Follow-Ups

Often I tell a story to show a snapshot of an idea, but since these are all real people they have continued their lives. Here's what happened to a few of them:

My friend from Jump is in a happy relationship which has lasted over a year. He bought a house, and they happily live together in it.

The man from the fruit stand in Better People never even called me back to say he didn't want to hire me, but I did get a job with one of the better respected computer-related companies in the world. Go figure.

I did in fact almost fail my background check, but not because of all the moving, but because it was a little tough to prove I ever worked for the feds. Crash sorted me out, he's the man.

The bounty hunting team lost. We were carrying the robot live (long story) and the motherboard shorted literally as we placed it on the competition field. We lost the competition but wound up with lots of interested sponsors. Pippin and I lost track of the team after that, he's still being completely absurd and enjoying it.

I'm no longer homeless. My first housemate I lived with for a year. He has a little dog, but it's well trained and well mannered. Now I live in another crazy community, but thankfully I don't have to run it, so I never feel like I have to stop anything from happening.

Being barefoot at my new job is much better tolerated.

I did call Nexus once when I needed a hand. He hung up.

Scavenging never goes out of style, the Torii and my new home both have furniture from the adventures with the feds.

Joat had a baby.

Magpie and Gilby lived together for a whole year. Impressively, nobody wound up getting punched, though there were a few close calls.

Gadget is still the politician, and is happily doing grad research.

Mime got her life together and is now getting licensed to do real estate. She's still boy-crazy, but I feel her taste has improved significantly.

My new meds cause me to bruise all the time now. Hilarity ensues. Related: I did lose the weight again, but I never managed to get my little plant.

3Stack runs the program I ran with the feds now. He's grown a lot in some ways, but is still a little silly.

My grandmother from Rice is fairing poorly, and has trouble remembering a lot now. She's scared, and we're trying to be comforting. My other grandma is comfortable and as happy as she can be, given the circumstances.

I do less breaking and entering now, and mostly scheme about taking over the world with varied success.

The project from Up is put on hold more or less indefinitely but has been absurdly educational.

Drummer's geographical challenges haven't prevented him from getting an extraordinarily respectable series of software jobs.

My friend from Las Vegas and I realized the situation was a little impractical but we're both still good friends and remain in touch.

Vex runs his own company now, where he makes tools that suck less.

Arbor totally still is bitter about that damn burrito. He ran into PJ recently and brought it up.

Appeal to Authority

The police man looked down at Py.

"You've got to stop that."

Py looked up, still holding the fireworks, mildly bewildered.

"I've gotten three complaints about you from parents who want you to stop..."

"Really?" Py asked, not cheeky but genuinely bewildered, "Nobody has said a word to me."

***

Lines and lines of feds sit glassy-eyed in an auditorium while an African American woman paces up and down the front to continue our Prevention of Sexual Harassment Training. Personally, I liked it better when they called it Sexual Harassment Training because I could respond that I did not require any further training in how to sexually harass people.

"We have to be," she says, "understanding of the comfort levels of different people. For example, some people might not feel comfortable with something you consider harmless, such as a miniature of the statue of David..."

For a split moment I considered the image of my laboratory decorated with dozens of miniatures of the status of David. To distinguish them I could put little feather boas and ill-advised flamboyant hats...

"But you have to realize it is wrong even if nobody says anything. Your coworkers might not feel comfortable confronting you, so you need to be considerate on their behalf and think of how other people might feel."

***

I understand that sexual harassment is serious business, but I can not agree to see it as a reason to automatically stoop to the lowest common denominator.

***

"Mom!" a seven year old me stomped into the room, "Why does Amy always go first and chooses everything when she comes to visit us?"

"Because that is proper manners. Amy is our guest."

"But when I'm at her house she always gets her way because her mom says it is her house and her rules."

"What does Amy say?"

"She says what her mom says goes."

***

This pattern became familiar to me over the next few years: my peers, who were either unable or unwilling to advocate for their own needs, appealing to figures of authority to enforce a system where they would be catered to as much as possible.

***

"SHARPIE!" I shouted the first time I saw him in the cafeteria. He was year older, but still the same shaggy looking kid. His eyebrows raised and then his face cracked into a huge smile, "Hey Pika!"

"It is so good to see you!" I ran up and hugged him. Sharpie flinched and stood stiffly when I reached out to hug him, and then, as if to not to rub in my foolishness, extended his arms to offer the most contact-free return of my gesture humanly possible. I stepped back a little puzzled, when I lived with him and Carne I always hugged him hello.

"Uh, so they just hired you recently didn't they?"

"Erm, yeah..."

"Alright let's get some food."

***

"Look," I said, pointing to the mini roller coaster we had hastily erected on my new boss' desk when he was out for a day.

"Where?"

"There," I returned, still futilely pointing.

The man down the hall turned his head and still missed the obvious point.

"Here," I said and grabbed his wrist, carefully by my thumb and index finger, and took two steps away, dragging him along with me to a better view.

"Woah!" he said, "You can't do that."

"What?"

"You touched my arm, that's sexual harassment."

I looked at him as blankly.

"No physical contact man..."

***

I would like to tell you that Amy grew up and eventually learned to advocate for herself and make reasonable compromises, but I haven't any idea what happened to her. I do know that by the time I moved away she, like so many of the little girls I spent childhood playdates with, was royally fucked up.

The scarier part is that I know that there is absolutely no reason she should have grown out of this trend. We have created a society where appealing to authority to force others to cater to you is a wildly successful tactic, and if done right, requires no compromise at all. This is opposed to confronting people with your issue, discussing it rationally, and seeking a compromise.

People have all but completely done away with person to person conflict resolution. Now you always need a mediator, or so many top-down rules that you have completely rewritten normal human interaction.

This constant appeal to authority and top-down thinking means that everything eventually gets boiled down to a series of rules which are made to handle all situations. The reality is that our world is far more complicated than these rules can handle, and that you can not lawyer morals into a society. The rules enforced on us tend to swing from extreme to extreme depending who is winning the appeal to authority, and they make an awful lot of people spend time doing very stupid things.

"Pika." Gadget had a fantastically wicked grin as he walked out of the Sexual Harassment Prevention Training, "Do you think I can order miniature statues of David online?"

Living Hawaiian

Microwave Directions:
Remove frozen burrito from individual packaging and wrap burrito in paper towel. Microwave on high for 1:20 minutes or until cheese is melted.

I stood there with the frozen food item turning it over in my hands. The shell seemed steamed completely shut and impossible to pry open without cracking it.

Huh, I wonder, If the cheese is inside, how would I even know?

Pulling the door of the freezer which wasn't mine open again I paw through the unfamiliar contents before throwing them all in a bag and loading them on my makeshift cart. Then I go for the fridge and start on the pantry shelves.

The sun was warm on my back and on the underside of my feet via the black tar that paves the road from delta to what was alpha.

***

"You guys should get on our meal plan next cycle."

"Nah," Bubbles says, "we have Costco frozen pizzas, we're set."

"That...sucks...to eat all the time."

"Nah," the Hawaiian replies, "We have ramen too, gotta eat your saiman!" He throws his thumb and pinky out and flicks his wrist back and forth in a shaka. I still find it odd to watch them do that, but of late they have adopted doing this to emphasize that whatever it is that I don't understand is just how they like things, that its something the "mainlanders" aren't going to get.

***

"There's no room in my freezer," Supplies lamented.

"There's only five people in Delta... Alpha and Gamma have seven and they seem to be ok.

"Yeah well we have all three Hawaiians and they all just went to costco. They are currently eating the 6th gallon of ice cream and rebagging ice cream sandwiches because only the first 5 gallons will fit in the freezer."

"Oh come on, I'm sure its not that--"

"And the corn dogs and the frozen pizzas and...I'm afraid to open the door because every time I do shit falls out."

"Ah," I said, "well, maybe Beta has a little room for you."

***

Even walking out of the airport I felt like I was in a totally different world. Portions of the airport did not even have walls, but the temperature was comfortable enough that I had not noticed this until I noticed a palm branch which had strayed, still on the living tree, into the corridor of the airport.

The McDonalds sold spam with breakfast. They also sold it with lunch, and even disguised as little sushi-like rolls bound up with a scrap of seaweed to a rectangular prism of sticky rice.

My mother had heard me mention that many of the rich girls from school went to Hawaii. I never dreamed to ask to go, but as we walked off the plane my mother said, as if already mid-conversation, "and now you can tell them you have been to Hawaii too."

We stayed in a small hotel in a little town near Hilo. The only comparison I could draw for the hotel was not until many years later when I saw Circus Circus in Las Vegas. Once it was pompus and gaudy by the day's standards, but time had given it a healthy dose of humility. Compared to what else existed you could even call it modest.

I spent my days mostly wandering the local town. Everything was slow and friendly, but I could not quantify it and so, being a geek, I turned to numbers: gas was expensive. Fresh food of all varieties was expensive. The frozen food section of grocery stores was tremendous.

"Everything they have here must be flown in," my mother said.

I remember standing in an isle with my hands on the glass of the freezer door, looking upon the rows on rows of cheerfully labled plastic bags of flash frozen, pre-cooked, make in 10-minutes everything. Really, a person could probably live off what could be found here. Somehow, what I really wanted at that moment was a fresh fruit salad.

I wonder if this is how we will all live in 100 years.

***

Two of the Hawaiians were sitting in the kitchen of Delta, obscured by the kitchen table.

"Hey," I said, "Sys's dad brought probably 4 gallons of ice cream to beta."

Kelson held up a spoon in one hand and a tub of ice cream in another, "Nah, we're trying to finish our own before move out."

Probably half an hour later Kelson is sitting with Gadget, Michelle, and Supplies playing Set. He's got a new quart of ice cream in his hands and a spoon.

The oddest part about Kelson and Bubbles is they both are rather thin and fit.

"If I ate that way," Gadget said, "I'd die of diabetes at 500 pounds."

***

The pile up of abandoned food in Alpha is tremendous. I must have at least 7 jars of salsa in varying degrees of spiciness. Ketchup and mayo follow in close pursuit in popularity. All of these people gave to me when they moved out instead of putting them into the trash can.

Most people managed to finish their fresh fruit and sandwich meats. All that's really left are the things they bought in bulk: cereal and frozen foods. I used up my own fresh supplies some time ago, and buying food when you already have some here for free seems wasteful.

Cereal for breakfast, frozen potstickers for lunch. To change it up I added a pot of rice to the entre of potstickers for dinner.

"Heh," I laughed over AIM to Supplies, "I'm living Hawaiian now!"

"Don't be stupid," he said, "if you were going to do that you'd need to have a flash frozen breakfast too."

Memorize

"17 squared is...?"

"Erm..."

"Oh come on Pika, you need to know this."

"Not with a calculator..."

"You should really know this, its not like you will carry a calculator everywhere with you during life."

I have a calculator in my backpack, but normally I just use the one integrated into my cell phone. I carry this phone everywhere, and I have not seen a phone in the last 5 years which doesn't have such a calculator on it.

***

They call us the search engine generation. We are storing less and less knowledge in our minds and have come more and more to rely on our ability to rapidly locate data than our actual knowledge of it.

***

I'm thumbing through yet another applicant's exam, first for the easy short answer questions before I even begin working out if the code they wrote is correct.

"What pins," the exam asks, "do you need to drive in order to put a number on the four 7 segment displays on the Nexys II by Digilent?"

"I have no experience with this display," the response reads.

Its a shame we don't have paper applications anymore. Crumpling up the application and trying for a two point swoosh into the trash can might be strangely gratifying. That particular board was chosen to be obscure, the question was meant to be one of character. If the applicant so much as pulled up an image of that board on Google he would find the numbers he requires have physically been printed on the front of the board. I find the concept that you would expect anybody to have memorized everything he needs laughable.

***

"Did you know," the priest asked, "that when paper first became widely available in ancient Greece that the older philosophers had a fit about it?"

The art of being in high school seemed to lie in pretending very hard that nothing a teacher could ever say would be interesting. After pause sufficient enough to indicate that he didn't plan to continue until we responded I shook my head.

"Yes," he said, "they thought that students would never learn anything because they could always just write it down instead."

***

"Your language skills are terrible, you'll never pass in any social context" my mother said, "you can not even recite poetry."

"Most people don't even read poetry anymore let alone memorize it..."

"This," she pointed to her bookshelf, "is what educated adults know. Some day you will grow out of this childish phase and want to pass as an educated adult you know."

Somehow I remember feeling distinctly like I wouldn't.

My mother was irritated and persistent, "Recite! Poe!"

"Whose woods these are I think I know / His house is in the village though,"

"Its that's Frost. I said Poe."

***

Meet Drummer. Drummer scored the best of the applicants on his technical exam, attends an ivy league school, and currently has an internship with a fairly respectable federal agency. He, in a similar previous episode of distraction, once named all 151 original Pokemon on a sheet of paper. He's a phenomenal coder and I have no issue with his performance or raw intellect.

"Could you name all 50 states?" he asked me.

I laughed, thinking he was being funny.

"No, seriously, if we printed blank maps of the United States do you think you could put the right titles in all the states?"

"Yeah, and I am sure you could too."

"I'm not..."

"Lets try."

Sys was up for the challenge too. The states were easy enough, and with enough discussion we got all of the capitols (although Sys contributed significantly more to that list than I did.) Drummer, partially from his mind and partially from random eavesdropping exclamations such as "oh yeah, Kentucky is a state!" managed to fill in most of his map.

Here's a photograph we took of it. It is worth noting that the two states Drummer has lived in are Georgia and New York.

After a merry round of below the belt comments about Drummer's education and general intellect he started looking slightly sad.

"How did you even pass 5th grade?" I asked.

"Well," he shrugged, "I knew it all then...I guess I just...forgot."

"Forgot?"

"Some of these states...aren't even important," he says.

"Of course they are all important!" I snap, "this is the country we live in. You should know at least all the parts of it..."

"Actually, I think its defensible," Gadget joined in, "I mean...he can always go look up the gory details if he wants them right?"

"No," I insist, "there is a basic minimum that you need to not look like an idiot in any historical or political discussion. This is fundamental knowledge for an educated adult."

Educated adult? I am slightly creeped out to hear my mother's words come out of my mouth. Is my insistance on what I consider basic geography as outrageous as I found her insistence on poetry? It might be possible. If the ancient greeks thought paper was a scandal, my parent's generation loathed handheld calculators in favor of Poe, might it be possible that in a few years memorization tasks like basic geography be rendered obsolete? Throughout the whole progression of human history we have slowly kept less and less in our heads and more and more in our tools. Where do we, as a generation, draw our lines of dependency?

***

I'm walking across the lab. Drummer's on break at his desk, sandwich in hand, staring at his screen.

"Penny for your thoughts," I say.

Drummer takes another bite of his sandwich and tilts the monitor so I can see it with his other hand. Across the whole screen I can see a map of the United States, completely labeled this time.

"Ahh, you're studying?" I asked.

Drummer nodded.

It warms my little heart.

Meet Gadget

Gadget's the politician where I'm the warrior. When I originally wrote the exam which became part of the interview process for software it included phrases such as "to see where you lied on your application." Gadget somehow made it look professional again.

***

"Where are you going?" Gadget asked over his cereal.

"Warped Tour!"

"Your pinky wouldn't fit in a compact parking space anymore."

"Its just a bruise."

"You need to go to the hospital."

Turns out the tickle fight with Pacem the day before had earned me two broken bones I had not even noticed. God only knows how my hand would have healed if I hadn't gone and had them fixed up. I bought Gadget a Cold Stone Sundae for it.

***

"And she burned it to the ground."

The high school intern's eyes look like they're about to fall out of his head. I'm a bit too busy chewing my sandwich to correct Gadget, so I don't for a moment, and simply enjoy the total look of bewilderment.

I guess calling Gadget the constant counterbalance to my immaturity isn't a fair statement either.

"The whole high school?"

"Do you think I could make something like that up?"

***

"You're scary!" The new high school intern said.

I can't tell if the kid is serious or not. On the one hand I can't imagine ever saying that to any of my bosses, especially not if it was true. On the other hand it is something I have seen my sister say and mean, is this part of her generation?

"Ah," I said, "Well, I haven't done anything mean yet as far as I can tell...is there something I'm doing which is making you uncomfortable?"

"You're SCARY."

Ah, she must think this is funny then. I look up to find her edging toward the door. This is going to be a long summer.

Gadget turns around in his chair and grins like a madman.

"She's horrible!" he shouts, "You have no idea! She beats us when we work too slowly!" The girl's eyes widen in a pattern which is sadly quite familiar.

"RUN!" he screams, "RUN WHILE YOU STILL CAN."

The girl bolts from the room and Gadget dissolves into a fit of giggles on his desk. I watch the door hang in the air for a moment before it bumps shut in the breeze.

"Man, you are going to get me in so much trouble."

***

"I want a flaming homophobe to be in this program next year."

I sigh, "No you don't."

"Yes I do. I want him to come in all angry...and slowly convince him to change his ways and accept everybody..."

"You want to live in a Disney movie is what you're saying."

"Is that...really so bad?"

***

This is the thing I love most about Gadget. While he is fully aware and respectful of the fact that humans are complicated, he has enough sense of humor about himself and the world to reduce all of us to cardboard cutouts and imagine the lot of us cavorting through some campy Disney film. At first you feel insulted by it, but over time you see that his caricture of you is mostly positive, and more than a little based on reality. You just need to get over yourself enough to admit it.

***

"Pika," Gadget says, "you're a five year old boy and I'm going to prove it."

A good chunk of the program is laying exhausted in the grass of the parade grounds. My head is on my at-the-time boyfriend's stomach as I turn the frisbee over in my hands. All of us are looking at the sky, enjoying the tips of the grass blades which obscure our perripheral vision.

"Shoot," I say.

"Pika, I'm getting you a TIE fighter for your birthday."

Even if I hadn't sat up immediately the excitement in my voice is a dead giveaway, "Really?"

For whatever its worth, he was good for his word. It was probably one of the coolest presents I ever got.

***

Some people find a sense of wonder in the world. Gadget, in some senses, makes his own.

***

He stands at the top of the fire escape outside the window of my larger lab, fishing through his pockets. Gadget opens his palms, and picks through the findings. Pocketing the majority of these results he takes the remainder and flips them, one by one, off his thumb and out the side of the building, as if calling a coin toss with somebody only he sees. All I can pick out are a few slices of copper as they flicker through the sky.

"I figure," he smiles, "that somebody's got to keep the lucky penny supply going."

Leash

"I can't imagine it."

"No seriously," I insisted, "this kid use to party hard. He taught me how to shotgun a beer..."

A voice in the front seat laughed, "talk about a role reversal."

"I still can't imagine it."

"Well, its the truth."

"Why doesn't he do it anymore?"

"Well," a voice to my left joined in, "he has a girlfriend now, bet she's keeping him on a shorter leash."

I found myself wrinkling up my face at the thought as I crawl out of the car from the middle seat and follow my friends into the store, "That's so dumb, why would you consent to that? Doesn't she trust him? Why can't he just do his own thing..."

"Maybe she doesn't party and she's alienated by him having something she can't."

"She doesn't have to go if she doesn't like it..."

"Or maybe she just tells him no."

"I don't know why you'd consent to that..."

"Well, she IS pretty hot."

I'm at a loss here. Who am I to judge the hotness of other women? I'm not the target audience..."

"Really?" I try, "hot enough to be worth THAT?"

"Well I don't know," he says, "besides, these things are somewhat necessary you know? You can't really have a relationship without some form of..."

"No way,"

"Wait, you mean like leather leashes and kinky stuff?" another voice asks.

"She's worth it too," the first voice continues, somewhat unaware of the second, "I'd..."

"Shut up," Gadget interrupts. He doesn't want to leave the box of wires and chips he is sorting through but he very obviously doesn't want to be near us.

"What Gadget? You embarrassed by us?"

"No," he says, "you're just all very rude and loud."

***

I've got one hand out, fingers brushing the labels on the boxes of keyboards and capacitors as I walk past. I'm such a stereotype, but the simple tactile input is soothing. Rounding a corner of boxes I nearly slam into Gadget, still lost in thought. He looks at me like he's expecting me to say something now.

"I found a box of big capacitors," I inform him, "they come in bags for a dollar. You want to blow some stuff up with them?"

Gadget smiles and I show him the bin. A few seconds later we are picking our way to another part of the store for him to show me his greatest find: a small blue case with handles like a suitcase. Inside is space and a rack for mounting about 2U of server.

"Its times like this," I say, "where the part of me inside that's a little kid kills me. I just want to climb up and jump from storage shelf to storage shelf."

Gadget smiles, "Yeah, me too." Sometimes I wish he did not work for me so we could be better friends. He understands most everything about me except my outlook on romantic relationships.

"You think that's true?" I asked, "About leashes in all relationships?"

Gadget becomes absorbed in the clasps on one of the boxes.

***

"Good," Crash said, "I didn't like him."

"I don't care what you thought of us."

"Aww, come on Pikachu. He was no good for you! He wanted to control you, see? But Pikachu is wild and free, no man will ever tame her..."

***

"It's me or the team."

I'm appalled. "How can you say that? I'm changing these kid's lives, you have no idea."

"You're wearing yourself out and you're cranky at everybody. I never see you anymore."

"We'll work out a compromise..."

We did, briefly, but it wasn't really the same after that. You can't really take back an ultimatum. The day he told me he was breaking up with me he cried. For some reason I didn't, although I did later when he wasn't around.

***

I'm standing on a roof now in California, cell phone in hand.

"Its me or your work," the voice on the other end says.

Different voice, different day, same situation. I didn't even hesitate this time, "Guess I'm single then."

"I...I didn't mean that...we'll...work it out..."

***

They say fall is most beautiful in New England, but the Midwest has a charm to it too.

"You always said you wouldn't change for me, that you were 'take it or leave it.'"

"I meant...about big stuff...my volunteer work...or my job... the little stuff, I mean, who cares? That stuff is so easy..."

"No."

Maybe I overdid it.

***

I'm so glad we took the effort to clean this couch properly. I'm sprawled across it, face down, pretty much exhausted from my day, barely moving. Pacem sits on an adjacent couch. A few seconds ago he was absorbed by the game but now its commercials.

"You think that its true? That mutual leashes are a part of every relationship?

Pacem acts quite absorbed in the Honda commercial.

"You've seen this fucking commercial a hundred times."

"I can watch it again."

I hush up to ask politely, still somewhat sulking like a spoiled child, "Answer it, please."

Pacem sighs. He'll make a good doctor someday. He's very good at telling people things they don't want to hear.

"Yeah Pika, its in a little of every relationship. I think its just a fact of life."

Warrior

"Pikachu (yeah my boss actually calls me Pikachu, even in real life) can have the bed and, Gadget, there is a couch for you in the corner," my boss Crash said. He stood for a moment at the doorway of the 10 by 13 foot single room cabin, short range radio in hand. I could see the top of the semi-auto, which was across his back, over his shoulder. A flash light was secured to the top via a large quantity of unceremously wrapped electrical tape. Odds are he was going to go sit on the roof of his own cabin for a few hours sipping a beer and thinking before climbing back down to ground level, going in his cabin, and calling it a night. After the fight that weekend he had been strangely quiet and contemplative.

I remember riding down to town earlier that day in Crash's truck. Crash drove, Wafflulz rode shotgun, and I was nominated to sit in the middle due to my short stature. Jack-of-all-trades (Joat) and his girlfriend were in another truck behind us.

Joat's girlfriend had come along on this trip to the middle of nowhere, although I am not entirely sure why. The outdoors seemed a little overwhelming to her at the best of times. However, she had reached a full-fledged breaking point after falling from a raft earlier that day and being dragged under the boat by the current.

Wafflulz got out from the car to do something and I was left there sitting with Crash.

"What's she getting so upset about," I asked. The words from my mouth were more snide and condescending than actually seeking an answer, "Falling out of a raft..."

"She thought she was going to die, and she was afraid."

"Well she didn't die, and that was hours ago! What is her problem?"

"That feeling of 'I will not live through this' probably never happened to her before"

I put my feet up on the dashboard of Crash's truck and stared at my knees flippantly. "Pffft"

I'd like to be able to offer a reasonable explanation of why I talk and act like a seven year old when nobody but Crash can hear me but I don't have one. I suspect it is mostly just because I can, and because I know he will not judge me for it. It is a rare luxury.

"Not everybody's like you and me, Pikachu."

I made another moronic and immature condescending noise, "I'm not afraid to die!"

I'd never thought about it before, and it probably wasn't true, but somehow I wanted Crash to believe it.

Crash sighed, "Yes you are."

"No I'm not! I've almost died a ton of times!"

My boss smiled a little, "I use to say that too, Pikachu."

The conversation had been cut short by Wafflulz reentering the car and muttering, "They don't have it." Crash threw the truck in reverse and shortly after we arrived at a weathered brown wooden building with the words "General Store" tacked overhead. Inside they sold pretty nearly everything you would need except clothing or alcohol. The alcohol situation was taken care of next door where a tired bar stood, constructed of the same weathered planks.

We all piled out and wandered into the General Store, including the car following us which contained Joat and his girlfriend.

Some asshole slammed the door of the shop on Joat's girlfriend. Crash asked him pretty nicely (in my opinion) to be kind to her, and said she had a rough day. The kid had turned and, without warning, slugged him.

Fights almost always start over stupid things anyway...because fights are rarely about whatever happened directly before the fight. Fights are normally about at least one person wanting to start a fight.

Crash had gone easy on the 20 something kid. My boss had not tried to hurt him, but the kid had drawn a good amount of Crash's blood via the rings he wore on his hands. Head wounds bleed like nothing you would believe and the blood had obscured Crash's vision, hampering him.

"Hah!" the kid had screamed every time he used a ring to gouge another line in my boss' forehead, "Fuck you old man!"

I remember being enraged not only that this kid was cheap enough to sucker punch Crash, who was more than twice his age, but that he was so cheap that he had done it with a fist full of rings. I wanted the whole thing to stop... or slow down, anything for a second to think. Every time I've been in a fight I've been to busy saving my skin to really be scared, but I was scared now. I wanted to run in and save Crash, but I did not do it. Crash had been a national champion once. To enter the fight and "attempt to help" him would injure his pride in ways I could never hope to repair. Additionally, to be frank, I never believed for a second that Crash could possibly lose. Crash is very much like a father to me and I suppose I had been struck by some bizarre impulse to believe him invincible and immortal.

I remember feeling very torn. The flip side of me thinking of Crash like a father was that I knew he regarded me as almost a daughter. If this unbalanced brat managed to draw a drop of my blood Crash would probably lose it and start snapping the kid's bones or worse instead of trying to just pin him down and make him stop. Then again, if I won, I could make the kid stop hurting Crash so much faster.

I can't ever remember feeling like my brain worked so slowly. All I could do was watch the fight. I never thought Crash could lose, but simply watching somebody I care about being physically beaten was one of the most difficult things I have ever done. I had never permitted anybody to do this to my brother. Now I just stood and watched, telling myself that this is what Crash would want me to do, telling myself that this was his fight, telling myself that he had it handled.

I remember looking over at Wafflulz, who was standing next to me on the porch of the general store. I remember being horribly jealous of him for being male and a good foot taller than me. The kid wasn't ripped, but he was built enough to do some damage if he wanted to. Crash didn't regard him as a son. He could have walked up and trounced the kid and not feared putting Crash into such a rage should he suffer a scrape. With his size and a little training he could have beaten the shit out of that kid. At that very moment I would have given anything to be Wafflulz.

I had this terrible lurking feeling that my hesitance to assist Crash was not out of consideration of his pride but a disguise for my own cowardice, and my strong desire at that moment to be Wafflulz did nothing but reinforce that fear. If I was wishing for strength, did that mean I doubted my own? Did it mean I did not fight because I was afraid?

Wafflulz stood there expressionless and watched motionlessly except to put one arm in front of me. The gesture was clear, "Stay here." Was his judgement better than mine? Should I do as he said?

This is one of those situations where indecision is a decision to do nothing. I never really decided that it was ok to leave my friend, but my failure to decide quickly meant the fight was over before I had really concluded anything.

Our faith in Crash's did not disappoint us. Despite what it felt like, in reality it wasn't too long until the kid was sauntering back to his truck. He reminded me of a frightened cat, walking at the briskest pace possible without flat out running. His head was held high, still pretending it was going this way just because he felt like it, not because he happened to want to get the hell away from Crash. He was trying to show that he wasn't scared, that he hadn't lost.

Joat had happened in on the fight half way and not immediately recognized Crash was one of the participants. I could tell he was flustered and as guilt-ridden as I was by this entire experience. His girlfriend had progressed beyond borderline hysterical into a full-fledged meltdown. Crash coolly cleaned the blood from his face and went over to comfort her, but the cuts were still bleeding and looking at him I swear you could watch the black eye forming, causing her to cry harder.

I had tried to convince Crash to tell his story to the police but his interesting childhood had helped him develop a strong distaste for for them, and I could see he was upset. Instead he left his business card and his story with a local sheriff who arrived shortly after.

We drove a small way before Crash realized his shirt was soaked in his own blood. He stopped at another town's general store, gave Wafflulz some money, and told him to buy a shirt. He did not want to arrive back at base camp covered in blood and alarm our other coworkers.

I stared at Crash's reflection in the windshield. I couldn't help but look at the fresh black eye and the cuts. I did not want to look directly at him because I knew it was important to Crash that I act like this was no big deal, and that seeing his blood soaked face and clothes did not upset me. I have never seen him so sad. It does not matter what actually happened, Crash thinks he lost.

"You totally had him!"

I blurted these words out of nowhere as if I was already in mid argument with him.

"It's too bad that coward ran away!" I finished

Crash sighed. His voice sounded distant, "I'm getting old..."

"No! You were just in it for the longer fight! Didn't you tell me how your team always won by endurance rather than brute strength? That is how you were trained!"

Crash's response was pretty half-hearted, "Yeah."

There was a long pause.

"You did the right thing Pikachu," he said at last. "A third person has no place in a fight."

I remember staring at his face in the windshield reflection wondering if he was just saying that to make me feel better.

Crash turned his face to look out the driver's side mirror, and away from me.

***

"Pikachu can have the bed and, Gadget, there is a couch for you in the corner,"

There was a definite advantage's in Crash's simple instructions. In one sentence he had completely eliminated my dilemma of whether the me claiming the better spot to sleep (I had shown up first) was me abusing my privileges as Gadget's boss or just me calling dibs.

It was just the three of us up there in the wilderness that evening. Wafflulz, Joat, his girlfriend, and everybody else had gone home a few hours ago. Gadget and I had a presentation to prepare which we had planned to spend pretty much all of Monday doing anyway, so Crash invited us to do it out in the wilderness instead of in my lab.

I picked up the box with the gun and ammo in it and moved it right up next to the cabin door, which I locked. If Crash wanted to come check on us he would radio over before hiking up here anyway. Walking over to the twin bed in the corner I tossed my sleeping bag on top of it and sprung up to sit on the side of the mattress, legs swinging in the air over the edge, just above the floor.

"Hey," I called to Gadget, "you tired yet?"

"Nah."

"Me either."

It's amazing when you find yourself repeating conversations from second-grade slumber parties in "real life." I guess it is one of my reasons for wondering if most people ever grow up at all.

So, like so many girly slumber parties from eons past, we sat up and talked with one another for hours. We talked about all manner of things which I have no right to repeat here. It isn't that the events were dirty or shameful, far from it, I just have no right to try to tell you the story of somebody else's life.

Discussions ranged from life stories and eventually into just raw philosophy.

"I think," Gadget mused, "That people can be divided up into two groups pretty easily: politicians and warriors."

I was intrigued. I knew exactly which of those things I wanted to be considered. The image of Crash covered in his own blood was still very vivid in my mind. I wanted more than anything to be told I was brave enough and strong enough to protect those important to me no matter the personal or reputation cost. Gadget had not heard of the fight yet, so in this moment of weakness, it very important to me for him to say, without any prompting from me, what I wanted to hear.

Gadget laughed a little at my sudden attentiveness.

"Pika, that's easy, you're a warrior."

I remember laying in bed that night thinking. I remember wishing that Wafflulz had held me back and stopped me from fighting. It would have removed the responsibility of making that choice from me, and the feeling of cowerdance watching a friend bleed from each punch while I forced myself to stand still. Its harder to regret your choices when you can convince yourself you didn't have any.

"You're a warrior," the words echoed in my head.

Dear God, I thought, I hope he is right.