Raista, 29 Shiaa, 4392, Orthodox Calendar
Saturday, 7 June 2007, Native regional reckoning
New Orleans, Gamia Province,American sector
It had to be the busiest week he had ever had in his life.
Never before had he had so many projects all going on at the same time, but at least now he had one of them off his desk. He had school, he had training with Jyslin, he had his martial arts classes, he had trying to balance having a social relationship with Jyslin against his need to keep himself a certain distance from her while at the same time she tried to close that distance, and he had also had skimmer lessons.
Those were his priority during the last week, for it was the one project which could be finished in a reasonable amount of time. Every day after school he would meet Zora at his skimmer, and they would go over what he had to know to get a class three license. There were a great many rules and regulations he had to know in order to fly safely, just as there were for an old pilot's license. But since he was also getting space qualification, he also had to learn all the protocols and procecures that other craft he might meet in space would use, from little ships Zora called "zip ships," two man shuttles that looked like giant medicine capsules, up to the massive cargo freighters and battleships. He had to learn the rules for them as well as rules for flying in the atmosphere, and it was a real strain with everything else he had going on. He got virtually no sleep for the entire week, for he had to study and practice sending on top of his flying lessons.
The flying part was nothing. It took him all of an hour to get used to the extra controls, and by the end of that hour he had gotten used to the handling characteristics of the skimmer. He'd lifted it off the tarmac a bit clumsily, but had set it down two hours later just as gently and safely as Zora would have. He had a habit of not using the extra controls, falling back on old habits, and that really annoyed Zora. But she couldn't deny the fact that he could fly the ship safely and well, and she had signed off on the practical part of his license requirements that very night. All that was left was taking the written tests.
That was what took so much preparation. He'd forced Zora to schedule him for the tests after school today, only days away, and she'd reluctantly agreed. They spent four hours each evening practicing flying, going over rules, and having her quiz him on procedures. They flew all around the planet as she took him to a certain area and let him fly to see if he knew what to do, but the truly amazing part of it for him was when she took him into space and had him do the same thing. Flying in space had honestly freaked him out at first, for they'd gone through weightlessness, and all air resistance was removed from the ship, which radically altered how it responded to the controls. The controls were unbelievably sensitive in space, where the lightest touch could send one careening miles off in a direction one did not really intend to go. She walked him through all his space procedures, from approach to communication to rights of way, and had even made him execute a landing in a Faey battleship's landing bay six different times. Three of those landings were practice, two were simulated emergencies and one was a real emergency, which only came about when Zora had told him she was going to the bathroom, then disabled the control circuits once she was out of his sight. But Jason had done everything he was supposed to do, by the book, and that had impressed Zora just as much as it had impressed the Faey traffic controller on the battleship where they had landed. She seemed certain that he would panic and crash the ship against the hull or something.
The tests were brutal. They weren't straightforward, they were scenarios where he had to make decisions based on the information provided to him, a practical exam using theory instead of actual hands-on work. But they were over now, all three of them, and he stood outside the air traffic control center on Belle Chasse Marine Barracks holding a little blue plastic card that had his name and identifcation number on it, a picture of him in the upper right hand corner, an embedded microchip in the lower right, and the numeral 3, in a nice large typeset and in shimmering gold that clashed with the blue of the card, right beside where it said Class:.
It was his class three license. Jason could now legally fly his skimmer anywhere he wanted to go.
It was such a heady feeling, and for the first time in years, he felt that same sense of freedom he had once had when he had had his father's plane. He could now pack up his skimmer and fly anywhere on Earth if he wanted to. He could spend tomorrow in the Alps, or on the deserted beach of a tiny island in the South Pacific, or among the penguins of Antarctica. Or he could go to all three in the span of a single day. By using an orbital vector, going out into space and orbiting until he re-entered the atmosphere, the same type of navigational vectors that ballistic missles used, he could get anywhere on Earth with his skimmer in five hours. If he was willing to go as fast as an ICBM, he could be there in an hour, but that was potentially lethal to the people in the skimmer, and it was very hard on the skimmer as well.
It was too late now to think about it, but it was just so nice to know he could do it. It was nearly ten o'clock, and he was bone-tired. He had a test in calculus Monday and a project due in lab on Tuesday, which he hadn't even started yet. The project was to build a device that used a fusion pack that was not a device already in use. In other words, they had to invent something. It didn't have to be fancy, and it could do something that an existing machine already did, but they had to design and build it themselves. Most people in the class would just build a machine that made a light turn on or something, he knew they would, and that would be more than acceptable. Professor Ailan had already told him that he didn't have to do this lab, for his subsonic inducers were an original creation, and thus fulfilled the course requirement. He already had an A for the lab, but he wanted to do it anyway, for two reasons. Firstly, he didn't want to give any students any reason to get mad at him, and he also didn't want to attract undue attention to himself right now. By not doing a project, the students would get ticked at him, and many of them were already a little upset with him because they all now knew that he was dating Jyslin. Some of them had seen his war with Jyslin and the Marines as an uplifting morale boost, and some of them had taken it personally that he had seemingly totally caved in. It would also focus attention on him because of that, and given that he was still learning how his telepathy worked, he wanted no undue attention, and he also wanted no external stress of any kind. Emotional outbursts could trigger an unintentional use of his power, and that might get him caught. So he wanted to take no chances that a pissed off student would take a swing at him or make him angry. The risk was just too great.
He just had to go somewhere tomorrow. It didn't matter where, he just had to, to celebrate getting his license. He'd bring his panel and his books and fill up the skimmer's cabin refrigerator and take a little trip. He'd study for his test and come up with his project somewhere else. He had no idea where, and he really didn't want to yet. He was pondering just throwing a dart at a map and going wherever the dart landed.
Getting a cab wasn't easy after curfew, but given that he had permission to be out after curfew, the one that did come after calling his third cab company arrived very quickly. There was virtually no traffic on the road, as it was after curfew, and the cabby had no delays reaching the base. Jyslin told him to call her after he was done and she'd take him home, but when he did he got no answer. She must have fallen asleep, and he wasn't going to keep calling her until she answered the phone. He could get home just as easily in a cab.
"Got yer permission card?" the cabby asked immediately after rolling down the car window. He was a rough looking black man with wide, pudgy features, one of his front teeth missing, a scar on his lip over the missing tooth, and a battered old Saints cap on his head. "You ain't touchin' my cab unless you got it."
"Right here," he said, handing it to the man.
He glanced at it, and his scowl lightened immediately. "Good `nuff. Hop in," he invited as he unlocked the doors to his cab. Jason piled into the cab and buckled his seat belt as the man turned around on the old tarmac that was used as a parking lot. "Where to? And what you doing out here on the blueskin base?"
"Tulane, and I had to take a test," he answered. "School thing."
"Shit, they keepin' y'all out this late now? Least they coulda done was bussed y'all home 'er somethin'."
"Since when do they care how we get to and from class?" he asked.
The man laughed. "God's own truth that. You fuhst or last out?"
"Only one out," he answered. "I'm the only one who had to take the test."
"Da-yum," the man chuckled. "That musta been hella' nervewrackin'."
"You have no idea," Jason agreed with a relieved sigh.
The man laughed again. "Hey, least it's over."
"Amen."
The man laughed again as they turned out onto Belle Chasse Highway, and said nothing more.
At first he thought he was going to have a nice quiet evening, but things like that never seem to go anywhere. The first distraction came when he got home and found a message waiting on his panel. It was the Imperial Bank, and they were asking him if he wanted to take his account and put it into an interest-bearing plan. That made him curious, so he checked his account once again.
And found that it again had too much money in it. Now there was nearly two hundred thousand credits in the bank. He checked the account history and found that the Ministry of Technology had again deposited a hundred thousand credits into his account. He hadn't touched the money there outside of five hundred credits to pay Zora for her lessons, and now it had gone beyond curiosity. Now, he had to find out what the hell was going on. So, he used CivNet to track down a contact number for the Ministry of Technology on Draconis itself, and then he called them.
As he expected, he got a holographic image of a Faey that was going to route the call, just like an automated answering system. He tried to navigate through their rather confusing menu of choices, until he somehow got hold of a live person. "Accounting," the male Faey said in a boring voice, staring blankly at his monitor.
"Hello, I need to find out about some payments that the Ministry has made to me," he said.
"Are they late?"
"They're too many," he answered. "They keep depositing money in my account, and I want to know why."
The man chuckled. "Just don't say anything," he winked.
"No, I want to know what's going on," he said.
"Alright then. Name and I.D. number please."
Jason gave him the information, and he split the display so half was his face and the other half was written record. "Well, they're not a mistake," he said. "There was the initial patent purchase of twenty-five thousand, then an expansion payment of seventy-five. They pay that when they change your original design to create a new system that works differently than the original patent, but is based on your patent. Then there was a usage fee of one hundred thousand."
"What's that?"
"That means that they've built something to actually use your design in a practical manner," he replied. "Subsonic—hell, that's you?"
"What do you mean?"
The man laughed. "Friend, you're going to be a very wealthy man," he told him. "From the records here, they've split your initial concept and patent into two major subdivisions, and both are actively being used. The first design is currently being mass-produced. The water planet of Aigar VIII has ordered a few million of your subsonic communicators. Seems that the water carries the sound much better than any other kind of communication technique." He switched to another page of data. "There's also a second design they've built on your patent that they use as a subsonic extermination device to kill the larva of deadly insects on Threshkal II. That was the second usage fee that they deposited into your account. In a few cycles, you're going to start getting royalty deposits as soon as the manufacturer that's producing the communicators starts shipping them. You get one half of one percent of the sale price of each unit. That's the standard inventor's royalty."
Jason was a bit startled. He leaned back in his chair and stared at the screen. "So…the money's mine."
"All yours, and no, we didn't screw up," the man laughed. "Your subsonic device is the current rage with the boys over at R&D. They keep building replicas of the itcher and sticking them on the cars of the bureaucrats. It's gotten to where the paper-pushers don't want to park anywhere near the Ministry."
Jason laughed. "Well, I'm glad someone's having fun with it."
"They certainly are. Is there anything else I can help you with?"
"No, no, that's it," he answered. "Thank you for explaining that to me. I was going a little crazy."
He chuckled. "No problem. Have a good morning."
"Night here."
"Well, then have a good night," he said with a chuckle, then the call was terminated.
He was a little surprised. The money was legal, and there was going to be royalties. One half of one percent didn't sound like much until he realized that the man had said that there were going to be two million produced. As long as he didn't go crazy with the money, it would last him for a very long time.
After that, he sat a while and brooded over Jyslin. He knew he shouldn't be going out with her, socialize with her, but he just couldn't help it. He liked her, and just the invitation of sex was enough to send him running in her direction. He felt weak for that, weak that he was compromising his principles just to go out with Jyslin. He didn't see her as the Imperium, but he couldn't trust her entirely yet either. She'd shown she was worthy of some trust, but not the kind of trust that he would need to see in order to forego his philosophical stance and accept her as more than a passing friend. He was being weak, and he knew it. He was compromising his principles to satisfy his personal wishes and desires. He wanted to be Symone's friend, he wanted to go out with Jyslin. He wanted even more when it came to Jyslin, but he couldn't have it, and he was just fooling himself by doing what he was doing with her now. He was letting her seduce him into going against what he felt and believed, but it was so hard not to get involved with her. She was training him in how to control his power, and them being thrown together like that gave her all kinds of opportunity to both sway him by trying to change his concept of her, and also to just plain old tempt him into bed.
But he could only think about that for so long before it became a self-repeating loop of accusations and frustrations, so he laid back on the bed and thought about where he wanted to go tomorrow. That was a pleasant enough thought, and it was enough to lure him into sleep. Heaven.
Heaven was sitting on a beach with the sun shining down on the sand, the waves crashing on the beach, a steady cooling breeze blowing in off the water, and him sitting under the wing of his airskimmer with a panel in his lap, a beer in a coozie on a blanket beside his chair, and him being a thousand miles away from all his troubles. The beach was about the only place that was hot that he was ever willing to go.
Of course, he couldn't enjoy that kind of heaven alone, so the very first thing he did when he woke up at five was go upstairs and knock on Tim's door. He was there, and he was alone for a change, opening the door with bleary eyes. "What?" he demanded sleepily.
"Get up and call Symone," he told him abruptly. "We're going to the beach."
"Man, Biloxi beach sucks, Jason," he complained.
"We're not going to Biloxi. We're going to Hawaii."
"What? How the—oh, you got your license?"
Jason nodded. "Pack. I want to get there to see the sun rise."
"Hell yes!" he said with sudden alertness. "Symone's gonna kill me for calling her this early."
"She'll get over it. Now hurry up."
"Yes, sir!" he barked with a grin, then rushed back into his tiny room to call his girlfriend.
Jason went back downstairs and packed up a small bag with what he wanted to take; swimsuit, towel, sunblock, sunglasses, bermuda shirt he saved just for excursions to the beach, and a straw hat. Then he packed his panel in with his lab notes so he could work on his project, and he was ready. He debated calling Jyslin and asking her along for several moments. On the one hand, calling her was doing nothing but yet again knuckling to his own desires over his perceived duty. On the other hand, he was taking very important lessons from her, and keeping in her good graces right now was a matter of some importance. If he didn't invite her along, she would likely be extremely pissed off, and that was something he couldn't really allow to have happen. Though he hated how he kept bowing his morals to pursue his relationship with her, at the same time he was more or less forced to maintain the relationship simply to protect himself. It was a delicate line on which he had a swordfish hooked, and he had to reel it in just right to avoid having the line snap.
He pulled his panel back out and placed the call, already kicking himself for doing it. But it was necessary. "You'd better have a damn good reason for calling me at five in the morning, Jason," she growled at him over the panel. The image of her showed that she'd been sleeping, for she wore an oversized shirt to bed that hung down to her knees. Her gray eyes were narrowed against the light of the lamp in front of her, shining into her face.
"Well, you finally woke up," he told her with an arch smile.
"I was awake last night. I got called in. Mobility exercise. I tried to call your panel, but you had it turned off."
"I took it with me, but they made me turn it off," he answered.
"That explains it. I just got back in a couple of hours ago. I'd just gone to sleep when you called me."
"Sorry, I didn't know. I was going to see if you wanted to go to the beach, but—"
"The beach? Hell yes!" she said brightly. "I take it from you asking me that you got your license last night. Congratulations, hon."
"Thanks. I thought you were sleepy."
"I can sleep on the flight over. Which beach?"
"Hawaii," he answered.
"I'll be over in twenty minutes. Oh, the skimmer seats eight, right?"
"Tim and Symone and nobody else," he said immediately.
"You're intent on that, I take it?"
"Completely."
She sighed. "Alright. I'll be over as soon as I find my bikini and pack a bag."
"Don't bother. I'll call you right before we leave, and you can meet us at the skimmer. Symone's coming over, and she can take us to the base."
"That works. See you in a bit." She gave him a wolfish smile. "I'm going to wear my dental floss."
"It's your sunburn," he shrugged before ending the call.
Symone was all for the idea of going to a beach, and she was over about ten minutes after Tim called her. She was carrying a woven straw bag with her swimsuit and some other things in it, though she had it covered at the top with a towel and he couldn't really see what she had. She was almost insufferably bouncy, and her banging around and loud shouting at Tim to get him moving woke up half the dorm. Jason called Jyslin just before they left and told her it'd be about a forty-five minutes before they got there, and they all piled into Symone's rather beaten-up Toyota. Symone wasn't all that good of a driver. "The barracks?" she asked as she buckled her seat belt.
"We have to hit the all-night Wal-Mart and the Winn-Dixie first," Jason told her. "We need food, and I'd like a cooler to put out on the beach. I don't want to have to run into the skimmer and hit the fridge every time I want something."
"Good plan. Have sunblock?" He nodded. "Okay. I want to get a scooby mask."
Jason laughed. "Scuba mask," he corrected.
"Whatever," she said with a wink as she pulled out of the dorm parking lot.
Their shopping was very quick, for Jason knew exactly what he wanted, and so did everyone else. He bought a cooler, a small grill they could stow in the cargo hold, grilling supplies, four beach chairs, two beach loungers, and a large beach blanket at Wal-Mart. Symone got her scuba mask, and Tim bought a beach ball and a portable volleyball net and ball. Then they ran to Winn-Dixie and picked up all the things they'd need to grill hamburgers and hot dogs, bought some munchies, junk food, a couple of cases of soda, ice, and two cases of beer, then, just before they left, Symone ran back and bought two more cases. "Taking beer home is just fine, but you should never run out," she winked at him. It got to be a tight squeeze in the car with all the junk they had in it now, but nobody complained as Symone raced to the Marine barracks, squealing the tires as she pulled up to the gate.
"Watch your speed!" the guard barked. "Passes, please."
Both Symone and Jason gave her their cards, and she gave Tim a long look. "Who's signing him in?" she asked.
"I am," Symone said.
"Business?"
"We're just parking the car and getting on a skimmer," she answered. "We're going to spend the day at the beach."
The guard sighed. "Got room for one more?" she asked forlornly.
Symone laughed. "Sorry hon, we're just the passengers," she replied, taking a panel from the woman and signing it with a stylus.
"Well, have a good one," she said, taking the panel back and stepping away from the car, then waving them through.
Jason had to direct Symone to the parking space of his skimmer, and Jyslin was there waiting for them, standing by her car. She had on a pair of loose white shorts and a very loose see-through shirt that wasn't meant to be buttoned up the front, and beneath it she wore a rather small white bikini top. She had a floppy hat on her head and was holding a cloth bag that looked to be a bit heavy. Jason directed her to the parking spot by Jyslin, for his skimmer parking spot had two spots for cars also assigned to it, and she jammed the brakes and skidded to halt. "Damn, girl, learn how to drive!" Jyslin barked at her. "Did you remember food?"
"Food and a grill," Jason told her as he opened the car door.
"Well, then we have too much food," she laughed. "I brought some crab legs and junk food."
"We have room for it," Jason assured her. "Let's get packed up and go."
They loaded up the skimmer, packing the food in the refrigerator at the back of the passenger cabin, on the left of the door to the lavatory on the back wall, stowing the stuff they wouldn't need in the cargo compartment, then stowing their bags in the cubby spaces in the cabin. "Alright, everyone strap in and we'll be on our way," he said as he jumped into the pilot's seat and inserted the keystick. He quickly and expertly started the engines and ran the preflight checks as the others got ready to go, and then he brought up the tower on the radio. "Tower," the female voice called over the speaker, as a sharp, fox-like face appeared on his console, a mature Faey woman with greenish hair tied back in a ponytail behind her. This was a civilian Faey, one of a very few that worked on the planet.
"Skimmer CS-18 requesting permission to take off," he called.
"Destination?"
"I don't have an exact destination yet, but we're going to Hawaii," he answered. "I want to find a secluded beach out there somewhere. Can I get clearance into Oahu and work it from there?"
"Hold a second, let me call it through," she said, and her face winked off the console.
"I thought you had to have a definite flight plan," Tim said.
"Not under the Faey system," he said. "I just need clearance into Oahu, the traffic control hub for the Hawaiian region. They can give me clearance from there, or make me land."
"Oh."
The face appeared in the console again. "You have clearance into Oahu, CS-18," she answered. "Flight lanes are open, control is dynamic. Avoid sector 14-43, and stay under 25,000 shakra through division 12."
"Division 12, roger," he answered, making a note on a small panel to the right of the console holding her image. "I don't think I'll be going through 14-43."
"What's your projected route?"
"I'm thinking sub-orbital arc along the southern trajectory," he answered her. "But I'll have to make it a double-dipper to pass through division 12."
"Affirmative on that," she agreed with a nod, looking to the side. "Weather looks calm along all southern windows."
"Alright then, local?"
"No unusual restrictions and no inbound or outbound traffic. You hit us during a lull."
"Lucky me," he answered.
"Alright then, you're cleared at your leisure. Have a good journey."
"I'm going to the beach. I know I will."
She chuckled. "Got room for one more?"
"Sorry, we don't have time to wait for you to get a suit," he told her with a chuckle.
"Hell, I'll go naked," she told him.
He laughed. "Maybe next time," he told her.
"Good journey," she said with a smile. "Next contact with hand-off. Tower out."
"What did all that mean?" Tim asked with a chuckle.
Jason lightly picked the skimmer up off the tarmac, and retracted the landing skids as he turned the nose upwards and southwest. "She cleared us to fly to Hawaii. Right now she's putting me on the board, and the global traffic system will keep track of my locator beacon. When I'm about to pass outside of the control area for this region, they'll radio me and let me know. That way, if I have to call traffic control, I know who to call."
"Oh, alright. "What is division 12?"
"It's an area of latitude," he answered as he kicked up the speed, and they all sunk into their seats a bit. "Division 12 is an area just off the west coast of America and out about 500 miles. I'll have to descend to under 25,000 shakra before we enter that area and fly under the ceiling until we pass through."
"Why?"
"I don't know, but they've called the control, and I have to obey the rules," he answered. "We're going to do a high arc out to California, descend and stay under the ceiling, then do another short hop out to Hawaii," he explained.
"Why arcs?"
"The higher we go, the faster we can fly," Jyslin answered for him, glancing back at Tim. "Skimmers are subject to air resistance, so by going into thinner air, we can travel faster."
"Actually, the skimmer can go that fast at any altitude, but it's hard on the fuselage," Jason corrected her. "And they don't like you to break the sound barrier under 20,000 shakra. It's an unwritten rule of courtesy."
"Sonic booms?" Tim asked, and Jason nodded. "I thought so."
The Faey traffic system was surprisingly loose. All he had to do was tell them where he wanted to go, and they more or less let him get there along any path he chose. He was passed to the Brownsville controller after passing out of the New Orleans control area, then he was passed off to a Mexican town called Zajuatineo, which was on the Pacific coast. He had to descend and get under the ceiling once he hit division 12, then he ascended again on the outside as he was passed to Easter Island control, doing a pilot's arc to Hawaii. They were moving west, through time zones that were earlier and earlier, and the sun actually set in the east behind them and sent them back into darkness as they moved towards Hawaii. They reached Hawaii control about 5 a.m. local time, and Jason slowed down, put it on autopilot, and accessed Civnet to peruse detailed atlas maps of Hawaii. He and Jyslin pored over them, then Tim and Symone joined in with panels that swung out over the seats from the fuselage sides , just under the windows, as they all looked for a good beach.
"Here, here, Molikakaiha," Symone called. "It's one of the tiny islands, it says it's uninhabited, and it's public land. The beach there is open."
Jyslin accessed the data for that island and nodded. "It says it's a wildlife refuge, but not closed," she affirmed. "It specifically says that the beaches are allowed to be used by boaters."
"That might not be isolated enough," Jason said, then he grunted when he saw that the island, little more than a fly speck, was at the extreme western side of the island chain. That island chain was nearly a thousand miles long, which put the island literally out by itself. The nearest inhabited island was nearly two hundred miles away. "I take it back. I'll call in and ask." He turned on the radio. "Oahu control, CS-18."
"Tower," came a male voice, and a young Faey man appeared on his console.
"I have a destination, and a question," he said. "Destination is Molikakaiha. Civnet says it's a wildlife sanctuary, but also says the beaches are public. Is it still public?"
"Hold on," he said, looking down and typing on his keyboard. "Yah, still public. You're cleared to destination Molikakaiha. There are no local restrictions and no traffic south of Oahu line. If you cross north of Oahu line, be aware of restricted air space around Oahu proper and Pearl Harbor and call in for further instructions."
"Understood. CS-18 out."
"Tower out."
"And that meant?" Tim asked.
"It meant that we can't fly north of the Oahu control station without calling for information about flight restrictions," Jason answered. "A line is a border that runs through the control station itself, and he defined which way it runs by telling me that north of it was restricted space."
"Oh. That makes sense."
"I'm so glad," Jason said dryly.
Molikakaiha was a ribbon of sand with some trees in the middle, and a very small, steep-sloped extinct volcano at its center. Jason circled the island twice until he found a good place to land, and gently touched down about a twenty yards from the waterline on a flat sand plateau whose edge gently angled down to the water, just to the edge of the treeline of palm, coconut, and banana trees. After he put the stairs down, they all filed out and set up their camp. Jason threw his large beach blanket over the sand under the wing, and Jyslin set up the grill as Symone and Tim set up the volleyball net. Then Jason filled up the cooler with ice, drinks, and some chilled snacks. The air was still a bit cool, and the breeze was strong, but he didn't care at all. After that, they put up the habitat module behind the skimmer, so they could have access to its bathroom and shower without having to go into the skimmer. The habitat module was nothing more than a glorified tent, but it did have a shower and a bathroom in it, so that made it very, very handy. After they got it all done, they sat down in the chairs and faced east, then watched the sun rise over the ocean.
That single thing made the entire trip worth it, for it was a truly beautiful sunrise, with the perfect colors filtering through the slightly hazy sky, giving color to the air itself. They watched until the sun became too bright to see, then they donned their sunglasses and got down to some serious relaxation. Jyslin revealed the rest of her bikini, and the term dental floss pretty accurately described the back of it. It was a thong bikini, little more than a G-string, in his opinion, which showed off her virtually every square inch of her very shapely backside. Symone's bikini wasn't much better, a black bikini with little fringe along the straps of the bottom, which was also a spaghetti-strap thong cord that disappeared into the cleft of her buttocks. Black fringe hung down partially over her bottom, presenting an illusion that something was being hidden when in actuality it showed off everything. Tim couldn't keep his eyes off her backside, and Symone enjoyed every second of his avid attention. Those two made Jason's bermuda shorts seem positively prudish, and Tim's higher-legged swim trunks conservative.
Jason was an avid swimmer, for swimming was a great way to beat the occasional heat in a Maine summer, but he wasn't used to swimming in the ocean. The water temperature of the ocean around Maine never got much over 60 degrees, which was a major difference from the warm water lapping at the beach here in Hawaii. The salt water was something new and a bit surprising. They all went for a swim, and Jyslin and Symone paid for their choice of swim suits very quickly. Thong bikinis made them look sexy, but all that motion made them bind and pinch in some extremely sensitive areas, and repetitive motion could cause that cord that ran down into the cleft to chafe the inside cleft of their buttocks. They raced up to the habitat module and took a shower immediately after they were done swimming, and looked much more comfortable when they came out.