Chapter 6: The First Lesson
Soon enough, the Ulysses was deep in the dark ocean and was near the bottom.
Back in the submarine, an elderly woman in her early sixties, known as Mrs. Wilhelmina Bertha Packard, was sitting at a cluttered desk of dirty dishes, an apple core, a hairbrush, a perfume bottle, a coffee mug and tea cup filled with used cigarette butts.
The woman had light skin, gray eyes, light gray hair tied in a low bun, and her finger nails were covered in red nail polish.
She wore an olive-green dress with buttons in the front, brown-heeled boots and a headphone with a microphone.
Mrs. Packard worked as a radio operator and was enjoying not just her job, but making phone calls to her friends from the surface.
"So, I says to him, 'What's wrong with my meatloaf?' And he says to me…" she said, in her cigarette-cracked voice and New Jersey accent, before a blue light flashed in front of her and set off a small alarm.
"Oh. Hold on a second Margie, I got another call," Mrs. Packard said, turning on a switch.
"Sir, we're approaching coordinates," she announced to Rourke and went back to her phone call. "Hello, Margie? Yeah, so anyways, he says…"
Milo and Emily entered the bridge and glanced around at the sight. The young man looked around at the size of this enormous space. Emily was curious and looked around with wide eyes. The siblings were curious to learn of why they were needed at the bridge.
"All right, let's have a look around," Rourke said.
"Aye, sir," Helga said, and passed the message. "Set course to two-four-zero."
"Aye, aye, sir," a sailor said.
"15 degrees down angle on the bow planes," Helga said. "Come right two-four-zero."
Milo and Emily walked up a set of stairs and arrived at the bridge where Rourke, Helga, and the other crew members were waiting, including Vinny and Mole. Standing next to Vinny was a teenage Puerto Rican girl; the siblings recognized her as Audrey Ramirez.
Audrey had fairly tan skin, brown eyes, full lips, and black shoulder length hair with curls at the ends. She wore an old-fashioned white shirt, blue overalls and dungarees, an aqua newsboy hat, tan mechanics gloves, and gray boots.
"Welcome to the bridge, Mr. and Ms. Thatch," Rourke said. He faced the crew. "Okay everybody, I want you to give Mr. and Ms. Thatch your undivided attention."
Milo slowly approached the crew and shyly introduced himself. "Good afternoon," he gave an awkward wave, and stood in front of a plain white board. "Can everyone hear me, okay?"
Only Vinny gave Milo a blank stare and crossed his arms. Audrey stared at the siblings as she blew up her pink bubble gum from her lips as it popped.
"Uh…" the young man stammered. Emily tapped him on the shoulder, handing him a bunch of slides. "Okay, uh, how… How 'bout some slides?"
As Milo and Emily prepared for the presentation, Vinny and Audrey glanced at each other in skepticism and looked back at the siblings.
"The… the first slide is a depiction of a creature," the young man began, holding a slide in his hand. "A creature so frightening that sailors were said to be driven mad by the mere sight of it."
Milo placed the slide into the projector as it was supposed to show the visual of the monster. Instead, this slide was a photograph of Milo wearing a ridiculous striped bathing suit, swimming goggles, a dinosaur float around his waist, arm floaties, and swim fins on his feet, waving to the camera as his cat, Fluffy was playing with a fish on the fishing line in the background.
The other crew members began to laugh and snicker.
"Hubba, hubba," Mrs. Packard muttered.
Emily sighed in embarrassment and facepalmed her forehead.
"Uh, I'm sorry. That's wrong," Milo said, embarrassed.
"Geez," Audrey said, in a Spanish accent. "I used to take lunch money from guys like this!"
Vinny glanced at the young girl and smirked.
"Anyway, this, uh, okay…" Milo said, dropping a few slides and finally found the right one. He inserted it into the projector. The visual showed a drawing of a sea monster attacking a ship and sentences written in Atlantean. "This is an illustration of the Leviathan, the creature guarding the entrance to Atlantis."
"With something like that," Vinny said. "I would have white wine, I think."
"It's a mythical sea serpent," Milo continued. "He's described in The Book of Job. The… The Bible says, 'Out of his mouth go burning lights, sparks of fire shoot out.' But more likely, it's a carving or a sculpture to frighten the superstitious."
"So we find this masterpiece," Rourke said, frowning. "Then what?"
"When do we dig?" Mole asked, excitedly.
"Actually, we don't have to dig," Milo smiled and turned off the projector. "You see, according to the Journal, the path to Atlantis will take us down a tunnel at the bottom of the ocean and we'll come up a curve into an air pocket right here," He took a piece of black chalk and began to draw on the board, he drew the surface of the ocean, a curved tunnel, the submarine, and the air pocket, leading to a road and the letter 'A', "where we'll find the remnants of an ancient highway that will lead to Atlantis," the young man concluded. "Kind of like the grease trap in your sink."
"Cartographer, linguist, plumber," Helga said, twirling her gun and smirking to Rourke. "Hard to believe he's still single."
Emily glanced at the woman, reading the sentence from her lips and frowned.
Was that a compliment or sarcasm? The dirty blonde signed.
Everyone looked at the deaf woman in confusion.
"What did she say?" Vinny asked.
"Emily's asking Helga if that was a compliment or sarcasm," Milo said, translating.
Helga was about to answer, until Mole interrupted pulling on her sleeve with a frown, "You said there'd be digging."
"Go away, Mole," Helga said, pushing the French man away.
"Captain," the navigator at the wheel said, "you'd better come look at this, sir."
"Okay, class dismissed," Rourke said to the others. He walked up a set of stairs to the wheel and Helga, Milo, and Emily followed him. "Give me exterior lights."
The Ulysses turned on its' front exterior lights and continued to navigate above the ocean floor. Back in the submarine, everyone grew stunned and shocked to see a disturbing sight. In front of them were wrecks and remains of ships scattered across the floor. Not only were the ships ancient, but they came from different time periods.
Rourke stared at the scene in complete silence.
"Look at that," Helga whispered under her breath.
"There are ships here from every era," Milo said, adjusting his glasses and widening his eyes.
What sort of event could have caused all of this? Emily asked, feeling dread and terror coming up and down her spine.
The submarine continued to drive through the water and its' lights flashed over the debris and went towards the deep chasm. Little did they suspect that an enormous lobster-like creature, bigger than the submarine, emerged from beneath the shipwrecks and began to stalk it with a loud menacing growl!