The Vessel

6. Illustrant

Baptiste stood at the front of the classroom. He looked out on the dozen, empty chairs peeking at him from the shadows, and he savored the moment while it lasted. Soon the day would begin, the day his mother always said would come.

The previous teacher, Mrs. O'Toole, told him this was her favorite part of the Vocation. The beginning of the semester, a new start, full of so much potential waiting to be unlocked. He could see the appeal in it, that sliver of time when everything had played out flawlessly in one's mind without being ruined by reality. Yet as a man of science he preferred truth to dreams, practice to theory. Why he had decided to become a teacher, then, was anyone's guess. It was too late to back down now. The students were due soon, and their minds needed to be filled with knowledge.

"Sunn, lights at half power," he called out. The soft lights at the ceiling's edge came to life, revealing to him the entirety of the classroom. He already knew the room well from his time as a student. It was a perfectly round room some fifty meters wide, with a domed ceiling perfect for displaying lessons in tremendous detail. So many kids looking for their Vocations had stared at that ceiling, hours spent gazing up at simulations of polluted bloodstreams, mass extinctions and all those other clinical ways to explain away the screaming Hell their people had run from. Baptiste was, in a way, lucky enough to have been born on the Ark. He'd been spared from the memories that haunted so many on board. All he knew of their original home was from books and stories, all of them with tragic endings. Ironic, he thought, the man teaching Earth Science had never set foot on it.

He turned now to face the front wall. "Sunn. Please show me the ocean."

An ocean blinked into being. It filled every inch of the walls with its bubbling and churning life, billions of gallons spreading out into dark blue. Baptiste craned his neck to see the surface bobbing overheard, just out of reach, as if he were a swimmer drowning in the grip of its cold, dark miles.

"Perfect." He took a few steps back to allow for some space at the front of the room. "Now I need a full-sized female Great White...here." A Great White- Carcharodon carcharias, as they were properly known- appeared at the front of the classroom. Its thick, white and gray body hovered three feet off the floor, swaying slightly as if swimming against an invisible current. He walked around to its front to inspect its scarred and pointed face. The shark smiled with its pink lips drawn back, revealing rows and rows of serrated teeth leading down to its massive gullet. Then he walked back around to its side.

He'd decided to start the year with something dangerous and exciting. To catch the kids' attention early and hold it as long as possible. If he was going to win any of them over to a science Vocation, if there was any way at all, it was through sharing his excitement for the subject. Standing so close to the shark, he could swear it was staring at him with those lifeless, black eyes, yet he knew it was only a simulation, a hollow play of light hanging on the air like an unspoken secret.

Well, not entirely hollow. He held up his right hand with the fingers together, forming the shape of a blade. "Sunn. Dissection mode."

Baptiste plunged his flattened hand into the side of the shark, making a deep incision. He felt no warmth, no wetness as he trailed a bright red line down the length of its body, then down and back up to the start. When he'd made a large enough section to surround all the major organs, he removed his hand and peeled back the section of light.

The anatomy of the shark was laid bare to him, all pinkish-gray with interconnected bags of flesh and vein. He refamiliarized himself with the layout of the shark's innards so he wouldn't find himself at a loss when it came time to teach them. He didn't need that kind of embarrassment on his first day, knowing full well that kids won't let a person live down a thing like that. He quickly found the spleen and heart just behind the gill slits, then moved the bumpy uterus aside to get a better look at the liver.