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12.31.2015: The Captain

Somehow, I have to stop replaying it. It makes my stomach heave. The captain goes down with the ship because the captain is the ship. The impact of the crash is a quake in my bones. The precious data we lost is my own blood fleeing my veins through a luckless gash. Everything we were not able to collect from the 4th River Gorge is my mind slipping—fading—dulling—straining—failing. Can't fall apart. That would be selfish. Hold it together. Everything's not lost. We have much to work with still. We have SeaSoar still. The crew's drive towards our North Stars is as strong as it ever was and I am the glue and the string and the twine and the nails and the prayer that holds all of it together. The crash. I can't stop seeing it. But we're all alive! Remember. We are still here! And the analysts are coming and they'll help make sense of the mess. And there will be new Acolytes and new journeys and new data. It's just stuff. Just. Stuff. Black oil scattered on the water in dark pools and twisted pieces of metal broken forlorn and the eyes of the crew I can't look into because I'm afraid they've stopped trusting me. But I had to risk it. We were so close. I had to. Our final pieces, the last steps along our journeys, we almost had them. It was worth it to try. It has to be worth it. Oil scattered on the water. Blood. I will fix it, I'll make it right. I will put on a face so brave it will seem like my own face. The analysts are coming and I must be ready. I'll make it right. —Salvador Sabal

[undated]: Letter for the Cryptographer

5. you think you don’t know me but you do, you do, you do, you do, you do, you do, you do, you do, you do, you would recognize me if you saw me from the inside

#cryptographer #letters

12.30.2015: The Cook

At my best in a crisis. Doesn’t mean I like them—crises. What I like: folks seeing how they can depend on me. Things start to fall to pieces, it focuses me. All I can see is the thing that’s got to be done. Flask focuses me too. Helps. Felt the storm in the wind before I knew what I was feeling. Just a little baby of a wind but there was fever in it. Dealing with Dad gave me a sixth sense for trouble. His storms had the same sick warnings. Pearl sat in the mess after lunch with both hands around her mug. Stared into her tea like she was getting ready for one of her dives. Everybody else off on watch, napping, chewing the fat. Pulled on my flask. Said, “Roberta, you’re imagining things.” Then Pearl looked up from her tea at me. Accidental almost. Saw in her eyes she felt the sick in the wind too. Poker night started at 7:30 in the mess. Just finished the dishes and my hands were soaked with the smell of bleach and underneath it a trace of dinner (tomato sauce, browned cheese, garlic: lasagna). Fingers still damp and wrinkled from washing so the cards were sticking to them, and Captain was elbowing me, good-natured, to take my turn, and snatching at my flask while nobody else was looking. Poppy rolling her silent eyes at my slowness. Francis looking bloodhound mournful over nothing. Then the chips started sliding. People diving, running interference at the edges of the tables like the poker chips were their firstborn babies. Me, I didn’t move. I knew what was happening. Pearl was nowhere to be seen. Never comes to poker night. Probably in the hangar, whispering to SeaSoar, comforting the thing like a skittish racehorse. Me, I go to work. Tie everything down in the kitchen or stuff it in a cabinet. Already the deck is bucking like a funhouse floor. Captain is quickest to catch on. Up to the bridge with Poppy. Little cabin girl is holding the edge of the table. “Take a pill,” I tell her. “What?” “You got pills?” No more blood in her face. I toss her my extra Dramamine. The Captain’s voice crackles over the PA system. All hands on deck. A pull at my flask. This will be a long night. —Roberta

[undated]: Letter for the Cryptographer

4. you are right, of course: I am the only one who can understand you. and so maybe you are right to look for me but I think it would be the same thing if you would learn to understand yourself

#cryptographer #letters

[undated]: Letter for the Cryptographer

3. right now I am looking out of a window, it is snowing, it has been snowing for days, the field is white, the trees at its edge are white, the long road to town is buried under white, I am squeezing the pen so hard that my knuckles are white, when will I

#cryptographer #letters #snow

12.29.2015: The Diver

The first things I recognize are smells. Coal is the baseline: a scent with a body. It has presence in my nose. It's filling. River edged with coal, wet leaves ribbed with coal, dirt layered thinly over coal, buttered noodles gritty with coal. And a chilly metallic smell—I remember that, too. It unlocks me. I'm ten again, doing secret, solitary Monongahela dives. Mom would have trembled over the currents, Dad would have shook his head over the filth, but it was my one transgression. Being in that river was a physical need, long before I understood why.

To conjure the feel of the silty bottom, I don't even have to close my eyes. I've long since lost track of all the places I've dived: salt water and fresh, algae slime and seaweed squeak, coral in cartoon colors, wrecks of warships and submarines and toy boats, fish struggling upstream after the smell of home. Nothing else has ever felt like the bed of the Monongahela.

I did not expect it to feel like this but the smells are calling me and telling me that I am home, home, home, home, home.

Isn't home what I am supposed to be looking for?

The ship is buzzing with excitement. We are only a few days from docking, and the scientists are waiting. Maybe this time (everyone thinks) we have enough. Maybe now we've gathered enough data. We will spread it before them and they will stroke their chins, tap their calculators, retire to quiet rooms, and return with all of the answers. This is what it's like when people no longer trust anything but machines.

In my body, I feel another body leap to life, beating its fins against the inside of my ribcage. This is why I am the only one who understands SeaSoar. To the others, SeaSoar is just a dog. A trained retriever who will bring them the bright, feathery corpses they've shot down in the form of data to interpret. The Acolytes think that SeaSoar is the highest expression of human progress and the perfect marriage of animal and machine. Every ability is enhanced. Lungs extended to limitless capacity, wings fortified against weariness, memory augmented by hard drives, eyesight sharped by infrared sensors, SeaSoar can surmount any barrier in the pursuit of collecting data. But I feel the wild animal straining against my body's cage, and I know for SeaSoar it's the same—that primal creature pacing behind mechanical bars, emanating cyborg wisdom and cyborg sorrow. We've talked about it, without words.

Slowly we inch around a bend. What the hills hid a moment ago, they now reveal. The spires, bridges and skyline of a city I didn't know I missed take shape in the mist. But instead of feeling the comfort of homecoming, now I remember the loneliness that drove me out. Familiar sadness rises in me: I am not understood, I am the only one, I am at sea. I contain only emptiness. A wind rises to fill me. I don't try to stop it.

—Pearl, the Monongahela Mermaid

12.28.2015: The Navigator

it has been so long since we docked

I know by the marigolds

how they are past wilting and I have set them to dry in a corner of the lab in which the air is recycled and cooled to kill the humidity and they are dry unto dust almost so brittle if you breathe they’ll crumble

put your laptop on an anti-slip pad put your coffee mug on an anti-slip pad

none of the chairs have wheels

the tables are bolted to the floor

every door has a hook to hold it open unless it’s one of those serious ship doors that leads to the deck and then it’s got a series of metal latches operated by a handle you pull up to open and down to close

it’s very medieval-looking

a lot of hands and fingers must have been mangled by these latches

I used to be able to tell time by clocks and numbers and I used to know the names of the months

time’s measures are now decay

lines and shadows on a face light and darkness on the ship’s hull

or a different scatter of stars

we approach the gorge and I am afraid that I am not up to this

the Captain says he knows I can guide us

SeaSoar’s whisper says here turn here turn turn

and these fears I cannot give voice to cannot even write down because my words my words are lost

but what will you do

I would ask if I could

if once again I am just a receptacle for misplaced trust

I need a shore a market a garden I need more marigolds I need fresh marigolds I am still poison I I I

there are stories of star navigators asleep in a ship’s belly starting up from a deep sleep and running for the bridge crying out tell the captain he’s steering us off course

there are stories of sea-born children who can follow currents through the ocean as if they were roads

if I can’t speak to other humans I’d like to at least be able to speak to the waves

but even in that

I am incomplete

I still have the

gift of seeing into

a stranger’s soul through her

eyes at first

sight but the

street goes just

one way now and it

is only the diver who has

patience for my empty

mouth because

the diver is not

entirely human

we will make the turn

we are now making the turn

we are sharply quickly turning and

the bolted tables do not budge

even the surface of my coffee betrays no ripple

as we slide into the 4th River Gorge

—Poppy McTighe

[undated]: Letter for the Cryptographer 2. it would be better for both of us if I could stop myself from writing to you

#cryptographer #data #letters

[undated]: Letter for the Cryptographer

1. you lost me because you are just like him you lost me because I cannot stand the winter you lost me because you were so young you lost me because of blue, waltz, watercolor, barnacle, moonbows, graphite because you have my face you cannot have my face

#cryptographer #data

12.27.2015 The Cabin Girl

7:45 AM: Watch finally ends. I catch the end of breakfast. Eat the same thing every morning so I don’t have to think: 1 scoop scrambled egg. 2 links sausage (find the brownest ones in the serving pan). 1 piece fruit. 1 glass OJ. 2 slices toast, one with butter, one with jam. Today the cook motions for me to hand over my plate: she saved me some really brown sausage. She never smiles at me, but she doesn’t smile at anyone.

8:00 AM: Trying to nap but I ate too fast. So I just close my eyes and listening to the water beating against the sides of the ship. It’s like the sound when you hold a seashell to your ear except all around you. I’m inside a seashell.

10:30 AM: I did it! I napped. Maybe too long. My head feels fuzzy. I read a little bit, from a mythophysical oceanography textbook I borrowed from the ship’s library. I’m excited to find a whole section on SeaSoar and the Acolytes. It explains how we are summoned and I remember my own summoning: tractor engines that purred like jungle animals, fields of our wheat swelling like a golden sea, and finally SeaSoar’s voice, hidden in static from the radio. I’m in a textbook. Sort of. Kind of. That makes me sort of kind of special, right?

11:00 AM: Trying to fit together what SeaSoar’s given me so far. But it’s like playing with a hand-me-down K’NEX set where three-quarters of the pieces are missing. With five older brothers who hit the world like a tornado, I’m really used to this feeling. Maybe SeaSoar is trying to tell me something about my hand-me-down life. Handful of sprockets. Some twisted pieces of metal. A C-wrench that doesn’t fit anything. Five greasy gears in different sizes. Lists of numbers. A broken protractor. I keep trying because I don’t have anything else to do.

12:30 PM: I scrub the grease off my hands. Lunch.

1:15 PM: Going for a jog around the decks. I hate exercising but exercising is something adults do. The other Acolytes are nice to me but they definitely treat me like a kid. If I wanted to be treated like a kid I would still be back in Illinois with my brothers. I’m nineteen and I’m tired of it.

3:15 PM: Sneak up to the bridge.

I’m allowed to be here but I always feel out of place. Everybody up here already knows everything. It’s like being around my big brothers. At least Captain answers questions if I ask. He told me once our navigator knows how to navigate by the stars. I want to ask if she’ll teach me. I’m trying to work up the nerve. For now I just point at dials and levers and maps and try not to knock stuff over.

Today when I get up there Captain hands me a heavy pair of binoculars and I put them to my face and he steers me by my shoulders so I’m looking in the right direction. Ahead and off to the starboard side I can see a channel branching from the main steam that looks too narrow for the ship to squeeze into but Captain says that’s it—the 4th River Gorge—and that we will be fine. The ship’s navigation system is sophisticated enough to hold us very steady as we travel through it and that’s where SeaSoar is telling us to go, there’s a lot to gather there. I squint to see better: the light’s getting murky. The gorge is lined with trees that are still holding on to their bright fall leaves because December’s been so warm. I have to admit it does look rich with secrets.

3:50 PM: Hurrying on my way to relieve the last watch, I trip over a hose and go flying. I’m always running late. Why is that?

4:00 PM: Back on watch. Supposed to do a routine walk-through in the engine room but I'm dragging my feet. Feeling useless and listless. Trying to remember what the Engineer told me, the Acolyte who trained me: that I was born to be an engineer and that I have math and motor oil running in my veins and my lungs are filled with steam heat and that I just have to apply myself. But he didn't know that I am good at everything. And brilliant at nothing. And that’s exactly the problem.

—Milo Malone

12.26.2015: The Cryptographer

When my watch ends today, the sun is rising. I walk on the deck to clear my head and my ears are ringing. No: bells are ringing. Right away, I think it’s a clue for me. Excitement fills me. Until now my clues have been letters, faceless sketches of female forms. Pieces of her. In the last few days I’ve felt myself growing desperate. Instead of piecing her together, I sense that I am disintegrating, becoming as fragmented as she is for me. I am hungry for something different, something that will lead to a breakthrough, and these bells—

Careful of wishful thinking, I caution myself.

Wishful thinking: thoughts full of wishes. Remember that. To wish something means to be able to articulate it. To articulate something is to be a step closer to the thing. A thing that can’t be wished is impossible.

I give into my wish. These high-pitched, singing bells, what new piece of her might they be? Her voice? I try to mold them to my own vocal chords. Too high. All of the other boys in my class were happy when our voices started to change. I felt sadness. I never spoke of it; I would have found no allies. But with every pubescent crack, I battled tears. It seemed to me that I was losing myself. The moment my boy-voice vanished is the moment I started searching for her. Now, on the deck, I scan the water and sky, eager, heart motion-sick with excitement.

Bodies brush past me. My shipmates, always there, just when I’m trying to concentrate, when I’m near a breakthrough—

“Francis?” It’s the cook. Smell of stale coffee grounds and fresh potato peels. Eyes that pierce me. I run my hand over my face as if it would wipe my thoughts clean. The bells are still ringing.

“What?”

The bells are still ringing. “Where’s your vest?” I hear a voice, too, among the bells. This is a drill, this is a drill. Fire on the 02 deck. It must have been there all along. The mind hears what it wants to. Wishful thinking. Man your stations. This is a drill.

“Captain’s going to be waiting for you.”

I’m off at a run for my stateroom, have to grab my life vest, have to try to remember my station, yes, of course, it’s Friday, it’s drill day, every Friday for the last year, what’s wrong with me, am I losing my grip, where do I go for fire drills, am I really falling to pieces?

We were all warned. We were warned about impatience. We were warned about wishing. About the pitfalls of hasty interpretation. SeaSoar warned us. Don’t start spending the season’s profits before you’ve begun to harvest, my father would have said.

And I have always been so careful not to jump to conclusions. This line with a gentle bend, what is it, is it the curve of a cheek? I try to fit the curve to photographs and sketches. Start over. I turn the curve. Stretch it, shrink it, start over. Enlarge it. Grow it to the size of the ship. Now I see: it’s the gentle hump of a whale’s back. Grow it again. Now I see: it’s a planetary dent pressed into the fabric of space. Start over. Shrink it. Shrink. Shrink. It’s an ant’s antenna. The curvature of a dustbunny. Understanding leaves me. I let it go. I am careful. Start again.

Now this. Fooled by a ship’s alarm I’ve heard countless times before.

How is it possible that I can feel so much for someone I can’t even picture?

—Francis Quinn

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