We made our way through the leaning first class rooms, examining trinkets left behind and the faces of the few passengers that were left in the rooms. "How about this?" I said, kneeling down on the floor to look at a necklace that had fallen there. "It says 'Ana' on it. Does that sound familiar?"

The woman in red looked away from a collapsed pile of bones dressed in a suit to see where I was on the other side of the room. "No," she said. She turned back to the well-dressed skeleton. "I wonder where this man is..." she said, more to herself than to me.

"He wanders the hallways," I said. "I'm sure we'll pass him on our way to one of the other rooms."

The woman in red sat back on her haunches and looked at me with a strange sort of smile. "How long have you been doing this?" she said.

"Doing what?" I asked, sitting up to match her posture.

"This," she said and held her hands out as if to explain. "Studying the people on the ship, counting everyone, looking at all the stuff... how long have you been doing this?"

I shrugged. "I don't know. It feels like I've been here forever." Sure enough, I heard the moaning cries of the suited man echo in the hallway. "There he is. Go look and see if you recognize him," I said, confident that she wouldn't know him.

She hurried down the hallway only to return a short time later. Her slumped posture made me feel bad that I had gotten her hopes up. "I'm sorry," I said.

"It's not your fault." She shook the sadness out of her form, like a shiver, and straightened herself up. "Besides, we have plenty more people to look through, right?" She flashed a smile so wide that it made the water around her lips shimmer.

I smiled and got off the floor to show her to the next room. It took us all night and well into the next day to go through all of first class. Toward the end of our hunt in first class, her disposition began to waver and her hope began to wan.

"I'm sure we'll find something," I said. "If you're here, that means the rest of you has to be here too, right?"

"What about you? Have you found anything of yours yet?"

"Not yet," I said. "But there are still parts of the ship I haven't been able to explore."

"Oh? Why not?"

"They're too dark," I said. "How about if we start looking through the middle class rooms?"

"I think I need a break from looking," she said. "It's too depressing."

"I understand." Quite honestly, I was grateful for the chance to stall. The thought of her finding her own body, which, I was positive, was lying on the third floor down in middle class, was terrifying to me. It created a world of "what ifs" and "oh nos." What if she found out she was married, and her husband was there with her body? What if she no longer wanted anything to do with me once I'd helped her find herself? I would become, essentially useless to her. "Why don't we go back up top and see how many more are awake from the glass float?"

What we found on the top deck was most surprising. A large crowd of cognizant wreck-dwellers had gathered near the glass float. Standing in the water above them were Dale, Thomas, and Silas. Together, they seemed to be holding some kind of meeting, and they had raptured the attention of the whole crowd.

"What do we do now?" One of the passengers asked.

"I suppose that's completely up to you," Dale said.

"But what's the point of even existing?" another said.

"I'm not going to get into a philosophical debate with you," Dale said. "We just wanted to work out some way for everyone to find their families and maybe even themselves. I think that if we do this in an orderly fashion, it'd go a lot faster."

"What's going on?" I asked one of the passengers near me.

"They want to help everyone find their family or whatever," he said. "If you ask me, it's all a load of horseshit. What's the point of any of this? We don't even know if the people we recognize are even family. And so what if they are? What then?"

"You don't care to find your family?" The woman in red asked.

"What am I going to do with them? Kiss my wife? Sit my kid on my knee and watch him grow up? Or her. It doesn't matter. There's no reason for existing like this." He waved his hands around and then slammed them down, saying, "There's no point!"

"Calm down," Dale said, coming toward the man with his arm out as if to put it on the man's shoulder.

"Or what?" the man said. "I'll break something?"

"I'm sure we can find something to make this life worth while," Dale said.

"Life? You call this a life?"

"More like the after party." Thomas stepped into the conversation with a big grin on his face. "I bet we'll find a good bit of fun to be had, we just need to get out of this damned ocean. Find a nude beach..." he winked at the man and poked him with his elbow, which went through the man's form into his stomach.

The man shook his head. "I don't know," he said. "This is all so... useless." The last word landed hard and angry like a fist.

"Maybe finding your family will make it seem less useless," the woman in red said. "At least you won't be alone."

"Oh yeah? And then what?" the man said.

"Well... I don't know. But it helps to think of things one at a time. Solve one problem and then you can decide what's next."

The man shook his head—not so much in disagreement as discouragement. With nothing left to say, he walked away, waving us off like pests.

"So, where have you two been?" Thomas said, turning toward me.

"We're trying to find herself," I said.

"Any luck?"

"None yet," she said.

"Yeah, well, do what makes you happy, but I'm getting out of here. This place is a hell hole," Thomas said.

"Where are you going to go?" I asked.

"Doesn't matter. I'll travel the whole world if I have to. I've got enough time, right?" He smiled at me, as if he had completely forgotten that he had accused me of murder, as if we were old friends.

"Well," I said, trying my best to put on the same kind of friendly nature he had. "It can get pretty lonely by yourself."

"Yeah? You sayin' you wanna come with?"

"No."

"You wanna stay here in this grave, then?"

I looked around the deck—once lifeless and silent, except for the low-hum of constant moaning. Now it was teeming with gossamer forms that moved with life and spoke to each other in a variety of tones and emotions. Sure, they weren't all happy, but they were... something. And then there was my friend below deck. He might not ever miss me, but I knew I would feel horrible leaving him there by himself.

"For now," I said to Thomas.

"Whatever makes you happy," he said and winked at the woman in red. "I'm not sticking around." Then he rose a little in the air and said in a much louder voice, "And I'll take anyone with me that wants to go have a good time."

Many passengers looked up at him, but didn't make a move to join him and soon, turned back to what they had been doing before.

"Fine," he said, more to himself than anyone, "I'm not waiting up, but maybe I'll run into one of you saps when you finally realize how dead this place is."

"I think we realize that, Thomas," Dale said, "But dead as it is, it's all we have at the moment."

"No it's not! We have everything! With the freedom to do anything!"

"Anything that doesn't require touching anything," Dale said. "I think I'll pass for now. I can only handle a certain amount of frustration at a time."

"Suit yourself," Thomas said. "My eyes still work and I intend to use them to their fullest potential." He laughed and started to drift off the deck of the ship and into the deep.

"Head that way," Dale said, pointing in the opposite direction that Thomas was moving. "You're going to want to move with the current if you hope to reach land as soon as possible."

"How do you figure that?" I asked Dale.

"I found a map of ocean currents on the bridge of the ship," he said. "According to the course written on the map, we were moving with the equatorial current. At least, I think so. The map was in pretty bad shape and half of it was covered by another sheet of paper... It really is frustrating to not be able to move anything."

"I know what you mean," I said.

Dale gave me a sideways smile. "Still wanting to wake your victim?"

"What?" the woman in red said.

"No!" I said. "I mean, he's not my victim. I didn't do anything to him, I'm sure of it."

"Relax," Dale said, "I'm just messing with you. Wouldn't really matter either way, now would it?"

"It would to me!" I said.

"What are you two talking about?" the woman in red said.

"Oh, you haven't taken her down there to meet your... uh... 'friend?'" Dale said.

"Stop it!" I said.

Dale laughed. "Don't get yourself all wound up. There's no point in that now, is there. Do what you want, I no longer care to know who you are or why I don't know you as a crew member. Let's start over again, shall we?" He smiled a genuine smile and held his hand out to the woman in red. "Hello, Miss, my name is Dale. It's a pleasure to meet you."