“The words on the wall are not the words he thought he wrote.”

S. begins to scratch his story into the wood with the nail; he writes:

I swam away from the ship. I assumed it had been destroyed. I found myself under a pier, coughing out seawater. I could hear the noise of the demonstration above.

His hand is quickly overcome with a hand cramp, and he stops writing to look at what he wrote. Turns out, what he wrote was completely different to what he thought he had written:

I swam away from the ship, I had aspired to destroy it. I found myself under an arch, cursing at senators. Could I harm the noisy demons above?

Here Straka explicitly shows the schism between who S. is and who he wants to be. What matters more? Which one is the real S.? S. continues to explore this idea throughout his journey. Also, this phenomenon would continue to suggest the adversity of the ship to self-expression. It already has a mute crew, but the fact that one cannot accurately inscribe their thoughts onto the wood suggests that the ship itself is not conducive to self-expression.

Jen and Eric attempt to figure out the meaning behind this phenomenon as well. Jen suggests that there could be a code in the words that S. actually wrote, and Eric agrees, considering that VMS did like to mess w/ people who read everything as a clue re: his identity. Later, in the second round of notes, Jen suggests:

What if it’s not a code or a joke but something serious about trying. To tell a story or express a feeling, but never having it come out the way you want it to?