THE CHAIR ROUND 1
It was all wrong. It had those nifty
levers to make it recline and such. It was comfortable. A damned
sight more comfortable than the copilot's chair. It was all sorts of
fun to swivel about in. But it was wrong. It wasn't the captain's
chair. It was the pilot's
chair. Due to the significant
lack of pilot, the captain eased himself into the chair. He felt the
padding fit about him. Then he felt the mend, right at the center of
his back. A hard patch. A shiver went down his spine as he tried to
ignore the memory of the event. The event that caused the need to
mend the chair. No. He forced himself not to think about the piece of
tyen-sah duh lumber. The diameter of it. The suddenness. And
here he was thinking on it. Bringing his mind back
to the task at hand, he flipped the obligatory three switches before
checking the nav and the panel views. And there were the
toys. The dinosaurs. No one had the heart to clear them from the
bridge. Even after everything had been patched up and cleaned as good
as new, those monuments remained. He was hard pressed to
continue. He could have just sat
his bum in the copilot's chair. Everything that needed done could be
done from there. But, no. She was there. The
lurker. Yet somehow, he couldn't fault her. Her presence allowed him
to complete his tasks. "So," he
began, continuing to prep the ship, "You gonna ride shotgun with
me, help me fly?" "That's the plan."
She said simply. And he realized that
all was well. No, not well. Not yet. But that it could be.