The room fills with floating green patches of light, like we’re inside an aquarium that desperately needs cleaning. ‘Here we go.’ Nelinha turns a copper dial on the side of the orb. Do they work like antennae? Grounding wires? Its Slinky-esque coils run in all directions like the tentacles of an octopus, attached to various points of the console with seemingly no rhyme or reason. The metal tennis-ball thingy has been mounted on top of the navigation console. Gem, Ester, Tia and I join her on the bridge for the big reveal.
The trip’s high points are notably fewer.įor one, Nelinha has got the LOCUS working. His urine … I may have blanked out when they told me about his urine. Franklin and Linzi have worked themselves to exhaustion keeping him alive, but they can’t say for sure whether he’ll make it another day. Their fight made one thing clear: nerves are starting to fray.Īlso, Dr Hewett’s condition continues to deteriorate. I was tempted to confine them to their quarters, but I need everybody working. This felt better than it probably should have. I pushed them apart and did some yelling. They got into it after one of them made a comment about – actually, I didn’t even care. (What I really wanted was a fresh-baked gujiya dipped in hot chai, but desperate times call for desperate comfort foods.)Īlso, I had to break up a fistfight between Cooper and Virgil. This makes me feel guilty that I sneaked an extra chocolate-chip cookie after dinner the first night. We’ve needed a lot more than I thought we would, and we weren’t as good about rationing as I’d hoped. Thank goodness for small favours.Īmong the low points: we’re running short of food. I have nightmares about the dark arrowhead shape of the Aronnax hurtling towards us underwater, cracking the Varuna’s hull in two.ĭuring the day, I’m too busy stressing about immediate problems to worry about problems that might kill me later. I think about Dev, and how it must have torn him up to keep so many secrets. I imagine them diving into the creepy rusted-out wreck of a sub, only to get trapped inside, or killed by some ancient booby trap. At night, I lie awake thinking about my parents’ deaths. Over the next two days, I try not to obsess too much about Ester’s words.