S. runs up to the deck above. The boat has docked at a small island. A giant volcanic rock rises at the center of the island. It has a large crater at its top, showing that it used to be a mountain. There are irregular outcroppings up and down the mountain, examples of the planet’s “indifference to anything but the eternal rearrangement of itself.”

This is a surprisingly philosophical moment. The mountain evokes a sense of the world’s impermanence. The only constant is change.

There is only one note on this page, and it is one of Eric’s pencil notes from high school. Eric writes that the passage is reminiscent of Chapter 29 of Straka’s last novel, Coriolis, in which Captain Erasmus discovers the black mountain.