The Diamond Goby's Check Out

The Diamond Goby's Check Out

David Diaz

04/17/2023

Closing Time

Being a truck specialist has many benefits. Your equipment is maintained by someone else for you, You can use the “I’m busy” excuse for almost anything, and most importantly for Noah, he gets to work more with machines instead of people. However, It’s easy for Noah to forget all those benefits when his tour ends. Being the fire department's resident mechanic and driver makes Noah stay overtime. Rigorously checking off boxes and following procedures to make sure everything is up to code for the next team when they check-in. Finally, the last box is checked and Noah, tired as Twilight, starts packing. The department where Noah is stationed is far from his house but it isn’t a not long trip. All fire departments are stationed on original dry land and aren’t too far from a super highway, a large multi-dozen-lane highway longer than the Great Wall of China. It was built to connect wet and dry regions of America and make traveling between flooded and elevated regions accessible to cars so the process is as seamless as can be. Every time Noah gets in his car and is about to enter it he remarks, “Finally our government does SOMETHING right with our money.” Passing through the super highway Noah insists on driving himself instead of activating the autopilot, even after the numerous warning messages and constant reminders that interrupt his drives. If Noah can drive a 5-ton fire truck that barely has power steering, he’s more than qualified to drive his fancy car of the year with practically instantaneous braking. Besides, Noah's daily highlights always have him driving faster than anyone else in the “No speed limit” lanes. Especially at closing time when there’s practically no one heading down to the residential areas. The same can’t be said about the other side of traffic. It’s practically bumper-to-bumper with people trying to enter Miami Beach. While the original Miami Beach was one of the first areas to flood, Everyone knew Florida wouldn’t let the party capital remain underwater. Long before things became drastic, Florida started preparing. Making buildings connected to each other, leading a media campaign to glamorize the perks of living in a landless city, and most costly, being inspired by China years before and dumping millions of tons of sand and making artificial beaches to keep tourists coming. Not that it matters to Noah, he hates the big city and his department doesn’t cover anywhere near there. Soon Noah’s fun came to an end, a gift and a curse to him for driving fast, getting to his location quickly. He can’t actually take his car home, since it’s a “raft home.” Noah didn’t want to move when the water levels started rising since his home was essentially worth nothing, he’d have to move. Instead, he took the risk and invested into turning his home seaworthy. With adjustable floatation rafts that also adjust to current changes and an anchor to keep it in place. Noah has to leave his car behind at an Aquamerica station. New airport-like facilities but are much quicker and lock up your car. they use old remodeled cruise ships like buses to drop you off at your doorsteps. The short commute is enough to tire out Noah who was already running on fumes. He skips taking a shower tonight and just makes a protein shake to help him sleep. He crashes into his bed still wearing his uniform pants and turns on the T.V.
Call to Duty

Noah didn’t get 20 minutes into his favorite show before the breaking news hijacked his television. On the scene, a massive sinkhole formed directly under one of Miami’s most modern hotels, The Diamond Goby. The news anchor says all residents are trapped inside the hotel that is at the center of the sinkhole. And water is rushing in to fill the sudden hole. and the current amount of first responders at the scene isn’t finding much success. Soon after, Noah's personal transponder starts playing an alarm, and flashing red, he’s being called to the scene. If Noah hadn’t seen the news first, he’d course out his job and thought of using his personal time off to skip this alarm. Knowing the severity he urgently grabs his clothes that he just took off from the floor. Rushing out the door he uses a ride-sharing app, knowing all other options would be too slow. Not long after a man in a jet ski appears and Noah frantically gives him his station's coordinates. Thanks to Noah contradicting the GPS and making the driver take illegal shortcuts they get there on record time. Noah may have been the last one to leave this station but he was the last to arrive. All his squad members were there already. Most were packing their kits and getting their equipment ready. Jess, the squad's electrical engineer was the first to arrive so she was ready to go. She also had to prep Noah’s equipment for him since the driver has that privilege. Thankfully Noah didn’t phone in his closing inspection tonight and had the truck already good to go. Soon after Noah arrived everyone was in the truck and heading for Miami beach. The bumper-to-bumper traffic became true for both lanes of traffic now. Cars were moving at a snail's pace but that only allowed Noah to showcase his driving skills. The autopilot system leaves a generous amount of space that Noah takes advantage of. Weaving between cars they make it onto the scene. The team looks at this massive crater with a tower barely protruding from the center of it. The loud alarms are drowned out by the sounds of rushing water that’s trying to fill in the crater and swallow the hotel itself. Already succeeding with the first dozen levels, them being completely submerged. At the higher levels, there are figures looking outwards at them. A helicopter spotlight flashes on them and confirms them to be the residents staying at the hotel tonight, seeking refuge from the water that has taken the lower levels. Looking around you’d think everyone just got there since all anyone can do is look and prep equipment. Jess begins to work on finding a way to communicate with the hotel residents to get a better idea of what the situation looks like inside. Expertly she rigs up a walkie-talkie to the firetrucks radio and connects to the frequency of the Hotel staff’s private walkie-talkie radio. The loud panic quickly subsided when Jess introduced herself. “Hello, this is Jess from the fire department. Is there anyone in charge that can tell me what the situation inside looks like?” Soon after Jess’s introduction, Everyone floods the radio waves with remarks ranging from light confusion teetering on annoyance to hysterical panic and people incorrectly assuming a terrorist attack had just taken place. All their panicking soon stopped when a deeper voice than the rest said quietly “Hello Jess, This is the Diamond Goby’s head of security, Antonio speaking. We’ve moved everyone we could to the higher levels and are awaiting further orders.” “Pleasure to meet you Antonio,” Jess says. “What does the situation look like inside Antonio?” “There are some residents in critical condition that need immediate medical attention. Besides that, everyone else can hold out longer. Over.” Relieved, Jess says “Thanks for everything sir, see you soon.”
Relief

There’s no way to reach the hotel. There isn’t even a helipad to land on so something unorthodox needs to be thought up in order to get a medical team inside. Noah scans the area around him and thinks up an idea. “We can zipline in.?” Jess looks confusingly at him as if he spoke to her in a made-up language. “I know, it sounds crazy, but think about it. We climb to a higher point and bust a window and zipline in people and supplies.” Ok great idea, just one thing. How are they going to get out once they’re in?” Noah dismissively says “Doesn’t matter, they’ll leave when everyone else gets rescued, but right now time is crucial and those people need help asap so start looking for the medical team and meet up here in 30 minutes to get started.” Noah excitedly began collecting the equipment needed to build the large zipline and met up with Jess. She was accompanied by an 8 ambulance crew newbies. Their faces are pale blue and their scrawny bodies quiver holding up their backpacks packed with medical supplies. All the experienced paramedics chose to opt out of going on this little side job so Noah and Jess were left with the riff-raff. Regardless, they entered an adjacent office building to try to get a clear shot of the zipline. The power was cut off and all the workers were evacuated from the scene so there was no hope of the elevators being functional. Still, the team started their ascent using the stairs. Noah quickly shed his antisocial demeanor past the 20th floor. He eagerly pointed out to the paramedics how heavy the zipline equipment he was carrying was, how he was the oldest one in the group, how his equipment is usually twice as heavy as this, how he was barely breaking a sweat… Jess interrupts him by the 60th floor, “We should be high enough, Noah you better know how to shoot the zipline, after letting everyone know you were the one carrying it for 60 floors I don’t want to hear you use the same “I have a bad back” excuse you use whenever we’re organizing back at the station .” The paramedics started snickering as Noah's face got beet red. Quietly he started setting up his equipment as Jess got on the radio with Antonio. “Copy Antonio” “Copy Ma’am.” “We’re sending doctors and supplies in through a zipline. I need you to bust a window on the south side of the building.” “Yes,m.” Soon after the team watches as an entire desk is hurled like a football through a window. Noah remarks “Wow, that guy should look into seeing if the Dolphins need a new lineman.” “Thank you, Antonio, see you soon,” Jess says into the radio. As Noah lines up the shot he does a double take. “See you soon? You’re planning on going in?” “Yes,” Jess answers. “I’ll be more helpful inside and I can start giving updates on what the interior layout is like. That way we can start coming up with an extraction plan.” Noah blankly states “Jess, Antonio can do all that you don’t need to go.” Jess dismisses that by saying “You know that’s not true Noah. How are we gonna tell Antonio what to look for if we don’t even know what’s inside?” Noah goes quiet. “Now focus up and shoot straight. The water’s filling up the sinkhole and I really don’t wanna fish bodies out of the water tonight.” With that, Everyone hooks up and starts ziplining in.” Jess turns back and gives Noah the radio. “Talk to you soon.”
Resurface

Noah begins his descent from the office building, tightly clutching the walkie-talkie Jess gave him. He’s anxiously waiting to hear his friend's voice again. He makes it outside while still being radio silent until he hears her. “Noah, I've located Antonio and the MDs treated the critical patients. The worst thing inside is some concussions and broken bones but they’ll get to that. How are the planning crews looking?” Noah, just eager to talk to Jess, gives her the disappointing news, “Well I just got outside and I still see a lot of people huddled in groups, and not a lot of them actively doing anything. So I’m guessing no one’s come up with something.” “Well, I’ll look at what we can do from inside, keep this radio close.” Noah begins migrating from group to group trying to find an idea that’ll work but they’re all outrageous and impractical. Constructing sky bridges, using helicopters to skylift people, just airdropping life jackets, and waiting for everyone to float up. Though the last one stuck out to Noah. Not giving everyone life vests and just hoping for the best that’s stupid but the idea of floating on the water is. His house is already just floating in the water. If there was a way to increase that scale and make it applicable to the current situation, everyone would be able to just walk out the front door. Eagerly Noah tells Antonio and Jess his idea and they get to work. Antonio mentions “We already have something like that. Whenever it starts flooding we turn on the Hotel's floatation rafts to keep accessible the lower levels. That should work but we need power for that.” Jess chimes in “There should be an emergency power system that can power them up.” “There is but that’s all underwater by now.” Noah interrupts and says, “Well I'll get a scuba team ready, Jess be ready to brief them.” “OK and tell them to get me a wetsuit too.” Noah and Antonio stay quiet for a moment only for Noah to casually ask “What’s up with you today? Are you trying to get yourself killed inside that hotel?” Antonio adds “I advise you refrain from joining them down there, That water is freezing this late at night.” Jess shuts them both up by saying, “What other electrical engineers are at the scene that can divert emergency power to boot up the flotation systems?” With that Noah just went on and did what he was told. A team descended down into the massive sinkhole and infiltrated the hotel. Waiting on the 30th floor was Jess who needed to change into her wetsuit. In a matter of 15 minutes, the water level has risen up to Jess’s knees. Not too much time was left until the water destroys the structural integrity of the hotel and made the building buckle. Being underwater means radio silence. All anyone can do is wait for the rafts under the hotel to start inflating. After 20 minutes of praying a loud clanging noise start as two mammoth yellow rafts start enlarging. With that, everyone knew Jess had succeeded. Noah waited for 5 hours until the hotel was back at its original elevation and rescue boats could approach. Waiting for Jess to step out he sees her and Antonio. Approaching them he goes up to Antionio and Noah says. “I’d have thought you’d be taller.” And Antonio replies “I'd have thought you'd be younger.” Jess breaks them up. “Listen you two we both had a long night, Let’s go get a drink we all need one.” Noah immediately says “No way Jess I gotta get back my sleep! See you next shift, Let me know if we got promoted because of this.”