goneawayworld | SHEETCAKE PARTY #1

SHEET CAKE MEETUP

“Who the fuck is Linda?”

The question pops up every few minutes, a little tack of punctuation above the offensively-inoffensive music being piped in*. The room the hires have been ushered into is clearly just a conference room, with a layout that requires either sitting at awkwardly-spaced intervals around a giant table or milling and scooting around the smaller folding table, where the “big surprise” the corporate officers promised them is on display: a sheet cake.

A sheet cake that that still bears HAPPY BIRTH DAY LINDA in blue icing across the top, although someone has, at least, gone to the effort of writing welcome, to the team new hires in Sharpie on a purple flashcard and used a Popsicle stick and tape to plant it like a dismal flag right in the middle of Linda’s “DAY”. Dedication aside, the cake itself looks pretty suspect too, not as if it were poisoned but more like if it were salvaged. The cake part looks dry, and the frosting seems strangely...sweaty. No one’s eating yet, and yet there’s already a piece missing.

However, there’s no lack of enthusiasm around the room. A projector hooked up to a laptop casts an off-center, warped rectangle of WELCOME TO, THE BEST TEAM. NEW HIRES!! onto a wall. The many paper plates have a festive print, although they all seem to be Christmas themed. The table cloth looks as if it came from both 4th of July and potentially a war, given the scuffs and tears. The shot-glass sized paper cups are inadequate to hold a satisfying amount of sparkling cider, but at least they don’t leak. There are many more plastic knives than forks, which could prompt some hires to give in to their animal instincts and just use their hands, or perhaps start a barter economy for the better utensils.

“I’m so jealous,” a corporate employee keeps saying as she ushers hires into the room. “We haven’t had a good party in this office since Kelly’s baby shower, and that little girl practically has teeth now!”

(An eagle-eyed hire may suspect that the box of donuts next to the sheet cake might have come from said baby shower, on account of the fact that the few stale hunks of donut remaining have Pepto-Bismol pink strawberry icing and that there’s still the paper envelope for a gift card with ITS A GIRL written on it.)

Most of corporate slips out after the hires get set up - this is clearly an event for the hires to do some “team building” and work on “rapport” in addition to filling their bellies with cake that tastes remarkably like sand. There’s a karaoke machine in the corner, but hires are instructed not to touch it because, as an employee points out, last year’s Christmas party demonstrated that karaoke is the worst thing in the entire world for morale (“in any world! even before this one got eaten away by the bombs!”).

There’s an additional big glass jar filled with scraps of paper, which the hires are informed are filled with prompts for ice breakers and activities in case the party needs a pick-me-up. Any hire who investigates will find that most of the ice breaker activities start with three benign questions (“what’s your name?” “where are you from?” “what’s your favorite animal?”) and somehow, always a fourth question that feels a little invasive (“what are your feelings on unions?” “under what circumstances would you kill an innocent person?” “do you use the same passwords for all your accounts?”).

“Please enjoy yourselves and all the desserts Jorgmund has generously supplied you with,” one of the employees says on her way out, “and don’t worry about making a mess, janitorial gets paid too much to sit around as is.”

*All music that can be summarized as ’grocerycore’.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"Hey dude. Everything okay? Relatively speaking, I mean. You've been pretty quiet over here."

Admittedly, that was probably at least partly because of him having no mouth. Still, Doreen reasoned, he had to have some method of communication. Even if it was just through the comms.

"My name's Doreen, and this is my buddy Tippy-Toe." She says, pointing at the squirrel on her shoulder.

It's a small thing, but he's actually startled that he's been noticed. That's not a way anyone would ever have approached Esplin. Alloran's eyestalks go upright with surprise and there's a distinct pause before he remembers that yeah, he really can react and should probably respond when addressed.

<Hello. I... forgive me, I'm not acclimated yet.> To freedom in any form rather than being made to serve someone with ominous aspects, but he doesn't need to give out his story. Alloran's voice feels a lot like sound, but it would be hard to describe and seems nondirectional, like it could be coming from anywhere.

Humans look more sensible with tails, which is an observation he's not going to share just now.

<Not a skunk, I think?> He has some knowledge of Earth life and has seen animals like this, and 'skunk' is similar but not quite there. Alloran has mixed memories of skunks; being sprayed was deeply unpleasant but it had been so much worse for Esplin and that had been incredibly funny.

"Oh, hey, telepathy!" Doreen considers asking about it, but then Alloran asks his own question.

Tippy looks about as offended as a squirrel possibly can, chittering angrily at him. She really does not appreciate being compared to a skunk.

"Calm down Tips. He might not even know what a squirrel is. I can kind of understand the mistake, but skunks and squirrels aren't really all that similar beyond the bushy tails."

He might argue it's not telepathy, though functionally there's not much difference. Maybe that the word implies that it goes two ways.

Tippy gets closely watched through one stalk eye, partly out of curiosity and partly so he has warning if she launches at him. It seems tremendously unlikely that this is an Animorph, but 'a transformed person' is his go to for animals behaving oddly.

Very neutral, he says, <My apologies. I've only spent a few years on Earth and have only been acquainted with so many of it animals.> Quite a few really, but no rodents. <I am... my name is Alloran.>

Tippy does seem slight mollified by the apology.

"It's nice to meet you, Alloran. Um. does your species shake hands, or not? Humans do, but I don't want to make any kind of cultural faux pas here if it's not something you do. Or if your just not comfortable with being touched."

He considers that for a moment, voice remote when he does speak.

<Hand contact is more intimate for us. It's a more formal gesture than this seems to warrant, or more familiar, depending.> Don't humans sometimes kiss in greeting? It's basically that. Alloran doesn't actually want to kiss a stranger, not unless he has to. It'd be better if he was in human morph, with heavier, less sensitive human hands.

Oh, but there's another option with this Doreen, isn't there? Even if she doesn't have a blade. <Would you be against touching tails?>

Doreen brightens. She like learning new things, and a new form of greeting definitely falls under that.

"I'm not. We can definitely do that," she says, curling around her tail so she can touch Alloran's with it.

Light blade-to-blade impact is out of the question and he can't tell how much tail is under the long fur. He politely turns his tail to press the flat of the blade to Doreen's tail, six or seven inches before the tip.

It's not the best approximation of the gesture, but it's still rather cheering. Alloran can do this kind of thing now. No one's stopping him.

<I am pleased to meet you, Doreen. Shall I also greet Tippy-toe?>

"What do you think Tips?"

Tippy-Toe cocks her head to the side, thinking.

<Yeah, sure. Okay. As long as knows I'm not a skunk,> she chitters, before scampering her way up Doreen's tail to press her own to Alloran's.

There's the intrusive thought that he should acquire this person? these people? which is something Esplin would be inclined to do, at least to Doreen as an unusual specimen. He doesn't - he's not really tempted - but the thought is there, not going away when dismissed.

And if the small animal is speaking in a language he doesn't know his translator chip should be starting sample collection, but it's silent when he queries it. Maybe the Rig technicians rooting around finally knocked it offline. It's been about twenty five years since its last patch update, so that's not surprising.

Alloran uses the flexible tip of his tail, past the blade, to touch to the squirrel's, and withdraws his tail with deliberate care. He has the feeling that Jormugand doesn't know how fast he can move it or the amount of damage it can do, and if they don't, it's best that continues.

...and now he's kind of at a loss. How do you talk to people, when there's not something immediately relevant? It's been way too long.

SHEETCAKE PARTY #1

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