by Gregory Adams

The Captain was sensitive to the objections of his crew, but they had to understand that problems such as this one didn't make his task any easier, either. Today, he had to get Sean through a full day of work, despite these fouled up orders, all while doing his own part in trying to find the cause of these communication troubles.

It was going to be a long day.

#

Sean was having a long day.

He hadn't slept well last night and he didn't get into the office until nearly 11:00 No one noticed. The designers were allowed to work flexible hours, as long as they put in least 40 every week and turned their work in on deadline. Sean ran about middle ground with the others in the graphics pool, coming in later than most but earlier than others. He usually didn't give his late arrivals much thought, but this morning he was self-consciousness about arriving so late, and he crept to his desk, head down. There wasn't any particular reason for his anxiety; Sean had no short deadlines looming over him and when he passed his supervisor's desk, Rob just nodded and smiled at him same as he did every morning.

Still, Sean couldn't shake his agitation and felt hyper-aware of his own behavior all day all day. He caught himself doing odd little things, like hanging his jacket up in the hall closet, rather than draping it over the back of his chair like he usually did. He also found himself stressing about how he was dressed. He was wearing blue jeans and black T-shirt with Strong Sad on the front, which was pretty much how he always dressed (although the cartoon characters changed), and no one had ever made an issue of it. Why should they? Sean was a workhorse designer and spent all his time at his desk hidden away in the back of the office. It wasn't like he presented work to clients, so why would anyone care how he dressed for work?

Nevertheless, Sean spent the earlier part of his workday hunched low over his workstation, irrationally nervous that today, someone would notice he was dressed like he worked in a comic book shop instead of on the on the floor of a downtown mid-rise office building, and that someone important would say something.

Sean worked hard until two o'clock, and then he did an odd thing: he took a break from his desk, left the office, and went for a walk.

#

It was just March, but the sun was warm and Sean's leather jacket kept the worst of the wind off. His office was near the waterfront, which meant it was easy for Sean to walk alongside the pier. As he did so, he sometimes looked toward the crowded streets, and sometimes looked out over the water. He felt very much out of place; he was uncertain as to why he'd come out here at all. His eyes stung from the hours of staring into his monitor, something he probably wouldn't have noticed if he'd eaten lunch at his desk like he usually did. But today, he'd been overcome by an irresistible restlessness that drove him outside.

Sean breathed in. The crisp spring harbor air was pleasant; a marked improvement over the office where the odor of a dozen bodies hammering away at a dozen keyboards cloyed the atmosphere. Sean walked the pier and thought about his sleepless nights, how too often thoughts about work kept him awake. Maybe this was just what he needed -- to get out, maybe get some exercise. Wear himself down physically as well as mentally.

Sean was thin but knew he wasn't in shape. He didn't eat much, but he hardly ever exercised. He had run track in junior high, but then had been diagnosed with asthma. In a way, that's what had brought him to his vocation: all those indoor activities, which had in turn led to the role-playing games and computers. Sean made a good life from his habits and imagination, but he couldn't say that it was an altogether healthy one. The thought bubbled up that his diet was probably why he still had problems with acne, which frustrated him to no end.

All at once he realized that he was starving.

Sean stopped at a sidewalk lunch wagon and wanted in line. Lunch for Sean was usually something he could eat quickly so he could keep working, like maybe a muffin scavenged from the break room and another cup of coffee. He was craving something different today, so when his turn came at the window, he ordered a chicken kabob with rice pilaf and a giant cup of soda.

While the server was ringing it up, Sean asked that the soda be exchanged for a bottle of water.

#

That night, the Captain of Sean was restless. Rather than improving, things were getting worse, more bizarre. It had started with lunch, but then in the evening, he had gotten orders to take Sean for a jog.

"Ensign!" he called to one of the Seans nearby. "Have you found those running shoes yet?"

The ensign wilted. Seans were easily intimidated by authority. "Not yet, sir." He gestured towards the massively thick but perfectly transparent cornea of Sean's eye. "As you can see, we're coordinating a search of the hall closet." The vessel's enormous hands could be seen rummaging through several boxes that had never been unpacked even though Sean had moved in with Trishell more than six months ago.

The Captain of Sean didn't reply. He could see that a search was underway just as well as the ensign could. He knew the crew was doing all they could, but that did little to ease his worry. It was more than that these new orders were strange, which they were, or that the changes they suggested ran deep, which they did.

His main concern was that he knew the ship was in no shape for a run. The vessel hadn't been for a run in 15 years, apart from the occasional sprint for a city bus.

Until recently, nearly all of the orders the Captain had ever received from Sean could be summed up as a lifelong voyage from one easy gratification to the next, with a standing policy that the dull stretches between pleasures be traversed as quickly as possible. What Sean did, he did easily, almost effortlessly. If too much effort was required, he quickly moved on to something less demanding. Running had been only one such demanding task.

The Captain didn't approve of Sean's easygoing nature, but that was the very reason he was the only crewmember who wasn't a Sean. Even when Sean had been a child, and had first begun imagining the crew that operated him, he hadn't credited himself with the ability to command an undertaking as complicated and powerful as himself. Therefore, Sean had delegated the job to one of his television heroes, the no-nonsense Captain of a World War II submarine.

However these bizarre new orders were challenging even the supreme, Burt-Lancaster-inspired-confidence of the Captain of Sean. The vessel had given up track back in junior high school because of a problem in respiratory control. The Captain was embarrassed to not be completely familiar with the condition of the respiratory exertion systems now. That oversight was no one's fault but his own. All the more reason for a shakedown. "Might do him some good," the Captain of Sean said aloud.

"Pardon me, sir?" asked the ensign who was still waiting to be dismissed.

"I said it might to the vessel some good, to go for a jog." The Captain of Sean repeated more loudly.

"Yes, sir," the ensign replied. The Sean looked reluctant, as if he'd rather be playing video games, instead of taking this ship out for a session of exercise that would prove as strenuous for the crew as it would be for the ship itself.