Hey, what the fuck?” Gideon barked. “I was using that.”
I kicked over the few extra pieces that had fallen to the deck, tidying up.
“What the fuck?” Gideon said again. “What’s wrong with you?”
“Sorry, pal. Didn’t know you were playing dollhouse with it. I promise I’ll get you some new Lincoln Logs for Christmas.”
“I wasn’t playing. I was fixing it. I was going to fix it.” His skinny hands balled tight into skinny fists, cracked fingernails digging into his own flesh. He looked as if he might hit me.
“I ought to throw you overboard,” he said. He unclenched his hands and took hold of the hem of my shirt. His grip was surprisingly light. I made no move to shake him off.
“You weren’t going to fix the radio,” I said. “It was a useless, broken thing.”
“You’re a useless, broken thing!” Gideon’s voice split on “broken.” His breath smelled like an old man’s, like something was decaying inside of him. I noticed for the first time that Gideon has lost two teeth since the start of the trip—fairly prominent ones. Blood leaked from his gums as he spoke. I felt around in my own mouth with my tongue to see if I had suffered a similar misfortune, but everything seemed intact.
“Nope, still okay,” I said.
Gideon blinked twice, shaking his head. He let go of my shirt and turned away from me, stomping across the deck to where Plymouth lay dozing, unaware of what had just transpired. I watched Gideon nuzzle his face against the dog and whisper conspiratorially to him. After a moment, Plymouth responded with a volley of face licks.
From the notebook of Captain C.J. Wyle, March 5
Today, Gideon is giving me the silent treatment. He refuses to leave his quarters except to cook and eat. I worry he may be ill. The quiet is eerie and I find myself willing Plymouth to bark just for distraction.
Shortly after dusk, I opened Gideon’s door and asked if he wanted to play cards, maybe some Old Maid or Go Fish. He only glared at me from his narrow cot, burrowing his body deeper into the stale sheets.
I’ve concluded the youth today have no patience for games of chance.
From the notebook of Captain C.J. Wyle, March 6
Last night, the wind picked up again and I could hear the sky eating up the stars, cannibalizing itself. From my bed, I yelled to Gideon to raise the sails, thinking we might use those early gusts to push us somewhere. He yelled back that I ought to go fuck myself.
For hours, we bobbed back and forth. I am getting pretty good at not puking in such conditions. I lay in bed, thinking still and level thoughts, and listening to the Artemis creak and shudder. At the worst of it, I was convinced I heard the suction cups. It’s come to pull us apart as an ally of the ocean, I thought. But there was no added violence from the squid. It was as if he’d found us, lonely in the storm, and was just holding on.
From the notebook of Captain C.J. Wyle, March 7
This morning, Gideon came down into my berth, dragging behind him all the line from the main sail.
“I’m going to lasso the octopus,” he announced. It was the second time he’d spoken to me in three days.
“Excellent,” I said. “That will be good eating.”
“No. I am going to lasso it so it will pull us with it to shore.”
I told him squid don’t live on shore. They live on the bottom of the ocean. This much I am sure of. I remember the page from my science book—colorful, with drawings and a fact box in bold text asking, “Did you know?” This knowledge is unsoiled by childhood forgetfulness or adult self-doubt. “I stake my reputation on it,” I said.
Gideon shook his head. No, he insisted, if only he could get a line around the octopus, it would take us someplace safe.
I looked into his jaundiced eyes. Crusted and earnest, they begged for something far, far beyond my capacity to deliver. Why hadn’t he ever asked before? I reached out and let my hand rest at the base of Gideon’s neck. I patted him between his jutting shoulder blades. People who are friends do this for one another. I’ve seen video footage of it. I remember a different place where I knew what it felt like to be touched and held.
I told Gideon I would help. I told him it was the best plan anyone had come up with.
We tied a giant slipknot and anchored the rope to the guardrails (all the cleats are gone, if you recall). I shook Plymouth awake and clicked and whistled for him to join us. It seemed important that everyone be present. Gideon dropped our best rations overboard, wiping fish remnants and coffee grounds off his hands onto his shirt and then removing the neon garment and placing it into the sea as well.
We sat together at the bow of the Artemis, in the aching sunlight, waiting.
May 21, 2077, Outer Space
Lieutenant Colonel Parker Timothy Olstead
He thinks this is what it might feel like to be out at sea. Vast. Surrounded by mysteries both above and below. Lonesome, but in a pleasant way—the kind of way that makes you a better man.
This is also how he likes to describe his job, when he gives talks and lectures for students, aspiring scientists and astronauts alike: We’re the new Magellans, he says. We explore uncharted places. We go to the limits of the known world, then we go further. By limits, he means both physical distance, but also intellectual distance, and personal, psychological distance. Going to space is hard. It tests you in degrees you wouldn’t expect. Sometimes he explains this concept; sometimes he leaves it unsaid, hoping his young audiences can make the leap themselves.
And here he is again, pressing those very limits. Particularly the personal ones.
He’d launched with two Swedes and a dozen cephalopods from the base at Vidsel the morning before. He spent the days prior working with his soon-to-be shuttlemates, Annika and Edvard, as they prepared for their departure. One evening, in the name of collegial small talk, they told him their favorite part of any shuttle mission was the launch itself.
“There’s this humming that happens within you,” Edvard said. “Like the sound of each one of your cells vibrating. When else will you ever have the chance to experience that? Never.”
“A launch is truly a thing to be savored and enjoyed,” Annika added.
But he disagreed. He likes the part immediately after the launch better—the first twenty-four hours up in zero gravity. Because it feels like being on a boat in the middle of the ocean. Obviously, their shuttle, the Krona Ark III, has complex navigation systems, keeping them in constant communication with a team back on Earth who monitor all aspects of their health and travel. But still, the feeling is the same: that, in their isolation, they really are totally adrift. They have to orient themselves to their new surroundings and rely on their wits and on each other to succeed. And there’s something both powerful and humbling in that feeling.
When he explained this, the Swedes had nodded in a way he hoped meant they thought this sentiment
