“I hope Sister
will return to us safe and sound, and I hope Corsair will stay out of
trouble. But most of all I hope that Lapse is all right, and that
I’ll see her again someday.”
Pack rose to his feet. It
was dark inside his cabin except for a lone ray of starlight shining
through his window. He took a deep breath and retrieved his notebook
from his desk. Purposefully, he strode towards his door and out of
his cabin.
“There is much
work to be done.” he addressed his crew, “we must be ready for
this morning’s business. There are floors to be scrubbed, windows
to be cleaned, sails to be mended, cracks to be filled in, and stock
to be counted. I’ll be making the rounds, so I expect everyone to
be working hard tonight”.
“Yes sir!” his
crew responded, in unison. He dismissed them, and they hurried off
to perform their duties. He climbed the steps to the helm and took
the wheel. To his satisfaction, he noted that the ship's course had
not deviated from its intended route while he had been away. He
approached the navigation table, where Quill was busy scribbling
away.
“How’s
progress?” Pack asked, twisting his whiskers in his paw.
Without looking up from
his work, Quill gestured towards a large stack of papers. “I’ve
almost finished charting this quadrant of the northern sky, sir”,
he said proudly, glancing up briefly to study the heavens, and then
returning to his scribbling.
Pack took the top page off
of the pile and studied it - An elaborately detailed grid of stars,
arrows, and captions. “Excellent”, he said, replacing the page,
“your work has been very useful in allowing us to chart our routes
more efficiently.” Quill merely nodded, still writing. “I’ll
leave you to it.” Pack said, walking away. Quill looked up again
and continued his scribbling.
Below deck things were not
as orderly. Someone had spilled a cleaning bucket and soapy water
was running down the hall towards the living quarters. Pack righted
the bucket, but there was no sign of its owner. He sighed and picked
up the mop when he heard footsteps approaching rapidly from down the
hall. “Don’t worry boss, I’ve got- Woah!”
Snag slipped on the soapy
floor, and the sponge he was carrying flew out of his hands, hitting
Pack in the side of the head. Snag himself slid all the way across
the floor into the bucket, spilling the rest of its contents and
himself onto the floor. Sheepishly, he stood up, retrieved the
sponge from the ground, and looked at Pack remorsefully, his folded
ears pressed so flat against his head it was almost a perfect sphere.
“You’ve done a
good job wetting down the floor,” Pack said dryly, handing him the
mop. “Now why don’t you try cleaning it?”
“Yes sir!” Snag
said enthusiastically, saluting him with the sponge, which left a
splotch of damp grey fur on his forehead, “I won’t let you down,
boss!” Pack shook his head and walked back to his cabin.
After cleaning his fur
there was a knock on the door. “Enter”, he called, still
grooming his whiskers.
“Mr Pack, sir, the
ship belonging to Captain Corsair is approaching off the port bow.”
Relay bowed politely after delivering the message.
Pack flipped through the
schedule in his notebook. “I guess I have time to meet with him.
Ask Craft to see to the sail repairs in my absence”. Relay bowed
again and stepped out.
“What news do you
bring, Corsair?” Pack wondered to himself as he gave his whiskers a
last once over. “I hope it’s good news, for your sake.” He
closed the door to his cabin and returned to the deck.
“Corsair! You’re
looking well.” He greeted his friend. It was only half a lie –
Corsair still looked as untidy as he always did, but he seemed a bit
more composed than he had when they had last met. “What news of
Sister?”
“She’s all
right!”, Corsair said happily, embracing him.
“That’s
wonderful!” Pack replied, surprised but relieved. “I’m glad
that this was all resolved so quickly and painlessly.”
Corsair chuckled to
himself and released Pack. “Actually,” he said, in a more
serious tone, “that’s not the only reason I came here tonight. I
need your help, Pack.”
Pack listened carefully as
Corsair told him about Sister’s escape, Michelle’s message, and
how they planned to search for Steven. His face conveyed nothing,
but he twisted his whiskers with his paw as he listened. “...And
we all need to work together if we’re going to have any hope of
finding this stranger”, Corsair finished.
“No, no, no, no,
no.” Pack replied, firmly, folding his arms. “Such a thing must
absolutely not be done.”
“But it’s
important to Sister, and Michelle needs our help”, Corsair pleaded,
but Pack was having none of it.
“Sister has only
just returned, and barely, and you would endanger her again? Use
your head, Corsair. It’s one thing to put yourself at risk for one
of us, but for a stranger?
They’re just work to be
taken care of. Such things no longer matter once we come home.”
“You don’t know
that!” Corsair insisted.
“What I do know is
that things were best when we were all together. Before our friends
started to disappear and not come back. Is that what you want? Is
it? Because that’s where this kind of thinking leads, make no
mistake.” Pack lowered his voice, to make it clear that it was the
end of the discussion.
“I didn’t think
you’d like it.” Corsair said, shaking his head. “If Lapse were
here, she would have been for this.”
“She’s not. You
would do well to remember that.” He narrowed his eyes and stormed
away.
Pack slammed the door to
his cabin behind him and tossed his notebook across the room. “That
fool!” he exclaimed loudly, striking his desk with his palm.
Supporting himself on one arm, he put his other paw on his forehead
and tried to think clearly. He didn’t normally argue with Corsair
this much, and it was upsetting him. “Why does good news turn out
this way?” he asked himself, and he sat down in his chair. “I
hope Corsair and the others will stay out of trouble”, he said,
“it’s not like anyone ever listens to me.”
He tried to bring his mind
back to his work, but it was no use, it was all he could do not to
lose himself thinking about her. Time was almost up, anyway. Pack
leaned back in his chair and watched the sun rise through his window.
It was a beautiful sunny
day outside, with barely a cloud in the sky. Pack gazed out the
window longingly, watching a flock of white birds fly by. A beep
brought him back to his senses; he reached up and closed the
shutters, then spun around on his chair to face his computer.
“Meeting in 5 minutes”, read the alert window, and it ticked down
to four as he was watching it. Dismissing it, he glanced at his
email inbox. At the top were messages from sales, purchasing, the
social committee, and someone named “Allen”. He sorted his
messages alphabetically by sender, and scrolled partway down through
the list, when there was a knock on his cubicle wall. “Better get
going to the big sales meeting”, said a bespectacled man with messy
blonde hair. He sighed and followed the man through a grey hallway
and into an elevator.
As the doors closed in
front of them, the man turned to him. “I stayed up all night
working on my presentation”, the man said.
“How is our
business looking for the next quarter?” Pack asked him, inspecting
his appearance in the elevator's mirrored walls. He straightened his
glasses and brushed his hair back.
“Oh, good, good.
Strong overseas sales puts us in a very competitive position in the
global market. Convincing the bigwigs that our slowing domestic
sales are solely the result of market saturation might be difficult,
but I’ve got so many bar graphs and pie charts showing growth that
I think I can sneak that part by them.” He swallowed nervously.
“I can count on you if they ask any really tough questions, right?”
“Oh, of course”,
Pack said, distracted. The man didn't notice, though, he was
fidgeting incessantly with his tie. The elevator stopped, and he
followed the man out.
The meeting room was large
and very crowded. Pack counted at least thirty people seated around
the large, wooden table, and many more standing around the edges of
the room. A screen was situated at one end of the room, and the man
he had followed was fiddling with a projector at the end of the
table.
“Push the input
selector button and reconnect the cable.” Pack volunteered. He had
dealt with more than enough projectors in his time.
“Oh, right”,
said the man, and a bar graph appeared on the screen.
The room fell silent, and
a man in a black suit stood up. “Thank you all for coming to our
quarterly meeting”, he said, “this has been an important quarter
for us, with the launch of our new product in the overseas market.
Now, without further ado, I believe Allen has some figures he would
like to justify for us”. The room laughed, and Allen chuckled
nervously and cleared his throat.
His confidence seemed to
increase when he gave his presentation, though, he worked through his
material quickly and handled questions from the audience well. Pack
didn’t understand most of the details, but he could tell that
business was generally sound and that always went over well. After
he was finished, the man in the suit patted him on the back and
dismissed the meeting, and everyone except for Allen and himself
filed out of the room.
“Do you think that
went okay?” The stranger asked him.
“You did well, I
think they were really convinced.”
“I hope so.” He
finished packing up the projector and rose to his feet. “Thank
goodness the company picnic is this afternoon, I’m starved.”
“Ah, I could use a
picnic”, Pack said, relieved. “Shall we get going?”
Pack followed the stranger
back to the elevator. On the ride down, his demeanor was completely
different from before. “I've been looking forward to this all
week”, he said happily. “Nothing says job satisfaction like a
free lunch! And maybe we'll get a chance to see that cute girl from
the third floor again, too, I haven't seen her in ages.”
Pack was about to respond,
but the elevator reached the ground floor, and they walked out to the
park behind the main building.
The sun was still shining
bright, and the picnic was a sea of activity. Pack saw many members
of his crew amongst the crowd, all laughing and enjoying themselves,
which made him smile - it was good for them to get time off, they'd
earned it. He spotted Snag, and laughed aloud as he squirted mustard
on his shirt instead of his hotdog, then spilled the entire plate
onto his lap as he tried to clean it up. He lined up behind the
stranger to get something to eat, but Allen seemed concerned by
something else, he was scanning the crowd for something.
“Mike isn't here.”
“Look at all there
is to eat!” Pack licked his lips, the food smelled so good.
“We have to go get
him” said the stranger. “You know he'll never come if we don't.”
“Okay, just let me
get-” But the stranger was already pulling on his arm. Pack gazed
back at the simmering meats wistfully as they gradually faded from
view.
They located Mike back up
on the floor where Pack's desk had been. He had long brown hair,
thick glasses, and was very thin, and his nose was buried in his
computer when they arrived.
“Hey Mike”,
Allen said to him, “you're missing the picnic.”
He only looked up for a
moment. “I'm too busy”, he said meekly, and begun typing quickly
on his keyboard.
“No you aren't,
you weren't typing anything before we got here.”
“Well, you know I
don't like picnics anyway.”
“You should still
go. People notice that you never come to company functions, you
know.” Allen said, disapprovingly.
“People notice
lots of things about me, but it's never anything good. I've stopped
listening to them.”
“What's the harm
in staying in?” Pack asked. “Picnics are supposed to be fun, if
he doesn't have fun then he might as well not go.”
“It's not just
about having fun” Allen responded sternly, “it's also to get to
know your co-workers. It's important that we all work together, as a
team.”
Pack fell silent, but Mike
spoke up. “All right, all right, I'll go. It can't possibly be
worse than having you nag me all the time. But I'm not staying for
long, I really do have work to do.”
By the time they got back
to the picnic, the sun had disappeared behind a cloud, and both the
attendance and Pack's enthusiasm had started to wane. “It's too
bad”, said the stranger, “that cute girl doesn't seem to be
here.”
“What, the one
from the third floor? She's a little weird.” Mike helped himself
to a hotdog.
“She's nice,
though. And she's definitely cute. I like her.”
“You've got
strange tastes.”
“That's not true.”
Allen protested. “You like her too, right?” he turned to Pack.
Pack quietly filled his
plate and sat down at an empty table. Mike and Allen followed him.
“Silence means yes”, Allen laughed. Pack took a bite of his
hotdog, but he wasn't enjoying it very much.
“Hey Mike, you
didn't take any of the potato salad”, Allen said, between
mouthfuls.
“It looked kind of
funny. Who made it?”
“I did!” Allen
responded, proudly.
“Good thing I
didn't go with it, then.”
“What, don't you
trust me? I thought we were friends.” Allen said, pretending to
be terribly hurt.
Pack shut his eyes and put
his hands over his ears. His mind was swimming with thoughts he
didn't want to have.
“Hey, are you okay
over there? Something wrong with your food?” Mike asked.
“Just... stop
talking!” Pack responded, hoarsely.
“Woah, you sound
stressed out. You should just try to relax and have fun.”
He had to get out of
there. Pack jumped to his feet and ran away from the main building
and the table, towards the woods at the other end of the park. Allen
and Mike watched him go, dumbfounded.
“It was probably
the potato salad. I knew it looked off.”
Past the first row of
trees the forest was dark and sparsely populated. Pack felt dizzy
and out of breath, so he put his hand on a tree to steady himself,
but it vanished as he did so and he fell face-first onto the
leaf-covered ground below. He looked up, and the world seemed to
spin around him. Suddenly, he thought he heard a voice: “Are you
lost?” it asked him.
“Yes.” he told
the voice, weakly.
“There you are,”
it said. “I've found you!”
Pack's head drooped back
down into the dirt. His eyelids grew heavy, and everything around him
grew dark. The last thing he thought he saw was someone's hand,
reaching out towards him, but he couldn't be sure, and he didn't care
anymore.
No comments:
Post a Comment