When the night shift ends on a laker, the ship doesn't stop. It just gets quieter.
I worked the loading crew that last autumn. At four in the morning the belts shut down, the cranes fold away, and you walk the quay to your cabin. It takes eleven minutes, because the hull is that long. The green light along the waterline walks with you the whole way. The haze holds it, so the air is green, your hands are green, and the water is a green mirror with the ship standing upside down in it.
My porthole was the lit one, high up near the bow. Round, warm, too small to climb through. I left the lamp on so I'd have something to walk toward.
Inside, the engines idle somewhere beneath the floor: a deep, slow breathing you stop noticing after a week and miss for years. Water laps at the steel. The lake is so still at that hour you can hear a mooring line creak three berths away.
I'd take my boots off, lie back, and feel the whole ship hold its breath with me. Then morning, and the belts again.
— a loading-crew hand, November 2083