I woke up at around 5:30 and got prepped for the day as usual, slipping out of bed and taking a quick shower before replacing my night gown with my regular uniform, smoothening out each wrinkle and making sure the choker collar wasn't too tight around my neck.
The sky outside was a beautiful crisp blue that descended into orange the closer it got to the sun which peaked out from behind greyed out buildings and a waving reflective ocean.
There was but a few clouds so it was looking to be another bright and productive day for the base.
Breathing in the sight before getting down to business, I walked over to the Commander's room and slowly opened the door so as not to wake him, I peeked through the open space and was surprised to see that he was not set in his bed like I would have expected him to be but was instead slumped over his cluttered desk with multiple books left lying open and a phone receiver loosely clutched in his hand, the dial tone repeating from it.
I chuckled a bit under my breath and snuck carefully over to his desk before taking the receiver and placing it back on it's hook and turning the light off on his desk, noting how his expression seemed to relax a bit as he mumbled in his sleep.
I was about to leave him but paused when I noticed the books he had open, the books themselves were fairly common but the pages he had them open to were very specific and obviously correlated, reports of government projects and missing people, ships that disappeared mysteriously and even one on the journalist, Miss Dorothy Kilgallen.
It was easy to assume that he was doing this to find out something regarding Miss Madeline but I hadn't a clue as to what that may be so instead of focusing on it, I placed that question on the backburner for now and continued with my morning tasks.
I snatched up his uniform and his shoes and headed out back the laundry room with them, the suit wasn't exactly at it's freshest but it could be worn another day so instead of wasting a wash on it, I simply steamed out the wrinkles and hung it on a hook to dry then I shined his shoes and made sure that no area went without shoe polish.
Then setting them aside for the moment I boiled up myself a pot of tea and read some of the morning newspaper to whittle away the time, at some point there was a phone call from the artists we hired to work on the Ourang Medan who stated that some drafts had been drawn up and were ready for viewing so I jotted down the meeting time in my notepad and went back to sipping my tea.
Until finally the clock chimed Eight-o-clock, from there I re-wrapped the newspaper with the rubber band it came with, grabbed his uniform and shoes from the laundry room and headed back up to his office.
He was still lying on his desk sleeping with the sunlight behind him peeking in through the shades so I hung his clothes back on the bar in his closet and placed his shoes underneath them, then walked on over to the blinds and opened them.
He immediately took notice and started to stir so I shook his shoulder to wake him the rest of the way up.
"Wha? What's happened?" He muttered, still hunched over.
"What's happened is that you decided to slave over a bunch of books making calls all night instead of getting the proper sleep you needed."
He stretched in his chair and a few loud cracks rang out, a frown on his face appearing shortly after.
He groaned, "Yeah, yeah. Certainly not looking forward to today."
"I bet. Go on and take a shower, we need to meet with a few of those artists and you'll want to be looking your freshest."
"Mmm, already? They called last night and said that they might be ready with something by today but I assumed they were exaggerating."
"Well they weren't. C'mon, I'll get breakfast ready while your in there."
"Alright, see you soon." He said and stood up from his chair just as I walked out and closed the door.
As the water pipes rumbled overhead, I prepared a simple but nutritious breakfast, some cooked sausages and over-easy eggs with a side of mixed fruit and as the toaster popped open, Alex came walking down with his jacket slung over his shoulder and his cap in his hand, his hair still wet from his shower but loosely styled.
"Feel any better?" I asked him.
"Much," he responded, "though still a little sore."
"Well maybe some breakfast will help ease your pain." I told him and placed his plate in front of his seat before setting my own down and getting started on it.
We ate in silence for a little bit occasionally passing comments about the weather and anything else upcoming on our schedule before I remembered what I wanted to ask him.
"By the way, what was it that had you working for so long last night?"
"Oh, well it was um... something I wanted to do regarding our recent recruit."
"I figured that much but from the looks of it, it seemed to do less with what we're trying to do for her now and more with what happened to her."
He stammered a short bit before answering, "W-Well, when she first arrived and we learned who she was, I tried informing Admiral Ferguson about it as per regulation regarding newly summoned ship girls without the aid or knowledge of the United States."
"Mhm."
"But when I told him that the ship girl recovered was the Ourang Medan, he started getting quiet, even a little hostile before hanging up on me."
My eyebrows raised and I'm sure that I was wearing a confused yet suspicious look on my face, I had met Admiral Ferguson several times before with Alex and each time he seemed easy to get along with and perfectly friendly, not at all like the person Alex was describing.
He must have had the same thought because he followed my confusion with; "Exactly. I was off-put by it too so I thought that the only thing to do would be to try and look up why he may have reacted that way."
"I tried calling every higher up I knew and each one reacted almost the same way, one even questioned if I was taking something so I tried looking beyond them and onto reasons why the Ourang Medan went missing in the first place and some of the theories regarding its disappearance."
"And even though many of the theories seemed completely bogus, from extra-terrestrial beings to giant squids, a number of them followed a certain specific story. A military ship carrying some type of secret cargo named the Ourang Medan goes missing with the last message ever being sent saying the words 'I die.' A recovery ship goes out to try and recover any survivors but finds instead the whole crew dead and in a state of absolute fear, so they try to tow the ship away but something inside catches fire and explodes and the ship sinks with all hands lost."
"And? What's that supposed to mean."
"It means that out of all the theories, this is the most reasonable and logical one and since we all now know that there was a real Ourang Medan, we have to ask if any of these theories have any real claim and obviously they do so we have to ask ourselves, what else was real and what happened to the original ship?"
He certainly made some good points, and it did raise some questions like 'what else was real about those theories' but those thoughts were interrupted when I took notice of the time, 8:30.
"Well, maybe you can work on this a bit more when we get back, but not too hard, alright." I told him and walked over with my empty plate.
He looked over at the clock and went wide-eyed for a short moment before chuckling a bit and placing his empty plate on-top of mine, "Right, right. Sorry, I guess I lost track of the time."
"I'll chalk that up to last night." I said and placed the dirty dishes in the sink.
"Yeah, I'll try to keep myself in check." He said as he finally took his jacket and put it on, along with his hat.
"You better, or else I might have to start enforcing a bedtime for you."
He laughed as I opened the door for him and responded, "Thanks mom." as he left with me following closely behind him.
"Hey, you finally going to take a break. You've been working since yesterday."
"Yeah, yeah, yeah. Just as soon as I get this last detail done..."
"You said that an hour ago."
"Well, I wasn't working on this an hour ago."
"Well at least get yourself cleaned up a bit, the Commander is coming here in a few minutes to meet with us and right now, you look like a sleep-deprived madman."
I tried to look over at Roland to see if he was joking or not but he had already left to join the group of men waiting by the door for the man of the hour.
Realizing he was serious, I quickly tried to finish up the last bit of the section I was working on and left to wash myself off real quick.
It was true that I had been working since yesterday but that was only because I had been so inspired by the work assigned to us that I threw myself into it without taking a single break or rest, the end product clearly proving the fruits of my labor with fully detailed sketches to small scale painted version to show the final product.
Though it did mean that I was just now feeling the full effects of my all-nighter and I tried to stifle a yawn as I splashed a little water on my face before looking at myself in the mirror.
I looked presentable enough, though my hair was a little messy and oily and my eyes were beginning to feel the burn of placing so much detail into an early sketch but what could you do.
I walked out of the washroom wiping my hands with a small hand towel before placing it on a counter and finally noticing the group of people staring at me, including the Commander of the naval base and his personal maid.
Swallowing my nervousness, I stood at attention and raised my hand in a salute, "It's a pleasure to meet you. Commander, sir!" I shouted trying to keep my embarrassment from showing itself.
The commander, looking much more calm and relaxed than I did, simply repeated the action and said, "That's quite alright, there's really no need for all this, you may relax."
I took to his word and could feel the tension leaving me when my boss Mr. Cohan approached the commander and said, "Commander Alex, may I introduce Timothy Collins, he's one of our best painters and has personally made the draft of our plans for the ship."
"Following the specific conditions set, I assume." He asked.
"Oh yes, down to the last request. Tom."
"Yes, sir?" I addressed him."
"Would you mind showing our employers the draft you made last night."
I smiled at him and answered, "Not at all sir. This way, would you please." and I led them into my office I had resided several hours in.
It was only now that I had noticed the extreme smell of paint and the absolute mess I had left in my enthusiasm and I could see that the commander had noticed too, with the way he seemed to off-handedly cough into his arm so I subtly went and opened a window.
"Well, here it is." I said gesturing to the several large sheets of paper in the office, there was four of them pinned up on a board with each one portraying a different view of the ship both in sketch form and fully illustrated with color. There was several more littered on the desk portraying several of the instruments that the deck housed at a much closer detail which all lead up to a final product of a perfectly recreated version of the ship in picture form.
Belfast was closely investigating each image, obviously impressed with the large amount of effort put into each one and the commander whistled in amazement, "I have to say, the amount of work done in so little time is seriously impressive, maybe you'd do better in my position, handling paperwork." He chuckled and nudged me slightly.
I politely laughed in return, "Yeah, well. I was inspired to do my best that's all." I replied.
"Wait, you mean to tell me that you did this all on your own!?"
"I-I mean... yeah?"
"...Man, I was joking before but now I'm not sure."
"Well, I'm certainly glad that you like-"
"Wait a second." Belfast suddenly interrupted as she leaned over the stack of papers on the desk looking through them, she had her thumb positioned over a specific one and showed the commander the image shown on it who in turn turned towards me and asked, "How did you come by this?"
I looked over at the image in question and found the sketch of the vehicle I saw from the deck of the ship, though it was detailed slightly differently, with cracked windows, rusted metal, and broken or missing metal doors from the side.
"Oh, I saw it when I was walking about the deck of the ship looking for equipment or cranes I might need to detail and figured that I might try my hand at detailing it my way. Was... was I not supposed to?"
The commander chuckled a bit under his breath and said, "No, you're not in trouble, we just weren't expecting to see it hear that's all. It's perfectly fine... although." And he looked down at the sketch.
"You might have to make some changes to it."
It was long decided that instead of scratching and hammering away all the rust from the ship we would try using a special chemical that would eat away at the rust and not the metal and then scrub away all that remains and so special stations where set up where men would spray the chemicals onto the ship periodically with a high pressured hose.
Which thankfully meant that those among us that didn't have the job of spreading chemicals all day were given the opportunity to take a break since they couldn't have us working while they were spraying dangerous chemicals over our heads.
The downside was that it stunk to high heaven so many of us relented to keeping their gas masks on.
I had decided against that, though I was quickly regretting that decision.
It was like standing near a swimming pool filled with far too much chlorine and somebody had decided to dump a bunch of rotting food in it just to see what would happen.
All in all, it was pretty bad.
It was at the point where I was just about to decide to yank my mask back on and never remove it again when I noticed a couple guys dressed in black suits walking their way over.
"Hey! Hey you! You can't be here, this place is for top-personnel only." I shouted walking over to them.
One of them looked at the other and nodded, the other guy then repeated the same action to the rest who then left behind them, then the person addressed me in a stern and serious manner.
"Pardon for the intrusion but you wouldn't happen to be Foreman Guthrow Wilson, would you."
"Well... Yeah! But-"
"Then would I be correct in assuming then that this ship you're working on is the VC2-S-AP1 S.S. Ourang Medan."
"How do you... Yes! But who the hell would you be?"
The man in his black suit then adjusted his tie and answered.
"My name is Agent Joseph Sedal and Michael Chicane, FBI, and this ship just so happens to belong to the United States Government and so in layman's terms..."
"We'll be taking her off your hands."