2030_ The Real Story of What Happens to America - Albert Brooks [139]
Paul Prescott walked into Robert Golden’s office and told him about his conversation. “Don’t we have the vice president?” Golden asked.
“I think this is a better choice. We already had the president; the vice president might seem like a letdown. I think Li will address their needs directly, and he is married to a senator’s daughter and is becoming world famous. I believe we can make his appearance sound like a much bigger event than the vice president.”
“But we’ve already told people what a coup getting the vice president was. What do we say now?”
“We say that because of what is happening in Los Angeles and all of the success out there that we have just found out that Shen Li has canceled his speech in China and is able to come to Florida and speak to us.”
“He’ll cancel the China speech?”
“There is no China speech. You asked me what we would tell people and I gave you an example.”
“Hey, you’re good! And what do we tell the vice president?”
Prescott thought a moment. “We tell him we got someone bigger. He’s used to that.”
* * *
The Sunset had left the port of Long Beach and was cruising to Miami through the Panama Canal. The canal was still one of the wonders of the world and people aboard the retirement ship loved moving through the locks and watching it all happen. Brad Miller likened it to sitting in his dad’s car going through the car wash.
The Panama Canal had had a major reconstruction that lasted twenty years, and now the widened locks could handle all cruise ships and most supertankers. A new class of supertanker had at first been too big for any canal, but the Koreans had had an idea: Their new supertankers would actually be two ships, joined in the middle. The ships could separate and both navigate on their own, or join up and form one ultralong vessel. This not only worked great going through canals but allowed the huge ship to travel the ocean as one and then break up and dock in two separate ports to unload cargo. It was known as a SplitShip and it became the new workhorse of international trade.
The day The Sunset was moving through the canal there was a SplitShip from India. Everybody gathered on deck to watch. It looked so funny. Half a supertanker moving slowly through the locks, while the other half was waiting on the other side. To watch them join up was really something. When the two halves came together, they made the same sound that blast doors at NORAD made when they closed, a low, massive thud that could be heard for miles, and then, as if by magic, the ship was one again. People sat on the deck of The Sunset and applauded when it happened. And it was all they could talk about at dinner.
Brad Miller was pleased that everything was turning out better than he thought it would. He liked his friends and looked forward to seeing them each day. And he loved having a lady in his life. There were no younger people around, except some of the crew, and they were paid to smile at the seniors. But no one missed young people. It became very easy to forget about the real world and just live on this floating universe.
“Let the young folks have the land,” Brad would say. “We’ll take the ocean.”
When the ship pulled into Miami the residents were warned to be careful. They were told that when they went ashore they needed to go in groups, as there were youth gangs that would prey on the olds. They were always given that same warning, but this time it sounded more serious. Another retirement ship that had just pulled out of port had had a homicide: One of its residents was knifed at a local restaurant. But the people on The Sunset weren’t too concerned because they really didn’t leave the ship very often and, when they did, they went en masse. Sometimes a hundred people would go together and cling like a school of fish. It was almost impossible to get robbed if you moved around like that, but