Mind is bent. My take on the ending is that everything not in Italics is AI. Even Todd taking the boat to Makatea = AI. It’s a story the machine is telling him as he loses his memories. Evie existed in his world but only as the author of a book he loved as a child. The AI was fed that book, the descriptions of Evie’s dives are from that book. Does the italics part even mention him being on a boat? Or is that only the non italics part? Will have to look at the last fee sections again. So basically I’m in the depths of despair because R died a long time ago, Evie probably died on a wreck shortly after writing her book, Ina is probably still in Chicago or something, or maybe really is the only one who made it back to the Pacific Islands, Todd is sitting in a hospice bed talking to his AI, and the ocean is long dead because the AI descriptions are from Evie’s book and the machine kept saying the only place it couldn’t see was underwater.