reverienet | voice: un: thomas

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voice: un: thomas

So here's something our life here puts me in mind of, often.

In eighteen something something, the Mary Celeste set forth to cross the Atlantic with a hull full of alcohol, with a full crew, a devoted captain and his little family on board.

The ship was found several weeks later without a soul aboard. Nearby Morocco was famous for pirates, but the valuables were still left all in their places. The beds were neatly made. Baggage had not been packed. Food was in the pantry, tables were neatly set, and all the barrels of alcohol were intact- except three or four, which were made incorrectly, and which sat empty, apparently having leaked into the hull.

The lifeboat was missing, and a long rope hung from the back of the ship. Most of the sails were furled. The ship had taken on water, but not nearly enough to be dangerous; more likely the result of having been abandoned.

When the men who found the ship checked the log, the last entry was dated ten days before the ship was recovered. The sailors of the Mary Celeste noted that they had sighted land- there was some evidence that the ship's chronometer wasn't working, which doesn't matter to the puzzle except that the crew may have been disoriented, and may have believed they were closer to Gibraltar or the nearby islands than they were.

What say you?

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I'd say it sounded like a ghost story, brother, and that I wish it didn't sound familiar.

Sometimes it's best just never to figure out what happened to the crew, you'll sleep better at night.

Oh, I don't know. I think the answer's tucked in there, if you know how to look.

Want a hint?

At least I'm fairly sure they weren't all found melted into blue goo around the engine.

Go on, gimme a hint.

It wasn't drinking alcohol. It was denatured alcohol, which has a few interesting chemical properties.

[Strongly scented, highly explosive.]

[ It was an archaic fuel - even gasoline wasn't something Alex was all that familiar with - but the 'interesting chemical properties' gave him enough of a hint. ]

So they fled somethin' that was almost certain to be a death trap.

Guess bein' on the ocean gives you a few extra options, that way. Tryin' to get off a ship that's set to kill you at any time is a bit different out here.

But I can see the parallels.

We found anythin' like denatured alcohol yet?

Couple of leaking barrels, they smell it in the hull, and move the population of the ship in a hurry into the missing lifeboat. Unfurl half the sails so the ship won't go too fast, lower themselves down in the yawl so they can be towed towards the land that they've misidentified the location of. Sails catch a gust of wind, the ropes snap, the yawl's lost at sea.

Bang. Enduring mystery of our times.

Huh.

I had no idea wind could do that.

Guess some things are easier in space.

Your entire language around space travel is predicated upon ships and you don't know how the first ones worked?

Young man.

Hey now. [ But there's a grin in his voice. ]

I ain't actually ever seen wind, you know. Or uh - felt it, I guess. Or the ocean.

You try that trick in space, and both you and the ship'll just keep on goin' in the direction you were headin' till somethin' stops you, or you change course.

Well, it used to be that ships would have a mast, and would mount large cloth sails to them to catch the breeze. You could easily be surprised and accelerate violently in a strong wind. Stopping was as tough as you imply- you can furl up the sails, or you can throw down an anchor, or bank as sudden as is safe, but that's about all.

By the time I was a sailor it was engines and propellers, of course, but you couldn't be around the docks without knowing the basics.

I'm technically qualified to fly in atmo, but I've only ever had to do it flyin' into Titan - and even then, we'd just use drop ships, anyway.

Honestly, sounds a bit like hell in a hand basket, to have to fight the planet to get anywhere.

How'd I not know you were a sailor? [ Guess who's going to be getting a nickname, now. ] Thought I had all of 'em pegged, on this bucket.

Baby, I wasn't a just a sailor, I was a smuggler.

[He says, smile stretching wide, feet kicking lazily up.]

In a very rough and tumble little archipelago and tropical sea. I wish I could show you- never seen the ocean, good lord.

Trust me, I wish I'd gotten a chance to see it, too. [ Said fairly casually, even if it underlined just how despondent he was getting about being able to get back home. ]

So what kind of smuggler were you?

Was it cheese? Because you'd be damn popular on Mars, if it was.

Sorry, just the usual. Guns-drugs-money, occasionally a box that cannot be opened if anyone on board valued their sorry life.

I got out of the game a decade back.

You say that like cheese ain't worth more than guns or drugs, in a lotta places.

But yeah, alright, slightly more popular than a pirate, at least.

What've you been doin' since?

Trying to get a bit more legitimate. Import and export that isn't strictly euphemistic, the odd government contract.

[Spying, he won't outright say.]

What about you? I know you fly, but I just realized I don't actually know why.

[ Government contracts, huh. Well he knew just as well as anyone that they needed smugglers, too. ]

Navy, for twenty years. Then tried retirement and that didn't sit right, then signed up to fly gas and ice haulers back and forth across the system.

Now I fly a gunship in the middle of a shootin' war that we ain't on any side of. Well.

I did.

No war and no ship, here, so it's kind of a moot point.

Mostly I just fly 'cause I can't bear to do anythin' else.

Gas and ice.

[He echoes, storing this away, notes about the future.]

There's a good life to be made, winding around the edge of a war. Or at least a good living.

Mostly our business is just survivin', and tryin' to stop everythin' from gettin' a whole lot worse.

It ain't even like I'm gettin' paid.

You're more altruistic than me.

[Guesses Ricki, with a snort.]

But that makes me glad we've got people like you on board. Community and solution focused.

Think there's just a point where nothin' really matters anymore, save gettin' people out alive. An' then either you help, or you let people die.

... The latter really didn't sit well, with me. So I ain't tryin' it, again.

You tryin' to tell me that you wouldn't be workin' on gettin' everyone out of here alive, if you could?

No. I play the villain, but I've got a good heart.

[He announces, virtuously.]

I'm going to find a way out of here.

See, that's the spirit. [ The smile is audible in his voice. ]

And no offence, hoss, but if you're tryin' to play the villain you ain't doin' a great job so far.

Sounds like they were running from something bigger and planned on abandoning ship in an area that it would be assumed pirates got to them.

A perfectly normal ship's crew from the eighteen hundreds?

[Arching an eyebrow.]

I don't think that's particularly likely.

Okay, then what's your theory?

If you were faking piracy you wouldn't leave behind the family jewels, you'd take them with you or at the very least toss them overboard.

I think they came into the hold and smelled the alcohol that'd linked through the porous barrels. Knowing the stuff was extremely fucking explosive, they did what any sailor might- set their ship drifting slowly towards land, lowered the yawl, attached it to the back by a tow rope and all climbed aboard it.

The big risk of setting yourself up in a tow is that if the wind picks up suddenly, your line'll snap, and you'll be lost at sea if you're not near enough land. Which, since their chronometer was improperly calibrated...

[Okay. Maybe a slightly better theory.]

And that's why they were never found.

Comforting.

[Some of the jargon he had used had gone over her heard, but she had caught the gist of it.]

Sounds like you've got experience sailing a ship.

They had engines, in my day, but I've seen them sailed. You learn things, hanging around a harbour long enough.

Are you from Earth?

Sounds like it.

[Daisy has never really been on a regular ship before, so aside from what she's seen out of those Pirates of the Caribbean movies she's pretty clueless.]

Yup. The 2010s. What about you?

Seventy six. Few years before you.

I feel a long, long way from home these days.

That’s a pretty long ways away.

[Even still...]

Yeah, I know the feeling. So you worked at a harbor?

1872.

( that is literally why she's here. you're welcome )

1872.

[He's completely on board.]

Perfection, thank you.

There's more to the story than you told.

Sure. Which parts are you thinking of?

The final disaster wasn't the only one that the Mary Celeste faced.

I'd say the happy explanation is that they somehow made it to land, but the more likely one is that they were all dead by the time the ship was found. Is this a metaphor?

No, it's a real mystery. There was a story in the papers that ran saying the beds were still warm from being slept in, food still steaming on the tables- that was an artful lie, but it does still occupy the public imagination.

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