Personal Space
A Picture Speaks A Thousand Words....
The sounds of steampipes bursting and metal bolts ricocheting inside the corridors began to echo from in front of where the two suited mechanics were standing.
"Do you really think this is such a good idea?" Jenna said in her kindly light tone of voice. Joel chuckled lightly at this and pulled out his flashlight to light the dimly lit-close-to-pitch-black hall.
"No one's ever been harmed in the Satellite of Love--" He stopped himself and tilted his head in thought, "Well, not severely--" again, stopping himself, "Except that one time when Servo's little bulb went out, but, that wasn't the Satellite's fault, oh no, that was the movie-" If he was trying to lighten the mood or reassure Jenna of anything, he certainly was failing.
"Wa-wa-wa-wait!" Jenna interrupted, wavering her hands back and forth to halt their journey. She stopped in her tracks and soon Joel followed her. "You mean to say that Servo almost died from a movie?" She tried to say this with a straight face, but couldn't help crack a smile.
"Oh yeah," he replied, hardly any emotion in his face or voice, "The movies we're forced to watch are sometimes really that bad, y'know." He was about to carry on walking when Jenna grabbed his arm once more.
"Forced to...watch?" She scrunched her sweet brow, hoping to not come off as hostile.
"Yeah, yeah, but that's the least of our problems right now!" With kind of a rude force, Joel shuffled her hand off his arm and continued on down the halls. He would get antsy when it came to fixing things, despite his calm and controlled personality. In Jenna's mind was a spinning carousel of questions. She needed to figure out more, but in doing this, she couldn't be found out herself.
~~~
"What exactly are we supposed to be looking for?" Mike inquired, hauling the enormous tool fixture he was handed and grunting with each gruesome step.
"Dunno." All Rashida wanted to do was get to a point where the bots couldn't hear them call for help...and then she'd get to work.
"Well, couldja try and, I dunno, remember what Joel said?" The tool was too heavy now and Mike wasn't the strongest fella, so it (and him) collapsed to the grated floor. He breathed in exhaustion heavy breaths and looked at the stuck up woman with a scrunched brow. "You just gonna keep brushing me off and ignoring me?" His tone of voice was slightly less 'victim-with-a-sweet-smile' and more 'temp-who-was-too-used-to-getting-fired' (no pun-intended. Kinda.). Rashida rolled her eyes and crossed her arms, still facing away from him. 'Dope', she muttered under her breath.
"Look," Rashida turned to face him and sighed, "I don't wanna be here as much as you!" She accused.
"And I can get that!" Mike replied on instinct, as if he were in an argument with an angry wife. "But can't you at least, I dunno...Try and make it a little more tolerable for the rest of us?" Rashida, to this, grew red in the face. Not from embarrassment. Not from humiliation. From rage.
"That's it, you son of a--" With that, she lifted her leg and karate kicked that sucker straight in the face.
MEANWHILE,
"Got any snakes?" Crow asked, holding up his go fish cards.
"Ahhh, you got me...." Servo plopped down his only snake card to give to Crow to which Crow let out his usual mocking cackle. To their left, they could hear a loud banging followed by wails of pain that were obviously coming from Mike. At first, Crow shot his glance over at the corridor.
"Aw, man!" Crow exclaimed, "I don't wanna get up!" Servo sighed in annoyance,
"Fine, rock, paper, scissors!" He said, and they began a round. Servo won with paper (as that was all he could do with his hands) and Crow lost with rock. "Haha! You have to goOoo!" Servo mocked.
"Wait, best outta three?" In a panic, Crow replied. They began their second. Same results: Servo with Paper, Crow with Rock. Third. Same. "Best outta ten!" Crow said again.
And so the games began...
and lasted probably about 5 hours.
~~~
"Loooks like wee'ree heeree!" Joel said in his excited sing-song voice. "Wanna go first, m'lady?"
"Oh no no," Jenna politely declined, "If the situation is possibly dangerous, the 'ladies first' rule doesn't apply." Joel gave her a slightly sassy look,
"Alright, Miss Rulebook." He tipped his hard hat and spun the wheel to the vault door of the loading dock.
The inside of the deck looked like something outta a horror film. Charred boxes, articles of burnt clothing, limbs from baby dolls (don't ask). Joel was hoping for more of a not too much damage situation, but this bogged his spirits a little. He glanced around the room, his smile slowly fading.
"Man..." He said, stepping further in the room to allow Jenna in with him. "It's a total wreck in here." He slid over a beam, one that he remembered when the fire was still burning, and walked slowly around the room.
"Maybe something is still intact?" Jenna rubbed her arms, uncomfortable of the unstable conditions. "We should check, yeah?" Joel spun around a second to check if she was serious, then nodded slowly and turned back around.
"Yeah, knock yourself out. But I doubt anything's gonna have even an inch left intact." He shrugged, disappointedly, his voice sounding kinda like a discouraged child. So they began rummaging. The first thing that caught Joel's eye was a wallet. It didn't look too bad, so he bent down to check it out.
It was strangely beat up, as if used for a long time. The outside was made with a faux leather, charred a bit by the fire, and the inside was the typical black fabric. Surprisingly, none of the contents had been touched by the flames, so Joel could actually see them. Even more surprisingly, there WERE contents. This wallet belonged to someone. He pulled out the first thing he saw. Some sort of business card to a phone company office building. At first glance, it was a normal business card with the typical white-print background and blocky-black letters. However, he noticed something that didn't quite match. The business card read:
____________________________________________
Allen And Colt's Phones Inc.
4650 Spencer St., Wisconsin
Call (715)-881-7861
Ask for: Milton Heston, Accounting and Managing Firm
_____________________________________________
However, on the card, written above 'Milton Heston' was:
"Jerk of the Century! He'll take your money AND make sure to give a bad Rap for you to OTHER Companies! Until he pisses off one too many temps and gets his face smashed in! ;P"
"God..." Joel said to himself upon viewing the card, "What jackass had THIS wallet?" He continued his investigation of the wallet and saw another suspicious sight. On the inside of the wallet was three compartments. The first compartment had nickels, dimes and pennies with some sort of Polaroid photograph stuffed underneath them. In the second there were quarters with a second photograph stuffed in that one. In the last, there were $1s, $5s, $20s, and $50s with a photo neatly folded in half and placed to the side along with the dollar bills. This seemed like some sort of psychopath's wallet, which is why Joel hesitated at first to look at the photos. After a second, he reluctantly lifted all three out and laid them on the ground in front of him.
The photo in the first compartment was wrinkled and stained. It was obviously not cared about. In it there was a picture of some young man in football uniform kissing an attractive cheerleader on the cheek. The man was impossible to see clearly, as the photo was so horribly kept, but the woman was quite visible. She had long blonde hair, bright blue eyes and a pretty smile. The kind of girl every college boy dreams of getting. Underneath the photo in the blank white area was written, and Joel read aloud:
"Ahrens givin' sugar to Ginger" Joel assumed 'Ahrens' was in reference to the linebacker on the Badgers (Wisconsin football team) named Dave Ahrens. Joel shook his head in confusion, and moved to the next photo.
This photo was slightly less juvenile (yet still unkempt). In it featured a sophisticated woman with a short haircut. She had bright red lips, dark brown eyes and a pantsuit. Her facial expression was nothing less than...well...expressionless. She sat upright (and uptight, I assume) in an office chair in what seemed to be a cubicle. At first, this was all Joel saw until he looked closer. He could soon see that, in the background, there were several men gathered in a circle at the water dispenser laughing and talking. They all looked like typical office workers. All but one. While all four of them were dressed in tight-fitting, well-kept business suits, one of them wore just a plain green button-up and dark black jeans with Converse. To make it worse, his top buttons were loosed to the point where his blue t-shirt underneath could be seen. He was the only one not laughing. Instead, he was looking over in a sort of love-trance at the woman in the chair. Again, it was hard to make-out his features, but he seemed to bear resemblance to the man in the first photo kissing 'Ginger'. Underneath THIS photo was written, in silver Sharpie, of which he also read aloud:
"Caught Big M Checkin' Out Carla Again! Watch out, Boss!"
It was easy to figure out what was going on in that photo, so Joel moved on as quick as he could. Ah, the last photo.
In this one there was only one star. Instead of the typical silly boy crush aura the others had, this one had a more saddening yet loving aura. The person in this photo wasn't as seductive or straight-faced as before. It featured a woman with dark brown hair, dark eyes, bright red lips and an enormous smile. She looked stunning, absolutely perfect. The photo was in good shape too. It looked like it was taken just yesterday. By the angle and distance, it was safe to say that someone, probably a boyfriend, snapped a lucky candid photograph of his girl in mid-laugh. The overall idea of this actually brought a physical smile to Joel's face. He glanced down at the white of this photo. There was something written in pencil but it was scrawled out and written over with in pen. Joel examined it and attempted to read this aloud as well:
"Life's like a moving car: keep your cool. stay focused. arrive quick. But if you lose your focus and get frustrated for even a second, it will all crash and go in flames."
Joel's smile faded immediately and his brow scrunched in a confused manner again. He flipped it over, quick, to check if he had missed anything, and flipped back. Just then, he realized, there was more to this story. The photo was no ordinary polaroid photograph. It, itself, was some sort of wallet.
"Joel?" Jenna called. He jumped from the sudden noise. "I'm going to go check in the back of the room, okay?" He nodded and bit his lip,
"Mmm'kay, just be careful, alright?" He shoved the photograph in his pocket to save for later and the wallet in the other one.
There was something fishy going on here. Sometimes, even mechanics need to play Sherlock.
Joel couldn't risk there being a psychopath on the SOL, nor could he risk the lives of his little bottie-babies.
He had to solve this mystery.
And quick.
"Do you really think this is such a good idea?" Jenna said in her kindly light tone of voice. Joel chuckled lightly at this and pulled out his flashlight to light the dimly lit-close-to-pitch-black hall.
"No one's ever been harmed in the Satellite of Love--" He stopped himself and tilted his head in thought, "Well, not severely--" again, stopping himself, "Except that one time when Servo's little bulb went out, but, that wasn't the Satellite's fault, oh no, that was the movie-" If he was trying to lighten the mood or reassure Jenna of anything, he certainly was failing.
"Wa-wa-wa-wait!" Jenna interrupted, wavering her hands back and forth to halt their journey. She stopped in her tracks and soon Joel followed her. "You mean to say that Servo almost died from a movie?" She tried to say this with a straight face, but couldn't help crack a smile.
"Oh yeah," he replied, hardly any emotion in his face or voice, "The movies we're forced to watch are sometimes really that bad, y'know." He was about to carry on walking when Jenna grabbed his arm once more.
"Forced to...watch?" She scrunched her sweet brow, hoping to not come off as hostile.
"Yeah, yeah, but that's the least of our problems right now!" With kind of a rude force, Joel shuffled her hand off his arm and continued on down the halls. He would get antsy when it came to fixing things, despite his calm and controlled personality. In Jenna's mind was a spinning carousel of questions. She needed to figure out more, but in doing this, she couldn't be found out herself.
~~~
"What exactly are we supposed to be looking for?" Mike inquired, hauling the enormous tool fixture he was handed and grunting with each gruesome step.
"Dunno." All Rashida wanted to do was get to a point where the bots couldn't hear them call for help...and then she'd get to work.
"Well, couldja try and, I dunno, remember what Joel said?" The tool was too heavy now and Mike wasn't the strongest fella, so it (and him) collapsed to the grated floor. He breathed in exhaustion heavy breaths and looked at the stuck up woman with a scrunched brow. "You just gonna keep brushing me off and ignoring me?" His tone of voice was slightly less 'victim-with-a-sweet-smile' and more 'temp-who-was-too-used-to-getting-fired' (no pun-intended. Kinda.). Rashida rolled her eyes and crossed her arms, still facing away from him. 'Dope', she muttered under her breath.
"Look," Rashida turned to face him and sighed, "I don't wanna be here as much as you!" She accused.
"And I can get that!" Mike replied on instinct, as if he were in an argument with an angry wife. "But can't you at least, I dunno...Try and make it a little more tolerable for the rest of us?" Rashida, to this, grew red in the face. Not from embarrassment. Not from humiliation. From rage.
"That's it, you son of a--" With that, she lifted her leg and karate kicked that sucker straight in the face.
MEANWHILE,
"Got any snakes?" Crow asked, holding up his go fish cards.
"Ahhh, you got me...." Servo plopped down his only snake card to give to Crow to which Crow let out his usual mocking cackle. To their left, they could hear a loud banging followed by wails of pain that were obviously coming from Mike. At first, Crow shot his glance over at the corridor.
"Aw, man!" Crow exclaimed, "I don't wanna get up!" Servo sighed in annoyance,
"Fine, rock, paper, scissors!" He said, and they began a round. Servo won with paper (as that was all he could do with his hands) and Crow lost with rock. "Haha! You have to goOoo!" Servo mocked.
"Wait, best outta three?" In a panic, Crow replied. They began their second. Same results: Servo with Paper, Crow with Rock. Third. Same. "Best outta ten!" Crow said again.
And so the games began...
and lasted probably about 5 hours.
~~~
"Loooks like wee'ree heeree!" Joel said in his excited sing-song voice. "Wanna go first, m'lady?"
"Oh no no," Jenna politely declined, "If the situation is possibly dangerous, the 'ladies first' rule doesn't apply." Joel gave her a slightly sassy look,
"Alright, Miss Rulebook." He tipped his hard hat and spun the wheel to the vault door of the loading dock.
The inside of the deck looked like something outta a horror film. Charred boxes, articles of burnt clothing, limbs from baby dolls (don't ask). Joel was hoping for more of a not too much damage situation, but this bogged his spirits a little. He glanced around the room, his smile slowly fading.
"Man..." He said, stepping further in the room to allow Jenna in with him. "It's a total wreck in here." He slid over a beam, one that he remembered when the fire was still burning, and walked slowly around the room.
"Maybe something is still intact?" Jenna rubbed her arms, uncomfortable of the unstable conditions. "We should check, yeah?" Joel spun around a second to check if she was serious, then nodded slowly and turned back around.
"Yeah, knock yourself out. But I doubt anything's gonna have even an inch left intact." He shrugged, disappointedly, his voice sounding kinda like a discouraged child. So they began rummaging. The first thing that caught Joel's eye was a wallet. It didn't look too bad, so he bent down to check it out.
It was strangely beat up, as if used for a long time. The outside was made with a faux leather, charred a bit by the fire, and the inside was the typical black fabric. Surprisingly, none of the contents had been touched by the flames, so Joel could actually see them. Even more surprisingly, there WERE contents. This wallet belonged to someone. He pulled out the first thing he saw. Some sort of business card to a phone company office building. At first glance, it was a normal business card with the typical white-print background and blocky-black letters. However, he noticed something that didn't quite match. The business card read:
____________________________________________
Allen And Colt's Phones Inc.
4650 Spencer St., Wisconsin
Call (715)-881-7861
Ask for: Milton Heston, Accounting and Managing Firm
_____________________________________________
However, on the card, written above 'Milton Heston' was:
"Jerk of the Century! He'll take your money AND make sure to give a bad Rap for you to OTHER Companies! Until he pisses off one too many temps and gets his face smashed in! ;P"
"God..." Joel said to himself upon viewing the card, "What jackass had THIS wallet?" He continued his investigation of the wallet and saw another suspicious sight. On the inside of the wallet was three compartments. The first compartment had nickels, dimes and pennies with some sort of Polaroid photograph stuffed underneath them. In the second there were quarters with a second photograph stuffed in that one. In the last, there were $1s, $5s, $20s, and $50s with a photo neatly folded in half and placed to the side along with the dollar bills. This seemed like some sort of psychopath's wallet, which is why Joel hesitated at first to look at the photos. After a second, he reluctantly lifted all three out and laid them on the ground in front of him.
The photo in the first compartment was wrinkled and stained. It was obviously not cared about. In it there was a picture of some young man in football uniform kissing an attractive cheerleader on the cheek. The man was impossible to see clearly, as the photo was so horribly kept, but the woman was quite visible. She had long blonde hair, bright blue eyes and a pretty smile. The kind of girl every college boy dreams of getting. Underneath the photo in the blank white area was written, and Joel read aloud:
"Ahrens givin' sugar to Ginger" Joel assumed 'Ahrens' was in reference to the linebacker on the Badgers (Wisconsin football team) named Dave Ahrens. Joel shook his head in confusion, and moved to the next photo.
This photo was slightly less juvenile (yet still unkempt). In it featured a sophisticated woman with a short haircut. She had bright red lips, dark brown eyes and a pantsuit. Her facial expression was nothing less than...well...expressionless. She sat upright (and uptight, I assume) in an office chair in what seemed to be a cubicle. At first, this was all Joel saw until he looked closer. He could soon see that, in the background, there were several men gathered in a circle at the water dispenser laughing and talking. They all looked like typical office workers. All but one. While all four of them were dressed in tight-fitting, well-kept business suits, one of them wore just a plain green button-up and dark black jeans with Converse. To make it worse, his top buttons were loosed to the point where his blue t-shirt underneath could be seen. He was the only one not laughing. Instead, he was looking over in a sort of love-trance at the woman in the chair. Again, it was hard to make-out his features, but he seemed to bear resemblance to the man in the first photo kissing 'Ginger'. Underneath THIS photo was written, in silver Sharpie, of which he also read aloud:
"Caught Big M Checkin' Out Carla Again! Watch out, Boss!"
It was easy to figure out what was going on in that photo, so Joel moved on as quick as he could. Ah, the last photo.
In this one there was only one star. Instead of the typical silly boy crush aura the others had, this one had a more saddening yet loving aura. The person in this photo wasn't as seductive or straight-faced as before. It featured a woman with dark brown hair, dark eyes, bright red lips and an enormous smile. She looked stunning, absolutely perfect. The photo was in good shape too. It looked like it was taken just yesterday. By the angle and distance, it was safe to say that someone, probably a boyfriend, snapped a lucky candid photograph of his girl in mid-laugh. The overall idea of this actually brought a physical smile to Joel's face. He glanced down at the white of this photo. There was something written in pencil but it was scrawled out and written over with in pen. Joel examined it and attempted to read this aloud as well:
"Life's like a moving car: keep your cool. stay focused. arrive quick. But if you lose your focus and get frustrated for even a second, it will all crash and go in flames."
Joel's smile faded immediately and his brow scrunched in a confused manner again. He flipped it over, quick, to check if he had missed anything, and flipped back. Just then, he realized, there was more to this story. The photo was no ordinary polaroid photograph. It, itself, was some sort of wallet.
"Joel?" Jenna called. He jumped from the sudden noise. "I'm going to go check in the back of the room, okay?" He nodded and bit his lip,
"Mmm'kay, just be careful, alright?" He shoved the photograph in his pocket to save for later and the wallet in the other one.
There was something fishy going on here. Sometimes, even mechanics need to play Sherlock.
Joel couldn't risk there being a psychopath on the SOL, nor could he risk the lives of his little bottie-babies.
He had to solve this mystery.
And quick.