Reading the Ship’s Papers

Friday. My submarine is full of paperwork. I had not noticed how much until a party asked me to read it to them.

There are logs, notes, labels and charts aboard the Nautilus, all in English, and my voice through the tubes is in English too, as are any clues the gamesmaster sends down. Not everybody in a party needs to be fluent; one good reader can carry the papers. But most of the party should follow what I am shouting, or the shouting is wasted.

Today’s party had never done one of these rooms before. They told me so at the hatch, nervously, as though confessing to something. I told them every captain was once a passenger. They took the extra clues when they were stuck and read every scrap aloud, and by the end they were arguing about gauges like old hands.

Their reader was a boy of twelve. He did all the voices, including mine, which he does better than I do. I have asked him to stop.