Chapter 10: Tempestuous Part 1

| Part 1: My Analogy | Part 2: My Reality |

Man Overboard!

“Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!”

~~~~~~~~~~

Just sit right back and you’ll hear a tale,
A tale of a fateful trip
That started in the open sea
Aboard a great big ship…

My name is Chief Petty Officer Bernard, and I come from a long line of proud oarsmen. I grew up on the Ship, and I’ve been part of the crew for as long as I can remember. While we sailed the seas year after year, Captain Comoros used to tell us stories about the land we were heading to. Even though none of us had ever seen land ourselves, he told us he had been there and had seen it with his own eyes; he sure made the elusive idea of dry land sound beautiful with his detailed descriptions of mystical jungles and forests and plains and mountains. We didn’t quite know how to picture it, but we all expected to eventually reach our destination and walk on solid ground one day; in fact, bolstered by calls of “land ahoy” from the crow’s nest, a lot of my shipmates woke up each morning convinced that we would make landfall that very day. I wasn’t so sure myself; in fact, sometimes I’d wonder whether the captain had dreamed it all up just to keep us at the oars. But I do have to admit that it sounded like a great place, so I just kept right on rowing to the beat of the drum.

Then last year everything changed when I found myself bobbing in the waves in the open sea while I watched the Ship drift off toward the horizon without me. I felt excited to be setting off on a new adventure of my own, but it was still a bit scary. Even today, when the waves around me start to dwarf my little makeshift rowboat, I get out my oars and sometimes find myself paddling off in the direction I last saw the Ship heading. Now that I look back on my time on board, I feel funny even calling it “The Ship” – capitalized as if it was the only one in the ocean – but that’s just what we always called it, and it’s all I ever knew. And when the wind blows, sometimes I put up my tattered little sails, wondering if I’ll ever cross paths with my old floating home again.

I really don’t know how I would react if I did have a future encounter with my former crew, though. Would I want to climb back on board to see if anything had changed in the meantime? I can’t say for sure, but I know I didn’t jump out blindly; in fact, I contemplated every exit strategy I could conceive of before setting off in a cobbled-together craft with my rowing partner, Seaman Bianco, and the young cadets we were training.

During those first few days as we drifted farther and farther from the Ship, Bianco and I kept reassuring each other that we had made the right call; these days when we look up at the clear moon and feel the freedom of charting our own course, we shake our heads and wonder why we didn’t think to do this sooner. We still talk about life on the Ship on occasion; sure, there are some painful recollections, but we also have amusing memories of the routines, some of which seem awfully ridiculous from our new vantage point. If I really let myself reminisce, I realize that I did enjoy the parties, the processions, and other parts of our life on the Ship…the endless roll calls and training sessions maybe not so much, but even those give us some good material to smile about these days!

Well, a lot of the sailors I’ve encountered since setting sail in my own vessel have asked me about life on the Ship, so I thought I’d tell my story, starting with the Ship’s layout and our daily routines:

~~~~~~~~~~
Rowing Stations

Let’s start with the rowing quarters below deck. My job as a lead oarsman was to keep my oar to the rhythm, adjusting the length of the stroke and the angle of the blade to match the orders coming down from the bridge. I had initially been trained to follow the lead of my own mentor, Admiral Fiedler, and I took over with a rowing crew of my own when he was promoted to a leadership position above deck. I was right-handed, so I sat on the port side, closest to the center. That way I could use my stronger arm with the most leverage. To the right of me was my left-handed rowing partner, Bianco. All lefties sat on the starboard benches, and every lead oarsman was lined up with their counterpart directly across from them. When a port or starboard turn was ordered, I had to watch Bianco closely to make sure we were providing just the right amount of give and take to see the Captain’s directions through.

We held endless training exercises to ensure orders were followed instantly and precisely. “Back water,” “Dip and hold,” “Spurt!” Whatever command was issued, we reacted instinctively. We knew we would capsize if we couldn’t quickly align the bow into the waves or get into the attack position to ram another vessel; our absolute adherence to each order was absolutely crucial. Sometimes it was a test, and other times it was a real battle for the survival of the Ship; we never knew whether or not it was going to be a drill; we were expected to react just as instinctively and energetically either way.

We couldn’t see very far from our benches, but when the tarpaulins were up, we could catch a glimpse of the horizon where the waves met the sky. When a storm approached, or if another ship was sighted, we were ordered to pull down the tarps, which would sometimes billow in the wind. We could see faint shadows moving past us, and sometimes we heard the sounds of intense battles, but we could never really make out what was going on. It wasn’t our job anyway; our role was to propel the ship to wherever it needed to go. Being below deck was the safest place for us, we were told, and we trusted the Captain and his officers to keep us safe. We had to make sure the tarps stayed down until the danger passed, which made a lot of sense, because we had been told that sailors on enemy ships were desperate to learn our secrets, and if we left the tarps up, they might see how we operated and figure out why we were so much swifter than the other ships in the sea. In reality, whenever the tarps came back up, I was always a bit disappointed to look around and see nothing but water; I wanted to catch a glimpse of at least some of the action, and I sometimes dreamed about what the lookout up in the crow’s nest might be able to see from that vantage point.

Our ship was a quadrireme, with four oarsmen to each oar. Three right-handed cadets sat next to me, and three left-handed cadets sat by Bianco. Even though as the lead oarsmen, Bianco and I did a large share of the work, our cadets had to keep their hands on the oars at all times, even if they couldn’t contribute much to the workload; the idea was that they could learn to work the oar through repetition and muscle memory. The right-handed oarsmen weren’t any stronger than their lefty counterparts, but for some reason (that I admittedly could never quite figure out) all right-handed lead oarsmen were petty officers while left-handed oarsmen could never advance past the enlisted rank of Seaman First Class. “That’s just the way it has always been,” I was told when I once asked the question of Fiedler. Because of that tradition, I outranked Bianco, even though he instinctively seemed to know more about rowing than I did. If there was a disagreement, I was expected to hear him out, but he was expected to follow my lead, since I could pull rank with the final say in the decision. It had to work that way, Fiedler had told me, because when we went into battle, you couldn’t just have everyone second-guessing each other.

I took his word for it: I followed the drummer and Bianco followed me…at least that is how it was supposed to work…only for us it didn’t quite work that way, because Bianco disagreed with the whole idea of the ranking system to begin with. His training had come on an oar where everyone spoke up with their opinions; if there was a disagreement, they weren’t afraid to fight it out. I thought that sounded like chaos, and that eventually he would see that the established, hierarchal order of things was much more efficient. He never bought into the idea or the endless saluting at the beginning and end of each shift, but even though our rowing patterns differed, I appreciated the advice he offered. We weren’t a conventional team, but in the end we rocked it anyway!

~~~~~~~~~~
Movie Night

We all wore white uniforms at our rowing stations, but on movie night the lead oarsmen got to change into a navy-blue jacket. At the end of our shift we would line up for roll call where our commander, Warrant Officer Orville, would note our presence in his detailed logbook. We would then line up single-file at the entrance to the Ship’s cinema, where Orville would check the stripes on our jackets to make sure only lead oarsmen could enter. “Did you row extra hard this week?” he would ask each sailor. As long as you nodded, you would earn yourself a cinema pass.

The Ship’s cinema had a collection of classic Disney films with happy endings. Unfortunately, all but one of the films in the Ship’s archives had been water damaged, so we could only gather the basic story lines from the promotional posters on the wall. The single film we could actually watch was about life aboard a sternwheeler in a scary, crocodile-infested swamp called Devil’s Bayou. Because it was the only viewable movie in the collection, we watched it over and over again. It got a bit redundant, but we were all named after characters in the movie, so we would pay special attention when our eponyms would say their lines, which we were expected to memorize. After the movie, we’d break into designated groups, and Orville and the other officers would come around and quiz us on our lines and what new insights we had gained with the latest viewing.

My standard response was, “If you stray too far from the Ship, you’ll get eaten by crocodiles.” That answer always seemed to satisfy Orville enough to move along so we could talk about other, more diverse topics. At lunch in the galley the next day the other lead oarsmen would tell each other and their teams how much they enjoyed the movie, but our team never seemed that interested in it and tended to avoid the topic altogether unless pressed to speak up by a senior officer. Secretly, I think everyone else was bored with it, too, because I’d look around on movie night, and half the sailors who were supposedly watching it would be asleep while the rest were looking at the other movie posters on the wall. If wandering eyes happened to cross, they would quickly look back at the main feature with a hint of embarrassment. Even if the movie itself was a bit mundane, the happy ending became the accepted goal behind our fervent strokes at the oars.

One of my cadets, Seaman Rufus, admitted to me one day that he had wanted to learn more about the wise old Rufus after whom he was named. He had checked out the original novel that the film was based on from the Ship’s library, and even though he wasn’t allowed in the cinema yet, he had documented a lot of changes that had been made between the book and the film version. When he asked the librarian about it, however, he had been told that the book was wrong about those details, and that the differences in the film were actually mistakes in the original, printed version of the book that had since been corrected and restored in the motion picture. That claim seemed like quite preposterous to me. The fact that the book was set in a fjord rather than a swamp, and that the action took place in a wintry castle rather than a river boat seemed like major discrepancies, but in the end I brushed them aside, since I had never seen anything even remotely resembling a fjord, a swamp, a castle, or a river boat with my own eyes.

Rufus told me he had been reprimanded for calling the book a novel, when, in fact, The Rescuers was a non-fiction history book about the young, adventurous author’s personal journey from Devil’s Bayou to the big city of Sellas. The book itself was unbelievable enough, but the movie seemed to stretch things further. Rufus had been told, though, that any apparent discrepancies could be explained by the water-damaged frames that had been spliced out of the movie reel and had to be substituted in with remastered frames. Any remaining concerns could be dismissed with the changing definitions of the book’s archaic terms like fjord and castle that had very complicated Old Norse and Latin word roots and actually meant the same thing as the movie depiction if you could trace it back far enough.

All details aside, I could never quite resolve the reality of talking mice. And try as I might, I really couldn’t imagine dry land as a real place, where the mystical Sellas City’s glistening skyscrapers were as beautiful as the swamp was scary. Eventually we would get to ride up the elevator of a towering glass building ourselves someday, we were told, but only if we memorized the clues in the movie that we would need to remember if we were to find our way on the day.

I was always left the cinema with more questions than answers, but when the discussions started diving too deeply into the details, the officers would herd us through the kitchen – the galley of the galley – where they always had great snacks for dessert. We would quickly forget about the inconsistencies, and if the seas were calm enough, we’d get to play ping pong in the adjacent game room. Those who hadn’t missed a beat on the oars that week got a special token they could use to get a puzzle from the game room cabinet. Only us righties got the tokens, which didn’t seem fair to me at first; but sometimes I heard the lefties talking, and I got the impression that they felt the puzzles were a silly waste of time. According to one conversation I overheard, the lefties were actually glad the puzzles kept us righties busy so they could have time to play games of their own that they enjoyed much more. It sounds a bit dysfunctional from where I sit today, but all in all, we did have some great parties on board.

~~~~~~~~~~
The Library

Despite the fun festivals, I ended up spending much of my precious free time in the Ship’s library, studying the great naval battles of the past. Most of these battles had occurred long before any of us could remember, but we had heard the legendary stories repeated during our nightly pep rallies. The stories seemed to get more and more impressive with each repetition, and I wondered how accurate they might be given the number of times they had already been repeated by the time I began my own tenure as a tenderfoot oarsman and started getting invited to the rallies myself. I took a great interest in the original records, but when I ran across the actual accounts of the individual campaigns in the library, I was surprised to learn that every time there had been a major battle, the Ship had actually started out fighting for the wrong side. In every case, we ended up switching sides just before defeat was imminent – and then the Ship’s historian proceeded to rewrite the official captain’s log from the new victors’ perspective.

Every once in a while, an artist would be brought in to sort out the old Captain’s logs, altering those parts that would otherwise implicate the Ship with complicity in defeated agendas. The alteration station was well stocked with white-out, big fat sharpies, and a range of right-handed scissors. The desk was conspicuously located right next to the fire pit.

As I looked at the pictures of the succession of head librarians on the wall, most of the spots were blank, and there were obvious gaps in the dates. I dug a little deeper and found that invariably, the head librarians would get disgusted with the artist’s “restoration” of priceless historical manuscripts, their concerns would be dismissed by their commanding officers, and they would either jump off the ship or get thrown off the ship by the Captain’s inner circle of officers. Whenever there was a vacancy for a librarian after a purge, the Captain would send in one of his navigation officers to lock up certain cabinets, burn a few suspicious books, and temporarily take the librarian’s place while they looked for qualified replacements. Interestingly, only these substitute librarians still had their pictures on the wall by the time I started visiting.

I found these details to be troubling but fascinating at the same time, and I continued to search for more answers. My favorite place to study was in the library’s map room. On the map room wall was an oversize master plan of the all of the Ship’s journeys to date. According to the map, the Ship had begun its journey at a dry dock in the land of Preckstence. On the opposite side, the map showed more dry land with Mount Sellas and its namesake, Sellas City, as the plotted destination; in between was nothing but open ocean. The Ship’s course was plotted as a single line, but I knew from my own studies that there had been substantial deviations in the past. As I looked closer at the map, I could see that each of these off-course lines had been erased in favor of the single line that had been reproduced in the daily flyers that were distributed to the oarsmen.

The map on the wall had been signed by Captain Comoros himself. I asked the librarian about the sources he had used for the detailed depictions of Mount Sellas, and I was told they had come from original drawings by Captain Smitty, the first captain of the vessel. I found a fragment of the original map in the special collections archive, and I was surprised to find that it was actually a drawing rather than a map. The drawing showed some formations rising from the water that Captain Smitty had seen when he climbed up to the crow’s nest one day. To me it just looked like a unique cloud formation that had been mistaken for a mountain, and the dry land around the mountain looked like sea foam from breaking waves. It sure didn’t look much like the drawings and maps that I had seen in the printed flyers. In those depictions, Mount Sellas had trees and waterfalls and granite cliffs. I looked through the drawings that had been produced by the captains who followed Smitty and found that they had sketched in these details in the areas missing from Captain Smitty’s drawing. The enhanced drawings gave the oarsmen the confidence to keep rowing, and the altered maps highlighted how much progress we were making on our journey; Orville and his fellow drum-beating officers frequently referred to these documents to summon the extra effort required of each oarsman if the Ship was going to reach the shores of Mount Sellas.

I was struggling to see the relevance of the drawings to any sort of land mass, but the librarian then showed me a signed affidavit stating that Smitty’s junior officers had witnessed the same sight as he had, proclaiming dry land to be a reality. That sounded promising, but when I kept digging I found out that they later explained that they hadn’t actually seen it, but had dreamed about the very same shapes that Smitty had drawn that very same night, so they were convinced that Sellas was a real mountain.

That new revelation had my head spinning, and I asked the librarian if there was anything else that might help substantiate the claims. He seemed to get agitated at this request and explained that attempts at substantiation were viewed negatively by the bridge, to say the least. He explained further that one of the captains who followed in Smitty’s role had run into a ship that was part of a scientific expedition; he roped up with them briefly and brought their chief meteorologist, Antonio, on board to have a look at the drawing. He took the unusual step of inviting the whole crew up to the deck to hear the announcement, expecting to get confirmation of the map’s authenticity from an expert. Antonio, however, quickly realized the shapes in the drawing had all of the characteristics of cumulonimbus clouds, which sometimes appear to look like mountains to those who had never seen them before. He found a number of distinguishing features of the clouds and the wave crests that couldn’t possibly exist on dry land. Furthermore, they had a catalogue of similar sketches made by the crews of other ships that showed the shape changing over time and moving in the direction of the prevailing wind. His other colleagues all agreed with the assessment, and the gathering on deck was quickly canceled under the guise of a contagious disease before the scientist could speak. The oarsmen were sent back below deck, and future deck gatherings for enlisted men were done away with entirely. We parted ways with the other ship and have avoided scientific expeditions ever since, citing the potential for an infectious outbreak.

This had all occurred before my time on the Ship, but I had never heard about it from Fiedler, Orville, Comoros, or anyone else. “Why weren’t we told about this?” I asked.

“Because that information, frankly, just isn’t very useful,” the librarian replied.

“Useful for what?” I asked, “We’re following a fake map, and the only parts that even look remotely like dry land were added in later.”

“Look, the scientific findings don’t prove anything,” he argued, “our own on-board weatherman had a look and said that the clouds must have been obscuring the mountain; the reason they look like the mountain is because they were moving around the shape of the real, rock-solid mountain behind them.”

“But the entire formation was moving with the wind,” I said, “What do you make of that?”

“Haven’t you heard of shape-shifting mountains?” the librarian asked, “Oh, of course not, you’re just an oarsman and they never taught you about magma and other concepts of advanced geology.”

“Maybe not,” I replied, “but from what I do know, that would take thousands of years – this one moved in a few hours!”

“OK, listen,” the librarian countered, “here’s the real scoop: Captain Smitty didn’t want us to have the whole map, because he knew he’d have to test his sailors to see if they were up to the task of following orders.”

“So the drawings aren’t mountains after all,” I asked, “and this is all just a test?”

“It isn’t that difficult, is it?” the librarian explained, “Even an oarsman can understand that when Smitty drew the waves and the clouds that he actually saw, he had actually been thinking about the actual mountains at the end of the sea, so his interpretation is actually correct…in the end”

“But…”

“Look,” the librarian said, “You’re just going to have to trust me on this one. So just stop asking so many questions and get back to your oar. That’s a direct order!”

I didn’t think a librarian would outrank me, but when I hesitated, he pointed to the certificate on his wall that included a sealed statement: “Whether it is the librarian’s order or the Captain’s, it is the same.”

I saw that the discussion wasn’t going anywhere, and I felt a little seasick to boot, so I obeyed the order and went back to my rowing station. Every time someone would see a light on the horizon, rumors would spread that it was coming from the lighthouse at the end of the Sellas City pier, and everyone would row extra hard. Nobody seemed dismayed or dissuaded when it turned out to be lightning or lanterns on passing ships every single time, but I began to lower my expectations. Day after day as I say at my oar, I couldn’t help but to wonder whether we were just aiming for waves and clouds that had simply been mistaken for dry land.

Only ranking officers had the right to walk the deck. I knew that oarsmen belonged below deck, but occasionally I’d venture out and wander around to have a look. I’d often see features with my own eyes that looked remarkably like dry land. But if I looked long enough, I would see them roll away or dissipate into mist, exposing their composition as nothing more than waves and clouds. The curving lines that I could have sworn at first glance were the outlines of foothills ended up just being darker clouds.

I could certainly understand how we all found ourselves in the same boat, chasing an illusion, but after a few of these deck-scapades I didn’t feel even remotely connected to that vision anymore.

Every time we engaged another vessel in a fierce battle, the Ship’s officers would distribute a daily, printed flyer to the oarsmen focussing on how the Ship is definitely on the right side of the battle. Given the rumbling sounds of cannon fire and flashes of light that I could sometimes see coming from the horizon, I got the sense that there were some even greater battles ahead, and I really hoped those navigating the course had learned some lessons from the previous conflicts that were really just masked victories.

In his morning monologues that were broadcast around the Ship, Captain Comoros kept telling us the Ship was destined for victory in the battles ahead; but given the history I had studied in the library, I was never quite sure myself whether we would enter the next battle fighting for a just cause. Oarsmen don’t get to ask questions, though; I knew my job was to follow the beat of the drum, and to trust that the guy up in the crow’s nest could serve as the eyes for the rest of us below deck, so I kept right on rowing on.

~~~~~~~~~~
The Crow’s Nest

One day Nerus, the Ship’s chief security officer, saw me standing near the rail, looking off at the horizon.

“What are you doing up here?” he asked, “Shouldn’t you be rowing?”

“Don’t worry,” I answered, “I’m not planning to jump.”

According to the word below deck, an increasing number of sailors had been jumping overboard, so Nerus and his troops now spent most of their time talking people down from the rails.

“I’m glad to hear you’re staying on board,” Officer Nerus said, “Best to not even dip your feet in the water, cause them sharks will rip ‘em right off…that is, if they don’t pull your whole body in first!”

“Really?” I said, “I heard it’s not that bad out there after all.”

“Look for yourself,” he said, shaking his head “it’s all grey and dim.”

“Well, some sailors say there are beautiful colors under the waves.”

“Who are you going to believe?” he asked, “a bunch of rumors spreading around below deck, or the Lookout, who can see down through the water from the crow’s nest?

“Well, if I ever get to meet him face to face, I’ll have to ask,” I said,

“Believe me,” Nerus said, pointing out to the sea, “There’s nothing out there for those who decide to leave.”

“What if you climb up higher?” I asked, “I’ve heard you can also see the peak of Mount Sellas along with all of the other ships out there from the crow’s nest.”

“That’s right,” he said, “but only the Lookout is allowed up there. Whatever you do, stay off the masts!”

“How come I’ve never seen him?”

“The Lookout? Of course you can’t see him,” Nerus replied, “because we can only look at the crow’s nest from the bottom! But if you listen very closely, every time he sees land, you’ll hear him say ‘Land Ahoy.’”

The next day I decided to climb up the ropes and ask the Lookout what he could see. When I reached the crow’s nest, though, I couldn’t see anyone inside at all. I was about to head back down to let my oar team know that the crow’s nest was empty when I saw something move. There was a figure under the blanket; I looked underneath and found a sailor huddled inside on the floor.

“Are you the Lookout?” I asked.

“That’s what my contract says,” he answered.

“So are you the one saying ‘Land Ahoy’ and pointing your light ahead?”

“That’s me.”

“But have you actually seen dry land?

“What’s that?” he asked.

“What’s what?”

“Dry land,” he answered, “I’m not familiar with that concept.”

“Are you serious?” I asked, “So why do you keep saying ‘land ahoy?’”

“Look, the lines are spelled out right here in my contract,” he said, handing me a piece of paper from his pocket.

Sure enough, the duties outlined in his job description said that when he felt a raindrop, he needed to blow his whistle three times and say, “Land ahoy, straight ahead.”

“But why not have a look around for yourself?” I asked.

“What are you crazy? I’m not looking out there!” he said, “I’m afraid of heights…and I could get salt water in my eyes – that really stings!”

I was totally stunned. Whenever storms had come in the past, we all believed the lookout had coincidentally just spotted the harbor, and we rowed all that much harder to get there. While I was cooped up below deck, scrubbing down the benches or furiously working the oar, I had always thought that someone had actually seen land. I had assumed that at least the Lookout could see farther than the rest of us; but it turned out he wasn’t even looking.

“You shouldn’t be up here,” he said, “It’s really dangerous. You could fall and break your neck!”

“So could you!” I countered.

“Not if I keep myself down here on the floor,” he said, “Besides, the Captain says I’m needed up here. Doesn’t it make everyone below deck feel good to hear me say my lines?”

“Well sure, but…”

“Wait, I felt a raindrop,” he said, blowing his whistle three times. He then shouted resolutely, “Land ahoy, straight ahead!”

All I could do was shake my head at my previous naivety. I climbed back down to the deck and looked over the edge at the threatening waves.

“So I see you climbed the ropes,” Officer Nerus said, having spotted me again.

I wasn’t in the mood to hear his reprimands.

“That’s fine, feel free to jump now, or stay aboard; it’s your choice,” he said, “But if you stay on board, we expect you to keep quiet about what you saw. It could be bad for morale if you start spouting off any crazy theories about what you think you saw up there.”

I nodded my head, not wanting to get in a confrontation in which he would just pull in more of his cohorts to back up his position. If I couldn’t even speak up to Nerus, how did I ever think I’d have the guts to jump overboard?

~~~~~~~~~~
The Machine Shop

I went back to the dry safety of my routine and debated telling Bianco about what I had seen, but I was afraid he would jump without me, so I kept my mouth shut. Something inside of me I started having nightmares about being trapped inside the sinking ship as it went under. I’d wake up, feeling like I was suffocating. If the ship was off course, heading for the shoals, or facing unwinnable battles ahead, maybe we’d be better off taking our chances in the open sea after all!

Day after day, we kept rowing – presumably toward Sellas – but my heart wasn’t in it anymore. I had previously tried to catch any glimpse of light coming through my oar’s porthole, but after these discoveries, I began to find myself just looking downward while I rowed. As I stared at the floor stroke after stroke, I started feeling the contents of my pockets cutting off my circulation: Just like all the other lead oarsmen, I kept a compass in my left pocket and a keyring in the right one. I had grown so accustomed to their presence that I had stopped noticing them anymore, but now my legs were starting to feel bruised, and I began to question the purpose for carrying the compass and keyring with me everywhere – even when I slept.

On the first day of rowing training, every sailor was given a compass as a precious gift to take care of. For some odd reason, from Day 1 my compass had always been defective. Everyone around me kept telling me theirs worked perfectly – pointing to Sellas like a good compass should – and I trusted their readings completely. But the needle on mine was stuck, so whichever way I pointed the compass, that’s the way the needle pointed, too. I thought of taking it apart to see what was wrong with it, but we had all been warned not to try to repair the compasses ourselves. The standard protocol was to hand a broken compass over to the authorized machinists in the shop for repair. Those who opened their compasses on their own could never seem to be able to put them back together again. These do-it-yourselfers also had a tendency of deliberately smashing theirs to bits after their failed repair attempts – a crime that would get you thrown overboard with all hands on deck to watch.

I didn’t tell anyone mine was a dud, and I never turned it in to the shop, because if you admitted that your compass was broken, you’d be assigned all sorts of remedial training courses on compass repair and related topics that I didn’t want to deal with. My compass had never worked in the first place, but most of the people who were sent to the repair course had dropped or otherwise damaged their own compass through their own negligence or dereliction, so they had to go all the way back to the first Caring for your Compass course that the trainees had to take as an induction. Sailors whose compasses worked perfectly would come in as guest lecturers, but from what I heard, they would usually just gloat about how well theirs worked rather than offering any real assistance. You could earn bonus game room tokens for referring someone to the class, so those with functional compasses would eagerly try to identify those with inactive compasses so they could be herded into the remedial courses. Frankly, I just didn’t want the attention, but now that I think about it, maybe I just wanted to avoid the label of being a compass-breaker; in any case, I kept my mouth shut.

It never seemed odd to me that all compasses pointed toward the direction of travel, because Captain Comoros had told us that any working compass would always point toward Mount Sellas, confirming our trajectory with a unanimous consensus. He told us the compasses worked because Sellas was a hellamagnetic mountain, whatever that was. The more I thought about it, though, the more my thoughts landed on the trumpeted figurehead at the bow of the Ship. I had seen her depicted in artwork, where she looked like painted wood, but she wasn’t visible from the deck. It wasn’t until I saw her golden trumpet glistening from the crow’s nest that I realized the figure itself was cast out of iron. Maybe she was skewing the compasses, so that the needles of the compass weren’t pointing at a destination at all but rather just the front of the Ship. If that was indeed the case, no matter where the Captain steered the ship, the compasses would all point in that direction!

I decided to have a look for myself during my next deck-scursion. When I looked around the figurehead, I found it connected to a wire that was coiled around the bowsprit. I didn’t know much about ferromagnetic materials or electrification at the time, but I did know enough to suspect that the bow of the Ship was purposely being magnified. I got the sinking feeling that we had been traveling in circles all along rather than following a straight course to Sellas!

When I traced the wire in the opposite direction, I found that the other end ran straight into the on-board mechanic’s shop. I never actually saw inside of the machine shop myself, because you needed a special badge to get in, but I knew the shop had one job: churning out a personalized key for every sailor, past and present. Each key was custom-made and engraved with the initials of its recipient. You received your own key upon your promotion to lead oarsman. You would receive a written notice that your key was ready; then, when you knocked on the door to pick up the key, the shopkeeper would open a hatch and quiz you on your loyalty. In order to get your key, you had to swear a lifelong oath to the Captain, saying that you would never, ever, ever step aboard another ship. That request sounded a bit paranoid to me when I was asked to repeat it in unison with the other candidates, but the weirdest part about the induction was the part where they took you over to the brig where one of the cells housed a caged crocodile. The cage’s gate had a padlock on it, and the shopkeeper would issue a warning to those who drop their key: Should your key ever find its way to the floor, your dropped key would be turned over to Nerus, who would use that key to open the cage; the croc would then hunt you down and sink its teeth into your throat, rip out your larynx, pull you overboard, drown you in a death roll, and leave what’s left of your rotting carcass to be devoured by a shark. And if you thought it was over then, the shark would be caught by pirates, its own carcass hauled onto the pirate ship’s deck and slaughtered; your remains would then be exhumed and tossed into the ocean to be eaten by the next shark in a continuing cycle that would never, ever, ever end.

It seemed like an unnecessarily gruesome depiction, but to make it extra disturbing, you were supposed to look directly into one of the croc’s yellow eyes while they rattled off the description of your horrid fate should you fail in your duties. I wasn’t sure I wanted to agree to the terms, since I questioned whether I’d be able to hold onto the keys until we made it to the dock; but the bleak imagery of failure was quickly contrasted with the sunshine and rainbows of success: if you managed to hold on to your key by the time we all made it to the dock at the foot of Mount Sellas, you could use it to unlock a gate to all of the glorious awesomeness of dry land.

Apparently saying yes to the terms right then and there was the only way to avoid being stuck on the dock forever without a key; besides, my own mentors had gone through the process before me, and they actually had working compasses. So when my own time came to take my vows, I figured I’d just go for it: I looked that croc right in the eye said yes!

With that concession I was granted admission to the cinema and was issued a keyring with a single key. In the end, the single key was just the beginning: The oversize keyring wasn’t just intended to hold my own key but rather a whole set of additional keys that each oarsman was supposed to collect during their voyage. Oarsmen who had previously manned the very same oar we gripped each day had carved their initials into the wood, and we had a duty to identify them. Sometimes we would spend hours after our shift taking rubbings of the oar to see if we could spot the initials of our predecessors. When we found one, we would bring the paper with the rubbing to the machine shop, knock on the door, and hand it through the slot. A few hours later, we’d get a key that was engraved with the initials we had found on the oar. Sometimes the initials we found on the oars were indecipherable, and some of them looked remarkably like termite tracks, but we’d cash them in just the same.

Captain Comoros had told us that when we reached the dock, the oarsmen who had rowed before our time would all be waiting there for us; the machine shop had only been added to the Ship for our current voyage, so none of the previous oarsmen had the chance to get their own key. If we hadn’t found their initials, we were told that they’d be stuck on the dock forever, unable to step onto dry land. If we had a key for them on our keychain, on the other hand, they’d get to accompany us through the gate at the end of the dock. What a stroke of luck – and an honored duty – that we happened to be assigned to the only vessel in the sea capable of turning out keys!

~~~~~~~~~~
The Soundtrack

Once a sailor had sworn his allegiance to Captain Comoros and received his key, that commitment came with a duty to watch the Rescuers every night for the rest of our time on the Ship. The journey depicted in the film was supposed to be symbolic of our own voyage across the sea; the other lead oarsmen were always trying to find any similarities between the two – whether they made sense or not – and I gave it my best shot as well.

The movie started with scenes from the mad, mad, cruel world of Devil’s Bayou that Margery had escaped as a young girl:

Although life on the Ship was supposed to be ideal, compared to the destination we were heading toward, it was as dark and bleak as the cruel world of Devil’s Bayou – in a symbolically relative sort of sense. The haunting movie scenes of the decrepit river boat in the bayou were accompanied by a song called “The Journey”:

I’m lost at sea without a friend,
This journey, will it ever end?
Who will rescue me?
Rescue me!

After the spooky opening scenes, Margery embarks on an adventurous journey in the film, after which the lost wanderer is finally united with her forever family. The closing scenes show rainbows, serene beaches, palm trees, symbols of freedom and opportunity, and the great big glass building that we would all be living in someday.

These scenes were accompanied by another song of hope that starkly contrasted with the despondent opening lyrics:

Come along, sing a song,
Winter day becomes tomorrow,
Will we find joy or sorrow?
Sing a song, is it wrong?
To put all our hopes together and wish for something better?
Is it wrong, to belong?
To face the future with another who means more than any other is to belong.
We’ll paint the grey clouds with pretty rainbow hues,
And we’ll brush the gloom away and save it for a rainy day.
Oh today, if troubles cast a shadow,
And shadows make the sun afraid to stay, it’s okay!
Cause there’ll be sunshine shining and we’ll find the silver lining another day.
How I hope you’ll always stay,
Tomorrow is another day!

Some oarsmen drew their strength from the rich reward they expected to reap in Sellas City; while others drew their motivation from avoiding awful consequences. I have to admit that I liked the motion picture soundtrack and the clips about the glorious bounty at the end of a challenging voyage, but I could never get Medusa’s malicious crocodiles in the opening scene out of my mind. Most of my shipmates seemed to be able just focus on the final song about looking forward to a latter-day tomorrow, but I kept coming back to the drastic consequences of failure. Why couldn’t I just let that go like everyone else? Why couldn’t I smile that frown away with a cheery disposition?

~~~~~~~~~~
The Meetings

We held weekly motivational training meetings that were intended to boost morale, but they were filled with warnings of shipwrecks and sea monsters and other reasons to stay on the only unsinkable ship in the whole sea – and the only one with any reliable means of staying on course. In these meetings, we would greet each other and part ways again with the same phrase: “Land ahoy!” I felt a bit funny saying it, since I pictured us striking an iceberg or other floating debris at any instant – and likely with no advance warning whatsoever – given the ineptitude of the Lookout we were all trusting as our means to stay on course!

On every new moon, we would hold a trajectory confirmation meeting in which we were all supposed to turn to each other, shake hands, and say, “Margery F. Sharp was a true seafarer.” I still wasn’t sold on the idea of talking mice and some of the other details of her account, though, so I’d switch the words around when it was my turn to speak. I’d say, for example, that “Officer Sharp was a very, very important writer,” but I couldn’t quite bring myself to say the word seafarer, because I really had no idea whether the author had actually undertaken the journey she described. She had written about a girl named Penny, which we were told had been her nickname at the time; but given the substantial differences Rufus had uncovered, I started wondering if Penny might have been a fictional rather than an autobiographical character all along. The more I thought about it, the more I realized that even if it was all true, the big glass building we were all supposed to live in someday in wasn’t my thing at all, even if it did have sprawling views of Sellas.

My picture of paradise was something completely different, for some reason that I can’t explain anymore, I kept right on singing songs about Sellas as I rowed away to the beat of the drum in spite of all of my countering inclinations. Maybe I just preferred the company of my shipmates to the lonely, solitary ocean. With every stroke, though, my compass and keyring started seeming more and more trivial to me. When I looked at my pockets, I couldn’t help thinking that if the Lookout actually looked out at the horizon, maybe he’d spot something worthwhile after all. And maybe whatever he might spot would be more worthy of pursuit than the illusion of Sellas that we were supposedly steering toward!

~~~~~~~~~~
The Wheel

In all my days on the Ship, only right-handed sailors had ever taken the wheel. On occasion, though, one of the left-handed sailors would ask to help steer the Ship.

“The wheel is designed for right-handed steering,” the dissenting voices were told.

I always thought that was a weird excuse, since the wheel was round and symmetrical, after all. I figured maybe the prevailing current must tend to veer the ship to the left, so a stronger right arm might be beneficial. Whatever the reason, I assumed it was valid and shrugged it off.

Besides, it all balanced out in the end, anyway: The pots, pans, scissors and other tools in the galley, the sick bay, and the uniform repair shop were designed specifically for left-handed use, which meant that lefties were better suited to be appointed with roles as cooks and caregivers and tailors. Occasionally they would also be appointed to a committee tasked with organising one on-board activity or another; but lefties as a rule weren’t granted the authority to make decisions of any consequence or to touch the wheel at all.

One day, some outspoken lefties decided it was time for a change and staged a protest. Their leaders were promptly thrown off the ship and the remaining protesters were told to fall in line or suffer the same consequence. Most fell in line, fearing the turbulent water. I was at my oar at the time, but I heard a voice in the water shout, “It’s actually nice out here, you should try it!” I saw a few heads turn, but nobody was about to join them.

I moved the tarp to sneak a peek and saw a glimpse of the castaways between the waves, were swimming off in search of another vessel. I thought I heard one of them shout, “Fine, I didn’t like your ship anyway!” but the splashing of our oars soon drowned out the voices.

Some of the sailors started getting quite concerned about the fate of the “lefty saboteurs” as they had been designated.

“Don’t worry,” the Captain said in an official flyer that was distributed to the oarsmen in response, “They’ll be picked up by another ship that lets lefties steer.”

That consolation helped ease some nerves below deck, but in the officer’s meetings above us, they bemoaned the loss. Sure, the radical lefties might get picked up, they acknowledged, but the officers all believed there wasn’t a single other ship in the sea with a certified Lookout, one who could see the signals coming from the Harbormaster and the Lighthouse Operator that could help their ship plot a safe course for Sellas. It was clear to them that the dissidents were never going to arrive in Sellas at all: Their rightful rooms in the big glass building were going to remain empty and boarded up forever! They held a symbolic burial-at-sea ceremony, washing their hands of the treachery. It was a time of mourning, but we were told that it was in our best interest to jettison the poisonous notions that threatened the fate of the Ship. We all accepted the fact that an even worse fate would have awaited the entire crew had a lefty been allowed to touch the wheel and capsize the whole vessel!

~~~~~~~~~~
The Castaways

Captain Comoros had always been very methodical about the seating arrangement, but after the lefty revolt, he enforced it even more strictly: lefties on the right, and righties on the left. That way when you picked your rowing partner, you’d be able to help keep things nice and symmetrical, and the Ship wouldn’t ever veer off course.

Sometimes a lefty would defy orders and try to choose another lefty as their rowing partner. They would promptly be re-seated by the commanding officer.

“You’re supposed to be right-handed,” I heard Orville shout to one of the lefties who found himself on the wrong side of the Ship one day.

“No I’m not,” he said.

“Are too!” Orville replied, “Now get back where you belong!”

In keeping with Orville’s orders, the poor sailor spent the rest of his days on board trying to tone up his right arm in an attempt to make himself right-handed. Although he quietly complied in public, he vented his frustration in his logbook; each entry started out with indecipherable characters that he formed while trying to adhere to the mandate, but usually ended with more legible text written with the more comfortable, dominant hand. I thought it was a bit absurd that anyone would try to tell a sailor whether they were right-handed or left-handed; it just seemed like something you just knew inside. I felt comfortable in my assigned position, so I never questioned the protocol any further myself.

One day we crossed paths with a ship flying a bright, colorful flag. The ship was veering to port on a collision course with our bearing. We could have easily steered around it, but the Captain instructed us to stay on course and ram right through it at full speed. I peeked through the tarp once again and saw rainbow flags in the wreckage behind us. It seemed entirely unnecessary, but Orville told us we needed to teach others a lesson about meandering courses to keep the seas safer for everyone. Besides, the Captain reported that the Lookout had received the instructions to ram the ship straight from the Harbormaster himself, beamed through a coded signal of flashing lights that could only be seen from the crow’s nest.

From what I had seen while climbing the ropes, that scenario didn’t seem remotely plausible; but as time passed, I stopped giving the incident much thought. Then one day we encountered a whole flotilla of colorful ships. This time, it was clear that we were outnumbered and outsized; we couldn’t possibly stay afloat if we tried to sail straight through. On orders from the Harbormaster – relayed to the Captain by the Lookout – we steered around them in a sweeping arc. In our pep rally that night, we got a lecture about how the seas were being overrun with vessels that couldn’t steer straight.

We were no longer safe, and given the dangers of listing one way or another with an off-balance ship, we were warned that it was high time to clean house on our own ship. Those oarsmen who had tried to sit on the wrong side of the centerline were charged with particularly grievous crimes. They were taken above deck and whipped while everyone watched in a special ceremony. Those who didn’t renounce their crime were keelhauled in the hopes that they would be cured when they came back up on the other side of the Ship. Most never came out the other side, though, having cut themselves loose in the hopes of swimming off to find a less arrogant crew.

One morning as I was about to start my rowing shift, I heard an awful ruckus from up above and a lot of splashing down below. Bianco told me that the Captain had decided that any cadet who had been rowing with two lefties or two righties on their team had to go, not for the sake of the Ship but for their own sake as they would be too confused to be of any benefit to our manual propulsion system. I didn’t believe it, but I left my post and ran up to the deck to check. Sure enough, the security officers were tossing the junior cadets overboard. A few sailors with standard teams decided to jump overboard in protest, but the rest of us just sat there and watched it happen. I felt like I should speak up, but the water looked really cold, and by the time I gathered up enough courage to take a stand, the whole episode had all passed. The Ship steered straighter after this incident, but it had lost a substantial amount of power.

There was a bit of grumbling, but the Captain passed around a flyer stating how the order to dump the young cadets had once again come straight from the crow’s nest. Keeping the troublemakers on board until they became lead oarsmen would send the whole ship off course, so it was best to jettison any ballast that promoted asymmetry.

This incident just didn’t seem right, and the whole thing really tore at me. How could the Lookout have seen the signal, anyway? Instead of placing the blame on a delusional captain, though, I doubted my doubts and looked for any explanation I could concoct. Maybe the Lookout had a peephole through which he could see the Harbormaster’s signal; maybe my broken compass was the problem after all.

I decided to tell Fiedler about my useless instrument. “Do you think I should turn it in for repair?” I asked.

“Don’t bother,” he said, “even if you get it fixed, it will just point to the front of the Ship.”

I was stunned. “So you know about the magnetic figurehead?” I asked.

“Sure,” he said, “Lots of people know about it. But as long as everyone else believes their gadgets are working, it keeps the oar teams happy and occupied with a challenge. What else are we going to do all day? Better to be rowing than swimming for your life!”

“But when everyone says they know Margery F. Sharp is a true seafarer, do you believe it?”

“Nope, she made it up.”

“The whole movie?”

“No,” he said, “other people made that up. She only made up the book.”

“So why do you say it?” I asked.

“Well, I don’t actually say it. I move my lips, but I don’t exhale. So I’m not actually lying.”

“So shouldn’t we tell everyone else and pull down the wires?” I asked.

“No!” Fiedler said, “Even though it skews our readings, that wiring also acts as a lightning rod, which protects us all in the end. Without it, we’d go down in flames in the next thunderstorm.”

Boy did I have a lot to think about after this revelation!

~~~~~~~~~~
The Jump

Even though I no longer felt like anyone’s compasses were giving valid readings, I believed Fiedler’s stories about the dangers of the open sea and decided that we were better off staying on board than any other alternative. That’s the mindset I found myself in when I went above deck one evening to have a look around and saw Bianco standing on the rail, looking down at the water. He had actually been talking about jumping off the Ship since I had first met him when we took our positions as rowing counterparts, but I didn’t think he would actually do it. I gave him a direct order to come down, but he had already made up his mind.

Knowing that he would regret this decision someday, I snuck up behind him and clipped a tether line to his belt just in time. Sure enough, he jumped, but once he hit the water, the lifeline dragged him behind the boat. Surprised to find himself clipped in, he shouted to me that he was drowning out there and that I should cut him loose. Instead, I pulled harder to try to draw him back in. He finally threatened to cut the line himself, so I made the fateful call to jump in after him, with the intention of pulling both of us back to safety on the Ship. I held on to the lifeline for a while once I reached him, but as I struggled for breath in the turbulence of the Ship’s wake, I soon realized we were now both in over our heads.

“See, this isn’t where we want to be,” I shouted, “We’re going to drown!”

“I was already drowning on the Ship,” he replied between waterlogged breaths.

“Come on, let’s get back in the Ship,” I begged, “It’s way too dangerous out here!”

“We’re only sinking because you won’t let go of the line,” he said, “Trust me!”

I felt torn inside, but our survival depended on it, so I got out my pocketknife and cut the line. Spinning in the wake was terrifying, and I got completely disoriented in the process, but when we stopped moving, I was surprised to find a calm sea.

“What about the rest of our team?” Bianco asked.

We looked back at the Ship and were surprised to see that our apprentices had been watching the whole thing unfold from the poop deck.

“The water is nice!” we called to them.

I thought they might go back to their cozy cabins, but instead, they trusted us and jumped overboard to follow us into the dark. Eventually we all found each other and huddled close together, glad to have our whole oar team in one piece.

I heard Fiedler’s voice wishing me well, but others were begging us to return, throwing us lifelines they were hoping we would grab. Orville shouted a return order that he was relaying straight from Comoros, but I frankly wasn’t even listening anymore.

I knew there would be some ceremonial mourning on board, but we felt at peace. We started picking up floating pieces of debris to build our own boat and eventually put together the comfortable little raft that we find ourselves in today. Those first few days were disconcerting, but it was exciting at the same time. Given the open sea all around us, we didn’t know which direction we should take, or whether we should bother paddling at all.

As we discussed our options, we realized we had jumped just in the nick of time, given that our senior apprentice, Seaman Evinrude, was getting initiated for his own new role as a lead oarsman. If he had been manning his own oar when we jumped, we wouldn’t have had a chance of being all together. We spoke with each of our cadets to find out where they wanted to go, but my first question was what they were doing up on the deck in the first place – against Orville’s orders! I was stunned to hear that they had each been sneaking up to the deck for quite some time – some of them since long before I had started venturing out myself – and as it turned out, they hadn’t mentioned their sauntering for fear of disappointing me. We obviously had a lot to catch up on, but we now had plenty of unregimented time to do it; finding out what they really thought of life on the Ship was eye-opening to say the least!

Speaking of eye-opening, the first time I dipped my head underwater, I was afraid it might get bitten off, but as I looked around and saw the vibrant sea life and colorful underwater reefs, it was the complete opposite of what I expected to find. There’s a whole world under the sea with creatures I never imagined. I was told you’d get eaten by predatory sea monsters if you even dipped your toes in the water, much less put your head underwater. I was told the drab water itself held a meaningless, monotone void of nothingness. What I see under the water instead was a beautiful, diverse expanse of reefs and marine life. Now we’ve all taken up diving, and we enjoy looking around and then sharing what we saw on our dives with each other. I guess the main insight that we’ve gained is that we really do enjoy each other’s company here in our little raft.

To this day, we’ve still never seen dry land, and I’m still not convinced it even exists. As I watch the criss-crossing ships heading off in all directions, burning fuel and oarsman-hours, I get the feeling they are wasting their time and missing the beauty of what’s right there under our boat. The circulating current seems stronger than the fastest ship, so paddling in any direction at all in search of land seems fruitless to me. If the wind or the currents take us to dry land, we’ll make the best of it when that day comes, and I guess that’s when we’ll find out what lies beyond. Given that every sign intercepted by the Ship turned out to be an illusion, though, I’m through with the futility of the chase for now.

We enjoy our occasional encounters with other drifters, but so far we haven’t rafted up with anyone else. Every once in a while, a large ship will pass by us; we’ve run across yachts, frigates, warships, and pirate ships.

The first one we encountered was a cruise ship with a steam engine. It seemed very modern compared to ours since it didn’t need any manual labor for its propulsion system. It sounded tempting to be able to relax without having to row ourselves.

“If you like our company,” the officer on deck said, “you’ll need to burn your little ship and get on board, because we need more fuel for the furnace.”

“Thanks, I said, “We’ll pass.”

“Suit yourself,” they said, “but your little boat will never hold water, and you’ll all drown out here by yourselves.”

We decided to take our chances. Next came a party boat, with music blaring and passengers keeled over the side. We had to dodge some nasty jetsam from our flotsam, and we passed on their invitations to climb aboard as well.

One day a Galleon passed by with a web of ropes behind it. The ropes were tied to hooks and harpoons that had been launched at passing vessels; we had to dodge a few ourselves. They were dragging along all sorts of debris which had trapped a whole lot of sailors, most of whom didn’t seem to have any interest in getting on board at all. Some of the transients didn’t even realize they were tethered to the mother ship, and some were just being pulled along by the force of the powerful wake. One of the crew members leaned over the side to see if we had been harpooned as well.

“Sit down, you’re rockin’ the boat!” came a loud voice through a bullhorn megaphone.

My heart sank a bit at the thought of someone telling a sailor where he was allowed to look. I wanted no part in that sort of obstinance, and we had to paddle away hard to avoid being snagged.

The latest ship to pass by us was an inmate ship; it felt awful to see galley slaves shackled to their oars. The exploitation seemed appalling, but I realized that the detainees were doing some of the same tasks under duress that we had done voluntarily on the Ship. Again, we fled the scene as fast as we could. I came away from this encounter with the distinct impression that we had been just as shackled as the prisoners; but rather than iron chains, our coercive fetters had come in the form of fake stories that had conscripted our minds for a made-up cause.

~~~~~~~~~~
The Note

From where I float today, I acknowledge that the voices from the passing ships may be right, or they may be wrong. So far, none of the other ships look to be worth boarding, but what do I know about the future, anyway? For now, I’m just bobbing in the waves, happily floating in my makeshift rowboat. I don’t have any regrets from here; sure, I wish I had recognized the manipulation earlier in my naval career, and I do have a few questions I wish I had asked the Captain myself while I was on board, but all in all I can’t complain about my circumstances or the journey that landed me here. I like our little boat, and if life on the Ship is what it took to get me to appreciate this new life, well then so be it. Without having had that experience, I might be tempted to climb on board one of the other passing ships where I would get caught up in another regimented routine that leaves no time to enjoy the surf. No thanks!

My compass and keyring have become mementos of a former life without any other function. I was told the salt water would corrode them and render them useless the moment I jumped anyway, so even if the Sellas Pier’s gate was a thing after all, my key is now a dud just like my compass always was. So I don’t know why I kept them at all, but at times I look at the trinkets and miss life on the ship. I really do. When I think of the young recruits singing songs of Sellas, for example, I remember the melodies fondly. But when I think of some of the accompanying lyrics, I have to lean over the side and throw up a little, and I quickly remember why I jumped ship.

In my own boat, I get wet when it rains. When the wind blows, I bob up and down with the waves. On board the Ship, it was dry and warm, and you could feel safe and stable…as long as you read only the official flyers, stayed off the ropes, steered clear of the library, and kept your hands on the oars. Despite the occasional disorientation and discomfort in my daily life today, the trade-off is that I can navigate my own craft without having to lip sync phrases that I can’t bring myself to say out loud. And I wouldn’t trade that prerogative for anything!

It’s fun to draw maps about where we might be heading, but I realize now that there are no fixed reference points that might serve as a basis for any map at all. I’ve tried to learn as much as I can from other drifters who have shown me their maps; I see it all as conjecture, but I do find that their maps help me to get to know them better. Some have said there is nothing but water, while others say the only thing encircling the sea is a shear drop off to oblivion where everything that passes over the edge collapses into an endless, meaningless, purposeless, senseless void. According to that view, the end result will be the same for all of us, so you might as well just lie down in your vessel and wait to meet your inevitable fate. Some have said the entire sea is one tiny drop of water in a landscape of massive scale that we’ll finally see someday when we master the magic of flight. Others say the landscape is authentic, but we’ll never see it ourselves, so all of the paddling around is for nothing despite its reality.

Maybe the elusive dry land was just a myth all along, made up by those captains who needed oarsmen to plow through the waters and collect the spoils of naval warfare. As flawed as all of the maps seem to be, though, none of them are as absurd to me as an endless sea – much as it fits our observations. I am convinced there is something else, but I’m likewise convinced that Smitty, Comoros, and the Lookout haven’t got a clue as to what that something else might be.

As I was looking out at the sea from my little boat the other day, reflecting on what might lie past the horizon, I saw a bottle floating past with a message inside. I scooped it up and pulled out the scroll.

I was surprised to find a flyer that appeared to have come straight from the Ship’s printing press, signed by Captain Comoros himself. I couldn’t believe my good fortune of having picked up a message from my own former Ship.

“How are you enjoying your time aboard the Ship?” it read. The question seemed odd, since nobody had ever asked me for my opinion while I was at the oars, but apparently the Captain was conducting an opinion survey, and someone had thrown their survey form overboard. It was obviously intended for active-duty crewmembers on board the Ship, but maybe they wouldn’t mind hearing my impressions as well.

The form included some blank check boxes ranging from good to excellent. There was no box to check for a bad review, but it did include a comment field, so that’s where I started my list. After adding my comments, I rolled it up again and tossed it back in the ocean. Maybe someday it will float past the Ship to be scooped up. Maybe some of the suggestions could save someone else the hassle of having to jump out themselves.

Maybe some things have already changed in the meantime. Maybe by the time anyone reads my suggestions, Captain Comoros will already be letting people out for a swim to enjoy the water and have a look at what’s beneath the waves while still allowing them to get back in and travel with the entourage. Maybe everyone will have been told the truth about the trumpet-wielding figurehead, the acrophobic Lookout, or the redacted maps. Maybe the Captain will have apologized for casting the castaways overboard. Maybe after a mutiny, the Ship will have broken up into a flotilla of vessels piloted by mariners that still choose to travel together without compulsion. Maybe by then, all of the passengers and crew will feel free to express their individual views on the trajectory ahead. Maybe instead of damning the Farragut torpedo mines at full speed, knocking crewmembers overboard with each explosion along the unwavering path, the Captain will have learned to watch out for his counterparts and proceed more cautiously. That’s really all I can hope for in the end.

As I write about my journey, my changing pronunciation and enunciation sums up my changing perspective: In my head, my former home has transformed from THE Ship, to the Ship, to the ship, and finally to a ship. We’re all in the same sea together, no captain having any more or less a clue than any other about what lies past the horizon.

I see an occasional seabird flying off to the horizon, and I like to imagine where it might be heading to roost. I think we all have an equal right to picture what’s out there without anyone conspiring to paint that picture for us. In the meantime, all I can offer is the suggestions that come from my own voyage.

“Come give it a try!” is the last thing I wrote in the comment box, “the water’s just fine out here!”

This is my message in a bottle!

[Next: Chapter 10 Part 2: The Old Ship Zion]