Insomnia

09: Oscar

South Atlantic, October 2124

I'd never seen a shark before.

When it collapsed onto the deck, the beast was smaller than I imagined. The sailors removed the hook from its mouth, and left it to thrash itself to death. In a way, the predator was almost pathetic; no matter what it is beneath the waves, a fish out of water is always exactly that. And I'm a woodsman at sea.

I pulled a sailor aside.

"Where are its teeth?" I asked, confused. The creature's mouth was nothing but gum.

"He doesn't need them, not when there are bigger things out there," he replied. "If you're the size of this guy, you either swallow prey whole or get swallowed yourself. The giant sharks used to have just orcas and us as predators, and with one now extinct and the other heading that way, they've grown to dominance. With the oceans growing just as fast, they're thriving as if the past few million years never happened."

"Nature's great survivors," Antonio added, nodding. I had barely seen the captain since joining, and the first mate Ferrao seemed to never leave his side. In their place, I'd been welcomed by Antonio and his friends. An orphan, he'd been adopted by the ship as a child, and grown up on the Amazon. He was helping me to cope with the change.

I'd been ill the first few days. At first I was homesick, having never travelled far or left mamã for more than a day, let alone permanently. Eventually, though, I just longed for any land at all. I wasn't used to this life at sea.

It didn't help that the ocean was constantly reminded us of its power, waves tossing us over sunken cities and more circling sharks. There had been no wild animals in the forest, just birds flying over. The shortage had meant either we drew them to extinction by taking all of their prey, or made them our prey themselves. Here, however, we were outnumbered.

"My first captain used to have a saying." Antonio had told me. "All life came from the sea; she's been trying to reclaim it ever since."

Soon, even O Mercado might be underwater, and there would be no home left to pine for. The ship turned sharply left, to avoid scraping on an office block. I shuddered.

Satisfied that the shark was dead, the sailors began to cart their catch off below deck, to be served as our evening meal. The captain was on deck, but he seemed busy commanding the sailors on duty, and had hardly seemed welcoming even in when docked. I went to talk to the navigator.

I knew little of her, other than what Antonio had told me: she was well-read, her name was Mariana, and everybody thought she was crazy.

"Where did they find you, then?" She was about my height, but with much paler skin, though perhaps only because of my time outdoors. Her face was pretty, but I could not bear the sight of her eyes. A perfect sea-green, they brought my nausea rushing back.

"I used to work in a big city library, and was lucky enough to be there when the riots came. Whilst the bankers and politicians were getting torn out of their houses, we were safe behind our thick stone walls, no matter how many starving peasants tried to breach them. We had to burn books to survive the siege, of course, and it gave me the idea to sell them as fuel once the uprising had shrivelled up and died."

She means that literally, I realised. Not just the movement, but the people.

"We did quite well on it all. I felt guilty burning the tomes I was supposed to protect, though. You feel that books are somehow sacred, and that those who destroyed them will be cursed." She smiled. "But then, haven't we been cursed enough already?"

"Is that what you think we are, cursed?" I'd entertained the thought myself.

Mariana laughed out loud, which earned us a sharp rebuke from the captain. The crew were trying to navigate their way across a swollen ocean and sunken coast, with all our lives depending on their slim chance of success. This wasn't the time for jokes.

"You mean like by God?" She mused it over, seriously now, her voice hushed. "Well, it's not like there's no precedent. Sisyphys was punished for chaining down death, after all. Gods may have made us in their image, but they do seem to frown upon imitation. From Babel to Bellerophon, we've always been cast down if we try to reach their lofty heights. They know we can't be trusted. Well, we've stolen ambrosia from their cups, so who knows. We might well be paying the price."

"By getting what we asked for? That doesn't seem like much of a punishment."

"As far back as our stories go, genies, witches, and trickster spirits have punished us by doing exactly that. Even Sisyphys was ironically punished with eternity. Gods like a joke as much as men." She glanced at the captain. "More than some men, in fact. Either that or, they've sent a second great flood to cleanse us."

Gods? Which gods? For every reference I understood, another completely passed me by. I nodded anyway. Mariana seemed like a woman who enjoyed the sound of her own voice, even if nobody else was listening.

"But we didn't choose this," I whispered. "Not all of us, anyway. It was our parents and grandparents who received the cure, and passed it down to us through our DNA. We're innocent."

"Adam didn't know what the apple was when Eve gave it to him, but it still gave him powers that shouldn't have been his." She shrugged. "You know, they say that Japan is destroyed, so perhaps you're right. Perhaps this has been a targeted curse, only affecting the instigators. This could be an opportunity for the rest of us. The captain fancies himself a Noah, and we might well be destined to find our Antarctic Ararat. We didn't choose this, no, but here we are. Perhaps we were chosen."

I was stunned into silence. She sees this as a good thing. Mariana didn't feel cursed, but blessed. She was lucky to be in the right place at the right time with the library, and again with this ship, but luck was all it could be. It was as much due to her own ruthlessness, too. She felt guilty about the books, but not about those starving outside. People like me.

I left her to ramble to somebody else, and gazed out across the blue horizon. For the first time, in the month since we'd left port, my stomach held.

I felt sick enough already.