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refueling with oil or anything like it would be insanely expensive and complicated to say the least. Most of the vehicles planned for transportation on or within the island were some form of electric.
    Windmills and solar, what the protesters wanted, would have covered every inch of the island and would have destroyed its aesthetically pleasing appearance. Windmills would have added another complication by acting like giant sails.
    It seemed environmental protesters would protest anything that got their faces in front of a camera or in the local paper. Their beliefs didn't seem to extend much further than publicity and fundraising, same as the average politicians.
    Had they truly believed in global warming, they would have supported ANY technology that cooled the ocean; that it made a hundred fold the free energy of a windmill with the reliability of a nuclear plant, as the thermal design promised, should have been seen as a bonus. In a rational world, it should have looked like an answer to every environmentalist's prayer. But it wasn't. They only seemed interested in plans for cooling the oceans that CONSUMED large amounts of energy or closed businesses and punished people with lowered standards of living, all while paying more for energy and taxes.
    He wasn't an engineer guy, changing oil and the occasional brake job was about the limit of his usefulness. The news anchor lost him a little, but it made sense the way Buck explained it. Steam was the expanding gas used in turbines; the thermal generator simply used a different gas, or working fluid as he called it, and used pistons instead of turbines. Steam depended on temperature differences too. If a steam turbine vented into a planet filled with steam, like Venus, it wouldn't work. It only works on Earth because the cooler ambient temperature and lower pressure of this planet gives the steam somewhere to go. He still didn't understand the thermal design enough to build one or fix one if it ever got broken, but that was true of cars, too. He understood the standard combustion engine in the most general ways. Yet, even without holding such in-depth understanding, cars continued to work despite his ignorance. The thermal engine probably would work as well.
    Nathan, on the other hand, was fascinated and researched every aspect of it, and was confounded by Jason's ignorance of the intricacies of his own supposed occupation. But the reality was, Jason just sat and watched gauges, and rarely got a chance to do more.
    Or learn more.
    When he got the job, he had hoped that he would be intimately involved with every aspect of— but who was he kidding? He was just a high school graduate, nothing more. He was a laborer. He did grunt work. Low pay, by comparison, and low skilled.
    He learned more from late-night conversations with Nathan than he did from the job. But then, he only took the job because of Gina. Knowledge of anything else was an extra.

    To get back in the swing of nightshift, he returned to the ship a day early, with a new bottle of melatonin.

    Over Easter, he was scheduled to work. A part of him was glad to not be a burden on Gina's family. The rest of him sorely missed them, quirky mother and all.

[Chapter 7]
    He kissed her on the lips as they lay in bed, late into the morning. They had yet to consummate anything, and probably wouldn't still for months to come. But he was strangely ok with all of that. She no longer stiffened when he hugged her. She didn't reflexively recoil at every touch. He had stopped telegraphing his kisses, and she was reacting more naturally to unexpected pecks on the cheek.
    He was liking all of this. He was enjoying the simple pleasures of spending time with someone.
    It was nice to have conversations during the commercials instead of mindlessly getting something out of the fridge. Without her, even in Hawaii, the week off would have been more boring than his job.
    He didn't even mind when Nathan dropped by the rented room from time to