For dinner, our orangutan chef feeds us homemade seaweed gnocchi in creamy lemon garlic sauce, followed by a delicious tiramisu cake. Because clearly we all need more caffeine and sugar.
Afterwards, Jupiter is in such a generous mood he lets some of the crew switch off The Great British Bake Off so they can play retro games on the PlayStation and GameCube. Others volunteer to return to the Nautilus with Luca for some nighttime ‘detail work’。 I’m not sure what that means. I’m afraid tomorrow morning I’ll find the Nautilus’s hull decorated with airbrushed flames.
I don’t even see Nelinha until bedtime. Ester is already snoring when my Cephalopod friend arrives, grinning and covered in machine grease.
‘Luca says we’ll take the Nautilus for a short spin tomorrow,’ she whispers to me, ‘if you can convince it to move!’
I suppose I should be thrilled. I might achieve what every Dakkar since the 1800s has dreamed of: getting the Nautilus back into action.
‘Yeah.’ I try to sound enthusiastic for Nelinha’s sake. ‘That would be amazing!’
But I go to sleep more unsettled than ever.
I feel like someone has opened my brain’s access panels and started cleaning out all the excess goop. I’m not sure I want them in there, removing the residue and debris of my life. Who will I be when they’ve finished their repairs?
While I sleep, I have more nightmares about being trapped and drowning. Only this time my underwater tomb looks like the bridge of the Nautilus.
The next morning, I’m up early again to dive.
Socrates is nowhere to be seen. In fact, the lagoon seems devoid of any dolphins. This doesn’t help my sense of foreboding.
At breakfast, my classmates are in good spirits. Trying to sail the Nautilus will be the most challenging thing we’ve ever done, and I can practically smell the adrenalin in the air, along with the scent of Jupiter’s blueberry muffins.
Linzi Huang reports that last night in the sickbay, Dr Hewett farted in his sleep. Apparently, this means his bodily systems are working better. She jokes that he’ll be lecturing us again in no time. Cooper Dunne claims he had a dream about how to fix the Nautilus’s torpedoes. His fellow Sharks tease him about doing his best thinking while he’s unconscious. Kay Ramsay, who hasn’t smiled since she lost her sister in the attack on HP, actually laughs at one of Robbie Barr’s corny jokes – something about how many nuclear engineers it takes to change a light bulb. Cephalopod humour – I don’t get it.
Some of the crew are whispering about how creepy the old sub is, which just makes them more excited. A few gossip about where Captain Nemo’s body was found, and how exactly my parents were killed. They try to have these conversations out of my earshot, so as not to upset me. Unfortunately, I can read lips.
Everybody seems to think that our first spin in the Nautilus will be a great success.
‘You’ve got the Nemo touch!’ Kiya Jensen tells me, as if she wasn’t questioning my taking command of the Varuna just a few days ago.
Even Nelinha, who knows how tricky advanced tech can be, seems perfectly at ease. ‘We are about to operate the oldest, most complicated submarine on the planet,’ she says. ‘Aren’t you even a little excited?’
I don’t know how to answer her. These days, I’m having trouble distinguishing between excitement and terror.
After cleaning up from breakfast （because time, tide and dirty dishes wait for no one）， we gather on the Nautilus’s dock for a pre-dive briefing. The Cephalopods have brought their tool kits. The Sharks have brought their weapons. Gemini Twain has so many guns and other dangerous objects strapped to his body he looks like he’s expecting to fight off a mermaid apocalypse.
He catches me looking and shrugs like, You never know.
The Nautilus herself appears unchanged since yesterday. No flames have been painted on her prow, thank goodness. Her giant insect eyes glint in the dim light of the cavern. In the water around her, the multicoloured phytoplankton are still putting on their Holi festival.
The submarine looks timeless – as if she literally exists outside of time. She doesn’t belong in the twenty-first century any more than she belonged in the nineteenth. I try to imagine how lonely that would feel, especially if my creator scuttled me at the bottom of a volcanic grotto for over a century. Would I even be sane after all that time?
I don’t realize I’ve zoned out from Luca’s lecture until he says, ‘As I’m sure Ana would agree.’
Everybody looks at me.