Ride the Titanic! (35 page)

‘Hear that?’

Joe nods. ‘Should be an easy fix.’

‘That screen rip won’t be, though.’

‘The cheapest thing you buy. . .’

‘‘. . .is the most expensive thing you own.’ I know, but the guy said. . .’

‘The ‘guy’ always does – hey.’ Joe points to the lead lifeboat. ‘What’s that bonehead up to?’

A news reporter/videographer has somehow defeated the EMV safety restraint and stands to get a better shot.

‘Gonna’ P-stop?’ Joe says nervously.

I start to key my two-way, but then take a deep breath. ‘Give the system five seconds.’

It takes less than two before our laser-sensor system, relentlessly sweeping the area for anomalies to detect and identify it as a body shape extending beyond safety parameters, cross-references the reporter’s RFID, and all of the above meeting and exceeding our P-Stop criteria, smoothly brings the lifeboat to a halt. A recorded female voice sweet as syrup repeats three times, ‘Please remain in your seat and secure the safety harness. Thank you.’

By the second time she says it, the guy plops back down, while his fellow newshounds, like sharks feeding on a wounded brother, film his embarrassment. But if he doesn’t comply, seconds later a strategically-placed ride security attendant, on call for just such eventualities, will arrive to solve the problem more forcibly.

Joe grumbles. ‘Hell of a way to start a sell job.’

‘Fine by me. Proves the ride’s safe.’

My headset clicks twice. Molly’s crisp, distant voice says, ‘Green board, sir. Back on track.’

‘Good work. Thanks.’

‘Thank the detection system.’

Typical geek response. The minute you skate even remotely near an emotion they skate backwards, convinced the ice is so thin they’ll break through and sink. But I learned long ago with folks like Lewis and Molly and the rest of her team, that while their hearts are in the right place, their feelings hide in the basement and have to be gently coaxed to come out and play.

‘Molly, that your voice I heard on the warning?’

A long beat. ‘I did it as a place marker but they liked it so much they kept it in, I guess.’

‘You did the other P-stop recordings too?’

‘Uh. . . yes sir.’

‘Good work.’

A pause.

‘A simple ‘thank you’ will suffice, Molly.’

A tight laugh. ‘Thank you, sir.’

I spend most of the ride checking what’s working and what’s not, and also watching Ellie ply her craft. I especially enjoy how she manages to blend in with the herd of other reporter/videographers, becoming just another member of the gang of shooting-vest-wearing guys, who wield their cameras like big game hunters as they pan this way to capture the interior of the
Wheelhouse
scene, and that way – but a touch too late – to catch Frederick Fleet’s shout of alarm as the iceberg looms ‘straight ahead.’

Not Ellie, though, who knows every twist and turn of the ride, and capturing all the right moments, but in a way that will seem like an ordinary rider made a homemade video – shaky, breathtaking, unsure, looking this way and that way, wondering what’s going to happen next – just like the Vegas VIPs as they lean forward, hands gripping the lifeboat gunwales during the
Forward Hold Flooding
Scene
,
version 3B, with Captain Smith and Thomas Andrews, one I haven’t seen, running full up until now.

The
Titanic’s
chief designer ticks off on his fingers the flooding compartments. ‘Holds one and two, boiler rooms five and six, and the mailroom.’

‘FIVE compartments?’ Smith sounds incredulous.

Andrews regards the rising water. ‘She’ll float on three, but on five. . . .’ He turns to Smith. ‘We’ve lost her, Captain.’

The music swells. No buzzing speakers this time.

Perfect.

And upward we shoot, zooming past increasing chaos in the flooding boiler room, stewards hurrying down second class halls with stacks of life preservers murmuring, ‘Just a precaution, nothing to worry about.’

Faster and faster we climb - or so it seems. We’ve traversed only thirty vertical feet on the guide track, but the combination of enhanced motion from our lurching and rocking lifeboat, the blur of HD images racing past on both sides, and the blast of nitrogen-driven compressed air, make for a convincing sensation of speed.

BOOM, the first of
Titanic’s
distress rockets explode overhead and Ellie swish-pans from the sky as the
Wireless Room
scene begins with Captain Smith and the operators.

The Vegas VIPs’ heads swivel back and forth during the tense conversation that ensues. Ellie’s directing skills with her actors are paying off. Caught up in the drama of clicking wireless keys and the sharp tang of ozone, the three actors demonstrate what Ken Burns once said, ‘Good history-telling happens when you start to wonder if it’s going to turn out the way you already know it does.’

Down we drop to the
Engineering
scene with the panicked stokers, and then zoom up again, this time to the slanting
Boat Deck
Scene, version 4A, with a different set of actors than the mother and her missing child, like last time. According to my run-schedule, a young clergyman and his sister will soon emerge from out of the swirling mass of digitally-projected passengers. Just as they appear, Ellie turns and gives me a thumbs-up.

Two actors stand statue-still amidst the growing tumult swirling around them. The young woman puts her hands on her brother’s narrow shoulders. Her voice has a soft Irish lilt. ‘You’re sure, then?’

‘A shepherd cannot leave his flock.’

‘Then I’ll be staying too.’

He laughs. ‘You’re not a sheep. You’re my beautiful sister Kathleen. Now get yourself to that lifeboat. Your husband-to-be waits for you in New York.’

‘Patrick.’ She searches his face. ‘You’ll come along soon then?’

‘When it’s time, aye. Now off you go.’

She touches his cheek. ‘Goodbye.’

‘Not goodbye. I’ll take you home yet.’

An officer elbows his way out of the crowd and shouts, ‘Over this way, last boat’s going, hurry up.’

Joe, caught up in the moment, whispers, ‘It’s sink or swim, now, for those poor kids.’

Like the EMV’s ahead of us, hydraulic pistons lift our lifeboat out of the ride track, davits and sheave blocks attach to bow and stern, and swing it outward to dangle above the ship’s steel cliff of a hull, dotted with glowing portholes. Then down we go, past scenes of the ship’s final moments on the lower decks:

A fist-fight between two men, fighting over a lifejacket, crying children, distant shouting, lights flickering, speed increasing until blackness swallows us up.

But tonight there there’s no scene of the
Titanic
sinking in the distance, no arrival on the
Carpathia
and ‘exit through retail,’ like we would during a day ride. Tonight the lowering cables release and our lifeboat veers to the right instead of left and races along a different track leading toward the egress hatch.

LED ‘stars’ mimic the constellations as we move along a narrow passageway; the same stars the passengers would have seen that fatal night. A chilling combination of rhythmic sound effects blends with a low frequency hum that grows louder and louder. As we zoom through the darkness, my notebook displays the EMV’s as neon-green triangles maintaining proper separation from each other via infrared-sensors that can slow down or speed them up as circumstances require.

A faint click and soft ‘thump’ beneath my seat as the EMV cradle begins its separation sequence. Keel brackets no longer grip the boat securely. The gunwale straps retract, along with the main power umbilicus. Weight is the only thing holding our boat in place on the cradles.

‘Never rode this thing dark,’ Joe says.

‘You like?’

‘This part, yes. The roller coaster part that’s coming? No way.’

‘C’mon, you’ve done this before.’

‘With work lights, not the real thing.’

A glimmer of light ahead, then darkness. A whiff of dry, cool, outside air, then a dense curtain of chilled air that makes my shoulders hunch.

‘Hang on.’

The ride cradle drops away as the lifeboat shifts onto a geared track that grips the keel rack and slowly eases us through the egress hatch until we’re outside the ship, teetering like a Ferris wheel cupola at the top of its arc.

But only for a brief instant before gravity takes over and we tip forward and slide down the 150-foot ejection slide and land with a resounding SPLASH in the water trough. Deflection vanes tame the spray to a gentle dousing, which refreshes rather than soaks. As proof, the news crews who’ve arrived ahead of us are still shooting instead of drying off their gear like they would have on your average amusement park slide-ride.

Joe’s face lights up like one of the ship’s rockets. ‘Awesome and then some!’

‘Nothing like a good story.’

Joe points to the VIP boat. ‘Looks like your boys bought it hook, line and sinker.’

Electric propulsion motors move our lifeboat closer to where Xia sits in the stern saying something to the group that I can’t hear. She should have saved her breath because the city fathers aren’t listening. To a man they sit hunched over, huddled for common protection as they stare in wonder at the
Titanic
, no longer the regal, four-stack maritime masterpiece they boarded less than fifteen minutes ago. Now the massive ship is down by the bow and sinking right before their disbelieving eyes.

The sound effects track, complete with a heavy bass THRUM, soars above the street noise on the boulevard. Blue and green Fresnel show-lights ring the dive basin and, after a brief flicker, shine eerily upon the maritime tragedy repeating itself against the backdrop of the towering hotel, a menacing, iceberg-shaped symbol of man’s hopeless efforts to beat Mother Nature at her own deadly game.

Except for the sidewalk superintendents, whose stunned faces peer through the ‘portholes’ in the construction fencing, pedestrians continue cruising along the strip, blithely unaware of what’s happening.

I, on the other hand, am hyperaware as I monitor the ride bridge channel’s voices as they continue the full systems test, which so far – miraculously – has gone off without a hitch.

‘Egress doors secured.’

‘Ramp locked.’

‘Flooding forward tanks, five, six, and seven.’

Then a tense-sounding voice: ‘Low pressure alarm; show-exit four. Request P-stop.’

‘Negative,’ Molly says coolly. ‘Stand by.’

Joe says, ‘Problems?’

‘Don’t know yet.’

Seconds later, Molly says, ‘Override alarm. Confirmed anomaly.’

‘Roger. Marked as same.’

‘We are go for full immersion.’

By now, the
Titanic’s
bow and foredeck are completely under water. Faint music from the ship’s band drifts across to where we bob in our lifeboats, seemingly adrift, but in fact held securely in place by water-jets in the keel that respond to infrared tracking signals. As proof, we skew slightly to starboard in response to commands coming from the Ride Bridge, where Molly and her team monitor each lifeboat’s location to make sure they move further and further away from the ship to avoid danger when she finally sinks.

Golden light spills from the hundreds of portholes along the ship’s downward slanting hull. They flicker on and off, a dark reminder of the watery death sentence imposed on the stokers and engineers trapped inside the ship’s boiler and engine rooms. Even though our techs are safe and sound inside the pressure hull, it’s hard for me to not to shiver at the thought of something going wrong. I mean, despite my rock-solid faith in technology, this IS the
Titanic.

Joe senses my unease, ‘Sure hope you know what you’re getting yourself into,
paisan.
’

‘You mean the ride?’

‘This ain’t no
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
ride we did for the kiddies.’ He scrunches up his shoulders. ‘Thing’s almost too real.’

‘And why not? It happened – the
Titanic
, I mean.’

A deep, booming rumble comes from waterproof speakers all along the hull as the stern slowly rises clear of the water.

‘Here we go. . .’

Pale-blue spotlights bathe her massive, motionless, bronze propellers and blade-shaped rudder. Faraway shouts mix with the thrum of frightened voices of passengers trapped on the ship. First a mysterious crackling sound, immediately followed by a soaring distress rocket arcing into the night sky. As it explodes high overhead, its brilliant light bathes the four, raked smokestacks reaching up like a fingers desperate for help. Panicky screams break out when the cable stays of the Stack #1, under impossible tension, TWANG free and the funnel begins its slow-motion collapse onto the boat deck.

Nearer My God to Thee
swells louder, but not enough to drown out panicky voices, both young and old.

‘She’s going.’

‘Stay back.’

‘Hold on.’

‘Stay here.’

‘Momma!’

‘Darling!’

Deeper and deeper she sinks, fully amidships now, her stern at its full angle of inclination. She trembles on the brink, waiting – or so it seems – but in truth it’s a planned stop-point as the myriad of computer programs cross-check each other as they will every time the ship sinks to confirm that all systems – and backup systems – are functioning perfectly. It might be just my nerves but we seem to be holding longer than usual. Our ride has a fixed, scene-by-scene story arc, and needs to disappear just as the expectation of its doing so reaches the ultimate peak. Any sooner and we lose our audience’s focus, any later and we lose them, period.

I surrender to my nerves and key my radio. ‘Status, Molly?’

‘Wait one.’ A slight beat, then her confident voice. ‘Green to go, sir.’

Another deep BOOM from inside the ship and all the lights flicker once, twice, and then darkness. The EMV’s water jets hum slightly as they re-positioned us to witness the final scene.

Show lights wash the
Titanic
in what looks like moonlight, even though no moon was in the sky on that terrible night. Speakers, on board the ship, along the dive basin perimeter, and inside the EMV’s themselves combine to deliver a cacophony of sound effects that washes over us like a tidal wave; metallic crunches and snaps, wood splintering and steel groaning in distress competes with the growing voices of desperate people about to meet their fate in the middle of an unforgiving ice-cold sea, that was there long before they were born and will be there long after they’re gone.