In Search of the Nimrod

[aggienaut]

   Okay am I to adjudge from the lack of comments that no one else finds this as amusing as I do? Well I'm amused and will carry on regardless.

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   The town square is half dust, half puddle—an architectural afterthought caught between half-ruined stucco façades, sun-bleached fruit crates, and a rusted water tower scrawled with names no one claims. Overhead, laundry flaps lazily from wire to wire, and a dead moth floats belly-up in a puddle. The Nimrod is nowhere in sight.
   Rafael Panza stands at the edge of it all. His capybara, Sancho, stands beside him, blinking thoughtfully at a nearby cantaloupe. No sign of a ship. Not even a landing strut.
   Nearby, a largish redheaded man with a round head like a jack o lantern and a boyish grin is deep in conversation with a slim, rumpled man in a faded waistcoat. The redhead is all freckled mischief and kinetic shrugging.
   “I’m telling you,” says Rousseau, rubbing his temples. “She looked normal in the profile. I mean okay she was a bit green and her teeth looked a bit sharp but I assumed it was a filter. Girls are always using filters. We agreed to meet at that new romantic Alderaanian restaurant.”
   “And then she was a goblin,” says Ben, delighted.
   “Not metaphorically. A literal goblin. Yellow eyes. Fangs. Small purse.”
   “But was she cute?”
   “Well, kind of menacingly cute, but a dating profile is a sort of social contract and she violated it! And somehow bamboozled me into signing up for a starship!”
   Rafael steps closer, drawn in. “Excuse me. You were recruited by a goblin?”
   Rousseau nods in embarrassment.
   “I think she came for me too,” Rafael says. “Do either of you know where the ship is?”
   Ben’s eyes twinkle with trouble. “Oh sure. You’ll want to head down the alley where the bricks smell like glue. Past the man with the violin case but no violin. Look for a closed door that’s slightly ajar in concept but not in form. Knock three times on the pipe that isn’t connected to anything, and when you hear the sound of a walnut cracking, say the word taxonomy. Then wait.”
   Rafael just blinks.
   Ben beams. “If a woman with an eel on her shoulder offers you tea, say no. That part’s important.”
   “Lies corrode the social contract Ben” Rousseau replies stiffly. ”And didn’t your pranking get you signed up?”
   Ben raises both palms. “Somehow she convinced me, actually got me to think it was my idea, to impersonate a SpaceFleet officer to play a prank on my friend Mick. Had to sign some paperwork of course, and next thing I know I had been tricked into signing on. She said I was ‘culturally compliant with improvisational tasks’ and ‘emotionally desensitized to unnecessary paperwork,’ which—fair. So yeah, I’m crew now. Not sure when we leave. Or how.”
   Rousseau sighs. “Look, the captain is over there." He points to a group across the square.
   “Ask for Captain Kirk,” Ben calls out as Rafael walks away.
   Ahead, near the shade of a flickering old-style viewscreen kiosk, four figures stand deep in argument. They're clad in varying interpretations of the Spacefleet uniform, with the posture of people who were trained to give lectures, not follow orders.
   Socrates, bare-chested beneath his uniform coat, speaks with a bellyful of emphasis.
   Aristotle, sharp-bearded and squinting, gestures with a half-eaten sandwich.
   Plato, wearing a robe and mirrored sunglasses, is carving shapes into the dirt with a stick.
   And Diogenes, lean and sun-withered, sits half-splayed under the kiosk bench, throwing dried peas at pigeons.
   A yellow stray dog lies beside Diogenes, head on its paws, ears flicking in the shade.
   “A hot dog,” Aristotle counters, “is by nature telic—it seeks its own completion. The bun encloses, but does not define.”
   “Is not a sandwich merely a conceptual vehicle?” Socrates is saying
   “It is a sandwich,” says Plato flatly. “But it is a sandwich within the ideal realm.”
   “I’m not saying a hot dog is not a sandwich,” Aristotle argues. “I’m saying it is a liminal food-object that resists binarism.”
   “It doesn’t matter,” says Diogenes. “I’ve eaten both from the same dumpster. They taste the same when you’re free.”
   Rafael stops, Sancho sniffing the dog’s tail. “Excuse me... I was told to speak to Captain Kirk?”
   The philosophers fall silent.
   The dog lifts its head.
   “Yes,” Diogenes says simply. “That’s him.”
   The dog wags once.
   Rafael looks down at it, unsure. “He’s in charge?”
   Diogenes nods. “Well he thinks so and who are we to judge?”
   Rafael glances at the others. Socrates shrugs. Plato scratches the dog’s ear reverently.
   The dog wags its tail once.
   “I was told to join the Nimrod,” Rafael says, cautious now.
   “Ah,” says Plato. “Then you’re one of us.”
   “So… who actually commands the Nimrod?” Rafael asks.
   Diogenes stands, brushing off crumbs. “Command is a fiction. Leadership is a burden. But I do hold the keys.”
   “Do you know where the ship is?”
   They look at each other.
   Diogenes (looking into the distance thoughtfully): “We were too busy asking why, we hadn’t thought to ask where.”
   Socrates (genuinely): “We have determined, through dialectic, where the ship is not. This, I think, is a start.”
   Aristotle (consulting a notebook): “Given its function is to convey officers through space, we can infer it is wherever that function is presently not being enacted. Which… includes here.”
   Plato (gesturing vaguely to the horizon): “We are searching for the Form of the ship. Its shadows are many, but its true berth eludes us.”
   Diogenes (to no one in particular): “Someone mentioned a windmill, but they were unreliable.”
   Rafael (pauses, then): “The person or the windmill?”
   Diogenes (smirks slightly, tosses a pebble at a passing drone): “Yes.”
   Rafael: “…So none of you know.”
   Socrates: “Knowing that we do not know is, in fact, the beginning of knowledge.”
   Diogenes chuckles. The dog barks once.
   Just then, Plato points past the plaza. “There—Ensign Leila N’dere. She remains from the previous crew. She knows.”
   Rafael jogs after her, Sancho trotting loyally behind. The square fades behind him as he catches up to a short woman with an aura of quiet composure about her. Her braids are wound back in a tight, utilitarian crown. She holds a small, pistachio ice cream in one hand, and a digital tablet in the other.
   “Excuse me,” Rafael says, out of breath. “Are you with the Nimrod?”
   “Yes” she says without stopping, “I’m returning to the ship. I wanted fish fingers, which at home are just pieces of chicken,” she complains in a precise and lyrical kenyan accent, but the vendor here gave me actual fingers of some ki–” she sees Sancho and stops. “What is that ... that--” she looks at Rafael, eyes narrowing, gauging how she can describe Sancho without offending Rafael overly much. “… rodent of unusual size?”
   “Sancho. He’s... harmless.”
   She frowns and sighs and continues walking.
   “Why isn’t it parked at the city’s main SpaceFleet landing pad?” Rafael asks.
   “That spot’s allocated to the USS Oversight,” Leila replies dryly.
   “But that ship left months ago.”
   Leila takes a solemn lick of her ice cream. “The allocation remains.”
   Rafael blinks. “That’s absurd.”
   “Compared to other things,” she says. “It’s relatively minor.”
   They walk on, Sancho waddling contentedly behind. Rafael glances back once toward the philosophers, still mid-debate. Diogenes has fallen asleep. Captain Kirk the dog is licking his own foot.
   Rafael is not sure what kind of story he’s walked into.
   But it’s too late now.