Bilge Goblins

Chapter 3: Angels and Demons

If you are of the more devout persuasion, I'm honestly surprised you picked up this book, much less stuck with it this far. Of course, I thank you most graciously and doff my hat to your commendable tolerance. I do not believe that I have committed many explicit blasphemies thus far, however, that will most certainly change in this chapter. If this line of introduction makes you uncomfortable, I might recommend getting of the bus at this point and maybe rejoining it later on down the line. For those of you brave souls still soldiering on, be warned, the Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church of Rome and its affiliating and unaffiliated decedents and splinter cells do not sanctify this particular parable. They will of course try to smother it with blanket statements like communion with demons or some such, accusing me of attempted usurpation of their position of spiritual authority on all the matters demonic and damned. However, the sad reality, in my humble opinion, is that most religious institutions are so out of touch nowadays, they just don't know a thing about anything, much less engineering and mechanics.

Take a look under the hood of your car. Unless you have one of these new-fangled electric or hybrid vehicles, you more than likely have an honest-to-goodness engine in there. An engine that sucks gas or diesel, makes noise, goes vroom, and makes the wheels turn. Or at least that's what you have been led to believe. Many of you may take it all for granted and might not actually know. For many people, an engine is just that strangely shaped magic box inside the car that supposedly makes it go. And who am I to argue with such sound deduction. I'm not here to shatter to any walls, just add my own two cents worth of observation and experience to an ocean of already proven knowledge. In my experience, very rarely is a machine merely a machine.

I do not know how it comes to pass: if a machine starts out its life dumb and inanimate and later becomes possessed of one entity or another, or if it comes out of the factory already possessed. Perhaps there is some god or deity of creation at the factory who shaves off thin slices of soul to grow into each machine, or maybe there's a raffle, or something. All I'm saying is that I have hardly ever encountered a full-on "dumb" machine. There have been some that took me awhile to notice, but so far, nothing completely devoid of nature.

What am I rambling on about? The ethereal presence and character of a machine. Some machines are themselves. Some are possessed by others. And still others aren't even machines to begin with, merely cursed or cosmic beings choosing to exist as a machine for this passing decade or century or millennia. Its wild out there, but if you are attentive and willing to be patient, you would be surprised what wonders await you.

As it so happened, it was a dark and stormy night. It was also a long and boring watch. I was still sailing as third engineer at the time, and my oiler watch partner, Wilson, had turned me on to a new way to pass the time from 1600-0000 (8pm-1200am). At the time, we were growing suspicious of DG#3 running afoul of its timing. My buddy Wil had been an hour or so down in the STBD engine room each night, nominally "cleaning", when he began to grow this suspicion. He later confessed to me that after cleaning for a half hour or so, he would lay down on his freshly swabbed deck between the running generators, his entire back in contact with the steel deck, and just feel and listen to the ship and the two engines running to either side of him. That's where he could hear the timing seeming to lag.

I was intrigued by this idea. I went down to the STBD engine room myself on that dark and stormy and long and boring night, and had a lie down of my own. For any future bosses, as well as past bosses, I wish to be perfectly clear: I was by no means sleeping in the engine room on my watch. It is incredibly difficult to fall asleep between two loud running generators inside a hot engine room in the tropics. It is however, incredibly relaxing, and seemingly mind-expanding as you can begin to witness and monitor the power and propulsion plants through a slightly different sense of touch and sound. I laid down there for at least fifteen minutes listening and feeling the plant, and after a bit, I picked up on the off-beat sound Wilson had described coming from #3. Couldn't tell you it was the timing, but something was certainly off in one of the cylinders.