Some people say that life is just a series of consequences which radiate from every choice you make. From the clothes you put on in the morning to what time you go to bed at night. You could leave the house at 7:30 in the morning for an interview and land your dream job, or you could leave the house at 7:35 and get hit by a semi. If only you'd left a few minutes earlier.
Still others say that life is a pre-determined series of events leading you towards a destiny that has already been decided for you, even if you don't know it yet. Your life is on a track, and you have no control over anything. You're just along for the ride, inching ever closer to an inevitable, already scheduled ending.
Those people are dicks.
I don't like the thought that at some point, some almighty power thought it would be amusing to stick me here on this hellhole of an island, separated from everything I love, everything I care about. I could die here at any moment, and nobody would ever find me. Just like Amelia Earhart.
But I'm getting ahead of myself. Let me back up a bit.
My name is Jason Wheeler. I'm 22 years old. I like skateboarding, football, girls. Nothing unusual about my life, nothing extravagant or amazingly special. I thought it'd be a good idea for me to get out and see a bit of the world after college, even if only as a series of distant landscapes from the railed confines of a small, private cruise ship. Sure, I would've liked to have gone on one of those luxury liners that can pack thousands of people, but who can afford that? I just had to stick with a tourist vessel. Barely held a few hundred tourists and about thirty to forty staff.
God, I'm an idiot. But I couldn't have known that then.
I left on a Saturday, not that it means much now. I waved to my family, promising to check in now and again. The day I left was beautiful, and the day after that, and the day after that. Fishing during the day, all the while listening to a Hispanic tour guide point out various points of interest. I'm not entirely convinced he really knew what he was doing. He kept referring to dolphins as fish.
The fourth day was when everything went to hell. I've always been a heavy sleeper, and still I'm not sure how I managed to sleep through the pitching of the boat. It would rock left, then right, then left, then right, then further right just to mess with you as soon as you thought you'd found a pattern to steady yourself. I was awakened finally by a wall decoration which flew off its hook and smacked me in the face.
Rain was splattering the windows like pellets from a machine gun. I tried to look outside, but saw nothing but empty, overwhelming black. Voices were yelling on the deck. I was understandably confused. This was just a tourist boat, we were scheduled to circle a few islands, never going all that terribly deep into the endless sea. Maybe twenty miles offshore at most. Surely someone would have seen a storm coming, and headed for the harbor.
Under the assumption that we were close to land, I raced for the stairs. I thought I could help, a noble thought, although in retrospect not the smartest one I could have had right then. I pushed open the door to the deck and was instantly drenched by freezing rain. Struggling to gain a foothold while slipping on the deck, I stumbled towards the nearest figure I could see in between illuminating flashes of lightning. I could see his mouth moving, but couldn't hear any words over the wind and waves.
"WHAT?!" I yelled, barely able to hear my own voice.
I recognized the young man as one of the other tourists, he had a rope in his hand. He yelled again, I still couldn't hear him. He was pointing downwards. He didn't want my help after all. I was already drenched, but there was no sense in making a bad situation worse. I had just turned to head back down below when the wave hit, and the boat rocked. There was a sensation of flying, and then utter helplessness.
They say, in space, nobody can hear you scream. I guess that's kind of what this is like. There's nothing more terrifying than not being able to breathe and not even knowing which way is up. My brain was already trying to figure out what the hell I was doing in freezing water, and ordering me to stop doing it at once. My lungs screamed, equally angry with me for suddenly betraying them after 22 years of faithful service.
I was completely turned around, struggled to swim upwards. The waves instantly made me their bitch, tossing me back and forth like a feather in a hurricane. I couldn't see anything long enough to figure out where anything else was. I still have no idea how I made it out of that. Freezing rain, freezing waves, freezing wind. It was not an ideal place to be.
I remember being plunged underwater at the mercy of one particularly angry wave, and when my eyes next opened, I was facedown in sand. The chances of this particular occurance had to be upwards of impossible. My lungs were burning and my head was pounding. The storm raged on, but the sea had been deprived of its prize. I tried to call for help, call for anything, but my tongue was heavy and swollen from all the seawater I'd taken in.
Alright, first thing's first. Get away from the ocean trying to kill me. I crawled forward in total darkness, expecting my hand to land on a snake or the ground to give way into a long forgotten pit of poison spikes. Only my burning desire to get away from the crashing waves kept me going. I crawled until the sand gave way to rocks, and the rocks eventually gave way to what felt like grass. There must have been trees overhead, as the torrent of rain suddenly turned off.
Exhaustion overcame me, and darkness took me once more.
My eyes opened, I don't know how long after that. The storm was still visible in the distance, the waves still angry. But the rain had stopped. It was light out, I had never been so thankful for light. I lay underneath a cover of tall trees, slightly bent from the force of the winds and dripping from their leaves. Down below was a rocky beach, an expanse which spread an indeterminable amount of distance on both sides. I slowly rose to my feet, something very strange was going on here.
Okay, common sense time. Pretty much every inch of the ocean has been charted, hasn't it? No way an island this big would escape notice. Especially one so close to a travel route. The ship would be discovered missing, nearby landmasses would be searched. I'd be home by the weekend. But I couldn't stop thinking about the storm. How the hell had it come up out of nowhere? It didn't make sense. I stumbled my way down to the beach, littered with debris. Alright, so first, scavenge anything useful. I began picking up anything made of wood, anything that might be flammable later. Those got thrown into a pile beyond the reach of the waves. Useless now, but they'd dry off.
Scanning the horizon didn't help any, either. No land. There was nothing. How the hell was there nothing? The ship hadn't gone that far. I picked up a large metal box half buried in the sand near the sea and shook it. Something clanked inside. Sounded promising. I tried the latch. Locked. Of course it was, had I really expected anything else?
Damn it all.
I carried the box over to one of the rocks, a particularly pointy piece of work, and jammed the box down upon its edge several times. The lock broke apart after several tries, and a small radio flew into the grass from within its confines. I almost cried right there and then. I couldn't possibly be that lucky, I'd be home by sunset. I snatched up the device, and turned the dial with shaking hands.
Static. Holy shit, it worked. Another impossibility. All of these impossible things working in my favor so easily were starting to stack up. Something was very unusual about this place. Was I dead? It didn't feel like it, something was far too real about all this.
"The worst luck ever followed by the best luck ever..." I said to myself, and adjusted the tuning dial. Static, static, static, every frequency, every station. Impossible. I'd spoken too soon. I continued tuning, convinced there had to be someone, somewhere. On one particular hairline frequency, the static cleared. I could only pray.
Trying to overcome the urge to smash the button in, I fell to my knees in the sand and whispered into the unit.
"Hello? Hello? Someone? Anyone?" I pleaded.
The response came, but it felt like I waited for hours. "Um. Yes?" Came the answer. A female. Thank Jesus.
"Oh thank God, listen, this is Jason Wheeler. I need help."
"Jay-sun? That's an odd name. Are you alright?."
"I'm not alright, but I'm not hurt." I said. I couldn't help but be surprised. The hell did that mean? Why didn't she seem more concerned that I was in trouble? Why was my name stranger than hers?
"Oh really? And if my name is so strange, then what's yours?" I demanded.
"Mine? My name is Lyra."