jamieproctor.ca

Dictionary Dick and the Missing Money

It was another exciting day in Decklestone, Pennsylvania, home to twelve and a half thousand humans.  One of them was little Richard Button, but even his own family didn’t call him that.  They called him Dictionary Dick, because even though he was just in the fourth grade he’d already read the entirety of Frank & Wagner’s 1952 Standard Encyclopedia.  This made him just the person to be consulted when people were puzzled, and he’d already helped his father, a police detective, solve over four and a half cases.

Today wasn’t a day for detective work though.  It was a day for schoolwork.  Dictionary Dick sat in class with his fellow schoolmates and wondered what the weird little glowing rectangles they were holding were.

“Phones,” explained his best friend, Katie Greene.  She wasn’t holding one herself, instead doing bicep curls at her desk with a barbell. 

Dictionary Dick’s brow furrowed.  “But where are the rotary dials?” he asked, bewildered.

“Oh NO!” came a sudden wail, sharp and piercing.  It was their teacher, Mr. Morguns, who stood stricken at his desk over a cartoonishly empty cardboard box, its padlock dangling wide open.  “Our class’s donations to the Decklestone Orphans and Dolphins Fund have been taken – stolen!  One of the three people in this class I entrusted the lock’s combination to must have done this over the weekend….but who?”

“Not me,” said little nerdy Nedd, straightening his bowtie.  “I was in the big city all weekend, visiting the museum’s temporary exhibition of feathered dinosaurs from the Jehol Biota.”

“It can’t have been me,” argued the principal’s daughter, Petunia, who was applying her morning antibacterial soap.  “I hate touching money.  It’s all germ-y. You can catch poor people from it.”
“I would never ever steal,” said Sam ‘Slick Sicko” Swanson, leader of the local gang of tough kids (the ‘Serpents’), and the directly proven culprit of half of Dictionary Dick’s schoolyard casework so far, “but of all the stealing I haven’t done, I wouldn’t have stolen the hardest from this cause.  I love dolphins!  They’re some of my favourite fish.  I’d never do anything to take money away from them…a lake without dolphins would be like a lake without sunshine!”  He wiped a tear from his eye and sniffled dramatically, which turned into a slight squeal as Katie Greene turned her menacing frown upon him. 

“Oh no, this is impossible to figure out!” sobbed Mr. Morguns.  “Who will provide for the Orphans and Dolphins now?”
“Not to worry,” said Dictionary Dick, pushing back his chair and putting away his slide rule.  “After what we’ve just heard, I can safely say that the thief’s excuse doesn’t hold water!”

Who’s the culprit?  Do you think you know the answer?  READ BELOW TO FIND OUT!!!

Answer: Nerdy Nedd can’t have seen any feathered dinosaurs at the museum because Dictionary Dick knows for an absolute fact that dinosaurs are basically big dumb dead lizards, which could never have grown feathers!  Nedd was put on academic probation, his parents were ordered to replace the missing money, and Slick Sicko started the fund anew with a single shiny nickel before leaving class early to buy all the Serpents triple-decker-deluxe fudge sundaes down at the ice cream shack.

***

Dictionary Dick and the Absent Dinner

After a long day of hard work at school – the first day back after the Long Weekend –  Dictionary Dick – the amazing fourth grader who had memorized all the facts from Frank & Wagner’s 1952 Standard Encyclopedia – took the bus home with his friend, Katie Greene.

“I’m bushed,” said Katie, doing one-handed pushups in the aisle.  The bus driver had given up on warning on her.  “Are you sure your parents are going to be okay with my staying over?”
“Absolutely,” said Dictionary Dick.  “I asked last week and they said it was fine.”

But when the two of them walked into the Button home, the air was not full of savory smells – rather, it was full of confusion and argument. 

“I could’ve sworn it was your turn to make dinner,” said Dictionary Dick’s father.  “Besides, I was late at work. I got called in to interview the Nortons after their kid got caught stealing from school.”

“And I could’ve sworn it was your turn to make dinner,” countered Dictionary Dick’s mother.  “Besides, I had to work overtime at the nuclear power plant. The number three cooling tower was an absolute wreck.”

“If only there were some sort of simple solution that entails neither of us making dinner!” bemoaned Dictionary Dick’s father.  “Or at least a way to know who should be making it right now tonight!”

“Not to worry!” said Dictionary Dick, pulling out a chair.  “I know exactly what’s confusing the matter here!”

What do you think has thrown Dictionary Dick’s Parents off their schedule?  After you make your guess, READ BELOW FOR THE ANSWER!!!

Answer: Dictionary Dick’s mother has clearly been telling fibs about her schedule to avoid chores – there’s no such thing as a nuclear power plant, let alone one under civilian administration!  After a long conversation for the rest of the evening, Dictionary Dick’s mother moved out of the house, leaving Dictionary Dick’s Father, Dictionary Dick, and Katie to order late-night pizza. 

***

Dictionary Dick and the AWOL Mayor

On the weekend, Dictionary Dick went with his father to city hall.  His father was going because there was a special meeting happening that the deputy mayor had requested police presence for, and Dictionary Dick was going because fourth-graders – even amazing ones that had memorized Frank & Wagner’s 1952 Standard Encyclopedia – shouldn’t be left home alone for too long.

“I worry what you’ll get up to with that Greene kid,” Dictionary Dick’s father confided in him as they walked up the steps into city hall.  “The two of you solve so many crimes, you’ll put me out of a job.”

“Katie’s busy today though,” said Dictionary Dick.  “She’s out deadlifting all the benches in the park.”

“Well,” said Dictionary Dick’s father, “so long as she puts them back where she found them.”

The council chamber of city hall was in an uproar: a cluster of three prominent local businessmen had perched themselves around the deputy mayor, whispering strange and surreptitious things into his ears. 

“Fellas, I keep telling you, the mayor’s on vacation in Estonia,” whined the deputy mayor, twiddling his thin little thumbs together. 

“And that makes you the man in charge, doesn’t it?” hissed Carolyn Peats, chair and CEO of Peats’ Meats.  “Just initial here and your town can have the world’s first jackalope slaughterhouse at the low, low, low, low price of a few billion dollars.”

“Don’t go throwing your money at just any old money-for-meat scheme,” snarled Devin Boggs head of Bogg’s Birds, “not when you could invest your nest egg in eggs!  A pittance, a mere ten billion dollars, and I can make you the nation’s foremost provider of snipe eggs – no hunt required!”

“Lunatics!  Frauds!  Liars!” ejaculated Ed Urp, tech bruncle and safari-taker.  “Gimme all your bitcoin, the keys to this building, and your daughter’s hand in marriage and I’ll set you up with a bigfoot conversation park that’ll draw every tourist’s eye from here to Dubai!  Sure thing!”

“I’m not so good at big decisions…” fretted the deputy mayor, brushing his fingers back and forth through his wispy moustache.  “Detective?  What should I do?”
“I’ll tell you what you should do right now, Dad!” interrupted Dictionary Dick, “and don’t take no for an answer!”

What does Dictionary Dick detect is off about these offers? READ BELOW TO LEARN THE ANSWER!!!

Answer: Estonia is a member of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics – the deputy mayor is a spy who has kidnapped the mayor and sent him behind the Iron Curtain to Stalin!  Thanks to Dictionary Dick’s quick thinking the deputy mayor was arrested and interrogated until he confessed to committing not only the commie kidnapping, but also every unsolved crime in Decklestone in the past decade!  Well done, Dictionary Dick!  In the interim, it was agreed upon that the mayor’s office would be jointly filled by a team of concerned local investors and businessmen who were deceived by the traitor through no fault of their own.

***

Dictionary Dick and the Invalidated Deal

At half an hour past eleven PM, on a clear, cloudless night, the roof of Dictionary Dick, fourth-grade detective and the only boy his age to ever memorize all of Frank & Wagner’s 1952 Standard Encyclopedia, was yanked into the sky by means of science unknown to humanity.  Dictionary Dick’s father lurched off the living room couch only to find his gun fused to its holster and his shoes seared to the carpet; while Dictionary Dick himself only made it halfway down the stairs before being confronted by a tall, glowing biped composed entirely of what appeared to be fingers. 

“We are representatives of the Glorteezian Hyperpublic,” it seethed into the knowledgeable mind of the crime-solver, “and we are here to investigate a terrible breach of intragalactic property laws!  By all rightful legislation our pre-existing claim on the lunar regolith of your planet’s satellite for use in beach replenishment programs throughout the lesser widdershinsward core!  Your civilization’s unlawful and wilful orbiting of said satellite in and crudely manufactured manned vehicle constitutes interference in a sanctioned industrial, commercial, and recreational necessity of multisolar import!  We demand restitution, and repentance!”

“Don’t worry, dad,” said Dictionary Dick.  “This is the most obvious case I’ve ever handled!”

What does Dictionary Dick know?  What will he do about it?  IF YOU DON’T KNOW, READ BELOW!!!

Answer: No human being has ever orbited the EARTH before, let alone the moon!  These so-called ‘aliens!’ are clearly ordinary humans in costumes, playing an elaborate hoax!  Alas, while trying to prove this point by removing the Glorteezian’s ‘mask’ Dictionary Dick partially removed the skin from the entity’s face, for which he was punished by having his brain ‘Full Degloved’ from his entire body and placed within a Mind Amphorae to be shipped to Glorteeza. 

Decklestone was only lightly menaced following the spacecraft’s departure, as the single six-story sentry quadripod left behind was uprooted and hurled into the lake by local fourth-grader Katie Greene. 

***

Dictionary Dick and the Pontifex Precarious

This was by far Dictionary Dick’s most perilous case yet, in all the years he’d worked from first to fourth grade – even with his full and staggering command of all the knowledge contained within Frank & Wagner’s 1952 Standard Encyclopedia, his current position (Full Degloved and floating in a Mind Amphorae) and location (in the Cerebralplex of the Glorteezian Pontifex) were quite tricky. 

“Your MEAGER BRAIN is of MODERATE WORTH to my GLORIOUS PERSON,” bellowed Pontifex Precarious from atop its Self-Throne of glorious tentacular forces, from whence it commanded the life and death of a thousand thousand thousand thousand million worlds across the lesser widdershinsward core of the galaxy.  “REJOICE GREATLY as I PREPARE INGESTION of your SMALL SELFHOOD into my GREATER PERSONA.  Following this TRIFLING MATTER I shall ANNEX UTTERLY your TINY WORLD using your very own HIDDEN KNOWLEDGE of its PUNY DEFENSES.  Any LAST WORDS?”

What will Dictionary Dick say in reply to this chilling ultimatum?  ANSWER FOUND BELOW!!!

Answer: Trick question – Dictionary Dick has been Full Degloved, remember?  He can’t say anything anymore, because he has no mouth!  However, luck was on his side: after ingesting Dictionary Dick’s intellect, the strain of trying to parse hundreds of pages of tiny cramped font caused the Pontifex’s amygdala to implode, decerebrating it instantaneously and subsequently collapsing the Glorteezian Hyperpublic into feuding warlord star-states for generations of untold strife.  Another case solved by Dictionary Dick, fourth-grade detective!

Katie Greene went on to solve global inequity and poverty through a series of targeted suplexings. 

Three old ones sat together in the morning, watching the sun go up and putting off useful things.

“It’s the weekend,” said one.

“About time,” said two. “We should go fishing.”

“I know the perfect spot,” said one.

“I know a more perfect spot,” said two.

“Prove you wrong.”
“Prove YOU wrong.”
“I don’t really know where to go fishing,” said three.

“Shut up and stay out of this,” said one with long-held kindness.

“Yeah, button it,” agreed two generously.   “Loser owes the winner.”
“Sounds good to me, the winner,” said one.  And with such good grace they parted in three ways.

***

One slithered between the trees and ghosted through the light morning mist, breath hissing from the gills of their thorax.  They followed the smell of water.

“Aha!” one said, and wriggled through thicket and muck until they at last triumphantly reared up and beheld a deep bog; quiet, still and dead.

“Aha!” one said, and surged over hill and dale and across wide-scouring sands until they spiraled up into the air and gazed down upon a salt-encrusted sulphuric basin, thoroughly populated by gypsum deposits.

“Aha!” one said, and heaved their long segmented self across the stones and the lichen and the moss and the strange ancient trees until they were worn and tattered and they nearly slipped and fell right into their quarry: a narrow streamlet, trickling over mountain gravel and empty of anything but glaciermelt.

“Ahh, to hell with it,” one said, and spun their self up and around in a small and very rude dance culminating in the sharp-splitting snap of their snout at the sky, which cracked an orbit which diverged a descent which sent many hundreds of tonnes of metallic elements slamming directly into the local geography, venting many billions of years of momentum in a single instant with only the briefest, politest deference from the atmosphere.

“See,” one said, once the steam had cleared and the crater had begun to fill, “now THAT’S a fishing hole.”

***

Two strode long-legged and thick-armed, sky to sky, eyes peeled like bloodied grapes, like sparkling-cut gemstones, like dead black suns: primary, secondary, AND tertiary.  All focused all flickering all finding. 

“There!” two said, and lunged at the glittering prize on the horizon, closer and closer and closer until they loomed low and large over perfect wind-swept waves, palely white-capped and made of nothing but fine soft sand. 

“There!” two said, and lurched forwards, push-pull, push-pull, crashing limbs like tree trunks and feet like ancient stumps, elbowing past massifs and mesas, descending with eager haste to find themselves at the shores of a shallow salty sea, too dense to drink, let alone let something live.

“There!” two said, and hurried, shimmying toe to toe to toe to toe to target, stumbling from step to step, vaulting valleys, hurdling hills, stubbing digits and blunting nails and almost toppling, sinking to all sixteens before their discovery: a soft and blue-streaked wall of water, frozen, caught in the long process of slinking down the flank of a mountainside. 

“There’ll do,” two said, and raised their hands and their hooves and their claws and their talons and swept and paddled and poked in ways that weren’t appropriate, which so shocked the glacier that it slipped free from its home and fell pell-mell for thousands of miles and millions of tonnes, dragging itself home whimpering and pouting atop a wake of scraped stone and dredged bedrock basins.

“Finally,” two said, watching the meltwaters rise and lap at still-raw shorelines.  “Somewhere to fish.”

***

Three waited until they were absolutely sure the other old ones weren’t coming back.  Then they stretched themselves from tail to tail to flagellum and went for a long, long walk.  Their ears were open, and they heard birds (a thousand kinds) and insects (a million kinds) and moving earth and rushing wind and dripping water and breath and life and death and rot and birth and everything, almost everything that moved and some things that didn’t.

And three heard frogs.  So they walked to where the frogs were loudest, which was a soft and worn-down sort of oxbow lake (like all oxbow lakes), surrounded by trees like well-wishers at a hospital bedside.

Three brought some flowers, so not as to be rude.  The petals splashed gently on the water, attracting some bugs, which attracted something else.

Splash.

“Oh,” said three, as they sat down atop a bare, barkless, age-softened old stump, “so THAT’S where you go fishing.”

***

“Clearly,” said one, “this is where you go fishing.  Look at how deep and pristine its waters are!  Clean and cold and held aloft by the edges of its impact, mathematically perfect!”
“It’s a simple bowl,” said two.  “Behold – a thousand lakes, a thousand shapes!  Don’t like one?  Try another!  Beauty enough to make a fine fit for the eye of any beholder!”
“It’s shallow and weed-ridden and looks like you doodled on half the continent with your arms and legs all the wrong way around,” opined one.  “Weren’t you supposed to have good vision?”
“And you’re always bragging about your nose,” observed two, “yet you can’t see your fishing spot stinks. Bad.”

One roiled.

Two pointed.

Troubles came to pass.

***

The fire was just climbing to proper height when one and two returned to the camp, eager yellow looking forwards to a red-glowing future. 

“Hello,” said three. “How was the perfect fishing spot?”

“Insufficient,” said one, coiling as close to the firepit as possible as ice-cold water steamed free from bruised scales.  “Someone tripped over their own feet and fell in the water, scaring off all the fish.”
“Unsatisfying,” said two, all uncurled limbs disjointedly picking and plucking algae and waterweed from every crevice and every other crevice.  “Someone kicked up a big stink and fell in the water, scaring off all the fish.”

“Whoosh,” said three.  “So, no fishing today?”

“Yes,” agreed one.

“No,” agreed two.

“Ah well, that happens.  Always better luck tomorrow, right?”
“Luck had nothing to do with it,” said one. “The perfect fishing spot doesn’t exist.”

“Bad luck is the only kind that exists,” said two.  “And it’s just bad luck that the perfect fishing spot isn’t real.”
“Well, maybe you two can come with me tomorrow,” said three, “I know a spot that’ll help you feel better.”

“You found a perfect fishing spot?” asked one, before two.

“You found a perfect fishing spot?” asked two, before one.

“No,” said three.  “But I did find a nice place to listen to frogs.”

***

And it really was.

The sun is high as I approach, a boiling clot in the midday haze that makes the inside of my highway mask damp with sweat as I take the last turns down the old roads.  I’m three hours out of the core, three from the compaction when I finally spot it: a red smudge rising up to touch the sky.  From there it grew and grew until it ate the horizon, then the road; crawled in through the cracks in my windshield to smear over my goggles and itch my skin in the gap between my gloves and jacket; put the taste of blood and lighter fluid in the back of my throat.  And then, through the mist, its source: a house-tall tractor, armoured in rust and caked residue, dragging a billowing hive of belching pipes and chugging diesel.  Red liquid foundtained into the air, poured hissing down on the twisted and towering stalks of nuclear hogweed that filled the lawn and tore at the sidewalk with hungry roots, dripping sizzling poisonous sap as they cracked and crumpled at the seams under the acrid red weight of the pesticides.  The roar ended, the tractor stilled, a hulking, gas-suited figure leaned from its open cab and waved a paw in greeting.

The last of the suburbanites had invited me to lunch.  I’d just arrived a little early. 

***

My roadhopper has never lived so luxuriously: half of a six-car garage, all its own.  The tractor scrapes the ceiling a little, but otherwise even that monster couldn’t have a happier home.  An older way of parking. 

The lunch Kaylee Hawthorn serves me is just as antique: antibiotic Jello apertif; tuna salad and dreadelion sandwichettes lunch brushed gently with ground gigagarlic mustard; a dessert of whipped headache pills meringue on multigrain meal-loaf. A real microwave does the cooking; actual plastic is the surface the meal graces, dyed soft blue and worn with age. 

“It’s hard to get this far from the distribution centers,” Kaylee explains as I finish eating, “but really, what isn’t?  I’m not out here for convenience.”

Many people don’t know Kaylee’s out here at all.  To them, the suburban way of life has been gone for decades, a long-fallen victim of rising fuel prices, the civic tidal retreat, and the groundwater annihilations.  Even those stragglers that limped through the gauntlet of the 21^st century are assumed to have withered away with the final stake through the heart that was the complete and irreversible erasure of Facebook during the global electromagnetic pulses set off during the Third Limited Exchange. Unable to detect, communicate, or like and friend one another across the countryside, the isolation claimed those few remaining surbanites one by one, sending them home to relatives in corebound groundscraper apartments or into shallow graves scraped in the soil by passing waste-roamers.

Kaylee never used Facebook. “More of a Myspace girl,” she says.  “I liked to make playlists.  And when that went down, I just sort of kept doing my thing.  I noticed the downturn, of course – fewer neighbors, fewer holiday cookouts, less of a need to buy a full two-four for a party when a six-pack would do – but I think it was all so gradual that I didn’t realize I was alone until the super coyotes took Brendan Clarke, and I didn’t even notice THAT until I went by to ask him why he’d stopped spraying my lawn for the nukehoggies – now, as you can see, I have to do it.  We used to trade off: I’d uproot the dreadelion colonies for him because he hated getting his hands dirty.  I know it’s really awful of me to say this, but the first thing I thought when I found him lying there all tied to the roof of his garage with his liver in his mouth and EAT YOUR’RE SELF, APESES written on his chest with his small intestines was ‘well, maybe if you’d done more weeding you’d have had the muscles to put up more of a fight.’  I swear, that man had no work ethic.  But he DID know his way around the insides of a toxitractor mister setup; I sweat every five years I have to hike to Lonesville to get someone to come out here and fix that damn thing because I just do NOT understand machinery.  How’d you like your sandwichettes?”

I tell her I loved them.  It’s the truth.

“Good,” she says.  “That was my second-to-last tuna.  I haven’t been able to find any for the last while, do you know why that is?”
“The last tuna sighting was just before the Second Limited Exchange,” I explain. 

“Oh,” she says.  “I’d better save that one for Christmost.”  She looks at the can for a moment, wiped clean and put in the recycling compactor.  What year is it?”

I tell her.

“The tin wasn’t punctured,” she draws out, carefully.  “I’m sure it’s fine.  Besides, I put plenty of rootcohol in the dressing.”  

***

After lunch we walk the most important feature of the suburbs: the lawn.  The redmist has settled now and the nuclear hogweed lies subdued and sullen, shriveled down to nothing.  Kaylee gives me her backup scythe and together we lop off any surviving limbs, now bereft of their virulent inner fluids.  They’re piled in a heap out back atop a scorchmark, a lone barbecue standing sentinel among the scanty remaining bricks that once outlined a mighty patio. 

“It was so easy to have cookouts back in the day once they moved in,” she tells me.  “Can’t really do it without guests, but I do it every couple days anyways.  Got to do SOMETHING with the stuff, and if you pile it up sometimes it comes back.  That’s what happened to the Hendersons down on Third Avenue.”  She wrinkles her nose.  “Take a look on your way back.  But from a distance.”

Once the weeds have been limbed, the rest of the yard work comes quickly.  A wind generator powers a pump that brings up septiwater from the waste tank, sprays it over the field of sheltered brown blades that cling to existence beneath the weed-corpses – glowing them a healthy green, for now.  The dreadelion patch’s perimeter is inspected for holes or flaws, all eight feet of chainlink topped by a live wire.  And as the shadows grow long, the barbecue is loaded: three skewers, strung heavy with members of the local rodent clade and spare crapapples.  I carry the briquettes to fill its maw, stand well back as it steams and growls to itself, sit back in an ancient deck chair and stare up at the clouds and marvel how so much of this place is expressed in burnt offerings.  Charred oil, steamed gasoline, seared vegetation, and charbroiled flesh.  A sacrifice in an empty temple to a god long forgotten by humanity at large.  I pay the price of philosophy and nearly burn the skewers, scramble in haste to put the meal in order and my mind back on the ground. 

Kaylee stands up suddenly, plates my work, and gently motions me to stay put as she walks out to the far side of the bonfire-to-be.  She comes back without the food, strikes a match, starts the conflagration, and together we listen to it crackle and fume.  The gas masks keep out the smoke, the smoke keeps out the malarial swarmers of the evening that swarm in waves from the creaking eavestroughs, the bugs keep the unseeable, unavoidably audible flapping wings of the mushbats fed and fruiting, showers us in tiny wisp-winged batlings that glow in the dark and die in thousands so that dozens might one decades-hence day sporulate on their own.  I finish my mojoitoid and try not to make an analogy out of it. 

The fire dies quicker than you’d think, fueled by the pesticides and the dried weeds.  Behind it, the skewers are gone. 

“The HOA isn’t as bitchy anymore,” she admits.  “But it’s a lot stricter on the deadlines.”
“Super coyotes,” I guess. 

“Mostly,” she says.  Her smile is complicated.  “I think maybe Brendan Junior is out there sometimes.  Can never actually prove it, just never found the body, and he never did like his old man.”  The sigh that comes out rattles a little through a loose hinge on her mask.  “Too bad, either way.  He was the best paperboy our neighborhood ever had, back when we had a paper.”

The conversation wasn’t lively to begin with, but that kills it outright.  Kaylee’s had practice not saying much, and I’m feeling the strain of a more complex cocktail – drink, air enviroquality, take your pick and pick both – than I’ve inhaled in years.  She tells me to stop by again whenever I want to, and we both know I don’t, and we’re both relieved.  The lights go out before I’ve even left the driveway; the six-car garage gaping black as I back out of its maw.  Something that sounds like six somethings yips behind me as I shift gears, and I try not to accelerate.  I can’t outrun them, but I CAN provoke them.

***

On the way out of the suburbs, back to the compaction, back home, I stop and follow the old signs for a bit.  Just for a while. 

It’s not hard to find the Hendersons’ street, but it’s impossible to see their house.  The nukehoggies have it in their grip now, swaying tall and invincible, barbed rachises swaying in the breeze until they scrape the undersides of the smouldering night fog. 

I watch them, unsettled by the lack of city light reflected in the sky.  Then I drive home, back to the compaction, back to the core, back to all two hundred million remaining civicilians in North Amerigo, away from the last suburbanite.    

In a place too big for the human brain to realize how empty it was, there was an untidy heap of sorted scalded and assembled elements, moving from one of infinite unremarkable point As to one of a few very specific point Bs.

Inside, carbon things moved, surrounded by tens of thousands of times their weight in silicon, titanium, copper, lithium, and so much more that was meant to keep them alive. They turned in their sleep, they ingested organic molecules, they signaled each other in light, in the vibration of air molecules, in the emission of chemicals, in the smack of an appendage across the broadside of a central body mass. They idled.

The Patient, despite his name, despite his shared genetic code (give or take a few bespoke modifications), had not. He had planned. Then he had waited.

Now, sixteen light years out, he was about to act. It felt like stretching. It felt like exhaling. It felt like floating.

It felt like telling Canary on monitor duty ‘goodnight’ as he had done sixty times before (in a place where night and day were as carefully constructed as their shared atmosphere), walking past the terminal and trailing his fingers as he had done sixty times before, flicking a switch to act on an autoextract pack he’d placed there before the ship left, and taking one turn different halfway to the sleeper deck.

To the inner hold. Atmosphere-preserved. Not comfortable for life, but comfortable enough. Just enough. A seedling, a human, a vertiginous space cow (common names lied), or an unnamed hypercarnivorous organism as of yet undocumented by science whose only formally recorded information was its weight: a little less than six hundred kilograms.

The Patient drew up the inner hold’s manifest, spun it down to a container holding extremely innocuous dried foodstuffs.

Alright, a little more than a little less than six hundred kilograms. Rationing had not been kind to it. It would be ravenous.

Oh, ideal.

The Patient didn’t draw up the rest of the ship from his hand terminal. It was already in his head. All the gaping arteries and veins and venules of traffic that oozed humanity through the tight-packed-to-the-brim body of the ship, all at their smallest just big enough. All cut just the right way at just the wrong moment, turning into funnels, cutting off escape, cutting off weaponry, cutting off alarms.

A cut reversable and retractable. Hidden. Oh, the alien did it. Ah, how tragic, how unforeseeable. Who can say what was damaged, or lost, or spaced in the chaos. What a tragic accident – it seems a crewmember became careless. Thank goodness for the insurance. Thank goodness. Thank goodness.

Thank the foresight of the company in setting up a branch devoted to Patient solutions to expensive problems, like the cost of mothballing and retiring antique ships and the agitation of would-be-unionizing crews. A little cost up front (augmented assassins) saved a lot of cost in the end (paying other people money).

The Patient opened up the second cargo container, which also held innocuous dried foodstuffs, engaged all the locks and plugged into the clean-control-center. He breathed in and out one more time to savor their lungs, then turned over autonomic function to the command software. Other things would need as much of his attention as possible.

The ship inside his head became the ship inside his grasp. He stretched without matter, then squeezed.

The first cargo container clicked open and a little more than a little less than six hundred kilograms of liquid muscled death did not pour out.

The Patient waited.

After three minutes, the Patient maneuvered a freestanding hold drone into position to glimpse inside the first cargo container.

The unnamed hypercarnivorous organism as of yet undocumented by science was lurking at its far end, back to the wall, both its praying forelimbs and all four of its preying forelimbs held tense and at the ready, its antennae twitching, its eyes unsheathed and flickering. Its primary spinal column was a rigid pole; its secondary brace bulged in time with its deep, quick breaths.

The Patient waited.

And waited.

And waited.

After six hours, the Patient closed the first cargo container, unsealed his control center, and hurried back to the sleeper deck, where he told the shift lead he’d gotten distracted catching up on old second-screen dramas.

“They’ll rot your brain,” she said disapprovingly.

“Well, the job’ll do that anyways,” he said. And she didn’t laugh, but she sighed in a way that wasn’t entirely unfriendly, and so he skated by for the day, which he spent reconsidering his options.

***

The Patient minded their fingers as they told Canary ‘goodnight’ for the sixty-second time. The switch was already flicked. The pack was already in play. The sensors in the inner hold were already his. All he had to do was run the habit as if nothing had changed.

Funny how the little things got to you. Less funny when the big things did too.

Seal. Plug in. Patience. Unseal.

And this time, the hold wasn’t empty. A slab of fresh protein. Still warm. Waiting at the hall entrance.

There. Go on. It’s safe out here. There’s food, right? Have a bite. Have another. Look for more. Smell the sweat and blood and flesh all waiting for you. Go on. You’re starving, aren’t you? Don’t you want to hunt? To kill? They’re slower than you, they’re smaller than you, they’ve got no claws or teeth and I can take all their weapons away. Go. GO!

After an hour, the unnamed hypercarnivorous organism as of yet undocumented by science darted out between flickers of the eyelid, grabbed the protein slab, and scrambled back into its container as if the hold’s floor were lava.

The Patient closed the container and hissed until his teeth hurt.

Fine.

***

Seventy-five goodnights, now each delivered a little earlier – a dire sin, but the Patient needed the extra setup time. Protein delivered in its own fluids, served rarer and rawer and farther and farther each time. A trail of juices dribbling farther afield. A schedule set up.

The organism yet left its container with wary tread, but it moved with less panic now. Its steps were still careful, but sure… at least within the perimeter of the hold.

The halls were a different store. While its eyes followed the bloodtrail, its antennae remained high and alert.

Well, it was about to get an interesting surprise.

One little tweak, that’s all it had taken. One little tweak on a schedule sheet.

As it rounded the final corner, quiet as a mouse, its meal finally in sight, new footsteps echoed down the hall. In the distance a janitor was moving. Loud. Careless. Certain of her own safety. Directly towards its promised meal.

It stared out into the beyond. Its antennae swiveled. The edge of its mouth curled tighter, baring an inch of something that was too complex to be a tooth.

The Patient watched.

The organism shot back to the crate so quickly it skidded around the corners and clipped its fifth hindleg badly, limping the last stretch until it could take a flying leap into its container.

The Patient punched the control panel and swore so loudly he bit his own tongue.

***

“Three-quarters there!” said Canary in response to the ninety-first goodnight.

“Yes,” said the Patient, through a smile a less professional and excellent infiltrator, assassin, and corporate cost-saver wouldn’t have managed at all.

So what if it was a little glassy? It was plausible! Anyone would be frustrated in his position! Anyone would be cross in his position! Anyone would be upset and frustrated and maybe a little imp

            no not that never that ever

RUDENT, to discover that their job was being obstructed because a rank AMATEUR wouldn’t do the VERY SIMPLE JOB they were literally BORN TO DO.

So! Maybe it was time for something more drastic.

For the first time in weeks, the protein slab was left inside the boundaries of the inner hold – just barely inside – which meant that for the first time in weeks, the unnamed hypercarnivorous organism as of yet undocumented by science was actually going to retrieve it. The Patient had marched the juice trail backwards day by reluctant day, hallway by hallway.

Last night it had lain in plain sight five metres beyond the hallway entrance. A bodylength or two, maybe. The organism had regarded it with solemn contemplation, then slunk home.

Fine. Fine!

Two of them could be perverse.

The jaws shut. His immaterial hand moved.

Click.

It didn’t realize anything was wrong until it was face to face with the closed container door. Then…

The Patient waited.

The Patient waited through five minutes of anxious pawing, ten minutes of frantic clawing, thirty minutes of low-frequency rumbles, and an hour of sleepless pacing in front of the container.

Then the organism began to sleep. Fitfully.

The Patient seized direct and ostentatious control of half the subroutines of the ship and started to adjust inner hold life-compatibility systems.

***

Light. Drop to nothing – initial startlement? No, no response – increase to blinding, until it shuts every eye and begins to rely on ear and antennae alone.

It huddles at the container.

Temperature. Increase, then decrease, then wildly oscillate.

It pants through mouth and spiracles both. It shivers convulsively from head to toe. It does not move.

Chase it with the camera drone. Flash readouts in its face. Transmit his vocals in direct defiance of all operational security so he can finally say what he’s thinking.

“YOU-”

It spins on the spot, scurries away to claw at the container again, and a lashing hindclaw catches the drone and catapults it into uselessness.

Put yourself on full audio broadcast.

“STUPID, STUPID THING! IDIOT ANIMAL! YOU ARE MADE TO KILL! WHY WON’T YOU KILL!? KILL! KILL! GO!”

The emergency siren goes on – surely someone’s going to hear it somewhere. Someone who should’ve been dead THIRTY-ONE GOODNIGHTS AGO.

He engages the cargo hoists. Swings containers like children’s build-a-chipsets, chases it from corner to corner like a fly with a swatter.

It cowers. It expels noxious substances. It shrinks and dodges and begins to whine and whine in pitches audible even to the Patient’s biological ears.

It won’t go out the door. It won’t leave the room.

The Patient loses himself for a moment. When he finds himself again, he is standing outside his container, outside his control center, in front of the organism. He is screaming and shouting and kicking at it and it is huddled in a little more than a little less than six hundred kilogram-heap, waving its praying limbs helplessly at him. He can’t hear what he’s saying over the emergency siren, or over the red roar in his head.

Why? He’s pretty sure he’s asking why. He was built to be good at what he does. So was it. He loves doing what he does. Why won’t it?
What’s wrong with it?

He kicks again, watches as an apex predator shrinks back and makes inaudible noises. He screams again, walks back to his control center, kicks it, hits it, hears doors open and shut at random, precision-engineered hand-sculpted code created with a chemically-managed coolness executed with the precision and planning of his big toe snapping in half against a metal casing.

He kicks it again with his other foot, veers drunkenly out of the container, screams – oh he can hear that, the siren is off – runs up to the organism, screams again, runs away, kicks something else, back into the container.

It isn’t his. It stinks of alien urine and dead-meat predator sweat, and in the back is a cluttered mess of hairy fibres that appear to be fashioned of loose skin integument.

“That’s IT?” he asks. His throat is raw, he would be yelling if he still could but something feels scraped loose. “THIS is what’s been keeping you distracted? A SECURITY BLANKET?”

The security blanket shrinks back from him.

The Patient loses himself again for a moment. When he finds himself, he’s torn half the mass apart and is looking down at an unnamed hypercarnivorous organism as of yet undocumented by science.

No information has of yet been formally recorded from it. He estimates its weight at six kilos.

It warbles at him. Little praying limbs wave in a familiar motion.

The Patient was lost for words, physically and mentally. But if he had, he might have said “ah.” He could’ve said “uh.” He definitely would’ve said “oh.”

The light behind him vanished.

He would never, ever, not in a million years, have had the time to say “no.”

***

Working out why half the bulkheads had shut, then released, was a big job. So was figuring out why the emergency warning systems had refused to fire when it happened. High priority. Then after that the janitors had to ask why they’d received sixteen schedule change prompts, and then evidence came in that some sort of mass data-grip program had hijacked half the ship’s systems to do all of that, and well.

It was the sort of thing that took time to work out. So by the time Canary went and realized that they’d worked through three full emergency shifts without hearing a single new goodnight, it wasn’t much later than the moment everyone else realized the inner hold had been the focal point of half the hijacking.

It was calm down there. Silent. There was an unnamed hypercarnivorous organism as of yet undocumented by science sitting in one of two opened cargo containers, and it made threatening noises until someone triggered the door and left it in peace and quiet.

The manifest said there were two of them. Six hundred and six kilos. And apparently they were well-fed.