Parallel - Weekly Drop #10
Final Drop. For Now.
Recap:
The crew is complete. It seems there will be no more voyagers added to their midst. Colton had a moment of introspection. He is beginning to doubt the efficacy of nihilism. Potentially, life has no inherent purpose. It is what it is. All the more reason for you to provide one for yourself and others.
HEADS UP:
As I explained in the beginning. There will only be 10 drops for Parallel. I will be taking a short intermission after this drop to look for editors and build a team that can turn this thing into a real book with covers and pages and all the good stuff. After that intermission, I will be starting a new publication. Stay tuned!
Now… Finally… It’s Drop #10…
The soothing smell of coffee traveled throughout the square blueprint of Gabby’s home, stopping by each person’s bedroom to gently nudge them awake so that the group could begin work for the day. As the team trickled into Gabby’s kitchen, each member was shocked at the imagery that their own two eyes were showing them.
Colton was the first to wake, with a giant pot of coffee roaring in the Mr. Coffee, a massive whiteboard brought in from the garage, hanging from one of the walls of the living room, and breakfast was already laid out neatly for all on the dining room table.
“You’ve been hard at work, did you get any sleep?” Kara asked him.
“I got enough, but I was too excited and had to get to work. Then, when I ran out of work, I started making breakfast, which I assume brought you all here. How convenient,” he said while smiling a little bit creepily.
“Well, thank you kindly, Colton, but might I ask… what is all this?” Collin asked.
“It’s a Tactical Operations Center, TOC for short,” Seymour answered (Though he wasn’t asked), “And it’s perfect, well done Colton,” he followed up.
“Wow, how did you know all that? Were you in the military?” Colton asked.
“Negative, I never had it in me. I have read quite a bit of military history, though. It always fascinated me, the battle planning aspect of war,” Seymour explained.
“Got it, well this isn’t necessarily my best work, but given the circumstances, I hope it will help us make some serious progress,” Colton said.
Colton motioned to the dinner table and explained, “For now though, everyone grab some food while it’s hot. I’ll give the brief once everyone is fueled up and has their share of caffeine.”
Collin, Gabby, Kara and Seymour moseyed over to the dinner table and immediately started consuming the delicious spread that Colton had crafted. They all had worked up quite the appetite from the adrenaline rush of the night before. They passed back and forth the carafes of orange juice and juice and the little vessel responsible for delivering agave syrup to their plates to drench their pancakes. It was quite the meal, and morale was substantially higher than it had been in recent history. Colton was energized and enthused by the group taking so well to his cooking.
When the meal culminated, they all formed an assembly line quickly rinsing dishes and silverware lightly before placing them in the dishwasher. Once the task of cleanup was finished, most grabbed a second cup of coffee to shunt the food coma that was destined to take place. Kara independently fired up the tea kettle and made some peppermint tea for herself. Colton brought them all over to the living room to discuss the way ahead.
“Alright ladies and gentlemen, this is Day 0. For many of us, it is Day 1, Day 2, or even Day 4, but collectively, it is Day 0. We have a long journey ahead, so I figured the best way to start making progress was to take a systematic approach. As Seymour hinted at earlier, you are sitting in the Tactical Operations Center, TOC for short. On the east wall, you will see our whiteboard, where we will track our assets, personnel, tasks, resources and timeline---”
Kara interrupted, “Okay, go off king, absolutely love it. But, let’s try to demilitarize it just a tad for the group. I think personnel, assets, and all that are kind of self-explanatory, but moving forward, let’s try to use some more universal terminology,” she explained.
“Roger, less military jargon, got it… fuck. I mean, understood, moving forward,” Colton paused for a second to collect his thoughts.
“Okay, so to the right of the board that contains all of our data collection,” he winked at Kara, “I have taken the liberty of drawing up our local area, with the road that connects all of our houses, the local coffee shop, and then the unexplored territory between all of that and the horizon.”
“Now, I realize that I kind of jumped the gun here, so I really want all of us to agree on who we think should take the lead here. I’m not saying that I am the most skilled person here, or the smartest or even the one with the most life experience. I do, however, have experience leading teams in a complex environment, particularly individuals like yourselves that all have different skill sets. I’m not particularly skilled in anything, but I can recognize the talent we have, and if we put our heads together and take a focused approach to getting out of here, I think we can do it.”
The group took a pause, looked at each other, nodded and smiled.
“I think I speak for the group when I say that you’ve got a good thing going Colton, let’s run with it,” Collin said.
Given Collin’s no bullshit nature, and kind heart, it was a good feeling whenever he offered praise. Colton continued, “Okay then. So if you take a look at the board, I’ve divided it into sections that we can build on through some conversation today. First off, in the person… In the people section, I’ve written all of your names and your primary profession. I was thinking that through discussion, we could come up with adjectives that go along with your profession to help the group better understand what attributes you possess as an individual and how we, as a team, can rely on those attributes.” He summarized.
The group hammered away at discussion and soon enough the left side of the board was filled.
Collaboratively, they had succeeded in analyzing each other’s strengths, the resources they had at their disposal, places they could go and even developed three distinct plans of action moving forward.
They were to embark on the first plan on Day 1, which was to just start walking toward the horizon. It was the simplest of all three ideas and required the least amount of foresight. It was however, something that would provide the group with immediate feedback with respect to their surroundings. Colton was the only person to make it as far as the coffee shop, so no one could truly confirm whether or not they were surrounded by nothingness.
PLAN A:
Although it was relatively straightforward, they still had quite a lot of work to do if they wanted to pull this off in a successful and safe manner. Colton polled the group for what they thought they might need on this trek. They all agreed that it was smart to leave one person behind, and seeing as this was Gabby’s house and she was objectively the least fit, she offered to stay behind for this mission.
Next on Colton’s checklist was to develop a loose timeline working back from the hour they were to depart to the time they had right now. As a team, they developed a packing list for the trek. Each participating member was to have:
A daypack
8 quarts of water on them
A change of clothes
3 meals, each in its own large ziplock so they could ration appropriately
Snacks
Pens
Paper
Flashlight
3 pairs of socks
A sleeping bag in case they had to bed down for the night somewhere.
Radios
Colton would carry an extra pair of shoes, extra water and the first aid kit.
Now that they had established the necessary packing list, they needed to pool all of these resources from all of the houses nearby because Gabby’s had none of this. To do this, they divided into teams, which they would keep in place for tomorrow’s hike to aid in accountability of one another. Kara and Colton teamed up, because Colton’s recent attitude shift had set the stage for a small amount of sexual tension between them. So, that left Seymour and Collin as buddies. They divided up and then brought the necessary materials back to Gabby’s house.
Once there, Seymour utilized his engineering expertise to build a field expedient antenna along with Kara and Colton. Colton had experience building antennas in Sapper school, and Kara was able to triple check their math on the half wave formula to ensure they built an antenna that was omni directional in case the group got lost. Compasses were moot because they were no longer on Earth.
Meanwhile, Collin began compiling all of the tools and equipment and building neat piles next to each individual's daypack before packing them. He began cooking chicken, sausages, and rice in order to build out the three meals per person that would eventually go in their packs. Gabby assisted Collin with the making of meals while also playing tunes for the three building the radio, like Mozart while studying. It was a work of art the way that Colton had orchestrated this team to make effective use of all of their strengths and morale was even higher than it was at breakfast that morning.
By the time it was evening, the giant omnidirectional antenna had been hoisted off of Gabby’s third story, each pack had all of its necessary items, and the group was ready for Colton’s first brief. He had constructed--what they called in the military—a sand table, which was a model of the local area using box tops, yarn, sand and whatever he could get his hands on to simulate the homes, the vegetation, the coffee shop, the elevation of the hills and of course the dead space where they were headed. The sand table was so detailed that it even had a swing at 48 Hill Street to match Kara’s and a plastic spoon to represent the antenna at Gabby’s place.
“Alright everyone, circle up around my little diagram here,” Colton began.
“What you see in front of you is my best attempt at depicting our local area. You can see our five houses, the street that connects them all, the local coffee shop, which you guys still have to try by the way, and the horizon. Our mission ahead is a fact finding one. We have prepared ourselves with enough water, food and necessary items to last a full night out there if we have to. Kara, Seymour and I have successfully rigged an antenna for us to reach Gabby back here at home base. Our goal is just to walk as far as we can in one direction, campout if necessary and return the following morning. I will now brief you on the timeline that will help us be prepared for departing by 0600 tomorrow,” Colton explained.
He went on to discuss the radio check that they were to conduct immediately following the brief, along with a final inspection of everyone’s packing list, a class on how to pack their gear most optimally, dinner chow and more. Everyone was very impressed with the thoroughness of his brief along with his ability to forecast. Collin, Seymour and Kara were excited and ready to get some answers.
Gabby had taken the liberty of preparing a beautiful meal so that everyone could break bread together one last time before the detachment took off for the horizon tomorrow morning. Her meal was nothing short of spectacular and was everything they needed to fuel their bodies for an indefinite amount of exercise tomorrow.
Everyone raised their glasses, toasting to the bravery of those embarking toward the unknown and to Gabby for volunteering to hold down the fort, not knowing what might come her way while they were gone. Each individual shared what they were grateful for here in this universe, and what they were grateful for back home. Colton, still unsure if he wanted to make it home, just vaguely said, “Family,” and everyone awkwardly nodded. Naturally, after the drinks started to make them more talkative and social with one another, they started swapping stories.
Gabby burst into a story about how she had this friend in the orchestra that had the kindest soul, but loved to drink a little bit too much when they were out on the road. Countless times, Gabby would rely on friends to navigate through crowded areas without falling, but by the end of the night, this friend would be relying on Gabby to stay upright and to get them home safely. She concluded by saying, “It was actually the blind leading the blind, and to this day some of my favorite memories.” The group roared with laughter.
Kara followed up by diming out one of her students for taking a shit on her front lawn after she received a failing grade on one of her math tests. When she said that she had one of those doorbell cameras and caught the whole thing on tape, the group was in tears. Kara didn’t even report the perpetrator to the principal or anything, she just pulled the kid aside after class one day, told her where they could go to get tutoring help and said, “I know you shit on my front lawn, I have it on camera, and if you don’t get your grades up, I’ll show it to the whole class before the end of the year.” Everyone got a kick out of that, especially Collin, who said, “It’s called tough love. I bet they got their grades up, didn’t they?”
“They sure did, and now she is studying engineering at UCI,” Kara responded.
They all were having such a great time sharing stories and getting to know each other. For a brief moment, they all forgot that they were stranded in an alternate universe. Instead, it felt like they were at a dinner amongst newly acquainted friends. They were travelers who happened to sit next to each other at the hotel bar and immediately hit it off. They shared a few more drinks until one by one they headed to bed. Colton and Collin were the last to bed and they each filled one final glass of bourbon.
“What’s gotten into you?” Collin fired at Colton.
“Don’t get me wrong, we are all thrilled to see you coming into your own, but why the sudden shift?” Collin followed up.
“I don’t know. I mean, I guess I just can’t explain it. Last night I really had some time to think to myself, and I got some answers I’ve been waiting on,” Colton paused.
“You all have such a clear purpose, and I’ve always desired that, but I could never make up my mind. I could never find out where my beginning was. For you all, it started with yourselves and finding out who you are deep down. I don’t think I’m there yet, but for the first time, I feel like I’m on my way,” Colton concluded.
“Listen pal, I’m a lot older than you, and one thing I failed to mention earlier when I told my story, is that it took me quite a while to find out who I really was. Don’t start to waver if it takes you some serious time, hell it took me about 40 years,” Collin said.
“I get that, and I’ll try. I enjoy it so much here, and meeting you all has been such a blessing. I don’t think I’m ready to go back to reality just yet,” said Colton.
“Well, I think we still have some time for you to get that sorted. Besides, what’s Kara going to do without you?” He asked as he chuckled to himself like a dad does when he’s teasing their kid about a new girlfriend or boyfriend.
“Nothing gets by you does it, Collin?” Colton asked.
“These days, a lot gets by me, but I’m doing what I can to stay sharp,” he said.
“Stay sharp, Collin, we’re going to need it. And with that, I’m off to bed. Sleep well.”
“You do the same,” Collin said.
They both returned to their rooms. The gentle breeze throughout the house shifted the mood to rest as it peacefully nudged the guests of 47 Hill Street to sleep.