Heartbreak And Hope Ch 07

CIS = Cornwall Islands Social. The social media app of the Cornwall Islands that has functions of Facebook, Twitter, and Outlook combined along with shopping and cultural events.

My universe, my rules. I am aware the practices in my story do not happen in real life including the social scenes regarding sports. Yes, I know I don't know crap about The Premier League. The culture in The Cornwall Islands is roughly 30% US, 40% UK, 5% other Europe and 25% my warped little brain.

Brownie points = the concept of emotional bank account. Look it up if you care.

The teppanyaki tables come from this Youtube video code: GPbueswx2do

In the US is a fast food chain called Chick-fil-A. They are known to have drive-through lines that are extraordinarily fast compared to other chains.

Gravitationally challenged = faux nice way of saying someone is fat

Gunner vs gooner... I'm a clueless American writing a story. In my universe, it's Gunners on The Cornwall Islands which don't actually exist.

Cop cut. Men's hair buzzed short on the sides and only a bit longer on top.

There is a bit of fun with characters that belong to George Anderson. No, this is not a Feb Sucks redo. Just a few fun paragraphs and a throwaway line or three.

St Ives. South island and current home of MC. The main town is named Somerset.

St. Austell. North island and the home of the other half of the people taking part in the project with Movie Max. The largest town is named Devon.

Covid does not exist in this world.

Car Park= parking lot. Some people in my story speak more 'UK' than American or vice versa.

The design of the surgegate wouldn't work in real life. Pretend it does.

Monday, March 2 2020

Wearing my new pair of steel-toe boots thanks to my voucher from work, I arrived at The East Surgegate complex that morning, stepped out of my car and walked toward the office trailer. I was mostly used to the naked all the time thing, but it was just odd to have only steel toe boots as the only thing I was wearing besides my wedding ring. I opened the door to the construction trailer and found Howard was at his desk, asleep. Shit.

I backed up, closed the door softly then stomped and opened the door a bit overhard and pretended that I didn't see that. Howard looked, blinking away the sleep and once awake, he stood up with a bit of disinterest and gave me the tour and reintroduced me to the team. Howard told them to take me individually to the different work areas then went back to the office trailer, probably for another nap.

Each individual supervisor took me to his or her area and explained what they were doing and how they were progressing and I dutifully took notes to update the reports on how complete the project was. At eleven, I met a man who would shake the whole project up. Then it shook the Interior Department and even parts of the Islands' government.

For my third meeting, I was passed from the controls supervisor to the electrical installation supervisor, Owen Corneys, a man proud of his Cornish heritage. Owen was cordial if a bit distant, but I accepted it as he was professional. As we were about to finish, Owen looked at me with an odd expression. He just stopped and looked at me, thinking. Then he sighed and I knew. I just knew something was amiss and asked, "What is wrong?"

He looked at me and said, "The traction motors are bad. I was there when they tested them after we put them in the motor mounts and powered them up."

The traction motors drove a railed wheel system while the surgegates were parked on the drydock if the water level was not high enough for the thrusters to act alone. It was twenty-one sets of flanged wheels set approximately fifty feet apart along the length of the surgegate with a blind, unpowered wheelset between each. I asked, "All of them?"

Owen nodded, "All are a risk. Three out of seven that we tested failed outright with no load, just hooked to the power system."

I knew the design as I had studied them on my office computer. Each surgegate was a thousand foot long, one hundred foot high and one hundred twenty foot wide reinforced steel hull that sat on land in a drydock the vast majority of time. but when needed, ran out on a special rail system on multiple sets of galvanized steel flanged wheels in the drydock. The gates of the drydock would be opened to flood it and achieve partial or full buoyancy depending on the tide. Once fully into the water, it floated out and moved by thrusters and once all the way out, the north gate and the south gate would lock together and valves at the bottom would open to allow the whole thing to sink onto the floor of the harbor which was exactly fifty feet deep from end to end at the opening.

Across the harbor entrance on the seafloor was a concrete structure attached to pilings deep into bedrock on which the two hulls, now locked together, would sit. Once in place, pumps are engaged to fill the portion above the water to add even more weight. The upper portions above the low tide line on the seaward side was sloped so that waves hitting it would deflect upward rather than hit it head on like a battering ram. The harborside was angled a bit more vertically but was also sloped so that the whole thing would be pushed less by wind and not act like a giant sail. Any waves that carried over the top fell into the rear half which was a channel that used gravity to take the water away then through channels on the shore back into the sea.

Behind that were four pumps at each gate that could pump 60 cubic meters of water per second and there were four of those groups of four just on the East gates. Still, that was a tiny dent in a harbor fifteen miles long by five miles across. It was all just to slow down the surges that managed to spill over the gates, not stop them. A mile in front of each complex was a massive seawall to break the largest waves coming directly toward the gates, but nothing would stop the surge itself from coming to the gates. The seawalls were forty years old and had prevented the largest waves from entering the harbor but there was always the risk of a surge.

The surgegates were to be new additions. Twice the islands had been hit by large hurricanes. In 2012, Hurricane Maxine came within a half meter of flooding downtown Somerset even though in 1946, it had been filled in and raised to a minimum of three and a half meters above the high tide line. Since 2012, the surgegate project was initiated and The Cornwall Islands began the massive project with the navy base lease payments diverted entirely to pay for it.

This was a nice design, but if the surgegate did not deploy because of the motors, it was just a giant hunk of metal sitting in a drydock.

FUCK!

I had to do it, 'I did not name Howard, but I sent Gemma a text: 'Big problem. All the undersea traction motors are bad.'

I felt like a snitch, but this was big and critical for The Cornwall Islands. I got a text a minute later, 'Are you sure?"

I replied, 'Absolutely.'

She replied two agonizing minutes later, 'Stay on site.'

I asked Owen about the motors. They were a Chinese brand he had never heard of and they had failed numerous times in tests before being installed."

My job had gone from zero to one hundred in stress level and asked, "How many are installed?"

Owen looked at me and asked, "You actually want to do something about it?"

I looked at him wondering why there was any debate, "Uh. Yeah!"

Owen had this look. Relief. Pure relief, "About half. Howard says they are fine. All the project managers say they are fine. They aren't. I swear. They aren't!"

FUUUUUUCK!

I asked about the motors, and Owen said he had looked into the problem on his own time. Only four companies made the motors with the quality we needed; one each in Japan, Australia, The Netherlands, and The US. He almost seemed hopeful. His demeanor changed and asked me to stay inside the gate as he went to his truck to bring back an Ipad. He then showed me the website of each of the companies that made better motors.

I gave him my work email and told him, "Please email me all four of those suppliers' websites."

We went over the problem for a while and he really seemed to warm up to me for showing him simple respect and listening to him. He understood that I considered him a skilled tradesman and not just some random unskilled guy with no knowledge. It was forty-five minutes later when we walked out an access door of the hull of the surgegate and toward the office. Howard's car was gone and Gemma's car was the only one at the office.

We walked into the office to find Gemma who looked distraught, "Howard is gone. Permanently. Say nothing to anyone besides your spouses and make sure they do not talk openly."

She looked at me in the eyes and snapped, "Say NOTHING! Either of you!"

We nodded understanding the gratuity of the situation.

Gemma sighed then softened, "You two say nothing. Owen. Stop your crew from installing any more of the motors and tell them they get the afternoon off. With pay and if I hear that ONE of them said anything publicly about the motors, the afternoon is WITHOUT pay for all of them!"

Owen nodded and said, "You can count on us."

Gemma smiled ruefully and said, "Owen. I need to talk to Joshua privately. And... sorry for snapping."

Owen nodded in agreement and said, "This is very bad."

Gemma nodded, "This is critical."

Gemma waited until we were alone then talked to me, "I found Howard asleep when I got here. As if that is not bad enough, I asked him nicely about the motors and when he did not come up with a good answer about the motors, I asked him very NOT nicely. I cannot say more, yet. Go home to your wife. Thank you. If we cannot work this out it may cost me my job and I don't know everything yet. Your flex time is working against you tomorrow. Be here at one in the afternoon and you work until nine in the evening. Sorry."

I was being paid well, sometimes a job of consequence meant hours were not regular. Honestly, that part felt good, my job mattered and maybe, I stopped something critical from becoming an actual disaster.

I went home and talked to Jennifer but I told her that I could not say anything specific other than there was a big supplier problem with inferior goods. She looked worried but I assured her it was a long-term problem and not a short-term one. With such a stressful day, we just went to a Tesco Express at the end of the street to choose a couple of their takeaway meals and ate at home. I was good with it as even a takeaway dinner sure beat the store brand noodle dinners from our time before Movie Max.

Tuesday, March 3, 2020.

I arrived at the surgegate a few minutes early and Gemma's car was there. Walking into the office trailer, Gemma looked at me with a haggard look, "Joshua. Howard and the three other project managers have been dismissed from their jobs and... all are under arrest."

I looked at Gemma in shock and she handed me an envelope, with her resigned smile, "Congratulations." She paused, "I guess."

I opened the envelope, my title was now Senior Project Manager and my pay was twenty-four hundred dollars per week.

I looked at her and asked, "Really?"

She nodded, "We are a small country and we have a staff exactly as large as we need for the long term. I don't have a bunch of spare senior project managers and you did exactly what I needed you to do. You saw something big and did something about it. Hundreds knew of the problem, even if they were not complicit in the fraud. All someone had to do was bypass the senior project managers and tell me one sentence. ONE SENTENCE! They failed. You didn't."

"You are now one of the senior project managers.. I know this is early but it is what it is. I am moving two senior project managers for the tramways project to the other surgegates as of tomorrow and finding their replacements as soon as I can, but that project will be delayed. I have to figure out who to promote for the fourth surgegate then I have to backfill the positions I just took the project managers out of."

She looked at me, "Joshua. I chose to promote you because you did exactly what you needed to do by alerting me when the problem was critical. My days just got much longer and I don't have time to handhold you. You have a good team working for you. Use them."

I nodded. Gemma said, "Even if it costs me my job, thank you. On behalf of all of us on the islands, Thank you. If we learned about this later, they may have failed when we could not do anything. Your first job is to find one-hundred-sixty-eight one-thousand horsepower submersible electric traction motors that will fit the surgegates."

It took me a second as the gate had forty-two of those motors then I realized the enormity of it, ALL of the motors needed replacing in all four gates.

I looked at her and asked, "Was it a scandal?"

Gemma nodded, "Bribery. Once arrested, the Minister of Law got a discovery summons for their banking information. They didn't even hide the payments very well, simply calling the bribes consultancy fees."

We were just standing there then Gemma received a text and she looked shocked. She showed it to me. It was from the Prime Minister, Charles Hall himself to all the directors of the Interior Department. Nathan Blaine, the Interior minister had been dismissed and was under arrest for bribery.

She looked at me and said, "It will take weeks to replace him. Your highest priority is your gate and finding replacement motors."

I looked at Gemma and exclaimed, "Holy shit!"

Gemma chuckled and nodded and said, "Holy shit. Indeed."

She sighed then said, "Be brief in any communications with me, but your highest priority is those motors. GET THEM DONE. Send me any additional funding requirements IMMEDIATELY."

It was trial by fire and I was okay with it and I had a good experienced team to help me. Sometimes a man sees the opportunity to shine and be the one to step up and this was that time. Gemma looked at me and pointed at the surgegate, "This is your thousand foot long baby now. Finish it."

She sighed, tired, "I have to go. I have a long day... and night, coming up."

I called the team in from laborer to the tradesman to my construction manager, I brought all of them in. I looked at them then gave them the short version of the mess. One of the welders raised his hands. I had a sinking feeling and gave a faux smile as I asked, "Yes?"

He looked at me and asked, "Are you going to actually do anything about problems?"

I nodded and he said, "Our welding rigs are shit."

I was pretty sure I already knew the answer but asked, "Some Chinese and probably no actual brand?"

He nodded, "They break a lot and yeah, Chinese, but not even a brand name made in China. I almost brought in my Lincoln Electric rig, but Howard said he would not be responsible for them if anything happened."

I had this sinking feeling and asked, "Anything more problems from anyone else?"

The men looked around and eventually, ten hands were raised.

FUCK!

I sighed, "Anyone with a specific issue come see me and we will fix it. Or... at least start the process."

I looked out at the crew, some were nodding. I realized then that on Friday when I came for my first tour, they were not rolling their eyes at me, they were skeptical of Howard, his naps and his lax attitude about problems the work crews were bringing up. All I had to do was listen to them with respect and they would respond in kind.

I looked at the welder who had spoken up and asked his name. He said his name was Jack Melville. I told him then announced, "New rule. Bring your welding rigs and if something happens, I will replace or have them repaired unless you do something stupid. The new rule is pretty simple, 'Don't be stupid'."

Jack smiled and so did the rest of the welders. Jack spoke up, "Uh, my rig weighs quite a bit and needs to be on my truck."

I said, "So put it on your truck."

He sighed, "And we are not allowed to bring our trucks past the car park gate at the end of the lot without special permission which is rare. It's a thousand feet from the gate."

I sighed, Howard was an idiot, "New rule. Open the damn gate and again, don't be stupid where you park your truck."

They were all nodding and kind of smiling. One problem down and apparently ten more to go. I texted Gemma about the issue and what I had done.

Gemma texted back, 'Just get it done and don't sacrifice safety. I promoted you for a reason; to give you the authority to let you get the project done. I'm not going to micromanage you."

I liked the feeling of being important. Sue me, but it was pure ego food. I looked at the line of people bringing me problems and that had now grown to fifteen. Shit. I needed help with this, there was going to be a long list of shit that needed fixing and I needed help on following up.

I texted Gemma, 'I need some admin help. Please send Arra'

Gemma texted back, 'Sending her now. You understand that she is just a receptionist.'

I texted, "She is very intelligent and will make a great admin. The office trailer is cammed and I can control myself so nothing bad will happen between her and I.'

Gemma texted back, "You having relations with her never came into my mind. She loves her man, Cal. It involves her receiving a promotion. You sure?"

I texted back, 'Yes. She will need a computer, cell phone and an Ipad with a cell connection.'

An hour later, Arra arrived with a cell, an Ipad and a pair of steel toe boots. She pointed at the trunk of her car which held a new boxed computer. A second car arrived two minutes later. The government IT guys arrived and went into the trailer to start putting things together.

Arra greeted me with a cheek kiss, "Thank you for your confidence in me, Joshua. I love my new job and my new pay!"

I walked inside carrying her new computer. The IT people were installing two more desks and two more computers along with the network connections needed. I had to admit I loved the efficiency of The Cornwall Islands. Something needed to be done and they just did it. No forms and no waits. I was expected to request the items I needed and my audit was the results of what I used the items for. I received a text from Gemma, 'Having them put in an additional workstation in addition to the one for Arra, just in case.'

I told Arra she was most welcome for her recommendation and that we had a lot to do. With her help I had it organized and I was only leaving a half hour later than normal though I would have to go back to work after dinner. Gemma texted me for an update and I gave her some good news. It was only small good news but it was at least something. I had the overall issues listed, organized, and we would work the next day to get them worked out.

Once the list of issues was done I texted Gemma that I would need purchasing authorization and I would need a lot. Gemma texted me to swing by the office briefly before I headed to dinner. I texted my wife to meet me at work and we would go out after I took care of some final work business.

Gemma was waiting for me at my desk when I came in. She handed me a Visa card and told me there was a million to fund it and if I needed more to text her. It was a bit worn and obviously something unusual. Instead of a name, it said, 'The Cornwall Islands Interior Department'.

Gemma looked at me and said, "Those Interior Department cards are very special and you will need your ID every time you use it. If you order something online you will immediately receive an email asking for your ID number to verify it is you. You may not let Arra use the card and only you may place orders on it. It is for the big things, not the small things. Use it sparingly as there are only five of those cards in existence."

She also looked me in the eye and smiled her first real smile in a few days, "Thank you, Joshua. It looks like we chose well with you. She handed me a different Visa card with my name on it. It said, Joshua Simmons, Senior Project Manager, Interior Department, The Cornwall Islands. She said, "We just had that made. Your senior project manager Visa card for petty cash items less than a thousand dollars a day. Take your wife out with it with my blessing. You earned it."