Thursday, May 20, 2010

You Have Not. Sorry.

---For David Benjamin Piery--- 


The child woke up under the radar to the ping! ping! ping! telling them whether the submarine was close to anything. The child recognized the rhythm; they were the only object within several hundred feet.
         He yawned, stretched his tiny bony frame and clawed at his back. Mussed his hair. He got up and ambled into the crew cabin. It was empty.

The child was the son of the captain of a submarine named Lima. It was the only of its class, built in Russia. The purpose was officially unknown but it was ostensibly in use for research on new technology or perhaps special mission support. It is assumed that Lima was unarmed, and it was. On this trip, Lima was used for something else entirely, and this is the account of David, the adopted aforementioned son of Captain Piery, who was not Russian at all, but a portly Italian man.

Guys? called out David. He wandered through the kitchen. Empty. He wandered through any common area the men might be. Nothing. Guys?! David called out again.

David was a child unknown for being notoriously overlooked. In his elementary school every student was to receive the Student of The Week award one time throughout the school year, regardless of merit. David never received this ‘honor’, to no fault of his own. In fact, just two days prior to David waking up alone, he was found wandering around Lima, and a member of the 32 man crew ran up to Captain Piery to tell of the strange boy spotted in this submarine that had been underwater for two weeks. Captain Piery knocked his hat back and his blood pressure jumped considerably as he was escorted to the boy. This is my son, he said in a sigh of relief, just now remembering that he was indeed on the submarine for this mission. The crewman said I didn’t know you had a son.
         The reason for David’s presence on the submarine was not actually known to Captain Piery. In fact, something about this whole mission seemed fishy. They didn’t actually know where they were going or for what. Orders from Above.

David walked into the boiler room. There was a note in a plastic Ziploc taped to a pipe. The note was written in gigantic scrawl with what appeared to be a quill and ink. The note said:

Dear Russia: Everyone on this ship has been found holy and was taken in the rapture. If you are reading this, you have not. Sorry.
-God

Rats! Overlooked again! David put the note, which was half true, in his pocket and manned the navigation controls. He attempted to surface the beast and was doing alright. He didn’t know how to land it, though, and he didn’t know where he was. He wanted to look through the periscope to see if God was anywhere nearby. But it was too dark under water.

David cracked eggs into a pan. I will make the best out of this, he thought, and breakfast was the best thing that he knew. He had the makings of pancakes set out and he was just about to get started on that when he heard a voice down by the boiler room. Hey David, it said. David. C’mere. So he did.
         He looked in and there was another note. This one said:

Hey David, I was just kidding about the rapture thing. I just wanted to see what you would do. Glad to see you are making the best out of being a leftover of rapture. I mean I knew you would, but I wanted to see you make the best of it. Otherwise you wouldnt have. You know? You know. Anyway, Im sending everyone back.
-God

         And everyone appeared back as soon as he finished reading. The letters were gone, though. As soon as he was spotted walking out of the boiler room one of the crewmen said Oh my God! A boy was stowing away in the boiler room!

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