“This is such a strange problem”,
he mused, surveying the courtyard from the window of the room. “How
do you go about searching for yourself?”
He walked across the floor and examined
as his reflection in the mirror. His hair was cut short and parted
tidily, a mixture of grey and light brown, with a receding hairline
that left most of his forehead exposed. Upon his wide nose sat a
pair of thick spectacles hiding tiny brown eyes beneath, and below a
small moustache framed his face, also showing tinges of grey. “Is
this the face of Steven?” he wondered, stroking his clean-shaven
chin. “No”, he said aloud, shaking his head. “We wear
different faces, yet underneath we remain the same. It must be
something deeper that defines us.”
He was interrupted by a knock at the
door. “Are you ready to go?” a woman asked from outside.
Pack opened the door, where a woman
with short yellow hair, a small nose, and a pair of
rectangular-shaped glasses waited for him. He had hoped for a moment
that it might be Lapse, but it wasn't, he knew instantly that he did
not recognize her. She lead him down a plush hallways to a set of
double wooden doors, which parted at the press of a button to reveal
a cushioned elevator inside. She pushed the button for the ground
floor, and as they descended he puzzled over the matter of Steven's
identity a bit more, but he was distracted by the sound of distant
voices coming from below. As the doors parted again, he was hit by
the roar of a large crowd as they exited into a huge room with many
tables laid out and a throng of people bustling about them.
“Our table is near the back.” the
woman said, cutting through the crowd. “The clients should be
there shortly.” Pack followed her, scanning the area for people he
recognized. He saw Quill and several other members of his crew
walking about, and Snag was seated at one of the tables. He tried to
identify the mental process he used to recognize them, but it was too
automatic. He sighed and focused on following the woman through the
crowd. At last they reached their own table and he sat down at one
of the chairs.
Several men who Pack deduced to be the
clients showed up shortly. They had a lot of questions about
capacity and performance that Pack didn't fully understand, but the
woman seemed to know how to answer all of them. Pack paid more
attention to the men themselves. They had brown-grey hair, like
himself, and two of them also wore thick glasses, one of whom was
clean-shaven and the other had a small beard. But no matter how
closely he studied them, he never felt as though he recognized them.
Eventually their conversation finished and they shook hands and left.
“I think that went well”, said the
stranger with a sigh of relief. “Our product should fulfil all of
their needs.”
“There's still a few things I'd like
to check on.” Pack told her.
“Oh, of course, you can take a look
around the rest of the convention. I'm sure I can take care of the
rest.”
Pack stood up and walked towards the
table he had seen earlier. “Hello.” He said to the short man
that he knew to be Snag.
“Hi, boss”, he responded quickly.
“Am I doing something wrong?”
“How did you know it was me?” Pack
quizzed him.
He tilted his head to the side a bit:
“Was I not supposed to?”
“I don't look how I usually do, but
still you recognized me so easily. What did you see that told you
who I was?”
“It's more about what I felt than
what I saw.” he said, gesturing with his hands and striking
something. “Whenever you're around, boss, I just feel like I'm
about to mess something up.”
The coffee from the cup he had knocked
over a second ago began to spill out over the papers in front of him.
“Oh, great. Just like that.”
“Did you get that same feeling from
anyone else here?”
“Nope, only you, boss.” Snag
knocked some of his papers on the floor as he tried to clean up the
spill. As he bent down to pick them up, the crowd quieted down and
the lights began to dim. “Did I do that?” he asked, bumping his
head on the table as he did so.
“I think it's time for us to go”,
Pack said, looking up at the lights. “There's nothing for us here,
anyway.”
Sure enough, the ship was waiting for
them in the now darkened hallway. Back in his cabin, Pack again
gazed at his reflection in the mirror, now back to his familiar
grey-furred visage. He raised his right paw to stroke his whiskers,
while his reflection raised its left paw. “It's not the same.”
he mused.
---
“I'm such a fool.” she chastised
herself. “I got everyone's hopes up for nothing.”
“Don't let it get to you”, Hope
said, reassuring her, “it's not your fault, you're doing all you
can.”
Yet another day had passed and still
they had made no progress, and everyone's morale was starting to
suffer. She never should have told her crew that she thought she
knew how to find Steven, but she felt like had to give them some
encouragement to keep their spirits up. Unfortunately, the painful
truth was that they were no closer to finding Steven than they had
ever been and nothing they did seemed to make any difference. She
felt so lost and helpless, and she hated it. How had things gotten
so far out of control so fast?
She tried to busy herself with chores,
but she just couldn't put her mind into anything. Although she had
felt better for the last few days, the feelings of resentment were
starting to creep back into her mind, and she wasn't sure how to
force them out. She was greatly relieved when Empathy arrived to tell
her that Pack was waiting for her above deck.
“Please tell me you've found
something.”, she said, before he had a chance to speak.
He shook his head. “Sadly, no, I
have not found Steven yet.”
Her heart sank. “You seemed so sure
you had found the right answer.”
“It's more complicated than I thought
at first:” he said, stroking his whiskers. “The way we see
ourselves isn't the same as what others see.”
“I'm beginning to think we can do
nothing. That things merely happen and we have no control whatsoever
over what happens to us.”
“Sometimes all we can do is hope for
the best”, he agreed. “But I still think we're on to something
here.” He put a paw on her shoulder. “Hang in there, I know how
much you want to help this stranger.”
She sighed and pulled away from him.
That was when she spotted another ship in the distance. “It's
Corsair!”, she exclaimed happily.
“And Lay too”, said Pack, spotting
a second ship. “This is great, now we can all put our heads
together and solve this mystery.”
It seemed to take forever, but
eventually their ships pulled up alongside hers. Corsair scarcely
had time to cross the plank before she pounced on him, throwing her
arms around him and burying her head in his chest. He patted her
head gently. “I hadn't expected to find you here.”
“I'm so happy to see you”, she
said, squeezing him.
“And you too, Pack”, he continued.
“Have the two of you been working together?”
“I think that's a good way to
organize our search effort”, Lay wrapped her arms around Corsair's
neck, and pressed her chest into his back. “Corsair and I have
been working together too.”
“Have you found anything?” Corsair
asked, feeling a bit squished between the two of them. He attempted
to wriggle free but they only tightened their grip on him.
“I think I have the basic gist of it,
yes. Looking for this stranger based on a name and a vague physical
description is not possible, because those things do not truly
identify someone. We have discovered that many strangers can share
the same name, and you know full well that we can change our physical
appearance...” He paused, twisting his whiskers in his paw, “No,
what we need to be looking for is the fundamental essence of this
stranger. We need to know not what he is, but what defines him.”
“That sounds deep”, Corsair
shrugged, which was as much as he could manage, “but we know even
less about that than about what he looks like. I still think we just
need to search in the right place.”
Pack was unconvinced. “That might be
part of it, but we've been all over, and besides, I think this is the
correct place.”
“It's true,” Sister said, raising
her head to look up at him. “I wanted to find Steven as quickly as
possible, so I've been all over, but it didn't bring me any closer to
finding him. So now let's all just stay here and solve this
together.”
“But what if we're on the wrong
track?” Lay said, coyly, “If we all stay together, we might never
find Steven.”
“She's right.”, Corsair said, “At
least, I want us to compare which way we've travelled to make sure
there aren't any big gaps.” Lay puffed herself up triumphantly and
stroked Corsair's chest with her paws.
“Well, if that's what it would take
to satisfy you, I think I can help. My man Quill has been working on
a series of charts showing the positions of the stars. If you've
been watching the skies, we should be able to accurately determine
where we've travelled.”
“That sounds like a great idea!”,
Corsair said enthusiastically, disentangling himself from Sister and
Lay, both of whom looked disappointed. The four of them crossed the
plank onto Pack's ship and stood before the navigation table where
the star charts were kept. With Quill's help, Pack arranged them so
that they showed a complete picture of the world they knew.
Corsair poured over the charts
carefully. They were extremely detailed, with each page only showing
a small portion of the night sky. “It's complicated, but I think
this is the route I took.” He traced the route with his paw.
“I definitely came this way”,
Sister said, indicating her route as well.
“I don't understand this, but I know
I was travelling this way when I found Corsair.”
“And I came this way”, Pack said,
showing the last route, “It's plain to see that we've covered all
the known waters, this is the last place.”
“Hmmm...” Corsair murmured, idly
running both of his paws over the charts. “I want to check this
place again”, he said, finally, pointing to an area on the map.
Sister looked horrified. “Oh no,
that's where... I don't want to go back there! Please, let's just
stay here!”
He put his paw on her shoulder: “I
have a hunch. The rest of you should wait here, in case Pack's right
and I'm wrong.”
“All of us?” Lay asked, hopefully.
“All of you”, Corsair repeated. “I
won't be gone long, and if my intuition is right, I might be back
with good news.”
Lay pouted and Sister looked mortified,
but they all returned to their separate ships. Corsair alone sailed
away from the group, while the other three set up a wide perimeter
around the general area.
Corsair leaned over the railing of the
ship, enjoying the night breeze on his face. “It's time to find
out the truth.” he said, closing his eyes. He felt at peace,
sailing off into the unknown, just as he had many times before.
Sister, however, could not relax, she
felt terribly apprehensive about Corsair going off alone towards the
place where she had become stuck. “Corsair saved me”, she
thought, “but what if something happens to him?” She paced back
and forth inside her cabin. “Am I strong enough to be there for
him if he needs me?”
“It won't be long now”, Corsair
said, as the rising sun bathed his ship in a pale light. “I know
that ship must be up here.”
“And when we find it, we'll be
ready”, Sabre added, beside him.
Cross looked less convinced. “I hope
you know what you're doing”, he cautioned.
The sun climbed higher in the sky, it's
warm light washing over them all. Far behind them, two other ships
also observed the same sunrise, dutifully maintaining their patrol of
the meeting area.
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