The Big Deal, A Charleston, SC Real Estate Caper

Tommy McLean, the mayor of Charleston, South Carolina for thirty years, has a UFO sitting in his harbor, completely obstructing the shipping lane and bringing the city to a grinding halt. But it’s an unusual UFO, shaped like a thirty-eight floor, glass and metal skyscraper, one hundred yards wide on each of its four sides, which burst from the harbor floor instead of falling from the sky.

The federal government orders all citizens to voluntarily evacuate, or be rounded up and sent to a government shelter in Georgia. Most flee… but some do not.

Meanwhile, a realtor, the governor of South Carolina, a city councilman and a marine biology grad student by the name of Mermaid, all try to figure out what’s inside before they commit to agreeing with the Pentagon that it should be blown sky-high in order for the local commerce and community to return to normal.

Mermaid boards the skyscraper and meets two artificial intelligence (AI) robots, 335 and 535 who are identical except for their skillsets. One is an operations robot and the other is a customer service robot. After spending time with the two bots, Mermaid begins to think the UFO may be more of a time machine, or a building that has traveled, accidentally, back through time.

Angry at being left out of developing the UFO as real estate in “Silicon” Harbor (luxury condos and mixed use), realtor Lynda Gross, head of Charleston’s Board of Architectural Review, butts heads with the politicians. She wants all the listings in the UFO, and she wants them now.

But then a client reappears, the last listing she sold to a guy named Ed Chase...