Pangaea surfari

Dear mom,

I'm writing to you from a small apartment in the city. Today is my second day off work in a row. The first day off is always a rough one after going through the plane-bending portal. Even within the ship that's supposed to help lessen the effects of time sickness. I'm no scientist, but it seems no matter how many strange chemical cocktails or brain wave adjustment therapies you receive, slipping through the fabric of space-time and moving 300ish million years in the past is always a jarring experience. Certainly not as peaceful as they described it in the new employee handbook. But all's well, I just feel as if I have a mild hangover and am existing in another plane simultaneously(also with a hangover). I'll spare you the details of time sickness, let's just leave it at that, feels bad.

In your last email, you inquired about what kind of tasks I do on the new job at Pangea Surfari ™. In all honesty, I am a glorified tour guide, I have no responsibility for flying the ship or for cooking meals for the patrons. My main responsibility is to keep the wealthy tourists from getting eaten by a megalodon, and constantly reading weather charts to find out where the surf will be the best. The customers are always from very wealthy families and generally have very little experience in the ocean or the wilderness. All of which is tenfold as intense on Pangea. So you can imagine it becomes very nerve-wracking, especially considering the customers are not acquainted with taking orders from someone a few castes below them, regardless of if it's a life or death situation.

The fishing tours are my favorite because they are the safest and easiest to manage. There are a few fishing holes that we have sonically protected from any of the dangerous creatures, and compared to earth in 3111, are filled with fish. there is never a fishing tour that comes back empty-handed. And the fish is about as delicious as it gets. All be it I’ve had to do a bit of test work to determine which fish are safe to eat, but even the poisonous ones we can't eat end up giving the customers a good fun fight. The customers rarely want to eat the fish at all, it's usually the crew of the ship that gets to enjoy the spoils after a long day of angling.

The more dangerous part of the job comes from the customers who travel with us to enjoy extreme water sports, surfing, kiteboarding, etc. you training me in the ocean is without a doubt why I was able to land this job and for that, I will be forever grateful. I often miss the smaller, less frightening personality of the ocean back home in northern California, and I hope once I've saved enough money, I'll be able to come home again, and help update our kelp farm; So these more adrenaline-seeking clients are always of a different sort, they drink far more, and are endlessly more reckless(especially the Australians). Pangea would be every surfer's dream if it wasn't filled to the brim with deadly aquatic life. The entire planet is one big ocean and all of the swell periods are well above 20 seconds, due to the massive fetch. Often the main challenge of my job as head forecaster is to find somewhere with waves small enough to be safe to ride, and also within our zone of sonically protected areas. There are a few places that remind me of some of the more famous surf spots in our time, Rincon, Skeleton bay, G-land, and Jeffreys bay, it's just infinitely more perfect. you would be amazed at how beautiful and otherworldly the waves can be here. I'd send some of the stills I've taken but I'm using all of my allotted web time to send these occasional emails. Most of the surfers that come on the trip are experienced enough, but all too overconfident, only ever having surfed on earth in our time. They are always overwhelmed at first and are very thankful to have the added floatation vest that automatically inflates when one of the clients gets put through the spin cycle. The vest can read the vitals and amount of oxygen in the wearer's blood, and does not inflate to bring them to the surface until the first wave of diaphragm contractions begin, or when one of the other 4 criteria is met. I'm not sure what criteria need to be met, I just know how to fasten the vest to the tourists and set it to “on”. I get to enjoy the waves a bit, but mostly I spend my time with swim fins taking video, and controlling a drone to get footage of the customers to bring home. Helping out panicking customers in the water is also a big part of my gig. I discharge their inflation vests, try to calm them down, and if need be, call a swim drone to take them back to shore so they can have a rest. Overall the job is very entertaining but also extremely stressful. I often get yelled at because I missed the footage of someone riding “the wave of their life” due to helping a struggling surfer discharge their vest and get back to shore. The most nerve-wracking situation of all though is when a big fish approaches the edge of our sonic protection field. When I say big fish, I mean twice the size of my apartment, eat you in one bite without even chewing sized fish. The average megalodon is somewhere around 10 meters and I've had experiences of seeing ones twice as big. I know the white sharks at home are frightening, but these ancient predators exist on another plane, literally! The only thing I can compare to looking at one of them in the eyes is the first time you guided me through a DMT ceremony when I came of age. You remember I'm sure, but I mean specifically the part where I experienced a being of pure energy that existed outside of time, mighty beyond description, filled with all the powers of creation and destruction. Of course, the megalodon is a physical being, somewhere inside this web of spacetime, but I've never encountered anything in this physical world that had such a gigantic presence in form and in sheer power that I could compare it to. The sonic protection rings that are set up are completely invisible, I have no idea how they work besides the cells inside of these predator fish can only withstand .7 seconds of a specific hertz before the fish begins taking internal damage. But when a shark the size of a building is swimming towards you, looking directly at you with cold unwavering eyes, the last thing you think of is an invisible wall of vibration that some scientist that has never visited Pangea assures you will keep the fish out. Even writing about it now I can feel the cold sweat on my palms and feet. Rest assured though, the new model of the sonic wall, aka “canción de tiburón”, has not yet been breached yet. The previous versions were not so successful.

If I was a big shot scientist and had access to the plane bender, I would go back to when I was just a child and bring the bio-machines I've been saving up for to stop the disease from ever spreading through ours and our neighbors' kelp farms, then I would never have to take this silly job. Don't get me wrong, I'm very thankful to have this chance, but I wonder what kind of strange unnoticeable damage we are causing in the present by bringing these time tourists back to Pangea. Sometimes I consider that maybe the disease that ravaged most of Crescent Cities' kelp farms was related in some way to what this company has been doing hundreds of millions of years in the past. Truly it'd be better just to be at home with you on the farm than it would be to see our world on a completely different plane of time.

Well, I'm truly sorry but I'm about 6 minutes away from exceeding my power ration to write this email. Next month I'll tell you about my crew, and some of the fun stories from our trips. I take off again tomorrow so it's time to get some rest.

How is the remaining section of the kelp farm doing? Please don't work too hard mom, I'll be back as soon as I have enough money to afford the biomechanical protective layer that will make the kelp resistant to the degenerative disease.

Ps. There is a code with a small bit of funds attached, bring your pocket device to the neighbors and have their daughter help you upload the money, and tell her and the family I said hey!

With love,

Alejandro kaijo