The Museum

When the sun is about to crest over a hill, or better yet, one of its Earth’s mountain ranges, the entire sky around the horizon turns to the same shade of the sunset. I remember always seeing it as a pink where the sky greeted the ground, and then a mild yellow-orange right above that, and then the sky blue would continue up until it would reach over to the other horizon. But in the sunset, the entirety of the sky can be seen; because when you finally look out onto the surrounding horizon and not just the clouds over the drifting sun, you come to a realization"an enlightenment. It’s an enlightenment that tells you that you can look away, just for a second, from what is considered the sheer beauty of the world, just before the world capitulates itself into ritual darkness, and you can see that there is beauty all around you in the places that people wouldn’t think to look.

            And sometimes in that unrecognized beauty, there lie secrets. And sometimes those secrets can harbor the fears that fester underneath the skin, the horrors that dwell in seclusion and comfort inside of the cerebral-cortex of the brain; it can keep potential under strict lock and key. But sometimes those secrets can become the greatest thing that someone had ever discovered; it can be a cure to ailments, a choir of archangels singing, the immortality that has gravitated want by the human existence ever since the concept has been conceived. This, this immortality, this choir of gods, this anecdote…I have found it in the most unexpected of places, and I found it with the person I’ve been closest with for all of my life, and she has been closest to me for all of her life.

And we found this great secret in an old, rusted-out fishing yacht. But there was something quite miraculous about this yacht…it was a time machine; and I and my friend were the only ones in North Carolina who knew about it.

            My name is Jonathan Grabac, and this is the story about how I became one of the Curators of the Carolinas.

 

            My friend was a girl named Adele; I had known her since I could remember. She was a sweet girl, as she always was. She came from a relatively wealthy family; they had this one beach house that I and she would always go to. It was on the outer banks of North Carolina, the house, and it was such a beautiful place; I remember back in the days of when I and Adele were young (about eight years old), we would wake up and sit out on the sand dunes to watch the sunrise. We would marvel as the stars were shifted away and cast out of the sky for the day to break through.

            “Adele…” I would say sometimes, “where do you think the stars go?” The times that I brought this up were few and far between, mostly at times where we would forget that I asked the question.

            “Well…” Adele would say, and she would start to think. Sometimes she would retort quickly with an answer or her grogginess from the night before would still be lingering inside of her mind.

            “I think…” She started, “that there’s an old man and an old woman in the sky who bring a blanket to the world and put it to sleep each night. And when the morning comes, they come to take the blanket off of the world.”

                Of course, this idea was nonsense; but we were eight years old at the time, we had no concept of how solar systems worked and how the Earth turned on its axis. I readily embraced the idea any time that she would bring it up. But it was almost different every time; sometimes she would make something up about a lion scaring the world into darkness or there was a woman who poured a jug of water onto the world to make the night sky the way it was and then the water would wash off of the Earth. In any case, we had no clue what we were talking about; we were just little children.

            I remember when it came the time when we were both about fifteen (I was fourteen, she was only a few months older than me so that made her fifteen). We still went out to the beach house, but this time we went out to the house ourselves. Somehow, her parents let her drive to the house. I’m not sure exactly how she convinced them to let her borrow the car, but she managed to do it, even if she couldn’t legally drive yet. Still, we drove out to the house.

            It had been a few years since we’d been there, even though we’d spent our summers together. When we pulled up to the house from its long, brick-laid drive, we’d forgotten how simply elegant the house was. It was an enchanting sort of feeling; like the kind that you can feel at the moment you have a powerful insight, or, rather, you’ve found your first love…things like these. Some sand tarnished the house a little bit, but its white paint still shown through the ailment. Adele turned off the car and turned to me. She smiled, her bright eyes shining as they always had.

            She was at the age now that she was a very beautiful woman; she had long, shiny, black flowing hair that you could want to get entangled in. Her eyes were a shallow blue-gray that, when she looked at you deeply, made you want to get lost in her irises. She had a smile that could captivate you for hours, and a face that was a mix between pale, tan, and olive tints.

            “Are we going in?” She said. “Or are we turning around?” We both chuckled at that notion.

            “Let’s go in.” I replied. “Open the trunk so I can get our bags, and I’ll put them in…which bedrooms?”

            “Don’t you mean which bedroom?” She said back provocatively. Her lips curled further and her eyes became brighter. I smiled back at her.

            “Okay,” I started. “which bedroom should I put the bags in?”

            “When you get to the top of the stairs, it’ll be the last one on the right as you turn to the right to go down the hallway.” She pulled a latch on the floor of the car to open the trunk. She then pulled her door latch to get out of the car; I did the same. She walked towards the house to unlock the door.

            “I’ll wait for you on the inside; at some point, for dinner, we’re going to have to go to the supermarket.” She said this to me as she was walking to the door and I was walking to the opened trunk of the car.

            “I can go down to there, I remember where it is.” I said back.

            “Or we can go down together.”

            “That actually sounds better.”

            “Alright, we’ll go together then.”

            I grabbed the bags and drug them out of the trunk of the car. I looked to the door to try to see Adele; she already had the door open and was walking up the stairs of the house to get to the second floor. I figured that she had to use the bathroom or something of the sort.

But as I reached for our suitcases in the trunk, I noticed that there was an elderly couple standing out on the sand dunes next to the house; there were staring at me. I looked back at them with a look of bewilderment on my face. I’d never seen these people before, but they looked at me so benevolently. I saw the woman tap the man on the shoulder and she whispered something into his ear. Then, I could see that they both smiled at me, and then they left.

I shook off what just happened as I took I and Adele’s suitcases, one in each hand, and set down one suitcase to close the trunk lid and then proceeded to go into the house.

            I walked into the house; it was like I was discovering a magical place that no one had ever seen before. The entire house was enchanting, most likely because I’d spent so much time in this house, so it became sentimental to me. I looked around at its Victorian style; it was simply elegant. There were two recurring colors in the house, green and white; they faded and spurned in the different rooms to accent different moods. But even though there wasn’t really anything paranormal about the house, I always felt that there was. It wasn’t like the place was haunted or anything of the sort, it was just that I felt it had some sort of essence to it that I couldn’t quite understand.

            But I proceeded to take the bags upstairs after I had marveled at the house I so cherished for too long. I went all the way to the end of the hallway and found the door to the bedroom Adele had told me to go into open. I called her name as I peered into the room, and I heard her respond.

            “I’m in the bathroom in here; hold on for a little bit.” She said. I’d forgotten that there was a bathroom attached to the bedroom I was in. I figured that I was right in assuming she’d gone in so quickly because of this need. I lifted the bags onto the bed; it was the only bed in the room. It was a queen sized, no, a king sized bed. It could’ve fit four people under its covers with room to spare. I became a little red-faced at the notion that this was the only place to sleep in this room; I processed in my mind all of the implications of this, but I flew them through my mind at such a quick pace that I didn’t let them hold up inside of my head.

            I heard Adele start to turn the door handle of the bathroom door, so I turned around to see her. I wasn’t prepared for how she looked; she was wearing lingerie…very scantily clad lingerie; and it was red with black lace embroidering the edges of wherever the little amount of cloth was. Her lips were curved upward in an ever-attracting smile. I could barely believe what I was seeing, and I knew I was greatly red-faced. She chuckled a little bit as she walked over to me. I backed up into the bed frame and ended up sitting myself onto the bed by accident. She got close enough to gently hold my hands down to the bed and talk softly to me.

            “Do you like this?” She asked. “That time I told you I went to France…this is one of the things I got there.”

            I was trembling in not knowing what to say or do.

            “Hell yes, I like it.” I managed to choke out. She laughed a little bit more. She drew her face close enough to kiss me, but she didn’t lock my lips with hers just yet.

            “Good.” She whispered. Then our lips met. We were in a moment a sheer ecstasy; this is the woman I’d known all of my life…an instance like this is only what I’ve dream of. Well, rather, falling in love with her was more of what I planned but, this was surely good enough for the moment.

She put my arms out farther to the side and moved me up onto the center of the bed. She was residing overtop of me, as if she were hovering. I then felt her sneak her hand behind my head and she pulled me up with that same hand. She was resting herself on my lap while still locking lips with mine; her hands started to find their way down my neck and to my waist. Her fingers crawled underneath my shirt and I instinctively helped her pull off my shirt. Even such a simple and mundane act as removing clothing from my upper body now seemed elegant in its own way. We had to stop kissing for a moment while she tossed my shirt onto the floor beside the bed. The moment the shirt hit the floor, I resumed our lip-lock, and I became a little more invigorated and as did she. Our heartbeats started to pick up and as did our breathing and as did the sound of our kiss coming together. I grabbed her back and picked her up to lay her down on the bed, to which she reacted in a very positive way…and by positive way, I mean that she herself started to remove her lingerie.

She was perfectly beautiful; nothing on her was in the slightest bit odd looking…she was absolutely gorgeous. Nothing in the universe could compare to her.

            She started to pry at my belt buckle, which she freed from its place. She slid my belt out of my belt loops and discarded the belt onto the floor. Then, she unbuttoned my trousers; first, disbanding the union between the button that held together fabric above the zipper and the fabric itself. I then heard the zipper of my pants flowing apart with its steel hiss. She then put me upright and turned me around to put me back down again. She gripped the edges of my pockets and pulled away the fabric covering my legs. She threw the fabric onto the floor and then proceeded with my undergarments; she did away with those as well. Then, I remember that she straddled me; I remember the feeling so fondly.

            But, that’s when I blacked out. It figures; right before I’m about to lose my virginity, I black out from the excitement of losing it. This world can be really good in some ways, but in other ways, it just plainly cheats against you.

            But, when I awoke from my black out, both Adele and I were under the covers of the bed. I pulled up the covers for a second to look at the both of us; she was nude, and as was I. I put the covers back down and I looked at Adele.

            “We did it?” I asked. Her smile spread wide across her face.

            “We sure as hell did.” She replied.

            “Um…I’m not sure if I want to ask this…” I rolled over to my side to face her, and she rolled onto her side to face me, “…but I blacked out, right?”

            “Yes, you did.” She said as she laughed. I laughed as well.

            “Well, was I any good?” I asked. She smiled even wider.

            “Yes; you were very good.”

            “Well, that’s good…but hey, first time and I blacked out and I still did good.” We both laughed at this. She leaned over and kissed me on the lips and then leapt out of bed. She turned to the door and said,

            “I’m going to make dinner, and then we’ll go for a walk on the beach; how does that sound?”

            “That sounds good.” I replied. She walked out of the room and went down the steps. I nearly forgot that she still wasn’t wearing clothes.

            I sat back in the bed for a little while. I knew that whatever Adele was making, it would take a while. So I thought about things; more about the future than anything. I imagined a family with her and I, the days that I would work, doing whatever it would be for work, having a few children, living in a nice house (maybe the one I was currently in), and just enjoying life with her. It was really just such a fantasy; how could I know that this woman was going to be the woman to be my future wife? But I was living in the moment, and nothing could stop me from doing that. Eventually, she yelled up the stairs,

            “The food is ready!” I immediately ran downstairs, also forgetting that I didn’t have any clothes on. And so, we ate dinner in the nude; how pleasant. Whatever it was that she made for dinner, I can’t remember what it was. I can’t remember much of what happened after we ate our meals; all I remember was that she and I went back up into our room to get dressed. It was rather that she led me up there, and I followed. While we were still dressing, she was talking to me, saying,

“Let’s go for a walk on the beach; it’s a nice night out. The dunes will be nice and warm to lie in, and the sunset is going to look amazing.”

            “Well, the sunset isn’t going to look as amazing as you do.” I replied. She smiled at this.

            “If I weren’t trying to get my pants on, I’d come over there and kiss you.”

            We both chuckled at her statement.

            We left the house, hand in hand, body next to body, walking out onto the sand. I loved the feel of the tiny rocks between my toes and beneath my bare feet. The smell of the ocean lingered on the air, but not so heavily that it became a toxic odor. The seagulls and other various birds sounded their calls into the dusk sky.

            Adele and I walked down the beach, enjoying each other’s company and enjoying the sights we could see. We decided to lie down in a sand dune for a while; we picked one that had enough grass on it so that the sand wouldn’t get on our clothes and cause irritation. But Adele threw her shirt out into the taller grass and then would lie down in the sand saying,

            “It’ll be okay there.”

            We watched the sunset for a little while (among doing other things), and then we decided to go down into the water. The feel of the wet sand brought back so many memories I was still fond of. I remembered all of the summers prior that I and Adele had been here. All of the games I used to play with her, all of the times we would talk to each other, all of the sunsets we would marvel at; everything came back to me. We let the water caress us for a while, then we went to retrieve Adele’s shirt from the tall grass of the dune. Then we decided to go further down the beach, not back to the house, even if the sun was just about to say goodbye to the Earth’s horizon for the day.

            She thought it would be a leisurely experience of trying to find the house in the middle of the night; although I somewhat disliked the idea of doing so, she said there would be enough moonlight for us to find the house again. So, I went along with what she was saying and we went off further down the beach and away from where we probably should’ve been.

            We came to this peer, one that we’d never noticed before. And there was a boat there, one we’d never seen before. It was a cross between a fishing boat and an expensive yacht. We didn’t know what to make of it; rather, I didn’t know what to make of it. When she saw it, she pulled me towards the peer, saying,

            “C’mon, I don’t think anyone has ever used that!”

            “No; it’s probably someone’s boat and"”

            “And what? It’s not like they would care; people down here never lock their boats because no one is ever down here. Come with me, please.”

            “No, I don’t want to get in trouble with this"”

            “Please?” I looked into her eyes; she wouldn’t let me leave her. She wanted me to go into that boat so badly. I’m not exactly sure why, but I agreed to her proposal. I knew that the owners of this boat could come walking down the peer at any minute, and I don’t know what they would do with us. If they were nice people, we may be able to make an excuse and get out of there. But if they’re the opposite of nice people, we may not be so lucky. Aside from this, we went into the boat regardless.

            The peer creaked as we ventured down it. It was creaking and moaning to the point that I thought that the wood and nails making up the composition of the peer would give up on supporting our weight. I knew that Adele was just as scared as I was; she was gripping me tightly whilst we walked down to the yacht.

When we came to the bow of the ship, we jumped onto the hull, thinking that the peer would fall down the moment that we landed onto the polished wood of the vessel. But, to our amazement, the peer did indeed collapse with our landing. The noise from the crash was enormous. Since the peer was long and large, its falling cry was synonymous with the roar of jet-planes, or the din of explosive devices. We stood there for a while, looking back at the mess of what we could not traverse on any longer. If we were to get back to the house, we would have to swim through the water. Swimming, we did not mind; it was the fact that a large peer was now destroyed (which gave off the loudest of noises), and it would only be a matter of time before someone would find it sunken below the shallow waters of the immediate shore and the deeper waters where boats could safely dock.

            I was in a frantic mood over this entire incident; a vacation was not meant to be something where I get in trouble. It was not meant to be something that causes me to fret about things. I wanted to yell at Adele, but I knew that shouldn’t; I didn’t want to upset her. Besides, the expressions on her face were already signaling that she regretted what she’d made me do; I didn’t want to make her more regretful.

            I took into account what our options were of getting off of this boat; we could swim to the shore from here (although, I was not the best of swimmers), or we could drive the boat to another peer or run it aground somewhere where there aren’t any people. At either of those places where we would take the boat, people would eventually find it. Then there would be a severe inquiry as to who drove the boat away from its original spot. We could’ve swum to the shore; it seemed like the best idea until I took into account the fact of the sunken peer. Once the peer would be discovered, everyone living along the beach would be questioned (questioned, most likely by the police). I wasn’t the best of liars, and Adele had a fear of police. And I didn’t want to take the risk of drowning, since my swimming was not up to par with what could keep me afloat.

            But there was a third option; I didn’t like it, but it was probably the only one we could’ve gone with. Maybe I was just caught up in the moment, I thought to myself. But no, the idea that I’d just hatched was the only thing that could get us out of here as safely as possible.

            “Adele…” I said to her.

            “Yeah?” She replied, not really wanting to be bothered because of the incident she’d caused.

            “We’ve got to drive this yacht out of here.”

            “Are you insane?! We can’t steal this!”

            “I know that stealing seems wrong, but"”

            “No! We’re not stealing the boat! As much as I hate the police, we’re staying here and waiting for them to pluck us out of this boat!”

            “But I have an idea…”

            “No! No ideas of yours, or mine!”

            “But Adele…”

            “No!”

   “Listen to me!” When I yelled, silence overtook everything for one moment; even the waves that crashed into the shore became silent. The world around me had an absence of sound vibrations for that one moment; the silence was nearly deafening. But when it came back, so did Adele’s will to listen. She knew that she did not want to face the possibility of serving time in jail.

            “Okay…” I said. “We can drive this boat further north; I remember seeing an old boat yard on the way to the house. The place was right along the road, but I don’t think anyone would think to look there. It was hidden rather well by shrubs and overgrowth, and it’s on an old country road anyway. So if we can get up to there, we might be able to walk home the rest of the way.”

            “I know what you’re talking about.” Adele replied. “I remember seeing that place too, but that place was at least ten miles away from our house; how would we get back to there in time? If we’re not home, and I know that the people that live closest to us know we’re there for the week, if we aren’t there, they would start to get suspicious. And if we just walk home in the middle of the night, where the hell would we’ve been? We couldn’t have been walking along the beach for that long; and if we would’ve gone to a friend’s house, our neighbors would’ve known because I’m supposed to tell them if I’m going anywhere. The people who live next to us are good friends with my dad, and my dad asks them to check up on me. If I’m not there, those people are going to tell my dad and them I’m going to get hell for it. If we try to do one thing, it’s going to end up backfiring on us…I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I think we’ll just have to wait for the cops.”

            “No…” I said. “No, we’re not waiting to get arrested. We’ve got to get away from here; we’ve got to drive this boat to that boat yard and"“

            “No! We can’t do that!” Adele yelled. “We can’t do that! They’ll find us eventually!”

            “Well, we can…” I was speechless as she walked into the cabin of the boat through its open door. She stood in the doorway for a moment and then turned around to me.

            “You know, I’m…I’m perfectly fine with going to jail.” Her voice cracked as she said this. She was on the verge of crying. “This…this is completely fine. I got us into this mess, and I should have to deal with the consequences. I’ll tell them that I knocked you out or something and that I drug you onto this boat. If they believe that, you’ll get away, maybe only with an overnight detention.”

            “But you’ll go to jail.” I said.

            “Yeah…I know.” Adele replied.

            “Well, your parents will eventually find out, and when they do, they aren’t going to let me see you for the rest of your life.”

            “I know that…” She looked down at her feet as tears from her eyes hit the floor. She went into the cabin and sat down next to the steering wheel; she wept. As I heard her crying I went over to her and sat next to her, rubbing her back and holding her.

            “We’ll be okay.” I said, trying to reassure her that we would have been okay. But I knew that we weren’t; it would take a miracle to get us out of this mess. I thought about what could get us off of this boat, but there wasn't anything else than what I already thought of. I didn’t want to capitulate to the idea that had already crossed my mind, but sadly, it was our only option.

            We had to steal the damned boat.

            “We’ll take this out to sea.” I said bluntly.

            “Hell no we won’t.” Adele said back.

            “Look…”

            “No! There’s no f*****g other perspective to this! They’re going to find us no matter what the hell that we do! We both are going to jail! The cops are going to find us sooner or later…”

            “Adele, if we take it out to sea, people probably will stop looking for us.”

            “Sure; and what happens if we run into a storm? What the hell is gonna happen then? Have you even taken a look at this bucket of bolts? There isn’t a f*****g chance that this thing would survive a storm…I’m not even sure if this thing even has an engine.”

            “Well, I’ll go and look…”

            “You’re an idiot.” She said this to me as I got up to search the ship. I didn’t react physically to what she had said, but I felt it in my heart. I knew that when she called anybody an idiot that she meant the word to its fullest extent. She could curse her mouth into oblivion and not mean a single bit of it, but if she insulted you by calling you a certain title, it always meant that she was saying, ‘You’re an idiot’, or, ‘You’re a b*****d’.

            I tried to shake off what she said as I made my way down into the bowels of the ship. The vessel was an old lady; it seemed like she’d been through two wars and almost didn’t make it out of the second one. She creaked and moaned a little bit, seemingly from nothing. I assumed that the hull was aching from some waves crashing onto the shore. I climbed down the stairs that led into the engine room; there sure was an engine in place. But, the engine was very old. Rust coated the engine like a thick patting of moss on a giant rock. There were some measuring gages and such, but dust clouded over the glass that covered them. I found that there was a pilot light near the bottom of the engine, so I tried to ignite it. I figured that doing so would allow me to start up the engine when I would get back to the cabin.

            I managed to spark the pilot light, but as I did so, I heard a voice whisper in my ear these words: “That’s not just the pilot light to the engine…”

            I thought that maybe I was hearing things; it was obviously a male voice, but no one was on the boat besides me and Adele. So, I shrugged the event off as merely something I couldn’t explain, and climbed back up to the deck.

            As I walked back up, I saw that Adele was now sitting on the bow of the boat, her legs drawn in with her hands clasped over her knees. She had her head down and rested on her knees (I presumed that she was crying). I went over to her and sat down next to her. As I put my arm around her, she lifted her head up to look at me.

            “Please tell me that we’ll get out of here.” She said, her voice cracking with every word.

            “The pilot light for the engine is on, so I’ll be able to start it.” I replied.

            “Thank you.”

            “You’re welcome.” I kissed her on the forehead. “I’ll go start up the engine.” I stood up and walked into the skipper’s cabin and found the ignition button. It was strange that there was no keyhole for the boat; most boat owners didn’t want their boats stolen, so such a measure as a key to cause ignition would normally be installed. And the control board was rather sparse as well. There were only seven buttons along with the throttle adjuster. The buttons were labeled: START, STOP, FORWARD, REVERSE, FOR CURATOR ONE, FOR CURATOR TWO, MUSEUM IGNITION. I was trying to figure out what the buttons meant by ‘curators’ and ‘museum’. Why would a museum need to ignite? And furthermore, why was a museum associated with an old boat? I didn’t know if I would have any more time to ponder the control board, so I pressed the START button and pressed the REVERSE button to pull the boat out of the coastal waters. I pulled back on the throttle so that the boat would move out of its docked waters. The hum of the boat’s engine rumbled through my ears. As I turned the boat to face the sea when it was fully out of a docked position, Adele stood up and came into the cabin. She stood next to me and held my hand; her eyes were still red from crying. She needed not to say a word more; I pressed the FORWARD button on the control board and pushed the throttle forward slowly. The boat left for the sea at a faster and faster rate; we were leaving all of our troubles behind.

            It was about at ten o’clock at night that we decided to stop the boat. I pulled the throttle back to its middle position and pressed the STOP button on the control board. By this time, Adele had curled up onto the floor and had fallen asleep. Now that the engine was off, I only managed to hear her breathing and the sound of the ocean. The sea was surprisingly calm this far out; there weren’t any large waves rocking the boat, only tiny ones that gently cradled the boat. It was such a pleasant night.

            I then curled up next to Adele, putting my hand into hers. She tightened her grip on my hand as she felt it; I could see her smiling.

            “I hope I didn’t wake you up.” I said.

            “It’s fine…” She said as she turned and looked at me. “You’re the best wake-up call a girl could wish for.” She kissed me once after she said that.

            “How do you always have the right things to say?” I said. We both chuckled at this.

            “I think I got it from my mom.” She replied. “Any time that my father would be distressed or overstressed or whatever, she would always calm him down with some little saying she made up. She would do the same for me, and I guess she just kinda rubbed off on me.”

            We smiled at each other in our dark silence. I could see the light from the stars slightly shimmer in her eyes and cast shadows on her face. She was always beautiful; her beauty rivaled that of angels. She smiled at me so benevolently; it was as if she were trying to cast me into a trance with her pleasing gaze.

            “There are these two weird buttons on the control board.” I said to her, breaking the hypnotic powers of her smile.

            “What do they say?” She asked.

            “They say, ‘for curator one’, ‘for curator two’, and ‘museum ignition’.”

            “How is a museum synonymous with a boat?”

            “That’s what I said.”

            “Well, let’s have a look at these things.” She and I stood up to go over to the control panel. We stared at the strangely named buttons for a while; we knew that we should probably press them because they probably did something important. But the reluctance was that we didn’t know what these buttons were going to do. We couldn’t make the connection to what this ‘museum’ was or who the ‘curators’ were.

            We looked at each other; we stared into each other’s eyes. We needed not to say a word to understand that we should press these buttons for the ‘curators’ and then press the button to ‘ignite’ the ‘museum’. With slowness, we drew our fingers to the ‘curator’ buttons; I put my finger on the FOR CURATOR ONE button, and Adele put her finger on the FOR CURATOR TWO button. We both pressed the buttons at the same time. As we did this, a strange noise sounded from the engine room; it was not that of the engine failing, but rather, it sounded like a new engine had been installed and it had tried to start itself. When we pressed the buttons the MUSEUM IGNITION button started to blink a green light. I looked at Adele and she looked back at me; my finger hovered over the MUSEUM IGNITION button as her eyes tried to say, ‘Press the button’. So I pushed my finger into the glowing plastic and waited for something to happen.

            Suddenly, the control board space to the right of the MUSEUM IGNITION button flipped into a computer screen. I and Adele walked over to the screen; I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. There were inputs on the touch-screen; one was for a date, the other for a month, and the last one for a year. Then, a voice sounded from the screen; it was the voice of the man I had heard down in the engine room.

            “Well, well there…” The voice said. “We’ve got a couple of new Curators, now don’t we?”

            “Um…Curators?” I asked.

            “Yes, yes…don’t you know what this boat is?”

            “No, I don’t.”

            “Ah…you just stumbled upon this, didn’t you?”

            “Well…yes, we did. We stumbled upon it.”

            “Or did you steal it?”

            “Well, yes…”

            “That’s alright; people have stolen this old lady plenty of times before. But, before I progress any further, I shall introduce myself. I am named Anselm, and I am your artificial intelligence interface for the Museum. Any time that you press that MUSEUM IGNITION button, my screen will pop up, and you’ll just be talking to me like you are now. But the main purpose of this entire ship is for you to time travel.”

            “Wait…time travel? That’s only in science fiction…right?”

            “Oh, no, far from it. You see, this piece of technology--me, actually--was brought here from a race of beings that have long since been dead. This ship belonged to a being that looked much like you. He was an anthropologist and was here gathering information about the Earth. But, this was back in the days of what your world called, ‘World War Two’. Which, from my standpoint as well as his, wasn’t really an entire world war because one of your continents--I believe you call it South America--wasn’t even fighting. I don’t ever recall any battles taking place there. Now, I remember hearing, from intercepted war plans, about that Hitler guy wanting to invade South America, but he never did. And what about that continent you call Australia? I don’t recall anyone invading that place either.

            “But anyway, I’ve digressed too far from my point. This is a time machine; you two are its operators, and I am the helper to you. All that you’ve got to do is put in the time that you want to go to and tell me the location and you’ll find yourself there. Now, since this is a boat, please pick somewhere that isn’t landlocked on your first voyage, please? My fellow who firstowned this boat--the anthropologist--once drank too much alcohol one night and told me to go to the middle of the Sahara desert. You don’t want to know how long it took a bunch of Libyans to haul a boat out of the middle of the desert and back into the sea. I got so much sand in my gears from that incident…I told that man not to drink, but no, he doesn’t listen to good, old Anselm. Oh, damn it, there I go again, off ranting about something…anyway; put in the year and date and month and then tell me where on this planet that you want to go. Actually, come to think of it, you can even go to other planets"well, ones that have water on them. There’s a planet map somewhere in the engine room, but I’ll find that for you two later.

            “But I guess to be formal about this occasion, welcome to the Museum; you two are now Curators!”

            “Curators of the Museum?”

            “Well, Curators of wherever you came from; so, where did you come from?”

            “We came from North Carolina.”

            “Ah, the Carolina beaches, how I loved them so…but aren’t there two Carolinas, a north and a south?”

            “Yeah.”

            “Why not just combine the two, just to save the trouble.”

            “Um…sure.”

            “Good; then, you two are now the Curators Of The Carolinas!” 

Reviews

[Sarusai Hiryu]

Carry on, Henry ...
'Sides the kidding, this really is great. Especially the description.

[Andy Ruffett]

I love the title. At the beginning you expect the story to be about a Museum and then completely have a different idea of the word by the end. Very clever. I've been to South Carolina. It's nice. Beautiful beaches, sand, and water. Though, it was too cold to swim in the water when I was there. We stayed at Myrtle Beach, lovely place. Anyway, back to your story. Everything flows rather nicely and nothing seemed forced, very natural. The suspense is great because you're reading to find out what the author means by the title. The hook is the title, essentially. I love how the yacht becomes a time machine, interesting ending and how it trails off. Though, the characters are fifteen and sixteen so why would they worry about being arrested? They're too young. Or maybe their young selves don't really know much about policing. It is possible, but highly doubtful. Just thought of mentioning that. They could be sent to a juvenile detention centre but it's not exactly the same as jail, well they're not supposed to be anywhere close actually. Though, they could be tried in adult court but I don't think their felony is that great for that. Anyway, another thing I'm throwing out there.

Now moving on, here are some sentences that have a few mistakes in them. I'm typing out the sentences so you can easily use the find engine on Word, or whatever type processing tool you have, so it's easier for you to find these mistakes. If you find this is just purely insulting, please tell me and I won't do this again. Here they are:

"drug you onto this boat" Should be "drugged"

"drug them out" Should be "dug"

"I and Adele's suitcases" I believe it's "Adele's and my suitcases"

"There were staring at me" "They" obviously

"Someone's boat and" Now this one is up for discussion because I thought you just forgot the hyphen which means he was cut off but then you use the ellipsis in the sentence "But I have an idea" which really means he's trailing off. I use hyphens to be cut off but I believe without the hyphen is fine too. I don't know, I'm no professional editor. It's something to think about.

"Knew that shouldn't" "I" inserted before "that"

Well there you, there's my editing, apologies for it being so long.

Your writer friend,

Andy Ruffett

[♥Kaitlyn♥]

Very good!
I love it
It was an amazing read

100/100

[Brad]

love how you've started this, can't wait to read some more