The Founder of Flounder

The Bride returned with a collection of groceries. I usually don't let her shop because of her tendency to purchase impulse items. A quick survey of the bags indicate purchases of some kind of spray nozzle for the shower, a package of pre-threaded needles and a backup battery pack for a sump pump that was guaranteed to run for three minutes.

But among the collection of useful groceries was rum mint and limes. So I froze my ass off grilling steaks while she mashed potatoes, and we had a nice dinner at home, followed with a round of mojitos. Of course, being 8.378 months pregnant, she's drinking virgin mojitos, while I arrange to have mine with a double ration of rum.

"You know," She said, "It's Fat Tuesday."

"It is? Wow, that snuck up fast."

"Yeah, I know. I'm going to go over to St. Whatchamallits to get my forehead smudged tomorrow. You want to come?'

"No, I think I'll be busy."

"Anyway, I was thinking … why don't you get a job for Lent?"

I contemplated her idea overnight, and the next morning called the agency that had placed me at my last data schlepping job. They quickly told me to report to one of the gray office fortresses that guarded the edge of our sub-urban area from the wilds of cornfields. After parking my car in a treeless lot, I was greeted at the front door by a woman wearing large swaths of polyester. She led me through a series of cubicle-laden offices to a drab box near a windowless wall. The wall sported a motivational picture of a bunch of zebras, with the motivating message "Be One of the Herd!" in stylized script.

"Please have a seat." She handed me a packet of mimeographed pages. "Here's the basic instructions for accessing the QAS and SPLF systems. Your network login id is J41GQ5, which is also the password for your voicemail, fax/copier access and the lock on the office supply closet. To log into the timecard system, you just use your number minus the status prefix, so your login id there is 41GQ5t, with the 't' always in lowercase because you're a temporary employee. To access the Mainline system, use your mainline id of mcr1chb, and make sure it's a separate password then your J41GQ5 login password. Set up your voicemail now, and there's a meeting in 20 minutes about your project. Please review the special voicemail instructions on top of your packet."

"There are special instructions for the voicemail?" I asked.

"Yes. You have to include your network login. You're a J series, which means a contractor with a life expectancy between three and six months, though the 41 is reserved for projects that don’t have an anticipated end date."

So I recorded my voicemail and went to the meeting where I listened to two guys in ties tell me seven times that they wanted this particular data carefully inspected, researched, reconfigured and processed into hundreds of little tiny sets, so that the tiny data sets could then be combined in such a way that it would appear as if they were playing with LEGOs.

When I returned from lunch, a workman was affixing a nameplate to the cubicle wall. It said 'JL41GQ15'.

"Don't I get one with my name?" I asked the workman.

"Yes, but we don't have the nameplate now. The guy who does the names refused to do so this week because we changed suppliers, and the new letter style was labeled 'Roman.' You see, he's Greek, and was offended by that for some reason about stealing their gods, so he refused to use them. He'll be fired on Thursday."

"Okay, but it's not right--there's an extra number in there."

"No, that's supposed to be there. It's to help people find your cubicle. By the way, did they tell you not to pin up anything on cubicle walls that face west?" He then pointed north.

"Um, no. Why's that?"

"It interferes with cell phone reception."

I thanked him and delved into my paperwork. At 3 in the afternoon, the speakers above stopped their string of disco favorites that was surely some satellite feed from studio54 and announced that it was time for the afternoon cheer. So I followed everyone else to the cafeteria, where we all saw two men and a woman in suits.

They proceeded to explain that the division had just made their quarterly quotas on sales. After each one took turns thanking everyone for their hard work, the three then started clapping in unison. The crowd immediately joined in. The three executives shouted in unison:

"Who are we?!"

"We're the best employees out there!" The packed lunchroom responded.

"And why are we here?!" The executives shouted.

"Because we love Mother Hubble!" The crowed shouted back.

"And why's that?!" Chanted the executives.

"Because she's the founder!" The crowd responded.

"She's the founder?!"

"The founder of flounder!" The crowd yelled.

"And are we busy as bees?! The executives asked.

"Bzzzzz!" Said the crowd.

"Mother Hubble! Mother Hubble! Mother Hubble!" The executives and crowd chanted.

It's going to be a long six weeks. I wondered if they would let me work from home. I went back to my cubicle, and began to look over the datasets I was supposed to schlep. Datasets are pretty tepid and dull, and soon I felt rather sleepy. I stood and stretched, but it didn't really help. So I laid my head down on the keyboard and closed my eyes for a few moments.

"The founder of under of flounder is calling you!"

A voice stirred me from my slumber. I opened my eyes and realized that the main overhead lights of the office had been turned off, and what remained was the eerie glow of the office night lights.

"The founder of flounder is calling you!"

The words were coming from my computer. The screensaver was a black background with the floating head of Mother Hubbell. I watched for a moment, and as her head floated over my cursor, she said "The founder of flounder is calling you!"

I pressed the enter key, but the screensaver remained. Instead, Ma Hubble's face became animated and she scowled at me. "Who are you?" She said.

Crap, I thought. It's the dreaded dream sequence. I looked at my hand and thought if this is truly a dream sequence then I should be able to eat my finger, so I did. Tasted like chicken.

With a minimal amount of effort I replaced the missing digit. "Tu habla Espagnol?" Ma Hubble asked.

"No," I said, "I speak English."

"Well it's about time. I've been waiting for some time for someone to to be alone here at night. Even tried adding Thorazine to the coffee, but it didn't seem to have an effect on anyone. So tell me your name, young man."

"Stuart Sutcliffe." I lied.

"Nice to meet you, Stuart. Can I call you Stu? That would make things so much easier for me. Anyway, Stu I have a job for you."

"I know. I was briefed on it this afternoon. You want me to use ..."

"No, not that. Well, I mean not right now. We'll still need to see those historical shipping tables on Friday. This is another task for you. It won't take long."

"Great." I stood up. "I'll start it first thing in the morning."

"Sit down, Stu."

"No," I said, "I think it's time to go home. Besides, I've never driven a car on dream. Should be pretty cool."

Her voice grew menacing. "You must complete my task, Mr. Sutcliffe. Don't make me demonstrate my power."

"Look, I have power, too. See, it's a nifty button here labeled 'power'. I wonder what'll happen if I press it." I hit the monitor power button.

Her face continued to scowl at me, and I heard the internal office vacuum system start up. The outlet near me began to noticeably hiss as air was sucked in. A piece of paper on my desk began to flutter. I couldn't believe it--the old lady was threatening me with a vacuum cleaner.

Might as well get this over with. "All right. What do you want?"

"I need you to go fishing. I need you to go get a fishing pole, and catch a fish. Once you catch a fish, you need to bring it back here."

"Well that doesn't sound hard. I Hope you don't want me to catch a flounder. There aren't any around here."

"No, it's not a flounder. It will be a female bluegill, and you need to bring it here alive."

"Okay." I got up.

"You have to catch the fish at the confluence of the rivers."

"You mean Wolf Point? That's in the city. I don't have to go that far. There's plenty of places to catch fish around here." Clearly the Founder of Flounder didn't know about fishing for bluegill.

"No, it must be at the confluence. And you must return by sunrise."

"So what are you going to do with this bluegill? I mean, am I going to get into any trouble ..."

"When I was bestowed the crown of being the founder of flounder, it came with a curse brought on by a Posiden like entity that is way too deep for children to understand. If I wish to continue my success in harvesting flounder, I need to release a virgin bluegill into the fish tank behind the front desk. Once this happens, there will be a virgin birth, and then those bluegill need to released back in the confluence."

"Um, I'm not waiting around for the full gestation of a bluegill. And how can I tell if they're a virgin?"

"You can't tell if she's a virgin. That has been our downfall. Many times our agents have returned with bluegill, but none proved to be virgins. One marketing idiot did bring back a virgin catfish, though. That was pretty tasty. That's when we started the Bayou line of catfish nuggets.”

"So I have to spend alnight catching a bluegill to bring it back here only to find out it's not a virgin? Shouldn't I just bring a bunch of bluegill?"

"No, it has to be only one. That's in the manual. Only when it returns will we know if it's a virgin." At that point, I realized my finger hurt. I looked down, and saw my bite marks.

I stood up. "Okay, well I'll see what I can do." I walked to the front door and stepped out.

The moon had freshly risen in the young evening. The air smelled sweet and springlike, and the nearby woods seemed to hum with the anticipated thriving of summer. The parking lot was empty except for my car. Sitting on the hood of my car was Violent Moonbeam, who was playing a guitar. As I approached, the soft sounds reached out to me.

She stopped playing. "What do you think of my song?" She asked.

"It has a great beat, and you can really dance to it. I give it a seventy five."

"I need to go into the city. Can you please take me?"