CORPORATE RETREAT - PART I

“Glad we got that sorted quickly!” I wipe sweat from my brow and can feel myself swimming inside the insulation suit. 

In our brief meeting with Human Resources, Chris made three comments:

Meganie, as drenched as myself, squelches straight into the changing rooms. I expected some banter, but she just silently gets on with showering and changing. No need to burn belongings this time.

1) There’s a Corporate Retreat coming up, which is basically a chance to relax dressed up as training. We need some time off to process things, and that’s the best he can do on short notice.

I don’t even bother stripping by our lockers and go straight into the wet room.

The torrent of juices glugging from the exhaust spigots on my thermal overalls are fetid. The stench of my own body, from days in sub arctic conditions and backbreaking labour, makes me gag and heave.

Even working on a rubbish truck for a month during a particularly humid summer didn’t prepare me for this.

2) We’ll have to keep going on missions in the meantime, even if that adds more stress to our situation, because the retreat is meant to be for the best Returners in their respective departments, so we have to at least scrape the top 10 for Sock Duty.

“I stink something foul Anie! Let me come smell you instead!” My joke isn’t even met with a scoff or protestation.

I’ve been calling Meganie ‘Anie’ since our heart-to-heart. Not a serial number, nor a nickname because of her glasses, and ‘Meg’ just didn’t feel right. ‘Anie’ is a name all her own.

We’ve been hitting cases out of the park since then, too. We always have fun with it, even if it's a little shallow and strained at times – we’re faking it until we make it after so many truth bombs – but something’s up if she’s this quiet.

3) Meganie can’t just wander about in panties and a vest, even if she’s wrapped in a blanket… much to my chagrin.

The impulse to waddle through and jump scare her in the showers tries to burrow itself into my brain, but I shake it out.

I’m too tired and really need to get clean.

Being back feels less like any kind of relief and more like when you’ve been desperately holding in a pee on a long drive, it’s painful but manageable. However, as soon as you’re home and in the proximity of your own toilet, your bladder becomes fit to burst. Your body, experiencing instinctive anticipation of the alleviation to come, floods your senses with all the pent-up pressure. It’s maddening. 

The shower is intensely relieving... for multiple reasons.

I can feel my body relaxing as I wash away the reeking layer of sweat that’s been trapped in the subzero suit for days. I nearly fall asleep where I stand. 

Fighting to stay vertical, I leave the plastic and rubber thermals in the cubical to drain. I gave them an initial spray, but they’ll need hosing down and scrubbing tomorrow. 

By the time I’m dried and dressed, staggering about like a drunk toddler all the while, I realise I still haven’t heard a peep from Meganie’s wet-room. Can’t even recall the sound of the shower running. 

“Hey, Anie! You alive?”

I prop myself against the door-frame, legs like jelly, pushing through my exhaustion to listen for anything going on inside.

Silence. 

“Everything okay in there?” A little louder, a touch of concern tinting my voice.

But still, nothing.

I pluck up the courage to check the handle – potential HR summons be damned – and, finding it unlocked, ease the door open a crack, “Anie! You want me to come scrub your back?”

How could she resist such an offer?

The complete quiet of her changing room is unnerving, even the automatic lights have turned off.
Hope she hasn’t opened a pocket dimension from finally unleashing her own stench!

Not that I think such a thing is possible, but also, we literally work in a job where anything is possible due to the nature of infinite timelines. As stable as the Returns Agency itself can be, weird stuff still happens here too. 

For instance, everyone perceives the place to be slightly different, and sometimes this causes overlaps. Those overlaps, if there is too much of a difference between the perceptions, can result in ‘minor’ paradoxes that need untangling ASAP. 

Like in the lab, I always see it as something between NASA’s 60s peak room sized super computers, with splashes of more retro-futuristic cables and wires that I’ll never understand, running all over the place.

Meganie sees the wires – and actually knows what all of them are for – but not the unfathomably dated space race tech. To her, the rest is more like what she’s used to from the future. Which, in turn, is something I can’t really conceive of due to lack of reference. It’s not Space Trek utopian tech per se, maybe a little biomechanical, I guess, from her descriptions.

One time there was a flash where we saw a glimpse of each other’s conception of the agency, but it’s a shock to the brain trying to compute so much clashing alien imagery.

Janus, thankfully, was swinging by to check our transporters, saw we were having a moment, knocked our heads together like unruly children, and that was that. 

“If you don’t say something, I’m coming in to check on you, naked or not!”

My heart pounds in both protest and excitement at my own indeterminably serious-or-not threat.

It’s totally a joke, honest, unless…

I slowly open the door wider, the lights coming on with a fluorescent buzz, though I am sure they’re more like a glow globe or bioluminescence to Meganie, and spot the leg of her insulation suit sprawled across the floor.

The smell hits me, and it is much the same as my own was.

That unpleasant sealed unit of bodily funk known only to submarines and the bedrooms of teenagers. Tinged maybe with a little pheromone sweetness my own lacked. 

...gives flesh world a run for its money...

The outstretched limb of the plastic thermals leads up to a partially filled suit.

It looks like its occupant sat down to take things off and fell asleep after only getting one arm and leg free.

She’s not going anywhere, so technically hasn’t broken point 3, but still.

...we definitely need a vacation.