“And if S. never again gets to dry land, never leaves this ship alive, who can be his audience?”

As S. thinks about the truth he wants to reveal about Vévoda, he realizes that he has no one to tell. He would never tell Maelstrom or the other crew members because he doesn’t trust them, and even if he does eventually leave the ship, he wouldn’t know of anyone to tell. While he reflects on this, he comes across a small, bent, rusty nail in a crevice of the ship and picks it up.

Again, we can see that S. is extremely lonely. The only friends he had are all dead, and the ship’s crew are too bizarre and inhumane for S. to really connect with. It seems as though Straka is ultimately trying to suggest that the quest for one’s identity is a lonely, personal one.

In their first round of margin notes for the page, Jen and Eric discuss Eric’s dissertation (or lack thereof). Jen asks whether he was trying to solve the whole Straka mystery and Eric replies:

Yeah. In hindsight it was way too big a project. Better to do something smaller, more specific–then get the Ph.D., move on, get the teaching job, then research/publish more. Oh well. Moot point now.

It seems fairly obvious that Eric is a pretty confident and proud guy, considering he had the audacity to attempt to solve such a difficult mystery people have been trying to unravel for years. Throughout his interactions with Jen we see him slowly come down to Earth, and slowly begin to lose sight of his ego as he begins to become more appreciative.

During their third round of notes, Eric writes to Jen about her younger sister:

She looks like you.

Taller. Thinner. Better hair. She makes me sick.

Maybe. But you’re the beautiful one.

You don’t have to say that. I don’t need to be the beautiful one. (Kinda resent the implication, actually…)

No implication. Just saying what I mean.