“Aw, man! Noooo! I can’t do this.” I knew I was whining, but seriously? Emmett expected me to sit through a three-hour presentation? I had things to do, places to go.
“What? It’s not that bad,” the man in question said.
“Emmett. I thought we could drop in, see what’s what and leave. Instead, it’s formal presentation complete with graphs and stupid bullet points. No. I need to be somewhere else. I’m. Not. Staying. For. This.” I jabbed my finger into his chest with each word.
“Sydney, c’mon. It really isn’t that bad. Besides, aren’t you the least bit curious about how they’re going to expand the station? I mean, we… I might be able to move in there. Think about it. Brand new living quarters, maybe even a window with a view of the moons!” Emmet used his best “persuade Syd that everything’s gonna be fine” voice, but I wasn’t buying it this time. No. I was not going to sit through… I look at the schedule… a three-hour presentation on the joys of the new isolation cubes disguised as apartments attached to this space station. Not happening.
“Don’t ‘c’mon Sydney’ me. It’s a three-hour presentation, Emmett. If you want to stay fine. I’m outta here. I have better things to do than letting some sleazy station developer try to talk me into living in his cheap-ass duct-taped cubicles. No.”
A deep voice echoing over the speakers cut me off just as I was getting to professional levels of stubbornness.
“Attention, ladies and gentlemen. We are terribly sorry, but the tour of the new living quarters will not take place at the end of today’s presentation, as previously planned. There’s been an, uh, a bit of a problem in the new addition. The rest of the presentation will continue as scheduled and we will re-schedule the tour for a later date. Uh, to be announced.” The voice stopped.
I spun around and glared at Emmett. “See? What do you want to bet there was a catastrophic failure of something… like oh, I don’t know, the airlock?”
To his credit, Emmett did look a little disconcerted.
“You might have a point, Syd. I mean, they didn’t say what happened, and they didn’t give a date for the rescheduled tour. That’s weird.” Emmett stared at the colorful sandwich board announcing the presentation. “I was hoping to get a new apartment,” he added, wistfully.
A sudden pang of sympathy hit me. Emmett did live in one of the older sections of the station and while I had snarked that the new section might have catastrophic failures, parts of the area Emmett lived in seemed to be held together with a wish and a prayer alongside copious amounts of baling wire and duct tape. Talon Station was old and creaky. It really did need a lot of upgrades but the likelihood of that happening anytime soon was slim.
Still. I wasn’t sitting through a three-hour presentation complete with slides and pretty pictures.
I nudged Emmett with my shoulder. “I have an idea. Let’s wander over toward the new area, and see if we can figure out what’s going on. That will give us better information than standing around here will. Then afterwards, we’ll get ice cream at that new place in the center market, my treat. Whaddya say?”
Emmett smiled down at me. “I thought you had ‘places to go, people to see,'” he said.
“Well, yeah. I do. But if we don’t sit through a three-hour presentation, I have time to go exploring and get ice cream.” I grinned up at him.
He returned the grin. “In that case, okay. That sounds like a good idea. Let’s go.”
******
My response to Leigh Kimmel’s challenge, I thought we could drop in. Instead, they had a formal presentation, and I needed to be somewhere else is just a short snippett of something. What, I don’t know. This just sort of unspooled in my head. Driven most likely by my distaste for PowerPoint presentations. Anyway, head on over to More Odds Than Ends to see what everybody else came up with for their challenges.
