Thing's Grand Adventure

Posted on Mon 31st Oct, 2016 @ 8:47pm by

839 words; about a 4 minute read

Mission: Cloak & Dagger
Location: Trams and Turbolifts
Timeline: After the explosion

Thing woke on its person's desk. It stretched, cracked its knuckles. No Chlamydia. It stood up on its fingertips, paced from one side of the desk to the other. Hours had passed. Thing was still alone. It was bored. It moved to the edge of the desk, hopped to Chlamydia's chair, and then to the floor. There was nothing interesting under the desk. Automated systems had kept dust from accumulating, let alone forming bunnies under the desk. There was nothing to hunt, or even pretend to hunt.

Thing emerged from under the desk, approached the door. It slid open with the characteristic whooshing sound as the atmosphere inside and outside equalized. Thing hesitated a moment, then ventured out into the corridor. It caught dim echos of Chlamydia to the right, and turned in that direction, staying close to the bulkhead. When it came to the door to the cross-corridor, it paused, advancing its middle finger cautiously around the corner.

Boots came pounding by, moving fast. Four two-leggers, carrying an anti-grav gurney between them. "This one's priority one," one of the two-legs was telling another. "Doctor Addams wants her down in the CDA facility with Dhuro."

"But the tram?" protested another two-legger. "Why not just do a transport?"

"Seriously?" queried a third. "With all the power outages and what-not? Are you volunteering to transport down there with her?"

"On second thought, the tram sounds like a good idea."

Thing scuttled out from behind the wall, and jumped up, attaching itself to the underside of the gurney.

"Yeah, that's what I thought," one of the two-leggers laughed, and three of them peeled off, going back the way they had come, while the fourth, the person on the gurney, and Thing went down the corridor out of medical.

The Corpsman pushed the gurney into a turbolift. "Destination, please?" the lift said.

"CDA hospital," the Corpsman instructed, "Deck 1400."

"For long distance movement," the computer began, but the Corpsman interrupted.

"Medical emergency override. Express turbolift mode."

"Express mode enabled," the computer responded, and the flashing of lights which indicated the passage of decks accelerated to a blur.

Thing moved to the edge of the gurney, but decided against moving to the top. When Chlamydia wasn't around, it had learned, two-leggers often seemed disconcerted by its presence, and getting swatted at or called a hideous thing was not on its agenda today. Especially as it was a splendid and marvelous Thing... Chlamydia assured it it was, often.

As the turbolift decelerated and then stopped, Thing lept from the side of the gurney to the lift bulkhead. The Corpsman, not noticing, simply pushed the antigrav device out into the corridor and disappeared. A moment later, the doors closed. Thing dropped to the floor and flipped up on its "arm," snapping its fingers.

"Please state destination," the computer said, and waited for a response. Thing waited as well. "Passenger, are you there?" the computer asked. Thing snapped its fingers again. "Scanning," the computer said, and then, "lifeform detected. Type: Zeta Reticulan spider. Designation: Thing A. Thing. Home of record: Deck 1554. Initiating pet return mode." The turbolift started into motion again, more slowly under non-emergency status.

On deck 1554, the doors opened, and Thing scurried out the top of the door on its fingertips. It moved up the wall to the ceiling, and along beside the light fixtures until it reached the north gate. It paused, looking around cautiously, and then dropped to the deck, landing on its fingers. It moved quickly along to the base of a bush, and then cautiously toward the bridge over Central River.

As Thing crawled along the bottom of the bridge, a steamboat approached. Willie, elaborate lettering near the bow read, and in the wheelhouse, an animatronic mouse was whistling while it steered. The ship's stacks barely cleared the underside of the bridge, and Thing backed up a couple of meters, not wanting to be scalded by the steam emerging. The ship passed, and Thing moved on, toward the shore.

In the woods on the northeast bank, Thing moved into the cover of bushes again, and pressed on. It skirted around the neighborhood with its nicely trimmed lawns, and looped back toward the dilapidated house on the end of the block. It passed through the rusting wrought iron bars of the fence, passed the newly-planted poison ivy, and scuttled across the dried lawn.

In the blasted tree, a crow stirred, turning an eye toward the scuttling creature. Hungry, it spread its wings, and launched into a glide, claws held forward for a strike. A meter above Thing, there was a poof of feathers, slowly settling; the bird itself had vanished. Thing changed direction, scuttling toward the corner of the yard. It dug into the soft dirt at the base of a vine, and then regurgitated the crow's skull and talons. After a moment, it covered the hole back over with the dirt it had dug out, and resumed its trip toward the open basement window. It was good to be home.

 

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