Across the Sea, Somewhere

Adelaide was falling asleep at noon, but she knew her only hope of getting on a normal schedule was to push through to sunset at least. She tried to spur herself with the thought that this was a unique vista that no human would ever see again, but it was pretty much just water and she was too tired for generalized wonder. She briefly focused on the clouds before she remembered that all clouds are unique and fleeting, and that made her unreasonably sad for a minute.

At least everyone else seemed similarly tired. Percy was downstairs, but most of the rest of her crew was sitting somewhere on the deck. Trish had either fallen asleep tanning or had accidentally left herself to tan while taking a nap - regardless, Adelaide was resigned to waking her at some point, but she wasn’t in a particular rush to do so. Jim had found a shady place and was reading something on one of those industrial Kindles they’d marketed for Triangle voyages, with the solar battery and the waterproofing. Emma was doing some extremely low-impact yoga near the back of the ship, and it was not entirely obvious that she wasn’t also asleep. And Ray and Mattson were in the bridge, probably not napping but very possibly drinking.

The only one who seemed to be actively working was Alessio, who had screwed so many attachments into his iPhone as to make it almost unrecognizable. He was wielding the combined gizmo deftly, having taken a full tour of the Strider and now surveying the panorama. Adelaide had heard him talking to himself earlier, but he was silent now.

Adelaide decided that watching him work was better than having him inevitably film her sleeping on deck. As she approached, he turned his head without so much as shaking the camera. “Hey. I’m filming, but I don’t need this audio. It’s beautiful, isn’t it?”

“Yeah. Have you spent a lot of time on the water?”

“A bit. Enough to make sure I wouldn't get seasick before I wandered off with you all. But this is something else. How often do you get to be all alone? I mean, obviously I’m not alone, you’re here, but you get my meaning.”

“Yeah. You filming anything in particular?”

“No, just b-roll. The stuff I’ll talk over in some video I’ll put together tonight. I always try to grab that as soon as I can. You think you’ll have all the time in the world, but then things get interesting. And you can’t reuse one little shot of waves: people actually react really negatively to reused backgrounds without even realizing it. I’m not sure if it’s about perceived laziness or a need for variety, but I learned that you need to mix that up. So I grab it while it’s quiet, as much as I can.”

“That makes sense. I do hope you get something interesting to show everyone. Although hopefully things aren’t too crazy, for all of our sakes. Did you hear about the dawnbat thing?”

“I did - I’m annoyed I missed it, but I’m hoping it repeats tomorrow. People love that kind of thing. I did get a whole little cooking video with Emma though, so it wasn’t a total waste.”

“You’re doing cooking videos?”

“I’m doing everything. I mean, you know what a risk this is for me, right? Two weeks is an eternity, and I need to be generating content that’s worth it. So I’m going to get everything I can.”

Adelaide thought of how many times she’d been busy researching and had barely left the lab or the library for two weeks. “I don’t know how you keep going like that.”

“I mean, you live every day, right? I just need to make sure I’m living something interesting enough for everyone to look at. And that’s the way I’d want to live anyway. So it works out. The challenge here is just the delay. But I prerecorded some stuff and have my assistant releasing it unless it becomes out of step with the moment. That’s the weirdest part if you ask me — not knowing the news. I mean, anything could have happened and we wouldn’t know! We could be at war with France or something, and we’d be the only people in the world not to know. I think that’s crazy.”

“I hadn’t thought of that! But you’re right. We could come back to anything at all. I mean, we probably won’t, but we could.”

Alessio pressed a button and stopped the recording, folding his attachments and putting the phone into his pocket. “We’re going to be traveling together, and I want you to trust me. That’s why I just put my phone away - I want you to feel like you can speak candidly right now. Because the real question is this: What are we doing out here?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that I did my research before agreeing to this, and I can tell there’s something big happening. You’re a scientist, but still a young one, and not exactly famous. No commercial work, no links to any big funders. And no Bermuda connections. Now Trish tells me you got an investment from her dad. He’s not known to throw money around, but I guess he could make an exception for his daughter’s friend. But if this was just a weird luxury, why this ship? And why are we sailing in a random direction, ignoring islands as we pass them? You have a plan, and I want to know what it is.”

Adelaide forced herself to pause and tried to keep her face neutral. She was definitely too tired to be doing this right now. “Even if you were right, why would I tell you? Why would I make something like that public?”

“Are you kidding? You knew my job when you brought me in! What did you think, I wasn’t going to look into what the point of this voyage was?”

“I thought this was sort of a human interest thing — like you’d show what life is like, the food, weird animals, that sort of thing.”

Alessio smiled. “Ah, so you didn’t do your research into me. I get it. But I’m here now.”

Adelaide closed her eyes for a second, trying to think. Why hadn’t she thought this through more? Alessio was a paying traveler, but still — she should have considered the privacy implications. Not that the project could remain totally secret forever, but she definitely wasn’t ready for it to become completely public as soon as they got back.

“Ok, let me propose this. I can’t get into everything right now, in part because I’m totally jetlagged. Shiplagged. Whatever. But I get where you are coming from. I’ll tell you this: we do have a destination, and we’re scheduled to reach tomorrow at about 2:15 pm. So set up your filming accordingly.”

“What’s going to be there?”

“I don’t know. Maybe nothing. But that’s the most I can do to help you find something interesting.”

“Alright, Adelaide. But you should think carefully about this. I’m not going to be distracted forever, and two weeks is a long time to fill.”

***

It was probably something about the time change, but Adelaide found herself starving before the sun set, even though she hadn’t especially done anything physical all day. She headed down to the kitchen — although she supposed it was a galley or a mess or something? — to see if she could scrounge something together and found Emma leaning over a countertop. Emma heard the door open and looked over her shoulder. “Do you need me for something?”

“Oh, no, sorry, I didn’t mean to bother you. I was just poking around — was going to see if I could find something to eat.”

“And spoil your appetite?” Emma smiled and waved a knife in the direction of a small fridge. “There’s some smoked meats in there. Nothing exotic, just stuff we sailed out with. Kind of fun, I think. People have been bringing barrels of that stuff with them on the water for what? Three hundred years?”

“Probably more. I’m happy to be part of a legacy,” Adelaide said as she crouched down and stuck her head into the fridge door. “What were you up to in here?”

“Looking at these weird shiny things you had them pull in. They’re interesting: I have a few ideas for preparing them, but I’m not sure how they’ll work in practice.”

Adelaide made what she hoped was an intrigued and interested noise around a mouthful of beef jerky.

It seemed good enough for Emma. “Yeah, like the outside probably isn’t worth anything nutritionally, but I could see people using it as fancy decoration. Like gold leaf but organic. The spongy stuff seems like it’ll be tough to eat, but if you saute it or fry it it could wind up being ok. I think it’s like a super dry tofu, but with a different flavor. But the seeds in it — I don’t know what they actually are but you see the little things I’m talking about — those won’t fry well at all, they sort of split and break up the spongy bit.”

“In an interesting way?”

“No, in a gross and kind of slimy way. So the only thing I can think of is to slice it up and then use these tweezers to pick them out. I’ve been putting them in this glass - I might try to figure out something to do with them later.”

Adelaide peered at the dozen-odd seed things in a glass. “You know, Emma, I appreciate your cooking for us, but we brought enough food to last us. You don’t need to try to cook the exotic stuff if it’s too annoying.”

“Nah, it’s fine. What else am I doing all day? Anyway, we want to sell this stuff when we get back, and I’ll get a better price if I can give a little info on how to cook it. Not that anyone will listen to me, but it’s a starting point.”

“Ok, well, if you don’t mind too much, it’s certainly interesting. Want some help? It’s not like I have so much to do right now.”

“Sure! Grab a tweezer and I’ll cut you a slice. That’ll speed it up a lot.”

Adelaide found the work calming — it wasn’t like this was brain surgery, so she didn’t beat herself up too much if she sometimes scooped out a bit more than she needed. And it kept her occupied pleasantly until she looked at the glass of strange seeds and a question occurred to her.

“Emma, how do we know this stuff isn’t poisonous or something?”

Emma looked over at her. “You want to know the funny thing about that question?”

“What?”

“You didn’t ask it the first time I cooked some weird thing we found out here.”

Adelaide dropped the ball she was working on.

Emma laughed. “I’m mostly kidding. It’s actually sort of impressive you noticed at all. Plenty of people never consider the possibility, and early voyages had a couple of casualties for that exact reason. That’s what led to the testing kits.” Emma handed Adelaide a red and white striped pouch that was ripped along one edge. “This is the one I used before. It tests for problematic interactions with skin and digestive systems.”

Adelaide pulled the pouch open. It was sticky, with some sort of warmish fluid leaking out. “How does it do that? You could test for known toxins, but that seems insufficient — what if some totally unknown chemical is out there that causes problems?”

“Yeah, I mean, I’m not a biologist, but I think those things actually contain some sort of living skin and stomach lining, and then it tells you if those things died faster than expected.”

Adelaide put the bag down very carefully and went to wash her hands. “I need to ask fewer questions.”

“Hey, if you’re squeamish, you went through the wrong Triangle. And you might not love dinner - I’m not sure if it’s going to be really tasty or really weird.”

***

It turned out to be both. The texture was exactly that of the sponge it looked like, and it took forever to chew. But it was unquestionably tasty, with a rich and meaty flavor that persisted throughout each bite. And Emma had taken the little seed things and cooked or reduced them or something and made a really bitter sauce that was somehow paired wonderfully with the sponge stuff itself. And there was some normal food too, prepared in case the spongey stuff was unappetizing — salad and some steamed chicken.

Emma looked around the table, and it seemed like most people were losing steam. This had been the first meal they’d all had together in a semi-organized fashion, now that they were more aligned with the time zone they’d found themselves in. Adelaide had sat near Captain Mattson, and he had done all of the talking, telling a story about a previous journey to her and Trish while Adelaide focused on shoving more food into her mouth. She’d only been half listening: there had been a whole part about how they navigated a specific current that had caused her to lose focus, and now somehow they were talking about cat-like things on some island.

“So did you manage to catch any?” Trish asked.

“It was challenging! The suction cups meant that they would run up the walls and onto the ceiling if they got spooked. You should have heard them - POPOPOPOP! It echoed!”

Trish and Adelaide both laughed.

“But we got some in the end! We pulled a piece of sheet metal off the boat and covered it with the fungus stuff we’d seen them eating. Then, when one of them came over and popped his way onto it, we just grabbed the sheet and hauled it back to the boat!”

“Why didn’t they jump off?” Trisha asked.

“I don’t know, but they never did, even as they howled and popped all around the thing. Maybe they were too stuck!”

Adelaide thought about that for a second. “I wonder if they could even jump. I don’t know how I’d jump with suction cups for feet, and why would they need to have evolved that? They already have a way to get up high, as you said.”

“Very possible! Anyway, we got a bunch of them, grabbed a lot of the moss so they’d be happy on the trip, and then we were on our way home!”

“What did you do with them once they got back?”

“Sold them off - there are some pet stores that connect critters like that with buyers.”

“How on earth would anyone know how to take care of something like that?”

“They don’t always, but they do their best. And there are some people who’ve become experts. Did you see the zoo before we left?”

Trish shook her head. “I meant to! I definitely will after this.”

“It’s worth the trip. I know some of the keepers there, they are good folks. And they’ve got funding like you can’t believe! Anyway, they wound up buying most of those little sucker cats.”

Trish smiled. “That’s so sweet, I’m tearing up! Although maybe I just had one too many glasses of wine!”

Adelaide tried to stop her eyes from rolling; she’d seen Trish do a dozen jello shots, it wasn’t like an extra glass of white wine was going to make a difference. But people were shifting in their seats, and Adelaide figured that as soon as the first person stood up, everyone would just go to bed. That sounded pretty good, actually — she was beat and would probably be woken up early by some bump or other.

Which was why she was so surprised to hear herself ask, “So what are we going to do now?” Everyone looked at her, and she worried she was blushing. “I mean, unless people want to go to bed, that’s obviously fine.”

Emma smiled. “I’m not tired yet — I’d be up to hang out a bit. Assuming people help me with the dishes.”

Trish stood up. “I think it’s obvious! Karaoke!”

Time slowed for Adelaide, and, for a moment, she gained the ability to see the future, watching as the group grimaced their way through the fifth performance of Blank Space. It was a grim future, but the grip of predestination had already seized Adelaide’s vocal chords. Looking around the table, she saw others facing the same grim realization.

Until Ray spoke. “I don’t have the energy for that tonight. Let’s watch a movie. Back to the Future.”

Jim smiled knowingly, but Alessio was the one who finally asked, “Why Back to the Future?”

“Everyone likes Back to the Future.”

And everyone did.