheric excrements from in a high barometric system and at high altitude, the anti-energy actually inverses its polarity and settles towards the bottom of the filbospheric excrements (we call those barks, FYI).

Now, if I had brought my low-polarity carbonalturer, I probably would have observed the opposite, where the anti-energy would become supercharged rise to the top of the bark. This phenomenon has been named (the “Garrett Effect,” after the scientist who discovered it), and I took a whole course in grad school on its implications for filbospheric macroprogeneration. I didn’t have room for a low-polarity carbonalturer, of course, which would have taken up half the plane. I don’t think it even would have made a difference at altitude, for that matter. One day, I’ll have all these tools on hand, I’m sure. It’s a new field and these instruments are both very rare and very expensive.

Lunch back at the mess is generally a collective lunch-and-learn. We share what we’ve been studying on the island, and Professor Lopez prods us with followup questions to get us to think about broader implications and our own blindspots. It’s been very beneficial for me to hear more about Jacky’s work. It’s like being in the mind of a genius.

Her theory of distillification for non-stetious hario clanes will revolutionize the field when she defends her dissertation. Sometimes I find myself with my mouth wide open in awe as she explains how we can actually turn hario clanes feces into a green alternative for non-stetious plactofuel. I keep asking her to explain it again and again, because even though I’m one of seven or eight people in the field, I have trouble wrapping my head around it. I get so excited about the idea of a zero carbon fuel for operating a Tertis or a delnometer that I sometimes have trouble getting to sleep at night.

In another life I could have been a Mavisian. The lunch fare is simple and light, to support peak productivity and mental agility. We are served a single egg and cucumber dumpling and two liters of gertis gertis tea. They tell me to limit my matcha intake to one cup per morning due to the unusual barometric pressure of the island. The egg and cucumber dumpling is naturally served on a large plate with trangonid oil to drizzle on top, but that’s a bit of an outsider embellishment. The Mavisians don’t use trangonid oil in cooking outside the context of a wedding or Belavid celebration.

In the afternoons we drill. There’s a lot of climbing onto and off of the Mitsubishi and preparing the Tertis at a moment’s notice. Professor Lopez has us fire the harpoon gun at least 20 times a day. Since this is my first expedition she also has to train me on the rubber speedboat. For now I’ve just been using the simulator they have set up in the Ops tent in Base Camp. It’s not that I don’t have plenty of seat time with speedboats. But operating one in the Bay back home is totally different from the rough seas around Mavis Island. I’m just glad I’m learning here and not in the aquatic graveyard around the Rable Islands.

The days are getting shorter and the lupus dragonicus are starting to howl at sundown. It’s safe, as they’re in the hills on the other side of the island. I’m with very experienced field researchers, so I’m not overly concerned about our readiness should an attack come.

Dinner is a bit of a celebration on Mavis Island Base Camp. All the field researchers and local guides who made it through the day come together and feast on roasted bellicous, twisted decorals, and a huge loaf of cucumber rye. There are liters of tempus cider on each table.

Generally, a field researcher is invited to tell a story. On my third night, they put me on the spot. I told the story of the first night on the island and the filbospheric churn. There was applause after my story. It was hesitant at first, but after Professor Lopez rose to her feet, Jacky and CJ followed suit and the rest of the room gathered around me, clapping me on the back and saying “boofret cherowah,” the local dialect for “boss of the skies.” It’s not a particularly serious expression, but one of respect nonetheless.

At 2000, CJ and I return to our bunk and either read, play cards, or write to our loved ones. When I have the energy to get out my toughbook, I write a blog entry. CJ and I say goodnight to each other in one of two ways: we either say “see you on the other side,” or, if one of us falls asleep first, the one who is last awake says “boofret cherowah” when he hears the other snore for the first time.

Signing off, it’s 2130. Boofret cherowah. To Maria Francesca and everyone reading, below is ‘our song’ from Yellowcard.

All glory to the University.

There’s a piece of you that’s here with me
It’s everywhere I go, it’s everything I see
When I sleep, I dream, and it gets me by
I can make believe that you’re here tonight
That you’re here tonight