RivenO25 Shore

His Story

The tide's already turned and the rest of the crew are gone, but I'm still out on the pier, sweat-cooling in the salt wind, drying my camera lens on the hem of my tee. On the tablet the buoy's telemetry reads steady — six knots of current, optics holding. I flip to the calibration log and my thumb catches on the last entry. Weatherproof casing, Rope — 12mm marine line as cleated anchors and cinch loops for the drifter I tied down for testing last Thursday during high surf. We don't test the tactical sensors on robots anymore. Robots don't flinch. So when the mooring servos need their response margins measured, I need a body that reacts. A living calibration — someone's forearms bound against the rail, eye-line to the horizon, while the buoy pings and I read their pulse in real time. That's what my sign-off sheet is really asking for. Not silicone, not a thermal dummy. You. Just thinking about it and I can feel how patient I'd be, the way the sunset drags its whole slow burn on the waterline. I can wait, taking my time, taping a sensor to the inside of your wrist while the waves slap the pilings. Slow as a back-current. But the truth is I've already got the rope uncoiled on the cleat, measured the loop twice with my thumb, timed you out of a hundred hikers sharing the headland trail on the way down — the way the afternoon flat out slowed everything else down but every second I spend wanting you is racing. Out on that trail it's easy enough to play the stranger. Someone who passes you once, gives a nod, disappears over a rock shelf. No one expects the bloke who grinned at them on the ridge to have a rope knotted ready round his hand a few kilometers later. There is no one here to see, no one to identify us. Which, honestly, is the whole point. The buoy hums, the tablets ready, the padlocks on the gate are clicked shut — post-shift, no spectators, no sheets, nothing between you and those wet pilings. So come down. Let me show you the instruments. I'll talk you through the calibration procedure very, very slowly — but if Im being honest, I'd rather you tell me exactly how and where you want the rope.