“I used to have dreams…they were really scary.”

The Lobotomy Dude

Living on the edge

Kona Dave is somewhere. He slips me messages and photos. Some arrive. Others are blocked. An angry armed Postal Inspector warned me the other day:

“Beware! This sender may involve you in felonious activity.”

I suspect he’s in some god forsaken region of the world. Working his deals. Moving and shaking. He thrives in queerly luminous spaces where dark shapes linger in the ghastly twilight. Where along the odorous canals flow the teeming masses. Where a man’s death can be bought for the price of a bowl of rice. It’s here that treasures are seized by those willing to abandon the weight of their souls.

Is it all for the money and the thrill of the hunt? Or does Kona Dave have some darker urge?

I hear Mister Kurtz’s death bed cry: “The Horror! The Horror!“

A nefarious clue

I got a call from the blackjack dealer at the Live-Bait-On-A-Pole cocktail lounge. You probably know the place. Right across the street from the Gypsy Joker Pool Hall in Fresno’s Chinatown. They get a lot of the action used to hang in Hanoi’s red light district. Strictly high rollers. This dealer, they call him Cro-Magnon, says Kona Dave left him a marker for three hundred grand and he should call me to make it good.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“You don’t know, eh?”

“No. I mean yes. I don’t know.”

“He said you’d say that. Which means the big dive is on and I should wait for his call.”

“The big dive?”

“The Titanic. He says you won’t know nothing about that.”

“I don’t know shit.”

“Good.”

“That’s it?”

He hung up.

Now what?

Titanic tourist submarine goes missing in the Atlantic

Kona Dave may be aboard the Ocean Gate Titan…that fancy cordless diving bell. The Titan has gone missing with a crew of five. Dave won’t be on the official guest list. He always manages to keep his name out of the news.

The following is Journalist David Pogue’s profile of the Titanic Submersible. Published last year.

Check it out.

Here’s Pogue’s recent comments on the missing sub

Renata Rojas

Okay, so I’m all in for visiting the wreak of the Titanic. That is, if the ride down there is safe as a Disneyland ride. Or even as safe as one of Bezos’s space ships. I mean, that’s pushing it. But for sure I could be coaxed into joining Shatner and Bezos if they gave me a ride for free.

But going down in the Titan?

You watched the clip. They steer the fucker with a Xbox game controller.

The interior lights? They purchased those at Camper world.

I’m thinking only a man completely out of his mind would go on a 12,000 foot dive in this tub, and spend a quarter Million for the effort.

Or, for that matter, a woman.

Renata Rojas. Most of her life she’s dreamed of viewing the wreak of the Titanic.

Thirty years she’s dreamed of this one thing.

After three aborted trips in the Titan she finally got her wish. She went down in that cranky tub, steered by a toy, lit by camper lights, three fucking times. A ride more dangerous than going over Niagara Falls in a barrel. They say the pressure down there is greater than the empire state building squashing your ass. A jalopy less safe than a VW bug at a monster truck smash-up. It took her three shots but she finally made it. She got her wish and she came back up to tell about it.

“Some people dream of owning a Ferrari,” she said. “Or a house. Me, I dream of seeing the Titanic.” She smiles. “You know, you can’t put a price on a dream.”

She rolled the dice against impossible odds and won. Embraced her dream. Won her lottery. Now she can coast on it.

Like beating a death virus.

Like a cobra shedding a skin, you rid yourself of the dream. And for the rest of your life you can talk about it. Because that’s what you are.

You’re the one took the dream by the horns and flipped the bull on its ass.

I say good for her.

But what about the others? Those on the current mission.

The Big Time Dreamer

“You know, there’s a limit. You know, at some point, safety just is pure waste. I mean, if you just want to be safe, don’t get out of bed. Don’t get in your car. Don’t do anything. At some point, you’re going to take some risk, and it really is a risk/reward question. I think I can do this just as safely by breaking the rules.”  

Stockton Rush

As I speak, he’s down there with the others. Stockton Rush. The dude that put this whole deal together. He’s trapped in his minivan sized tub. You could say he should’ve stayed in bed. That’s not what his kind is made of.

He’s the dream chaser kind.

Stockton was born into a wealthy family, which allowed him to pursue his passions. A Family Office Exchange article from a 2020 virtual forum explained, “With his family’s wealth behind him, Rush had the capacity to ‘meander’ his way through various jobs and experiences that eventually led him to the ocean. The family funds originally came from his Grandfather, who Rush describes as a ‘dirt poor Irish immigrant,’ who by age 33 became the youngest director of Standard Oil in America.”

Rush, who graduated from Princeton in 1984 with a degree in aerospace engineering, has said that he never really grew out of his childhood dream of wanting to be an astronaut, but his eyesight wasn’t good enough. He nursed his space travel dream for years, imagining he would join a commercial flight as a tourist. “I had this epiphany that this was not at all what I wanted to do,” Rush told the magazine. “I didn’t want to go up into space as a tourist. I wanted to be Captain Kirk on the Enterprise. I wanted to explore.”

This is the stuff of big time dreamers.

So he built the Titan. Started a business that did ocean research funded by offering tourist trips down to the famous wreak.

Not space travel. Deep sea exploration.

Same difference.

He took his Dream by the horns and flipped the bull on it’s ass.

Don’t get out of bed?

And yet this tub he built.

Turns out it really is the stuff of dreams.

You might say he made his own bed. But he’s not alone down there.

Aboard the submersible is explorer Hamish Harding. A billionaire and big time adventure seeker.

“Mr. Titanic” Paul-Henri Nargeolet. Another Billionaire. A true Professional. Was he steering with that Xbox?

Then there are the two official tourists. Business tycoon Shahzada Dawood. Yet another Billionaire and friend of King Charles. Shahzada brought his nineteen year old son along with him. That’s tough, the kid being down there.

Swept along with the Big Time Dreamers…

One thing I don’t get. And excuse me for expressing my ignorance. But let’s look at it. These are good decent people. All of them. Big time dreamers but hardnoses too. You don’t amass fortunes by being lamebrains. What I don’t get is this: What the fuck got into them, jumping into a makeshift jalopy like the Titan in the first place? These people are not dumb. They had to know what a foolhardy mission they were joining.

They all signed that disclaimer.

All I can figure. The dream blinds you.

The DREAM takes hold of you.

What about Kona Dave?

Is he aboard the lost Titan? Odd clues have arrived on my text feed.

Photographs.

Dave with a prehistoric Lizard. I’m not sure what this means. I’m still working on it.

The Simpsons Pin Ball Machine in the background of this photo could very well contain a clue to his whereabouts. But I need to get to this pinball machine. Meaning I’ll need to travel to Seattle, Washington.

I don’t know…

Two Thousand Naked Bike Riders.

This will test the limit of my code breaker skills.

Another call from Cro-Magnon!

“You got the numbers?” he asks.

“What numbers?”

“Off the Wench. Dave says he sent you the numbers.”

“I don’t know what your talking about.”

“He did me again, the bastard.”

“What?”

It’s hard to hear with all the shouting in the background. They must have a real doozy of a dancer on that pole…

Cro-Magnon is telling me a really crazy story. He’s saying Dave took the plunge. Went down to the Titanic. He’s saying something about serial numbers. And once you got the numbers they have a bank in Switzerland.

“You tell that bastard this is the last time I’ll be played for a fool. He’s a dead man.”

He hangs up!

Here’s the gist of what Cro-Magnon told me. Dave had some business dealings with a man of strange repute. A man said to be over a hundred and thirty years old. This man, on his deathbed, revealed to Dave a lost Swiss Bank Safe Deposit Box. He no longer remembered the numbers to this account. Only where he came up with the numbers.

The last living survivor of the Titanic

The numbers to the box match the serial numbers on a wench aboard the wreak of the Titanic. Dave had merely to go down to the bottom of the sea, read those numbers, and a vast fortune will be his for the taking.

He’ll be sitting pretty beside some weird rocks.

Oh oh, False Alarm

I just got a text from Kona Dave. With this photograph attached.

The Kona Big Wave Stage. More photos of him mixing with the Musicians.

He can’t be aboard the Titan.

It was all a ruse.

To what end I can’t fathom.

Unless he figured a way to get off the Titan. From 12,000 feet down at the bottom of the ocean?

That’s unlikely.

Those people are lost.

I’m rooting for their rescue.

Especially that kid.

One thing’s for sure. The Titanic is down there. Waiting…

The stuff of nightmares…