It’s quiet here.
I’m not used to that. Not after the screaming and the shooting and the fire and the crash.
Not after the shouting and the kicking and the punching and the crackle-hiss-zap of the taser.
Not after the long, slow sirens.
But most of all, not after the last few hundred years. I’ve lived a busy, noisy life in busy, noisy places.
Not like this. I’ve never been somewhere like this.
They feed me. It’s simple food, nourishing food. They didn’t know what to feed me at first, then I wouldn’t eat it, then they stuck a tube up my nose and forced it down me until I threw up and gave up and started cooperating. Anything to not feel the sting of crushed ginger cookies and milk against my sinuses again.
It’s not bad food. It’s my favourite food. It’s what I’ve always eaten and every time I open my mouth to chew I have to try not to cry.
When the meal is over, they bring me in to the calm room. They give me a special, calming treat – a little cupful of fruit-flavoured gelatin – and they ask calm questions, with earnest, open faces. How? When did you how? Who told you to how, when? Why?
Especially the last one, it always comes down to that. It’s the least likely to give them any useful answers, but they can’t stop asking it. Why? Why, why, why, why and z.
So today, I tell them.
It’s a big storm. We seem them a lot, this far north. Billowing and blustering their way over the planet’s balding crown.
But it’s big and WET and warm, and there’s too much water lying around for it to push against, lying bare to the sky when it should be sheathed in ice. Waves are forming. Water is surging. Ice is cracking – and there isn’t much ice to crack.
And nobody’s noticed, nobody’s ringing the alarm-bells, because we’re all too busy inside! Don’t get me wrong, we plan ahead. We plan ahead all year! But there’s always the last bit of loading, there’s always the checklist, there’s always the last-minute additions, the last-minute subtractions, the ephemeral wavering between the lists.
Besides, we’re not blind. We’re not stupid. The workshop’s been equipped with buoys for the last decade and a half. Just in case of what might happen.
Well, it happened. It happened right as I was picking up the reins. The floor shook and then rose, and I slid off my feet and bam, out the front door I goes.
And into the water. I didn’t expect that. It had been snow just an hour ago as we performed the final flight check. But it was liquid now, and I was paddling for my life, swimming to the workshop’s lights until I realized they were below me now, the whole workshop, glittering in the black-and-blue as it sank.
For centuries and more I’ve made things, I’ve seen things. And no matter what the shape or form, I’ve been able to look past it and see the thing inside that made it shine. But I’d never seen anything as beautiful as my drowning workshop as it slipped away from me. And that was what hurt most of all.
The hammers were still ringing. They were sinking and they were still ringing, louder and louder until I broke the surface and it stopped all at once.
They’re asking me why again. Why, why, why. And I tell them I’m telling them why, just leave me alone for a moment and let me finish.
You see, the team had made it. They’d been set and bridled, they must have flown out the roof just after I left through the front door. And they’d brought the pack with them.
I had my pack. I had my team. I had nothing else, nothing else at all. The list was lost.
But I could make one. It would just be much smaller.
It wasn’t very hard, in the end. I only had to visit a few thousand, instead of billions. And they only got one present each, which made it even faster.
Still, they caught on to me as I started my second pass. People pay more attention when something naughty happens to someone important. And they DO something about it.
So the planes scrambled and the missiles launched and I dodged and weaved and laughed until my dimples ached and they didn’t bring me down until dawn, when the night was over and I had nowhere to land and nothing left to fly with.
And then they brought me here, where they’re still asking me why, why, why.
I’ve told them why, but they want more. They don’t want my why, they want a why they can accept and make reasonable and understandable and rational. This is the calm room, it’s where they need to hear calming things.
So I shrug and I chuckle and I tell them this.
“It just wasn’t a very merry year.”
And I sit there and laugh, with my bowl full of jelly.
Ho. Ho. Ho.