Panoptic

Panoptic - Chapter 09

 By the next dawn, he still hadn't got used to being onboard the New Dawn. It wasn't just the way he had to climb three flights of stairs to find anything resembling an 'outside', or the mysterious odours, some harsh and metallic, others chemical or even floral, that wafted through the corridors, perhaps emanating from the engines, perhaps from the laundry rooms. It wasn't even the constant hum, the vibration that ran through the ship from bow to stern, although that was one of the strangest points of being aboard ship; he even felt it in his bed, during the night; it had given him an eerie feeling of being about to tumble out, although that was barely possible with a bed that size. It had translated itself into dreams of floating on a sea in the sky, to plummet down to an ever receding earth.

But it wasn't even the unending hum that gave him the weirdest feeling, although it challenged for that role when he noticed it in his plate and fork, his food, and his very body at breakfast. It was, instead, when he stood on the foredeck, or the aft deck, or somewhere along the side. It made little difference to look at the vast blue ocean before them, or the foam and churn they left behind. He knew the waters teemed with life, but they concealed it below a choppy, grey-blue surface that glinted now and then under the bright but cloudy sky. The salt smell of the waters came to him on the same breeze that carried the oily smell of the diesel engines, with sometimes a tang of ozone. He could look in any direction, and see the same sight: white grey sky and grey-tinted wavelets, extending to the arc of the world.

The ship was a trap.

Back on land, anywhere on land, he could walk or run, he could crawl, climb, sidle, leap; he could move. He could be confined, but with ingenuity, effort, and a spot of luck, he could get out and go.

Here there was no getting out. Any attempt to go would lead him to plunge through the waves into the chill waters of the Atlantic. The mere thought made him shudder, and Squizzle must have felt it too, because he turned away from the sight of the waters, and clasped Soro's head, nuzzling against it. The voyage had affected him, too, Soro noticed; the monkey's spirits had been low ever since they'd boarded.

And why the thought of escape? Why did he care that he couldn't vault over the side, make his getaway? He looked once again at the camera he had 'borrowed' from his intruder in the night. The expensive Moniker branded device confirmed what Belle had intimated; one of the other contestants was a criminal, and interested in him.

"Interested hell!" he said, making Squiz jump. "The creature was about to get hazardous, and I was lucky you warned me before he had a chance." He patted the little monkey.

He'd had enemies before, of one sort or another, but never had he been locked up with them, trapped on a ship. What made it worse was that now he knew his enemy was a fellow contestant, he couldn't trust any of them. The Moniker camera spoke of wealth, of success, but these people were the refined gold of his profession. Any one of them might have had this camera, either as something they'd bought, as a prize won in some past competition, or as a gift from an overjoyed client.

"That narrows it down to just about everybody," he said, grinning in an effort to burn through his frustration with grim humour.

He tangled with the problem until the captain announced that a special event would occur soon after breakfast, and would all the passengers go and take their meal.

The thought of food held little appeal, but when he sat down in the ship's restaurant, and the waiter served him a stack of steaming fresh pancakes, smothered in maple syrup and filled with good vanilla ice cream and fruits of the forest, his saliva glands began to work overtime. He wolfed down the pancakes, and called for more.