Ship Trap. Chapter 3: Empathy

After lunch, the travelers and the expedition expert followed their former professor to a meeting room where they would be informed by two other members of the council.

Upon entering, the council members stood up, and when both sides of the room faced each other, they all bowed their heads saying, “Thank you for your time.”

The first council member, Jorgenson, spoke up, “David, Samuel, Mallory, and Mr. Peterson, I’m glad that you all could be here. I’m sure you know of the company policy for the evening?”

David looked over his shoulders to Samuel and Mallory both, shrugged his shoulders and said, “You mean the party? Yeah, what about it?”

“David, we ask of you to stay tonight until 20:00 at the latest. You can leave whenever you want afterwards, but it is imperative that you stay within corporate premises until that time tonight. The latest you can leave for your traveling tomorrow is 17:00. Naturally,” the second council member pulled out a file of David’s portfolio, sliding Jorgenson a time sheet, “a person of your discipline can’t stand sleeping in past 07:00, even only on two hours of sleep.”

“What can I say? Sleeping in sort of feels like a waste of time to me. Always has as a kid. Why sleep in when I can play in the sun? Besides, you know I can’t miss my Saturday cartoons. It’s not like I acted mild-mannered in school all for nothing.”

Jorgenson and Peterson smirked at that. “Please, take a seat,” Jorgenson waved a hand to the seats in front of him.

Taking their places, the group made themselves comfortable. Peterson put his suit jacket on a coat hanger before sitting down; Mallory crossed one leg over the other as she wiggled in her seat; David scooted his chair closer just so he could tip back, balancing himself by placing one foot underneath the table, and Samuel turned his chair around as if he was half-expecting a back massage in a Lamaze class.

“So, David,” Katrina spoke up, “do you feel ready for the next travel?”

“As long as you send me with a change of clothes and don’t keep me within the vacuum too long, yeah.”

“Don’t worry, we’ll make sure that your needs are adequately met.”

“I hope so, cause my first time I swear it felt like you were going to have me pass out before sending me through.”

“Well, we’ll make sure to always have our rift engineers ensure that every possible hazard of vacuum over-extension is mitigated. You haven’t had any troubles with crossing through the fabric, right?”

“Nope. As long as my bladder and stomach are empty, it’s smooth sailing. All-in-all I just want to ensure that my clothes are sent as the same time as me, or immediately right after. Everybody remembers the Odysseus beach blunder.”

Mallory turned to face him with an eyebrow raised, “I beg your pardon?”

“You haven’t heard about it?”

“Allow me, if you will,” Samuel interjected. “Ahem! So, in the earlier days of rift translocation an agent was sent back in time around 1200 B.C.E. during which the Odyssey would most likely have taken place. However, due to our tolerances not being as refined yet, the traveler’s laundry and the traveler himself were displaced from one another. If I recall correctly his name was Malakai, right professor?”

“Malakai was supposed to be translocated within a nearby cave along a beach in Athens. However, the cave where he was supposed to be resided several feet above sea level, and Malakai’s position was translocated along the X axis, not the Z or Y. So, he fell into the ocean.”

“He just plopped into the water, in broad daylight?” Mallory couldn’t believe she never heard of this before. It sounded like a rumor that senior leads would tell new recruits.

“Pretty scary right Mallory? The wind hitting you from all sides, and the only direction you have to go is down, and you don’t have a parachute let alone a bathing suit,” David smirked. “Then again, if I recall, you mentioned that you panicked your first time too.” Her face started to blush a bit, “Your first case you ended up in a hot tub and couldn’t find your suit. You were so afraid of somebody seeing you naked that you stayed in the hot tub until your skin pruned!” David couldn’t help but laugh at that.

“Hey! At least I didn’t act like you,” she pointed a finger at him. “This is coming from the guy who acted like he just came out of a Terminator movie.”

“Duh-dun-dun-duh-Dun!” He mimicked the theme from the movie, earning a snort from Jorgenson. “But at least I found my clothes immediately on my first mission. You were so nerve wracked that you forgot the water park you were sent to was closed for the night. If you never would’ve left the tub, you never would’ve seen that your clothes were sitting on a chair right in front of you.”

“Its back was facing me, so of course I couldn’t see them.”

“May I continue?” Samuel looked at them.

“Sorry pal,” David apologized.

“My bad,” Mallory bowed her head.

“Please, carry on Samuel.”

“So, as I was saying, Malakai was dropped around thirty feet from the air into the ocean. He was just thankful that it wasn’t on the beach’s rocks. That being said, when he swam ashore there was a group of women waiting for him, and lo and behold, just like in the Odyssey they were doing laundry down at the beach.”

“Wait a minute,” Mallory interrupted him, “so they were-,”

“Yep,” Samuel continued, “they were naked just like him. Also, his laundry fell into their baskets. Plus, he practically fell right next to them. So, they saw him practically manifest into thin-air.”

“They must’ve thought it was raining men.”

“Hallelujah!” David couldn’t resist the urge for a good pun. Even Katrina had to chuckle at that.

“Yeah, when a naked man falls out of the sky right in front of you and his robes are bestowed upon you and your party, you might take it as a sign that the gods have a message for you or are bestowing favor upon you, if not a test of good faith,” Samuel finished.

“Well, based upon legend Zeus did plow a lot of fields back in the day. So, wouldn’t surprise me if they thought he was a sort of messenger from the god’s or a new one being born. Plus, Malakai used to be a professional weightlifter before he started traveling,” David made eye contact with Katrina, “Dude looked good.”

“So that’s the beach blunder,” Mallory asked.

“Yep,” cracking his knuckles, pulling his chair forward and setting his elbows upon the desk, David proceeded to ask them, “So, just what exactly are my objectives and how do you want me to attain them? I’m going to assume that this shouldn’t be treated with harshness, or rashness. Being that the man I’m trying to save is so rational, how do you propose that I convince him?”

“Well,” Jorgenson started, “we were told to leave that part up to you except to never mention the words, ‘crash,’ ‘sink,’ ‘iceberg,’ or any variations of the sort. The council actually wanted us to block off those neural paths to prevent them from even being able to leave your lips, let alone enter your mouth.”

“Hmmm… Okay, so I guess that I can’t use that method. What about course trajectory? Can I use a map and the ship’s targeted directions?”

“Yes,” Katrina answered, “that’s acceptable.”

“Ah, hold up a second,” Samuel scooched his chair up closer, “what if David didn’t have to convince Joseph and his family to stay on the SS France, but what if we had the SS France convince Joseph’s family to stay on the SS France?”

“I beg your pardon?” Jorgenson was perplexed.

“I think my student means this,” gesturing a hand towards his direction, Peterson grabbed their attention, “Samuel if I may?” Sam waved to his professor that the floor was all his, “What if David doesn’t have to convince Joseph to stay on the SS France, but the what if the SS France offers the deal that Joseph and Juliette are looking for? Mainly they wanted to be able to dine with their children and not leave them in the nursery. So, what if keeping them on the SS France is offering them a better deal than the Titanic’s second-class tickets?”

“Dang, you guys are putting two and two together faster than I can solve them, and I’m the engineer here!”

“Well, remember what you told me David? The theory of two ideas?”

“Yeah, you present them with the option that you want them to choose, but you also give them an option to absolutely refute. You give them one to accept, and one to reject. I gotta tell ya’, that plan’s worked well with you Peterson. You haven’t seen every prototype folder I’ve made.”

“Oh, you rascally hooligan.”

“Hehehe, so now, all that leaves is for me to either make the SS France so acceptable that he’ll never want to sell their tickets for the Titanic. If not, I could just make the Titanic look so terrible, that they never set foot on it, let alone let it cross their minds.”

“Why not do both at the same time,” Mallory suggested.

“As much as I want to, it could also mean that if I overdo it, I could affect too much of the Titanic’s history that we’d have to course correct. Whether or not it’s too many, too few, or just certain individuals that need to be aboard the respective ships. It’s best to not overdo anything, especially when it comes to the time stream’s tolerances.”

“Precisely,” Katrina said, “David only has to convince Joseph and Juliette, the less people that get involved, the better.”

“Now,” David turned his attention towards the councilmen, “how many people am I allowed to save before we end up course correcting? Cause’ I know I have to save myself, if not the very least prevent myself from ending up on the Titanic. Also, when will my extraction date be?”

“Well, suffice to say you’re going to have to linger for a few days,” Jorgenson replied.

“More time there, means less time here. That also means more information gets taken up here,” he tapped his forehead, “and less for the current present. So, are you going to gift me extra neurons or reset the synapse firing? Plus, what about my telomeres? Sure, they’re no fountain of youth, but if you could prolong my life for the time spent there for the time here, that’d be greatly appreciated.”

“I’ll make sure to book you an appointment with our gene therapists afterwards and with a neural practitioner’s neuronal rewiring program,” Katrina jotted those down on her clipboard, ensuring the weight behind her word. “Don’t worry David, we know here that neurons that fire together wire together. However, we don’t plan on having you lose those memories, since they’ll be essential for your future travels, but we can stow away a few things into your natural subconscious.”

“Alrighty then, hopefully they won’t get lost in the rift. Still, how many people am I allowed to save, or should I just focus on a certain select few, or am I even getting on the Titanic at all since I’m trying to keep somebody off of it?”

“We’ll send those messages to you in due time as you progress through your travel. However, if you do grow attached, keep them few and minimal. Remember, you won’t be able to save everybody else if you’re not concerned with saving yourself,” Katrina finished.

“I know that you’re our traveler for this mission, but even we don’t know the main details of this, and how to proceed. All we can do is have faith in the most suitable candidate, and if it wasn’t for Peterson here, we may have never reached that decision either, until we’d all start suffering from Déjà vu,” Jorgenson followed up.

With a look of defeat on his face, David put his head into his hands after a heavy sigh. Tears almost forming in his eyes, he was already mentally preparing himself for the several stages of grief he’d have to go through afterwards.

Sensing the grief that weighed upon him, as she had such grief upon her when facing the judicial court systems before, Mallory began to rub his back. “I know you don’t want anybody to die,” she whispered, “trust me, I’ve been through it too, especially when my judgement was the final verdict for whether or not people were saved from the lives of others, themselves, or that of the of state.”

“Well, it makes sense, why we have to party. Not just for a job to be well done, but to lift the sorrow from within our hearts.”

Peterson proceeded to stand up, and reach for the hands of his grieving student, “Don’t worry David, some of us had to commit to worse acts of inaction before you, and some will have to after you. Time knows that I have, and so have several other senior officer travelers, and even the councilmen.”

David turned his head to the side, facing his former professor, a bank of wisdom. “I thought you mentioned that not every councilman was a traveler.”

“You are correct, David. Yet, that does not mean that they are exempt from the grief. One of our principal things here is that nobody grieves alone. Every traveler here who has lived through terrible, if not, enormous amounts of grief, has had their neuron pathways transmuted into a visualization for the councilmen, to keep them in touch with their humanity. Afterwards they are followed up with a test of emotional balance, and based upon the CAT scans that come back, who is allowed to stay and who is meant to leave is all based on their ability to feel, and not their lack of. This way, no councilman can ever ask too much of any traveler or group of.”

“So, you guys will understand what I’ll go through, just like my previous journeys?”

“David,” Katrina reached out a hand towards him, “every traveler that is currently present or that’s returned, we’ve all experienced part of their neural pathways in one way or another. Whether it was through a book, Morse code, or a visual movie, we all have to feel.”

“This is a place where which we cannot harden our hearts,” Jorgenson stated. “For if we treated you like professionals and not as professional humans, then not only would the time stream get jammed, but so would our hearts.”

“It’s weird when you think about it,” Samuel spoke up, “yet somehow the time stream seems to have better movement the more we feel and empathize with one another. It’s not that human emotions need to catch up to technology. It’s that technology needs to be crafted with human emotions in mind. It’s obvious the fabric of time does so. The stiffer we are, the more of a trickle the fabric becomes itself. Good vibrations, you know?”

“Awe,” David couldn’t help but to stand up, “thanks guys. I really needed to hear that. Mind if get a hug?”

“Absolutely,” Peterson said.

“No problem, buddy,” Sam stood up.

“No better way to spend time than to empathize,” Katrina walked around from her side of the table.

“Well, all good things come in due time,” Jorgenson followed in Katrina’s footsteps.

In a big group hug embrace, they all smiled as the awkwardness settled amongst them, but something… No, someone was missing.

Standing up, looking at them all as if they were a bunch of goofballs, Mallory couldn’t help but to feel mildly annoyed, but she didn’t want to shrug off the comicalness and novelty of the scene. “What? You all look crazy to me.”

Raising an eyebrow at her, David said, “You know, the more stuck up you act, the more tangled up the fabric of time gets.”

“Yeah Mallory, it’s been about time you warmed up to us,” Samuel continued.

“Besides the only thing that could possibly more crinkled than the fabric of time, is the fabric of your own underwear.”

“Hush you!”

“Hey, don’t get your panties in a bunch. We’re just asking you to spend some time and unwind.”

Rolling her eyes in a giant huff, she couldn’t believe they were talking her into this. “Oh alright.” Striding over walked into the group hug, as Katrina opened an arm for her, extending her invitation into the group. After a brief moment of silence, Mallory asked in a highly annoyed voice, “Are you happy now?”

The whole room erupted in a chuckle. Just as they were about to exit the room, Sam asked, “So, shall we get this party started?”

“What are we waiting for,” David asked, “We already got the life of it right here.”

“Alright.”

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Author's Note: Harden not your hearts.