A/N HAPPY LATE BIRTHDAY ROSIEE!  I LOVE YOU TOO MUCH UGHH

Lisa POV

The first thing you want to install in your high-tech super sub? 

A pipe organ, of course. 

The wonders of the Nautilus have already waged war on my sense of reality. When we reach the bridge, my mind simply runs up the white flag and surrenders. A pipe organ – now silent – does, in fact, take up the entire starboard side of the room, but that's only one of the bridge's oddities.

 The prow's 'eyes' dominate the front of the bridge. The bulging metal-laced domes provide a wide view of the cavern outside, making me feel like I'm in an aquatic conservatory ... or maybe a fish tank. 

'The windows aren't really glass,' Irene assures me. 'As near as we can figure out, the material is a transparent iron polymer created at extreme temperature and pressure.' 

'Like at the bottom of the sea,' Jennie guesses. 'Near a volcanic vent.' 

Seulgi taps her nose. 'Just so, my dear. Perhaps Nemo forged his hull plating using a similar process. We're not sure how he would have managed that. It's yet another mystery to unravel. Of course, when Jules Verne wrote his novels, he didn't know what to call that material, so he called it iron.' Sheplinks a knuckle against the nearest nemonium girder. 'Clearly not iron.'

Four control stations make a horseshoe curve along the front of the bridge. As in the engine room, each panel is Swiss-watch intricate, with dials and switches labeled in engraved calligraphy.LOCUS nodes, dormant, are mounted on top of each station. Artistic flourishes decorate the borders of the controls: dolphins, whales, and flying fish.

The entire ship is a handcrafted, bespoke work of art. She could never be reproduced, much less mass-produced. I start to appreciate just how unique the Nautilus is and why her recovery was so important to HP and to Land Institute. Already on this tour, I have seen half a dozen technological advances that could change the world – if the Nautilus would let us take her apart and study her inner workings, which I don't think she would agree to.

'And here,' Seulgi says, gripping the back of what is clearly the captain's chair, 'is where we found Nemo.' 

'Aish!' Irene swats her arm. 'They did not need to hear that!'

'Well, I thought they might want to know he died at his station. We considered trying to extract some of his DNA, but, ah, ethical considerations aside, it soon became clear that the Nautilus would not tolerate any clever tricks to bypass her systems. She must choose her captain, and it must be a living Dakkar.'

Roseanne squeezes her eyes shut and shudders, as if trying to get the image out of her brain.

Irene pinches her nose. 'My dear, I am sorry. My wife has no sense of propriety.'

 I look at the captain's seat. It's a monstrous metal L on a swivel pedestal, like an old-fashioned barber's chair. Nested in each armrest is a hemispherical handgrip, like the DNA-reader on the Varuna. The seat's upholstery appears to be gleaming black leather. 

For some reason, the idea of my fourth great-grandfather's body being found here doesn't disturb me as much as I might have thought. In a way, the whole submarine already feels like his crypt, his earthly remains. 

Oh great. I'm going insane.

 I trace my fingers across the supple leather seatback. Roseanne swats my hand away. 'This material is new.'

 'Yes, indeed,' Seulgi agrees. 'The metal survived. The original leather was damaged beyond repair. Also, well, the remains of your ancestor had been sitting there for over a century ...' She glances at Irene to see if she will hit her again. 'We committed Nemo to the sea. Then I re-covered the chair. The material itself is seaweed-based. Fortunately, I have an excellent leatherworker friend in Seol. Korean workmanship is the best, as everyone knows.' 

Irene rolls her eyes. Guess she's not Korean then. 'We have, of course, tried to activate more of the ship's systems. But the captain's chair seems to govern access to everything critical: propulsion, weapons, navigation, communications.'

She points to each of the four control stations in turn. Then she faces me and Jisoo again as if waiting ...Of course. She'd like one of us to sit in the chair. She doesn't want to push, but she's dying to see what will happen if we put our hands on those control spheres. Even for Seulgi and Irene, who have been so kind and welcoming, it's hard for them to see us as people and not as an all-purpose miracle tool.

I take a deep breath. I don't want to sit in that chair. It isn't mine. I haven't earned it. I'm trying to figure out the politest way to decline when Rosie saves me. 

'You shouldn't start there,' she says. She's been quiet so far, standing in the middle of the bridge, taking in every detail, maybe listening to the mood of the ship. 'You should start there.' 

She points to the pipe organ. I've been trying not to think about the huge musical contraption and why it randomly decided to play a single blast all by itself. 

Something about its presence on the bridge creeps me out, even more so than the dead captain's chair. Trying the pipe organ before the bridge controls doesn't sound logical. But, then again, Rosie seems to understand the ship in a way that goes deeper than logic. I'm not sure I like that.

I approach the forest of gleaming metal pipes. 

The four-tiered keyboard has seen better days, but it is still beautiful. The major keys look like abalone. The minor keys have the same dark luster as my mother's black pearl. Like the pipes, pull-stop levers and pedals are of gleaming nemonium, etched with decorative fish leaping through waves. 

The bench's velvet cushion is black with mould. Its wooden legs look ready to collapse. 

Seulgi coughs. 

'I'm afraid I don't know much about pipe organs,' she says sheepishly. 'I cleaned it as best I could, but its more delicate pieces are still in bad shape. I'm sure it needs tuning ... however one tunes an organ.'

'I have no idea,' Jisoo admits. 'I took piano lessons, but ...' 

The memory takes me back to elementary school. 

I recall Tae complaining bitterly whenever Ms. Taeyeon arrived at our house for twice-weekly lessons. He hated playing the piano. It wasn't a sport. It wasn't outside. He couldn't kick it, shoot it or tackle it. Jisoo was the same. She preferred drop-kicking to pianos any day.

Still, our parents insisted.

 Your future depends on many skills, I remember my father saying, including the keyboard. 

I'd never understood that. I just chalked it up as yet another of our parents' strange and inscrutable commandments. Like so many things that involved Taehyung and Jisoo, my own piano lessons were an afterthought. Ms. Taeyeon was coming over anyway. She might as well give us a three-for-two deal.

Taehyung was always better. Despite his complaints, he had a natural ear. He never practiced. He just stormed up to the keyboard, listened to Ms. Taeyeon play, then imitated her perfectly. His sloppiness and impatience drove her crazy, especially since it didn't stop him from mastering whatever she put in front of him.

As for me, I plodded along, carefully and mathematically, treating the keyboard like another language, learning each song like a sentence to be diagrammed. 

Now I wonder if my parents knew about Nemo's pipe organ. Verne mentioned it in 20,000Leagues, didn't he? Were they preparing Tae and Jisoo for something more specific than just playing a few nice tunes at a dinner party?

'Did Taehyung ever come here?' I ask. 

Irene looks shocked. 'Of course not. It would've been much too risky.' 

Seulgi adds hastily, 'You would not be here, either, my dear, if not for the dire situation.' 

I still shouldn't be here. I'm a consolation prize. A last-ditch, third-string quarterback for Harding-Pencroft.

'Taehyung wanted to see the Nautilus, of course,' Seulgi continues. 'When he was your age ... Well, the staff at HP had a difficult time convincing him to wait, once he was told the truth. He wanted to come here immediately. Then he argued that he should come right after his graduation from HP. Eventually, he listened to reason. He agreed to go to college first, giving us four more years to restore the ship and understand how it worked. That would also have given Jisoo four more years to learn and mature.'

I try to process this information. I can recall several times over the last two years when Taehyung seemed inexplicably angry. Then again, we'd lost our parents. I wasn't a happy camper, either. 

I have no trouble imagining Tae being impatient to see the Nautilus. The idea that he would listen to reason and go quietly off to college, though ... that's a little harder to picture. Sure, he acted excited about graduating. He was looking forward to college. But, now that I know about the nautilus, I wonder if Taehyung was secretly chafing about those extra four years of waiting.

I wish I could have talked to him about it. Now it's too late.

 'You should play,' Roseanne suggests. 'I think the ship would like that.' 

Still standing, I place my fingers on the lowest keyboard. The keys are as cold as air-conditioner vents. It's been years since I played ... since just after my parents died, when our house was sold, and the old piano was rolled away. Do I even remember any songs?

 I decide to try Bach's Fugue in D Minor. That was written for the organ. I used to play it every Halloween, because it was so creepy. Played at a slow pace, it's also plaintive and sad, and the composition is so old Nemo might have known it. He might have even played it on this organ.

I peck out the first measure. The notes sound flat, but they resonate through the ship. Second measure: I miss a beat, hit a D-natural by mistake, but I keep playing. The arpeggio brings me to the first full chord. I let it play out, shaking the floor. I lift my hands. I am trying to recall the next measure when Jennie says, 'Lisa.' 

I turn. Irene and Seulgi are staring in amazement at the lights that have come to life on the bridge.heThe control panels are all illuminated. Four LOCUS holographic displays float above the control stations like a line of ghostly planets. The great eyes of the prow are lit purple around the borders. The captain's chair has similar mood lighting around the base.

The Nautilus, it seems, likes Bach. 

'People,' Irene says in a reverent tone, 'today is going to be a wonderful day.'

~~~