The walls of the exhibition room had been draped in blue netting to suggest the ocean. Someone had glued plastic starfish to form a border near the floor. A boom box played ocean sounds: water burbling, the occasional caw of a seagull.
In the center of the room, a spotlight shone from the ceiling, illuminating the highlight of the exhibition: a reconstructed ship. It resembled some of the rafts people sailed around Cypremort Point. It was built from cedar planks, and its broad hull curved at the bottom, forming a fin-shaped keel. Near the helm, the low protrusion of a galley was capped by a flat, shingled roof. Metal cables held the ship a foot off the floor, so the deck hovered just above Eureka’s head.
As students banked left or right to walk around the ship, Eureka chose left, passing a display of tall, narrow terra-cotta vases and three huge stone anchors speckled with verdigris.
Margaret waved her laminated map, beckoning the students to the other side of the ship, where they found a cross-section of the helm. The interior was open, like a dollhouse. The museum had furnished it to suggest how the ship might have looked before it sank. There were three levels. The lowest was storage—copper ingots, crates of blue glass bottles, more of the long-necked terra-cotta vases nestled upright in beds of straw. In the middle was a row of sleeping pallets, along with bins of grain and plastic food and double-handled drinking vessels. The top story was an open deck edged with a few feet of cedar railing.
For some reason, the museum had dressed scarecrows in togas and stationed them at the helm with an ancient-looking telescope. They gazed out as if the museumgoers were whales among waves. When some of Eureka’s classmates snickered at the seafaring scarecrows, the docent flicked her laminated map to get their attention.
“Over eighteen thousand artifacts were recovered from the shipwreck, and not all of them are recognizable to the modern eye. Take this one.” Margaret held up a color photocopy of a finely carved ram’s head that looked like it had been broken off at the neck. “I see you wondering, Where’s the rest of this little guy’s body?” She paused to eye the students. “In fact, the hollowed neck is intentional. Can anyone guess what his purpose was?”
“A boxing glove,” a boy’s voice called from the back, eliciting new snickers.
“Quite a pugilistic speculation.” Margaret waved her illustration. “In fact, this is a ceremonial wine chalice. Now, doesn’t that make you wonder—”
“Not really,” the same voice called from the back.
Eureka glanced at her teacher, Ms. Kash, who turned sharply toward the voice, then gave a sniff of relieved indignation when she was sure it hadn’t come from one of her students.
“Imagine a future civilization examining some of the artifacts you or I might leave behind,” Margaret continued. “What would the people think of us? How might our brightest innovations—our iPads, solar panels, or credit cards—appear to distant generations?”
“Solar panels are Stone Age compared to what’s been done before.” The same voice from the back rang out again.
Madame Blavatsky had said something similar, minus the obnoxiousness. Eureka rolled her eyes and shifted her weight and didn’t turn around. AP Earth Science student from Ascension back there was clearly trying to impress a girl.
Margaret cleared her throat and pretended her rhetorical questions hadn’t been heckled. “What will our distant descendants make of our society? Will we appear advanced … or provincial? Some of you might be looking at these artifacts, finding them old or outdated. Even, dare I say, boring.”