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Things

The Napkin

Lukas’s current diagrams on a napkin from the galley

One afternoon at sea, Lukas grabbed it from the galley and drew current diagrams on it: not sketches, but complete diagrams with arrows, depth figures, and a tiny legend, because his notebook was below deck and he couldn’t be bothered with the stairs. That was three weeks before the night he died. Lena Voss kept the napkin for two days, and then it was gone. Eight years later, that afternoon is what she has forgotten least about Lukas, and to this day she wishes she had kept the napkin. Lukas thinks of it too, in the prologue.

First encounter

• First noticed: the sea that afternoon, “flat as sheet metal”
• Quote: “To this day she wished she had kept it.”
• Habit: when he explained things, Lukas drew on napkins, on receipts, once on the back of an electric bill

Connected to

• Lena VossOceanographer at the ICRU in Hamburg, following a falling line

Spoiler-free. This describes the starting point of the book named, without its major twists or resolutions.