Andrew Smith - The Alex Crow

We forge ahead, if nothing else, simply for the sake of doing.

The condition of Mr Warren’s hand is worsening.

It may be selfish of me (and this is very likely a confession of sorts—for is selfishness not the truest component of survival?), but having a patient to occupy my thoughts during the endless monotony aboard ship proves to be an acceptable diversion, unfortunate as it may be for the newspaperman.

I am afraid that given our circumstances I may soon become overwhelmed by such selfish diversions. Our provisions cannot last. Eventually, we will all succumb to the ice. After the last hunt on the pack ice, the native drivers of the dog teams threatened to abandon us and make an attempt for Saint Michael, their home.

Now Captain Hansen has armed guards watching the native men and their dogs. He has instructed the guards to shoot them if the dog drivers attempt to leave. The situation grows worse with each passing day.

This afternoon, an inspection revealed stresses on two of the hull’s reinforcing beams. Before departing San Francisco, the Alex Crow had been refitted with new boilers and massive crossbeams below decks in order to withstand the tests anticipated on the journey.

Nobody could rightfully foresee our five-month imprisonment.

Today, while I was rewrapping Mr Warren’s crushed hand, Murdoch said to me that he had been his entire life at sea, but had never endured such a predicament as the one we find ourselves in at this moment.

“The ship will be eaten by the sea,” he said. “I know the ship will break apart, and we will all of us be buried in ice.”

Friday, February 13, 1880 — Alex Crow

The hull of the Alex Crow gave in last night.

Murdoch came up from below and woke me by pounding on my cabin’s door.

“Doctor! Doctor!” he cried.

At first I believed there was some kind of medical emergency that required my attention, but the commotion of men as they scrambled to remove whatever could be taken from the Crow and off-loaded onto the ice that trapped us here confirmed my worst fears.

The Alex Crow is sinking.

- - -

It was when he was eighteen—a legal adult in the Land of Nonsense—that Leonard Fountain answered an advertisement to participate in a paid study by a company called Merrie-Seymour Research Group. Leonard Fountain didn’t really understand or care about the aim of the study, because a thousand dollars was a lot of money to an eighteen-year-old kid from Idaho.

Unfortunately for Leonard Fountain, the study—which was the first round of such experiments involving the implantation of audio-video feed tissue-based “chips”—was directly linked to schizophrenic hallucinations among the majority of the participants. Merrie-Seymour Research Group decided to go back to the drawing board on newer generations of non-schizophrenia-inducing biochips.

Larry was the only inhabitant of Jupiterwho’d slept much on that first night.

But since the incident with Bucky Littlejohn and the field-point arrow through the foot, Larry was more than a little stressed out by the four boys of Jupiter. He looked as though he might toss and turn in his non-plastic bed.

After they packed up Bucky in an ambulance, Larry gathered us together and said, “I’m calling a cabin meeting. And right now.”

Max and I learned at “orientation,” an absolutely senseless meeting where we filled out the name tags we were required to stick to our chests at all times and counted out our socks and underwear and toured the dreaded lightless, spider-infested communal toilets and showers, that at Camp Merrie-Seymour for Boys, “cabin meeting” times were usually reserved for group sessions with the camp’s therapist, a frazzled old woman named Mrs Nussbaum. During our six weeks, Mrs Nussbaum ultimately came to the conclusion that at least three of the Jupiter boys were particularly troubled, and trouble for her—I never answered her personal questions, while Cobie Petersen and Max seemed to not fit in with the other planets of campers.

She happened to be waiting inside Jupiter when Larry marched the four of us in for our scolding about suicide attempts and such.

Our first session went something like this:

We sat on our beds while Mrs Nussbaum eyed each one of us, almost as though she were trying to decide which unattractive and mangy puppy to save from the euthanizing chamber at a dog pound. Ultimately, I got that all wrong. Mrs Nussbaum had other intentions as far as the fate of her boys was concerned.

Mrs Nussbaum touched the tip of her index finger to my name tag. It made me flinch, and wonder, as all boys do at times like these, why did I always have to go first?

My name tag said this:

HELLO! MY NAME IS: Ariel Burgess

I COME FROM: Jupiter

Mrs Nussbaum said, “ Ariel . That’s a lovely name. Would you care to tell us all something about yourself, Ariel?”

I looked directly at her and shook my head.

And since Mrs Nussbaum brought it up, let me add something about my unwillingness to talk.

It wasn’t that I felt embarrassed speaking English. I was confident in my ability with the language. The truth is this: I did not speak because I was unhappy and I was afraid. I was sorry for where I came from, and for what happened to so many of my friends and family members. I was sad to be an orphan—worse, a sole survivor—even if the Burgesses did graciously make me their awkward second son, Max’s non-twinned twin. And it made me feel terrible how much Max hated me, too.

I didn’t talk because I wouldn’t tell anyone about what happened to me with the orphans in the tent city. But most of all was the feeling that I didn’t belong here, as much as everyone had seemed so intent (and self-satisfied) with the notion of “saving” Ariel; and that I would never come to understand all of the nonsense that America presented to me.

That’s why the boy from the refrigerator didn’t say much.

So when Mrs Nussbaum asked me if I would care to talk about myself, what would she expect me to say? I would love to care about talking about myself, but I did not.

So I said this, as politely as I could:

“No thank you.”

Mrs Nussbaum looked injured.

It was a silly thing. Why would anyone ask a question to someone who has free will and then be surprised—or disappointed—by their answer? This made no sense. She asked, I answered, and then there came an awkward, silent, staring period that lasted for several minutes before Max contributed an opinion.

“Allow me to break the ice,” he said. “Ariel just doesn’t like to talk.”

Besides, Mrs Nussbaum mispronounced my name—she called me Air- iel—which is how most Americans said it. Max corrected her, saying Ah- riel.

It almost felt as though he were sticking up for me—something brothers should do, right?—but then Max added, “He’s stupid, besides.”

So Mrs Nussbaum asked Max to talk about his anger, and again seemed surprised by Max’s response that he A) remembered Mrs Nussbaum from when this was a fat camp, and he had never been fat in his life; and B) couldn’t give a shit about Camp Merrie-Seymour for Boys.

Apparently, Max still held on to his celery grudge from two years earlier.

“This used to be a fat camp ?” Cobie said.

Max said, “It still is a fat camp. They switch it every six weeks between fat camp and the eighteenth century. When I was thirteen, my parents got me in during a fat camp cycle. It was the shittiest summer of my life. Even worse than now.”