Somewhere outside of Livingston Montana

I awoke slowly this morning to the gentle rocking of The Bokeh Maru. The wind was picking up and the low rumble of faraway thunder rushed by leaving nothing but silence in its wake. I listened for the sound of Big Lemons gravelly voice gently coaxing the crew to their morning tasks. I wondered where the sound of ExcuseMe… I mean Candy’s, iron-toed Doc Martins were as she would move down the aisle kicking the late sleepers out of her way, when suddenly I remembered and realized all the comforting sounds of the morning routine were gone, along with her and Big Lemon. The Bokeh Maru was empty except for me.

Yesterday, as you remember, closed with the disappearance of Candace Flavours and Big Lemon Kowalski going into that strange building in Livingston Montana and disappearing without a trace. I jumped up, ran outside, thinking I would find them coming out of the building, sheepishly holding hands and ready for breakfast. But they didn’t of course, they were gone. Everything appeared to be back to normal, there were no flashing lights or strange humming sounds, the doors were all locked and the morning traffic went by on the road into town as if nothing strange had happened here. The only link to last night was that strange storm building to the North. There wasn’t a sign of my last two crewmen and friends. Well friends if I had liked them better. I ran frantically about calling their names but it was as I feared they were gone.

Since there was nothing to be done I began the procedures to get the
Bokeh Maru up and running. Taking one last look around to see if I had missed anything I pointed the Bokeh Maru West and headed towards our satellite facilities in Oregon, where I planned on spending a few days recuperating and conferring with my Department head. I was hoping there might even be the chance to pick up some new crew members if he had staff to spare.

Running the Bokeh Maru alone was a new experience. For one thing the missing weight of 31 crew members upped her speed from 38-39 mph to nearly 70. That was a welcome surprise. I never would have guessed that the wind resistance of those hanging on up on the roof would have made that significant a difference. The quietness was also a factor. Normally there would have been the sound of the many different languages spoken by the various crew members and the sounds of casual curses in everything from Urdu to the various Malaysian dialects ringing through the cabin. It was sad but at the same time I found myself enjoying the solitude. Mostly I missed Big Lemons shiny yellow tooth gleaming in the sunlight coming through the windshield as he quietly polished it with a bit of  emery paper. I even found myself looking about for ExcuseMeMs, but more for the fact that I didn’t like her standing behind me very much.

I began to enter the countryside where The Institute had set up it’s western observatory when the first shock hit me.

remains of our Oregon observatory

Our observatory was a shambles. I had been on an inspection trip just a year ago and it was up and running. Who broke all the glass? Where was my $149, on sale at Wal-Mart super-quality far-reaching telescope? Why was it a crumbling ruin? Where was the dome? That was really expensive. Why was the fence down? What happened here? I would have plenty of questions for my site manager you can bet on that.

I received another shock as I neared our Oregon headquarters. Our regional airstrip where The Institute’s planes were hangered had been reduced to a squalid flight school and sightseeing operation.

the remains of our once proud fleet of aircraft

I was stunned. How could a successful operation that was generating tens of hundreds of dollars fall into such rack and ruin in  less than a year. Heads were going to roll.

I pulled into our headquarters later that afternoon, wishing that I had Big Lemon with me to help educate the local management team when I discovered they were gone, all of them. In their place, living in the Institutes main headquarters, were people I had never seen before. Threatening to evict them immediately I asked them for an explanation. They told me they had bought the place from the guy who lived there before, my manager, the bastard, and showed me the bill of sale he had given them written on the back of a grocery bag with a felt tip pen. Upon conferring with a local attorney it turns out that sales completed with a felt tip pen regardless of what they were written on, were not only legal in Eastern Oregon but irreversible. It was just, “So Sad, Too Bad”, for me.

I did the only thing I could do to salvage what was left of the situation and that was hire the two of them to be my new Oregon representatives of The Institute. They turned out to be a wonderful couple, especially her, and he seemed trainable so I guess we’ll try and make the best of things. The upside is I will need to visit the headquarters here in the beautiful Wallowa valley to check on training and the rebuilding of the Observatory and our airstrip.

I did find out that my previous manager, the bastard, had succumbed to the temptations provided  by the high-rolling con artist that was producing videos for “Young Girls Gone Crazy” and needed our various off-site locations as backdrops for his videos. The story was the entire production was just a front for hard partying sorority girls and others of questionable repute.

The only way I had to deal with the property loss and damages was to bring in Batchu Sen, my Macau affiliate, as a partner. I gave him the photos, fingerprints, tissue samples and DNA that we take from each of our site managers and he will do the rest. He’s still upset over the loss of Big Lemon and is in no mood to be forgiving. If we didn’t have an understanding backed with various documents in our safety deposit boxes I would be concerned for our own well-being.

I’ll be offline for a day or two as I begin the process of indoctrination I provide all new employees of The Institute. It takes a while to build the bond necessary to have the excellent relationships The Institute has with all of its employees and we work hard  at it.

Then I’ll be piloting The Bokeh Maru through Utah and ultimately home to the World Headquarters of The Institute in Colorado.