Joan Groves - The Last Island

I don’t know if my expression changed. I did not know the derived resolution of the three but I did know my final resolution.

The Deacon spoke, “We could dive through this jellyfish bloom but it is better if we wait a bit until the bloom is gone and that will still give us time in excess to dive comfortably. In the meantime you three geniuses will have a chance to generate a whiz-bang answer.”

It came to me and I am sure it came to Manta and John Henry, too. How can one question have three correct solutions?

Manta looked out to sea and spoke a reply, “The Deacon is right. He is one of those people who is not always right but he is right so often that he may as well be right all the time.”

John Henry spoke, “You know, I wish he were more human and less Deacon. His standards are so elevated, perfect, and incorruptible but he cannot be that simple a man. Everyone, even the Deacon, has to have vulnerable, pathetic, and brittle aspects to their human nature.”

There was a moment of silence.

Then I spoke, “It has nothing to do with his humanity or his expertise. The Deacon is fortunate enough, but some may call him unfortunate enough, to hear the score of life.”

“The score of life,” they both said in unison.

Then I continued. “I do not mean the score like an addition or a subtraction score. I do not mean like a winning or a losing score. What I mean has nothing to do with numbers. What I mean has to do with notes. The Deacon hears the music of his life. He hears the melody and he hears the harmony of his life’s music. So he is fortunate because he hears it and he is most unfortunate that he cannot free himself from its beat.”

John Henry thought a moment before replying. “Look out there at all that chop, Vaughnie. Millions and maybe billions of jellyfish are out there riding the meaningless music of their meaningless lives: water temperature, salinity, moon cycles. But they are blobs, no better today than a million or billion yesterdays ago and no better than a million or billion tomorrows from today.

“Vaughnie, we are not to be dictated to by the music of our lives. Are we to dance to a score that we did not compose like those billions of blobs of jelly just pulsating to a no-good end, to either just dry up on the beach or dissolve back into the deep?

“No. I say the score of the music of our lives is to be composed by us so that the millions and billions of tomorrows are liberated, emancipated from the restricted imprisonment of all those past yesterdays.

“The Deacon is today, and he was today yesterday, and he will be today tomorrow. That is the noble beginning and the noble end of jellyfish.

“I am no jellyfish. I am much better than a jellyfish.”

I said nothing and neither did I nod nor shake my head.

Then Manta began. “None of this is the point. To make a better tomorrow is not in our job description. Those jellyfish out there are what they are and that is all they are; not jelly and not fish. They are a couple layers of cell tissue, some gelatin, and a group of unknowing cells performing a unified purpose and that is all they are and it is all they do.

“Somewhere and somehow in the simplicity of the Deep they refused the psychosis of complexity and elected the sanity of unfussiness. Where do you place simplicity on that upward chart of advancement that you carry around in your ego? You know and I know the Second Law of Thermodynamics. Things, all things, go from order to disorder—there is no exception. The world will be no better tomorrow for our efforts and the more we try to make it better, the more we will make it worse. There will be no better tomorrows. The good is today and the better was yesterday.

“The Deacon has no inheritance in tomorrow because he has no birthright in today. I am no jellyfish either but I am no better than a jellyfish.”

I did not nod. I did not move my head side to side.

Each second there were more jellyfish by an exponential amount. The mass of jellyfish exceeded the mass of the sea.

Then I spoke, “Jellyfish. Jellyfish. Tomorrow. Yesterday. It is not about those things. I don’t begin to understand the Deacon nor am I able to understand you. We are one step away from the completion of our task and now the vitality of raw nature dares us. It stands there and dares us. Imagine that—it dares us.

“It says dive now in the midst of cnidoblast and go into the anaphylaxis of Irjukadji Syndrome because our white blood cells release mediators in response to a neurotoxin from nematocysts. Imagine that.

“Then there is this: wait, which could lead to an out-of-season dive and the savage, cruel, and feral winds of the storm. Imagine that, imagine that.

“It has brought suffering, anguish, and grief from the beginning because unlike those jellyfish, in season or out of season, in the deep or on the surface, it knows we may or may not tempt temptation. Destruction and desperation is not given to us, rather we choose to claim ownership of them.

“Are we to dive to our destruction and cry in our desperation? No, we must not float on the tide in season only to pass as rot on the shore or film on the crest. Nor are we to not dive and claim ignorance. Such things as the Deep, the seasons, and jellyfish are lesser than we, but all are our greater, also.

“Even a dead jellyfish can kill.”

The Cyanea capillata that had started its journey at one thousand atmospheres below the surface had reached the final surface film of one atmosphere and was floating and its giant bell of six and a half feet pulsed slowly and in rhythm to the beat of the waves. Its hundreds of feet of invisible tentacles descended for a bit but then ascended to the surface and simply lazily floated along. The always armed microscopic and uncountable ruthless cnidoblast-nematocyst units were ready to generate death without motivation, neither malice nor mercy.

“Are not you embarrassed by the tag of Vaughnie? What kind of moniker is that for a man grown full? Is that gonna be your cute I.D. forever?” It was the voice of the Deacon.

“What the—? Is everybody on this island a child of the living dead?” I said.

The Deacon was no more than five feet distant from me but I had walked right past him. He was as stationary as the coconut tree that he was sitting on in the light of the dark sky. As always, his calmness showed his internal confidence and tranquility.

“Look in the spit of light,” he commanded.

I looked. I knew what he wanted me to see.

“ Cyanea capillata ,” I said.

“I do not know if you are all that smart or just goodly schooled but either way you know your stuff, kid.”

What the—

The Deacon used the familiar in his conversation and it was to me.

“Yeah, a Lion Mane jellyfish is out there a ways or so. Giant, big creature. Maybe six or seven-foot bell, with a tentacle net long and wide enough to envelop a whale. Giant, big creature but inoffensive and totally nontoxic. You can bump into it and be home free. Just a giant, big beast. Lion Mane jellyfish sounds better than Cyanea capillata .”

What the—

The Deacon was a scholar. He played at being boorish. In the dark light, his intellectual refinement was radiating.

“It is never of the giant big that you have to be vigilant, wary, or suspicious in life. On the whole such things are slow, dumb, and harmless but they fool you into thinking that they are a peril and a menace and, in haste caused by fear and panic, we put ourselves in jeopardy and expose our vulnerability,” he said.

I spoke, then. “ Chironex fleckeri .”

He laughed out loud.

“You got it, kid. The whole South Pacific contains a few harmless Lion Mane jellyfish that ain’t nothing more than floating balloons of glue which people avoid like salvation. But, it is filled with untold scores of killing, invisible Box Jellyfish that can and will hunt you down. And, as with all great evil, you are inveigled by its non-appearance and then only upon your death pang do you find the truth of the lie, kid.”