“She’s ripping!” says Gerry, with his usual lazy lopsided grin.
Jonathan leans on the hard coolness of the metal railing. The curved beach stretches in wanton beauty below. Long lines of surf are barrelling across the rocky point like the peelings off a lathe. Amongst the surfers jostling for position, mixing it with the best of them, is Nikki.
He nods in acknowledgment, a slow smile growing on his lips.
At seventeen, his sister is two years older than himself. As his mate Gerry is fond of telling him, Jonathan is a nerd who tries to surf whereas his sister is a total babe who can. Even from up here, he can see the respect the other surfers accord the blonde girl as she carves her magic along the curved cusps of walled-up swell.
Gerry detaches the videocam and folds up his tripod. “I’m going down to the beach.”
Jonathan watches his pudgy frame negotiate the eroded drop-off onto the glistening sand below. He has newfound respect for his friend’s filming obsession after last week, impressed by the sheer volume of photos and video clips stored on his computer, meticulously indexed by year and surfer name, Nikki’s folder being the biggest.
“Future champion, that girl,” murmurs Gerry when asked.
“What are you going to do with all this stuff?”
“Make a movie,” he replies, his eyes deadly serious for once.
The surf state titles are coming up in a couple of weeks and Nikki creeps past his room on those squeaky old floorboards to catch the early morning waves, falling into bed exhausted by ten at night – just as he is about to start his night owl time on the computer.
Her final high school exams are looming. “When are you going to start studying, Nikki?” their careworn mother asks.
Mum’s a bank teller. Pretty ironic, thinks Jonathan, surrounded by all that money at work but struggling to cover the rent and bills at home. Jonathan knows very little about his dad, except that he was a drifter and abandoned the family when he was only three weeks old. He sometimes fantasises about meeting his father, but then just wants to punch his lights out for what he has done.
From the big black motorcycle parked nearby, Jonathan knows that his sister’s boyfriend Matt is also out in the water. He is a laid-back twenty year old with dreadlocks, happy enough to be studying Sports Science at the local campus. He’s been going out with Nikki for ages and already seems part of the family. Jonathan likes hearing him talk about the secret surf spots in Indo, seeing his eyes light up in fond remembrance.
It’s Saturday. His mother will be wanting some help in the garden. He launches himself on his pushbike and pedals home. Being so close to the beach is the best thing about living here on the Central Coast. He wonders how long before they up the rent and the family has to move, yet again.
He is clearing up the last of the leaves from their neglected backyard, when he hears the deep whop-whop-whop of the rescue chopper. It flies so low that he sees the red bands across its yellow belly. The helicopter disappears behind the trees but the air continues to beat about his ears, monotonous and insistent, until he can’t stand it any longer and climbs back on his bike.
He arrives at the carpark just as the stretcher is being lifted into the big yellow cabin. Matt stands alone, bereft, top half of his wetsuit flapping wildly. The doors close, the turbines wind up and the downdraft tears at the ragged ring of spectators. The huge yellow and red machine lifts into the sky, carrying a broken body and a whole world of shattered dreams.
*
“She’s going to get smashed again,” says Matt wincing.
Scallops of foam expire about their slowly sinking feet while seagulls huddle in malignant groups on the sand nearby. Jonathan can hardly watch as the frail figure fumbles to get to her feet only to topple beside the surfboard pitching down the face of the wave.
“With all those operations on her spine, she mustn’t be feeling enough through her feet.”
“She can walk again, can’t she?” Anger burns in his belly.
“Yeah, but walking on solid ground is way easier than trying to stand up on a board that is trying to slip out from under you – every wave is different.”
“How was that guys? Getting better, right?” Nikki bursts into tears, standing vulnerable and wobbling in the shallows. Matt wades in and helps her to the shore. Jonathan retrieves the board for the slow climb back to the carpark.
That night, a new idea flares up in the darkness of his mind. He builds gaming applications, so why not a surf simulator?
“You’re joking, right?” says Matt in the morning, between mouthfuls of crunching cornflakes.
“No, listen. First of all, Nikki needs to see the wave from the same perspective as a surfer, so we use a helmet-mounted videocam to record you riding a wave.”
“So we play her a video of me surfing, how’s that going to help?” Matt is looking at him like he is one crazy kook.
“Wait, I’m not finished yet. We mount three smart phones in waterproof enclosures on your surfboard – one for each direction of movement. I write an app that records data from the accelerometers during your ride, that wouldn’t be too hard.”
“So you’re saying you can record how the board moves. But what about my feet and what they’re doing during the ride, surely that’s the most critical thing of all?”
“Absolutely! We lay a pressure mat across the top of the board and feed the data into one of the smart phones. That way we know exactly where your feet are and how much pressure you are putting on the board.”
“So you’re saying we record all of this whilst I’m riding a wave. Then we play it back on dry land, showing her the footage of the wave, putting her on a surfboard that moves the way it should and somehow showing her where to place her feet – all at the same time?”
“You’ve got it! And one more thing – the board is mounted on a motion simulator that pushes back the way a real wave would.”
“You’re totally bonkers,” says Matt with satisfaction, laying down his spoon. “Where the hell would you get a motion simulator?”
“Crowd funding.” This is the bit he loves, the part that got him so excited that he didn’t sleep a wink.
“We get Gerry to do a video clip, right? He already has plenty of footage of Nikki surfing before the accident. He even has her falling headfirst onto the reef and the aftermath with the rescue chopper and everything. We add a heart-tugging interview with the beautiful but injured surfer girl about her dreams being dashed. Plus a quick explanation from me regarding what we need to get her back on her surfboard.”
“So Gerry edits it all together and we put the video on a crowd funding website?”
“Exactly!”
“Yeah, that might work,” says Matt thoughtfully. “Help a beautiful girl surfer after her tragic accident – I can see the appeal. We’d need to recognise the donors somehow. I know a surf tour company in Indo. They’d offer some free spots on their surf charters. For the bigger donors I mean.”
“Great idea! Also, you could offer free surfing lessons. Thirdly, Gerry could cut a free video clip for any equipment donors that they can use for their own advertising. Plus, for all the smaller amounts, we could send out personalised photos of Nikki, individually signed.”
“I feel you, bro,” says Matt, “about raising the funds I mean. But I still think you’ve got no hope of actually being able to build the damn thing.”
“Give me enough money and I’ll build it,” promises Jonathan, exulting.
“Has anyone asked Nikki?” asks his mother, disbelieving from the doorway.
*
Pledges pour in from the crowd funding website. An Australian airline donates a motion simulator in return for publicity. The local Council finds a community hall for it and the Technical College helps strip it down and install the training surfboard. The national Indonesian airline flies Matt to Indo every month to add new waves to the recordings – all expenses paid.
Meanwhile Jonathan is madly writing software to drive the screens, the foot placement guide and motion feedback system.
It all comes together. Best of all, after another six months of brutal hard work, Nikki is back in the water and training for the state titles.
Still, Mum can’t quite believe it when Jonathan tells her there is enough money flowing in from his software licensing deals to buy them a little house, now that pro surfers from around the world are ordering his simulation package.