Mission Journal 3 — David Ince: Mission Day 1: Monday, December 6th, 2004
As I stepped into Aquarius I was immediately reminded of a scene from my favorite movie, the scene where the recently shipwrecked sailors boarded the fog shrouded Nautilus submarine in Jules Verne’s 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. Amazed by the apparently abandoned technological wonder, they eventually gaze from the view port in Captain Nemo’s stateroom, to see said Captain and his crew laying one of their fallen comrades to rest in a watery grave. I half expected Nemo to turn from his mysterious ceremony and discover that I had invaded his home as I gazed in wonder from the view port in Aquarius’s stateroom! Instead the unimpressed fish stared back at me, a creature in an ‘airium’ placed in their world for their amusement. A fantastic and humbling experience.
It wasn’t long before I was outside swimming with them, weighted down with necessary but cumbersome life support equipment, flowing past me unconcerned but curious about my presence in their environment, thousands of sleek multi-colored bodies turning the hull of the habitat into a shimmering living exo-skeleton.
In the darkness that evening I lay listening to Holst’s (Planet Suite), Neptune the Mystic, a moving and serene music which seemed to fit perfectly the ethereal view from the darkened view ports, as the denizens of Conch Reef glided in and out of the loom of the habs spot lights, the hunters and the hunted, a beautiful yet lethal dance of light and shadow.