Chapter 1: The Skeleton Crew

The idea of locating the Leviathan on my own had started out as a thrilling challenge, but reality has a way of sobering even the most stubborn fantasies. I had no idea how to find a ship lost in the vastness of the Indian Ocean, let alone make it liveable again. I needed help. Not the kind you find in the Yellow Pages, though. I needed a crew - a skeleton crew. People like me, who had nothing left to lose, nothing tying them to the world. I needed people who wouldn’t be missed if they disappeared. People who might even want to disappear.

So, I wrote a post on Craigslist, carefully cryptic to weed out the curious and attract the desperate. "Opportunity for those seeking escape. Adventure on the open sea. No questions asked. Inquire within." It was vague, but that was the point. Those who understood wouldn’t need more information.

The lounge bar at JFK seemed like the right place to meet. It was a liminal space, a no-man’s land where people came and went, where faces blurred together and no one stuck around long enough to be remembered. I set up shop at a corner table, ordered a drink I didn’t want, and waited.

The first few candidates were easy to dismiss. A woman who seemed more interested in a free vacation than anything else. A guy who claimed to be an ex-Navy SEAL but couldn’t stop sweating through his cheap suit. A man in his fifties who kept talking about the end of the world and how we needed to be prepared. They all had their reasons, but none of them were what I was looking for.

Then Clyde walked in.

He didn’t look like the others. There was a calmness about him, a kind of self-assuredness that came from knowing exactly who you are. He was swarthy, with skin weathered from years in the sun, and his bald head caught the light from the bar. He wore a clean, well-fitted jacket, but underneath it, I could tell he was all muscle and sinew. He moved with the quiet confidence of someone who could handle himself in any situation.

Clyde shook my hand, a strong, firm grip that wasn’t trying to prove anything. We sat down, and he looked at me with eyes that seemed to see straight through the bullshit.

"I could do it," he said after I laid out the basics of the job. His voice was steady, and practical. "But I wouldn’t know the first thing about tracking down the Leviathan."

I raised an eyebrow. "What makes you think you can handle the rest of it, then?"

Clyde leaned back in his chair, his gaze drifting to the row of liquor bottles behind the bar. "I grew up around machines. My old man was a mechanic, and I’ve been fixing things since I was a kid. Cars, bikes, airplanes - hell, if it’s got an engine, I can make it run. There’s a satisfaction in it, you know? In making something work again. Society’s a mess, but machines...they make sense. They’re honest."

He paused, his eyes narrowing slightly. "I never did fit in with the corporate world. Too many suits trying to tell me what to do, too many rules that didn’t make any sense. They just wanted to use me, keep me in line, but I’m not the type to be kept down. I’m done with all that. The idea of being out there, away from all this crap..." He gestured vaguely at the airport around us. "That sounds like freedom."

Clyde’s distrust of civilization was palpable, and I could see why. He had the look of a man who’d been burned too many times, who had found solace in the simplicity of machines because they didn’t lie, didn’t betray. They either worked, or they didn’t. And if they didn’t, you could fix them. People were different. People were messy.

"I get it," I said. "But what if something goes wrong? No backup, no second chances out there."

Clyde shrugged. "If something breaks, I’ll fix it. If it can’t be fixed, we’ll find another way. That’s the only way to live out there, isn’t it?"

I nodded slowly. He was right. The Leviathan wasn’t just a ship - it was a symbol, a last shot at something different, something untethered from the world we knew. Clyde understood that, and more importantly, he was willing to embrace it.

"You’re in," I said. Clyde smiled, a genuine, unforced smile, and for a moment, I felt like I might actually be able to pull this off.

But Clyde was only the beginning. The real challenge was still ahead - finding someone who could track down the Leviathan. And that was a different kind of skill entirely.