Hawk watched a cargo ship approach the island. This was the third one today. The other two were a science group and a news team. This time the people staying below decks seem to be armed. Watching them prepare their equipment and check their guns Hawk was puzzled. Portals could be created anywhere Hawk wanted them to be so why were these humans all trying to reach the one on that island? It wasn’t even there anymore.

  As Daniel had requested he waited until the ship reached five kilometers from the island before stopping the engine. A small portal to relieve compression in the engine cylinders was sufficient for that. With the ship stopped and unable to proceed the soldiers became agitated. Hawk watched and an hour later the soldiers could be seen inflating boats. Hawk waited till the boats were fully inflated and in the water before deflating them and sinking them. A day later another ship arrived at the disabled vessel to tow it away. Hawk watched and wondered again at this illogical behavior of these humans.

  * * * * *

  On a heavily overcast day an old cruise ship arrived at the dock. The captain of the ship was surprised both by an island itself appearing where no island should be and the modern looking docking facilities. The pier was empty except for one young looking man standing at the end next to a small step ladder. As the ship reached the pier the crew pushed out a gang plank from a lower hull door. A few minutes later the first of the passengers started walking down it. They were mostly single people but a few couples and families were mixed in. All of them were carrying or pushing suitcases and bags. As the passengers disembarking from the ship they gathered on the pier near the young man. Their expressions were both hopeful and scared.

  Looking at them I started to have doubts that we would manage to get any of them to stay. Not seeing any more disembarking I deciding it was time to start. Climbing a small ladder and using a megaphone I called for their attention until the crowd quieted down.

  “Hello”, I shouted. “My name is Dan Truly (my alias) and I am one of the coordinators here on Demeter. I know you all have questions but before that let me go over a few things. Behind me the large building you see is the transit building. Inside we will have a brief presentation on Ceres where you will be staying while on contract. Once you have seen the presentation I will answer any questions you might have before we leave.

  The crowd started to talk and ask questions at that point. Holding my hand up I waited for them to quiet down before continuing.

  “If after seeing the presentation you change your mind about the job the Captain of the Emerald Star will be standing by to take you back. Those who have changed their mind will get a travel voucher to get them back to whatever location they signed up from. Now please proceed inside for the presentation”.

  With those words I stepped down from the ladder and started walking up the pier to the transit building. It was currently the only building on the small island so hard to miss. Reaching the industrial size garage type doors on the side of it I clicked the remote to open the doors and walked through. As the crowd filtered through the large doors behind me a few tried to ask me questions but I told them we’d talk inside and motioned them on past me into the building. The building itself was well lighted with no internal rooms or walls. It was just a large open space with an archway on the far side across from the entrance. A small stage was setup on the side near the archway with a speaker’s stand on it. The building was reproduced from a famous TV Evangelist building right before they started hosting their shows in it. The only changes Hawk had to make were to remove the seating stands.

  As I stepped onto the small stage and reached the stand I turned and look over the crowd. Thinking about Sammy and Grandma watching me through a portal right now I was actually tempted to wave at them. They both wanted to be here for this but It was bad enough I was being exposed to people who would not be going to Tawny. I wanted to give them as much privacy as I could until it was no longer possible. So for now they would stay on Ceres and only show themselves to the people who agree to work there. We still intend to hide our positions as much as possible from them by claiming to be just employees ourselves as well as using false names.

  I picked up a microphone from the stand and as the crowd looked at me I waited until they quieted down.

  I then started to talk, “I know you all have questions mostly about where you will be working so let me answer some of them now.”

  I waited as the translation software converted what I said and played the Spanish through the speakers. It was a bit of a bother but our intention was to get a lot of the workers we needed from third world countries. Having a bilingual work force was critical so translations became a necessity. After the translation finished the first part I then went on and talked about terraforming in general. I noticed some confusion either with the translation of what I was saying or wondering how reforestation had become terraforming. Not giving them time to think about it I immediately went into talking about the logistics. I described Ceres as another island close to the terraforming which would be a permanent base for operations and supplies. I finished up with a quick overview of what the facilities were like on Ceres from the apartments to shopping. After I finished there was a moment of quiet before they started clamoring with questions. Most of those questions were where the terraforming would be done. I answered some of them while avoiding anything too specific. As things quieted down again I decided now was the time.

  Holding up my hands I said “One last thing, you’ll be working on another world”

  As I said that I turned towards the arch and a second later a view looking out at Ceres in the sunlight appeared. Everyone stopped talking for a moment in seeming awe before talking about how realistic the display was. Their comments turned to shock when I stepped through the archway, bent over and grabbed a handful of sand before steeping back into the room again. Walking over to the stand I raised my hand and left the sand pore down onto the floor. A few people ran back out the doors at this point.

  It took a few minutes before the group remaining calm down enough for me to continue. Once they did I talked about the portal and the planet Tawny stopping occasionally whenever the shouting and arguing got to loud. Some of the voices never stopped yelling their disbelief and anger at what they thought was a foolish trick. I just continued with my explanation counting on the volume of the PA to be heard over their arguments. After I finished explaining the portal and the terraforming I asked everyone willing to continue with their contracts to step through to Ceres. I reminded them of the bonus when their contract ended but if they had something more important to be doing then feel free to stay behind.

  As I walked back to the archway I said “The ship would be leaving shortly and it would take any who want back to Panama City. You will receive enough travel money to get you back to your home locations”.

  “For everyone else please follow me and we’ll get you checked into your apartments” I said as I walked back through the portal again. Hopefully that might encourage people who want to ask me more questions to follow through the portal first to do it.

  Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

  To try to get people to decided quicker I yelled over my shoulder as I walked away “The portal will close in fifteen minutes and the ship will leave shortly thereafter so hurry up and decided”

  Henry surprised himself when he heard the explanation of the portal. All he could think of was another world as he started to move through the crowd to the archway. All those years starring up at the stars in the Outback and now he would actually get to go to one of them. How could he resist so when that Dan fellow went back through the portal Henry was right behind him.

  The crowd could see Henry grinning as he looked around before heading off after Dan. It took a few minutes but eventually another person stepped across and then a few more and a few more. One or two of them looked back at everyone in the room before following after the others. Eventually the 15 minutes were up and the portal started to shrink down. Not the normal way a portal would close but Dan thought one last inducement to get people to take the chance. It seemed to work as a few more rushed through before it had completely closed.

  The ones remaining stood and stared at the empty archway with a few courageous ones reaching over and touching the sides. When the boat horn was heard going off on the cruise ship people started to turn and head out of the building. An hour later Daniel, Sammy and Grandma sat at conference table watching the people’s response when the portal closed to see what kind of attitude the people left behind had. Most were still expressing disbelief and some fear but a few where showing anger. The anger was a bit surprising but I guess they needed someone to blame for the job not being what they expected it to be and blaming us was the easiest.

  As the crowd followed me I lead them over to the apartment block where Sammy was waiting. She had a clipboard with a list of the employees, a box of room keys and a bright smile on her face.

  “Everyone” I said, “this is Mandy (Sammy’s alias), she will be assigning you your apartments. Once you check them out feel free to go to the supply building over there, it’s the brown building. Pick up any basic supplies and enough groceries to last you for a week or two. We will have a cafeteria setup for most meals but that will take a couple of days so in the meant time you’ll need to feed yourselves. First thing tomorrow morning we will be going over what you will be doing”.

  As I said this I waved farewell and heading to the building that was to be the headquarters for our Ceres operations.

  As I walked away I heard Sammy yell “People, no pushing just get in line and I’ll check you off and give you your room keys and yea I’ll answer what question I can for you as we do it”.

  It took an hour for Sammy had finished up the intake and met us in the conference room of the operations building. Seeing how frazzled she now looked I felt guilty for sticking them on her like that. She did have a content look on her face as she put the clipboard with the list down on the table. We had been talking about this for a year but we now had help with what we were trying to do.

  “Well we have 102 employees now. Most of the high priority categories we needed have at least one employee now. The only exceptions to that are cafeteria cook and mechanics” She said

  Grandma hesitantly said “I guess I could do the cooking for a bit”

  “No Grandma, with over 100 people that would be too much work for one person. We can go to a buffet style until we can get the staff. Hawk can just duplicate a buffet from someplace for now.” I said

  “What about Vegas, they have great buffets” she said

  Sammy and I looked at her in surprise, as far as we knew she had never been to Las Vegas.

  Seeing our looks she said, “What Mildred Phelps daughter ran off and got hitched there. She bragged to everyone about it when she got back.”

  With that decided we all turned our attention to the list deciding what we could get up and running tomorrow and what would have to be put off. After a few minutes of going through it I excused myself to go check on Demeter and the ones who didn’t come through. Eventually we would have a small staff on Demeter to take care of deliveries but for now the ideal was to just remove the island. Once we had everyone off it of course. After all, disappearing islands was a well known maritime folktale. It would create a lot of talk but misinformation was something we wanted right now.

  The captain wasn’t sure what had happened on the island now but the passengers were slowly boarding the ship. Looking down at the boarding level he could see they seemed agitated and kept trying to ask the crew about something. Some actually seemed to be in state of shock and one was angrily shouting to call the police. The customer had told him to wait at the dock until 4pm before returning the passengers and it was almost that time. Deciding he wanted away from this weird situation he nodded to the chief mate to hit the signal horn again. This time he had the crew start retracting the gang plank. Seeing this happening the people causing a commotion on the pier started rushing aboard. The captain waited till they all boarded before finally stowing the gang plank and leaving. As the captain looked back at the island that shouldn’t be there he thought that this was not a charter he would forget and also one he hoped never to do again.

  Daniel waited until the ship had actually pulled away from the island before checking for anyone left behind. The island was small with only the one building on it but to make sure no one was hiding he had Hawk trace everyone from when they left the ship. Excluding everyone on Ceres or returning on the cruise ship showed six people still on the island. Two were still in the building standing quietly in front of the archway while the other four were wandering around the island. One of them was actually trying to pry the boards off the back of the transit building. From his mumbling it looked like he was trying to find out how the trick was done. Daniel asked Hawk to transfer all four of those to a deserted area on the ship. He doubted if it would convince them they had just forgot they had boarded but it would confuse things a bit. For the other two he had Hawk reopen the portal just to see if they would go through now.

  Surprisingly as soon as the portal opened they both stepped through. One of them was an elderly man with a big grin on his face and the other a young woman with a look of desperation on hers. As they came through the portal to Ceres Daniel walked up to them as they looked around.

  “Welcome to Ceres and are you sure now that you want to work here?” I said.

  “Sorry” said the elder man, “I thought it was a trick until everyone just disappeared like that”.

  The scared woman jumped in and said “Are we really on another planet? Nobody can reach us here right?”

  “Only if the owner wants them to” I said. “Come on let me get you settled in and we can talk about this tomorrow.”

  I contacted Sammy then took them over to the apartment complex for her to meet them and assigned them rooms. After making sure they both knew where to get food and basic supplies Sammy and I left again.

  Walking away Sammy said “She wasn’t actually on our list of hires”

  Daniel thought about the scared look on that woman’s face and decided to do a little checking and see what she’s running away from. Whatever it was couldn’t reach her on Ceres but it would be good to know anyway.

  Back in the conference room they went back to going over plans for tomorrow. There wasn’t much to do about Demeter for now. With the first load of people here Hawk had already made Demeter disappear. Once the initial staff was setup and trained the island would be recreated permanently just in time for the next “official” load of employees. The disappearing island trick probably won’t work a second time but by then they should be ready to handle trespassers better. Until then they still needed to see what critical positions they could now fill and were they are still missing people to fill.

  With the list of all employees now available Daniel, Sammy and Grandma were quickly able to determine all the positions they were missing. Some like a doctor and nurse staff were critical but the one nurse who did come through would have to do for now. Oddly enough the horticulture employees were much more critical and had to be replaced quickly. The greenhouses needed to be seeded now so plant growth could start. They needed to appear operational and for that some time was needed for the growth. For the mechanics and stock clerks they thought they could temporarily do without them. Inventory could be recreated nightly without anyone noticing for right now and repairs could be handled similarly. Looking at the results they agreed that seven positions were critical and needed filled ASAP with 20 others that they could get by without for now.

  Catching Sammy yawning I realized how late it had gotten. Collecting all the paperwork together I hustled Sammy and Grandma through a portal and on back home. After wishing Grandma a good night Sammy and I headed off to bed. Tomorrow was going to be a long day and I was already dreading dealing with all the questions and complaints I knew was going to come up from all those people. I still had to figure out how to get the other staff we needed.