Shelby walked into the Wizard’s Keep to find Joshua set up with a demonstration. He had a fish and some kind of apparatus. The fish didn’t look all that fresh.

“Take a look.” Joshua used the apparatus to zoom in a microscopic view of the fish flesh displayed to them on VR. It had been sliced open and the flesh was laid over for easy viewing. The fish definitely was NOT fresh. In fact it had little wigglies in it.

Joshua zoomed in some more and fiddled with some controls.

“You can see the parasites, worms and various bacteria?” Joshua asked

“Oh yeah.” Shelby replied with distaste “lots.”

“OK...now watch.” Joshua replied.

Joshua moved the fish into the focus of an emitter and placed some shielding between them and it. Much like for an X-ray at the doctor. Then he triggered a FLASH! Much like a strobe light.

He moved the fish back to the magnifier.

“Look now.” he offered.

Shelby did. All the wigglies were dead. He zoomed in. No more bacteria either.

He knew what had happened but why rain on Josh’s parade.

“What’d you do?” he asked politely.

Josh knew Shelby knew but accepted the question as a compliment, as it had been intended.

“Flash irradiation.” he said “It rendered the fish flesh sterile for a few seconds. It’s been contaminated somewhat by the air already but it was sterile. I still wouldn’t want to eat it though. I imagine it tastes nasty.”

Shelby agreed. “I suppose most uncooked fish have some parasites in them to one degree or another?”

“Yup.” Joshua agreed “Most fish have parasites. Cooking kills them. If the fish is in an impervious membrane when it’s irradiated then it can’t be contaminated while the membrane remains intact. The flash would kill the fish instantly by the way. Painless. If fish can even feel pain.”

“I see great possibilities.” Shelby said “Are you putting it on the Fluffy you are converting?”

“Yup” Joshua said

“And other places” Shelby agreed.

A week or so passed as Fluffy was converted from a prospector to a hunter. She was made ready for her first hunt. Much Beer was loaded and other consumables. Finally the time arrived to leave. Henry, Wilbur and a small group of well wishers were in the shuttle bay.

“What are you going to call her?” Lucy asked “Every boat needs a name. Are you still going to call her Fluffy? There’s so many Fluffy’s out there now that it’s almost a class rather than an individual ship name.”

“Yup. We discussed that.” Wilbur said “I’m reminded of an Old Johnny Cash Song. The song goes on about how hard life is and what can be encountered. That’s kind of what we MIGHT be faced with. The time might come when we might have to be tough or die. In the song the father says this name would make the boy strong.”

“Not only that.” Henry said “ We’re hunting for the wily Su-shi.”

“So we decided to name her Sue.” They both said in unison.

“Grooooaaaaaan.” Unified and heartfelt from the assemblage.

“Thank you Brethren and Cistern” Wilbur said.

Sue extended a tentacle. Henry handed it a bottle of ‘Old Oil Change’.

Sue used the tentacle to whack herself on her ‘forehead’ with the bottle of beer. The specially prepared bottle broke nicely.

“I Christen thee SUE!” Wilbur shouted.

A cheer went up from the crowd. The two men boarded. The Boat Named Sue left the shuttle bay in search of the wily sushi. (and shrimp)

Days Later, In Salt Water over what used
to be the gulf gulf coast. Now it was quite a ways out to sea.

“OK, Time to get to work.” Henry said “First thing is Shrimp. TigerMom said, in no uncertain terms, that if she doesn’t get a metric bunchaton of shrimp we might as well not come back. Oddly enough I believe her.”

“Um...just how much IS a metric bunchaton? I don’t believe I’m familiar with that measurement.” Wilbur said with a grin.

“Just imagine what it would be like to not live up to her expectations and go from there” Henry wasn’t grinning much. He’d encountered her type before.

“So I will.” Wilbur said “That’s one scary little momma.”

“She is that. Luckily we have the power of the force. ” Henry replied “Joshua and his gang of hackers are a force of nature when it comes to thinking outside the box. I’m damn sure glad I’m on their side.”

“ Yup, Hmmm. ” Wilbur thinking about the job “So...let’s see what we have here.”

Joshua had given them a selection of info-dumps and the associated SSmoke construction programs, regarding fishing before they left.

“These are some of our ideas” Joshua had said “The old style of shrimp fishing involved big nets dragging the bottom. it’s true or not I don’t know, but the greenies’s claimed that the nets destroyed ‘fragile ecosystems”. Everything was ‘fragile’ according to the Greenies. I think most of them are watermelons, and they lie constantly, so I dunno if what they claim is true or not. I tend to doubt it considering the source.”

“ Watermelons huh? Cute. Green on the outside, red on the inside. Yup. I’ve run across some of those fools while trucking.” Henry had told him at the time. “Those Luddites are anti-human. They seriously think people are evil and I do believe they’d take the side of pond scum over that of their own kind.”

“Funny that you would say such a thing.” Joshua had said with a sad smile “they have actually done that.”

Later

“Ok” Wilbur said “Here’s what we’re gonna do. Cody gave me the plans for something that he said was sort of like a conventional shrimp net, but different. Instead of dragging, it skims an inch or so above the bottom. Sue keeps the deployed net wide and off the bottom with her two long tentacles. Then she swims slowly along near the bottom, strobing, with her mouth open. Notice how BIG Sue is?”

“Pretty Big” Henry agreed.”I’ve noticed.”

“Yup, She can put out a lot of strobe light. The idea is to disorient the shrimp causing them to jump up high enough to be snagged by the net as it passes by. Sue is strong enough to hold the net just high enough off the bottom so that it shouldn’t disturb anything. Sue will suck everything in. We have a sorting algorithm programmed to use the other eight mouth tentacles to snatch anything we don’t want out of the catch flow and toss it back over her shoulder. It’ll be back on bottom, unharmed as we go by. Let’s see how it works.” he said.

It worked just fine. They loaded up the required bunchaton of shrimp and as many crabs. Most of which they irradiated then shelled, cleaned and vacuum packed right away. No sense in hauling back trash. The trash, the shells and other offal was converted to SSmoke.

On a hunch Wilbur didn’t clean ALL the shrimp or Crabs. The last big batch he merely irradiated and vacuum packed.

“Why are you doing that?” Henry asked him.

“I dunno to tell the truth.” Wilbur said “A little voice tells me it might be a good idea.”

Henry shrugged. “Well we got enough shrimp. I noticed we have a lot of crab and even some Lobsters.”

“Yeah I noticed that too.” Wilbur said “I’m doing the same thing with some of the crabs, and all the Lobsters.”

“What ever floats your boat.” Henry said “Get that done then lets go catch some fish!”

So they did.

Some of the the toothed cetaceans have an interesting way of hunting fish. Dolphins build mud corrals. Some whales make bubble nets to corral fish. Cody knew this when he modified the Carbon Prospector, Fluffy into the Fish Hunter named Sue. He made provisions for that type of hunting.

So it was, that fast swimming drones, using bubble net techniques, caused many of the food fish such as herring to form ‘bait balls”. Sue opened her ‘mouth’ and swam thru the ball. The catch was beyond imagining. It only took a few runs to fill their quota on that type of fish.