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stick in his digital video camera. The previous one had blinked FULL in the middle of Andy’s lesson, something that had been planned, much to Zero’s chagrin, in order to start rattling Andy and get him primed for an eruption.
    “Are we ready yet?” Andy asked, flustered but still trying to smile.
    Zero raised the camera to his right eye and opened the other eye at Andy. “Yup,” he replied. The rangy cameraman used words sparingly, especially when he was unhappy. This job was making him unhappy.
    His lean physique, wide aquamarine eyes, and deadpan humor lent Zero a vaguely Buster Keaton-like quality, though he wassix-two and broad at the shoulders. He wore a gray Boston Marathon T-shirt that he had earned three times over, and battered blue New Balance RXTerrain running shoes with orange laces and gel-injected soles. His faded brown Orvis cargo pants had fourteen pockets stuffed with memory sticks, lenses, lens filters, lens cleaners, mike filters, and a lot of batteries.
    Zero had made his living and reputation photographing wildlife. He had mastered his trade in some of the most inhospitable environments in the world, taking assignments from the infested mangrove swamps of Panama (filming fiddler crabs) to the corrosive alkaline lakes in the Rift Valley of East Africa (filming flamingos). After the last three weeks, Zero was wondering which assignment was worse—this one, or standing in mud that ate through his wading boots while his blood was drained by swarming black flies.
    “Let’s go, Gus,” Zero growled.
    A grip clacked a plastic clapper in front of Andy’s face, startling him.
“SeaLife
, day fifty-two, camera three, stick two!”
    “And…ACTION!” Jesse Jones shouted.
    Jesse was the obligatory obnoxious member of the on-camera “crew.” The real crew wore uniforms and tried to stay off-camera as much as possible. Universally hated by both his shipmates and the viewers at home, Jesse Jones was delighted to play a starring role. Reality shows needed at least one cast member everyone could loathe with full enjoyment, one who caused crisis and conflict, one whom sailors in olden days would have called a “Jonah” and heaved overboard at the first opportunity.
    Tanned and muscular, with heavily tattooed upper arms, Jesse wore his hair short, spiked, and bleached white. No one had taken advantage of the show’s legion of sponsors quite so much as he had. He was decked out in black thigh-low, ribs-high Bodyform wetsuit trunks, complete with a stitched-in blue codpiece, and over them a muscle Y-shirt printed with palms and flowers. On his feet were silver Nikes and on his nose rested five-hundred dollar silver-framed Matsuda sunglasses with pale turquoise lenses.
    “Where were we, Zero?” Andy said, cranking up a smile.
    “Copepods,” Zero prompted.
    “Oh yes,” Andy said. “That’s right—Jesse?”
    Jesse threw a rubber hand-puppet at Andy, who ducked too late. It bounced off his face.
    Everyone laughed as Andy replaced his imitation tortoise-shell glasses and gave a crooked smile to the camera. He slipped his hand into the puppet and wiggled its single google-eye and two long antennae with his fingers. “So Copepod, here, gets his name from this microscopic sea creature.”
    The banana-snouted dog barked once and resumed panting next to Andy’s leg.
    “Poor Copey!” Dawn Kipke, the crew’s surf-punk siren, crooned. “Why would anyone name a dog after that ugly freaking thing?”
    “Yeah, that’s uncool, dude,” Jesse shouted.
    Andy lowered the puppet and frowned at Zero, who zoomed in on his face.
    Andy’s face turned red and his eyes bulged as he threw the puppet down. “How can I
teach
anything if nobody ever LISTENS TO ME?” he raged.
    He stormed off the deck and down the hatchway.
    The crew turned to Zero.
    “Hey, I’m not in charge, man,” Zero said, walking backwards as he shot. “Ask the guys upstairs!” He panned up to the bridge, where Nell stood looking down at