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The Onion's Defense Mechanism 4
This, too, shall pass... err, is continued from last week.
So I thought I had a few days to kill... I was wrong.
On the way down to the nearest internet cafe, I ran into a spectacle that would change the course of human history.
Actually, I'm not sure it was the nearest internet cafe. I had this Bluetooth-enabled watch, which didn't do anything, really, I just wanted to mention that I had a Bluetooth-enabled watch, one of the latest examples of technology and practical devices mixed together. With this watch I could sync to any network time server in the world, exchange files with other Bluetooth-enabled watches, change the radio station on Bluetooth-enabled radios, and read very small patches of text at a time with the gentle reading light built in. Of course, there weren't many other similar phones out there, or radios, so I generally just used it as a regular watch, only slightly bigger. Perhaps I wanted to pause a moment to reflect on my cutting edge watch because, by the end of my tale, I wouldn't have it any more.
But I did have a personal organizer device from which I downloaded the directions to the nearest internet cafe. This wasn't cutting edge technology. It was sort of once-cutting-edge technology backwash, where all the cool services that showed such promise when they made their debut a few months ago had now been picked up by all the little dirtbags out there who did things like put in ghost internet cafes on the internet cafe finder database and alternately put in distances to things in miles and kilometers. These were the same guys (and probably girls, maybe) who entered in restaurant reviews like "How long is a piece of string? That is how long you have to wait for food here."
So I can't rightly be sure it was the nearest internet cafe, or whether there was an internet cafe where it said there was one, anyway.
No matter, on the way, I hit the spectacle, that at the very least changed the course of me.
In the middle of the next street I turned down, a typical cute Nantucket street, all whitewashed and still unable to kick the last remnants of sand from its' skirts, there was an approaching mob of people doing their darndest to kick the remaining sand off the street.
They were rushing with picket signs, posterboards and such a determination towards me that instead of doing what I might normally do in the situation, I turned and ran down the street, back the way I'd come.
Normally, what I might be doing is studiously following the directions on my organizer's screen, which would allow you to weather any onslaught of people, unless it was at a technology conference, in which case you'd be worse off as all the onrushing geeks peered over your shoulder to take a look at what version of the OS you were running, what apps you were using, and how lame and old your particular unit was, already. But I'd recently had a bad experience with directions to a ghost pub down in New York City, some kid's idea of a joke sending unsuspecting people down to the meat packing district and all the way over to the little West side, and I wasn't placing nearly as much faith in the directions any more.
I had to slap my hands repeatedly around my body like I was trying to stay warm to keep all my peripheral bits with me. The Velcro(tm) clasp on the case of my organizer came in handy for the first time when it caught on the similarly equipped belt-clip I'd purchased with an eye towards attaching some sort of digital music player to my hip while I walked around whichever city I was in that week, and in that moment of sticking I was able to catch hold of the organizer and pop it in my computer bag.
I was around a few corners by basest instinct alone, and suddenly I found myself at the docks. Drawn, I thought, as though the sea were calling to me.
I thought that as I hustled up the gangplank of a ship that had a big man seated to the side, with a clipboard on his lap, studying something on it with the greatest degree of concentration.
Thankfully, I had stopped slapping myself to keep my accouterment on my person by the time I reached him. I had also been able to slow to a reasonable walk, as it turned out the mob wasn't rushing quite as fast as I had assumed and I could see they hadn't rounded the last corner as of yet. When I got aboard the ship and was able to take a view from a greater vantage point I wanted to make a note of the relative speed of people carrying picket-like signs v. people not carrying signs.
So I didn't look quite so ridiculous when I presented myself to the big man.
"Yes?" he said, not looking up from his clipboard.
"I'd like to ship..." I said, "aboard, the, ehm, oh. The Devils Dam. And I did earlier, as well. Though I don't suppose you ship until Thursday." I was slightly worried that my earlier breath-holding tests may be put to the test now, just after having run five blocks for, as I thought at the time, my very life. I was not hopeful.
The man looked up at the ship's decks, where a smaller man was waving him aboard and gesturing to some other men on board, who responded by pulling in great big ropes.
"Oh." He tapped his pen twice on the clipboard. I thought it was quite lucky that the first boat I came across that showed any signs of life/shelter from the mob just happened to be the boat I had wanted to ship aboard. "Have you sailed before?"
"Once. On a lake. Twin engine. Kawasaki, I think. 240 horse, I think." I believe I may have actually said "horse-puh," before thinking the experience with that much horsepower might be taken more seriously if I said it in a more casual manner. The way it came out reminded me of the way the word 'chutzpah' is spat out in some films.
"Right." He looked up at the deck again, where the smaller man was waving his arms more forcefully at everyone whom he'd already waved them. He made absent twirling gestures near his upper lip. "Going to the research station?" He pointed the pen at my chest.
Taking that as a sign to show my worthiness, I puffed my chest up, holding my breath ever so slightly as I did it, to show it was no effort to hold my breath, I could hold it on demand, if need be. "Yes," I said.
"Good. Get on board. We're shipping slightly earlier than we had planned."
And so, as I bounded up the gangplank behind the bigger man, whom in time I would come to know as Kipper, that was how I came to be aboard the Devil's Dam as we weighed anchor as the mob rounded the corner, chanting something, and crowded together at the edge of the dock, where the gangplank had been.
"Damn Fundamentalists... every single time we dock." The smaller man whom I'd seen on the deck, gesturing wildly earlier wasn't quite so small, close up. He was still smaller than the man minding the gangplank, but he had broader shoulders and a mustache which made him seem all the much more commanding.
Which was fitting, seeing as how he was the captain.
"Sir?" I asked. I hadn't known he was the captain then, but he was considerably bigger than me, so sir it was.
"Every time we dock. I keep telling the research project manager who owns this ship that once every couple of weeks they have a big meeting on the island, and it would be useful if we could either be at sea during that time, or perhaps we could, at the very least, dock for our few days of resting time at Martha's Vineyard or something. The Fundamentalists hear that we're down on the docks, take offense, and come storming down here, every single time. Without fail." He turned around and made a circling motion with his arm back towards the cabin situated midway down the deck. Midships, I suppose.
As the Fundamentalists hopped up and down on the dock, waving their signs ("Most of them were fairly unoriginal," the captain said, "they'd been much more original in the beginning, trying all sorts of different interpretations for dam; some favouring mother, others favouring wife, others getting creative with 'out, out, damn Devil' quotes. Now they were getting some real literal signs out there, some of them under the impression, apparently, that there was an actual dam somewhere this ship's name referred to. Well, they're Fundamentalists, anyway, it figures."), the engines could be heard rumbling deep within the ship.
I left the captain staring out at the people gathered on the dock, to go stow my bag underneath a bench inside the cabin, take out my personal organizer and made some notes about the relative and apparent speed of people carrying signs.
I was aboard the Devil's Dam, and we were at sea.
To be continued...
disclaimer:
Okay, tell you what, you probably don't care, nor do we, particularly. We missed the chance to upgrade our servers yet again this week, so we might miss the opportunity to do it again this week. Probably will, anyway. We'll have every good intention, and, lo and behold, Monday will roll around, and we'll not have done it yet again. Surprise, surprise.
So we'll get around to it, and we won't bother telling you, for the next five to six years that we've been unable to upgrade our servers just yet, and you can just assume that our sysadmin is locked in the server closet, trying to sort the whole mess out.
If you want to send him rhubarb crumble we're sure he'd appreciate it.
Soooo... how're you folks doin' out there? Good? Comfy? It's best to read these things in a comfy sort of chair.
But don't slouch. We're guilty of that sometimes, and it's just not good for you...
But. then, we don't want to tell you what to do, so slouch if you want to, just don't blame us if your back is bothering you after a long read.
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