REPAIRING FOR TWO

Sunlight and shrieks cooperated to bring Fugger back to life, awake then atop the deck of his ship with the command above unchanged as ever. He wondered if the words would respond to touch, if the birds knew, few remaining. His boat rocked gently. He considered he may have in fact died the night previous, that he’d become captive to a time loop he’d never be free of. Fugger looked down at his straps and leather, concluding then perhaps he was mistaken. So he groaned and got up. The ocean held still. The seagulls soared. Fugger shambled below deck.

“Thought you died. Lotta talk for a dead captain, I thought,” his first mate said at the sight of the zombie.

“You left your dead captain on his deck--dead?” his captain asked.

“You’re heavy.”

“Sounds mutinous.”

“Though heavy, I did try.”

Fugger tore into cupboards and produced loaves and meat meant to replace the nights’ submerged previous. Bellhound sipped from a canteen, passing. He ceased stuffing his face for a brief moment to thank his first mate for felling the sea beast that nearly felled Fugger.. Bellhound replied the cannons didn’t feel like killing. The captain looked at him strangely in between bites. The first mate went on to describe a ‘mysterious’ artifact of some nature also below deck, wondering whether it was Fugger’s--or who Fugger pillaged. But Fugger could only continue his strange gaze even as he re-affixed Blackgill’s hat off the table and back onto its throne. The two traveled below deck following breakfast.

“Light a torch,” commanded the ship’s commander.

“Aye. Was gonna.”

Fugger listened intently to the strained wood separating they and a watery grave. He heard tricklings, a known and uneasy issue Bellhound affirmed. But the artifact came first. Past barrels and boxes, mounted against that life preserving barrier birthed by tree, it glowed. The translucent blanket of algae green set itself against the face of Fugger, his first mate protected by the warmth of the torch.

“What is it?”

“Not playing dumb with me?”

Fugger’s exposure to electronics came in the form of a rare field trip of visiting a computer and its room, the exposed guts of the beast filling its corners aggressively. It hadn’t made much an impression on him at the time aside from the notion of its destruction--by bat, by bar, by anything he could get his hands on. But the idea, like most invasive thoughts, dissipated with time and was forgotten until standing before the mysterious artifact mounted to his wall, unable to shake the connection. Fugger approached the screen. Bellhound stood apprehensively--unwilling to join his captain--his heroics spent. Though it took the captain several moments to collect what was displayed before him, he gathered the offering of a message and its responses. These read:

UNTITLED SHIP HEALTH: 62%

>REPAIR

>RENAME

>UPGRADE

“So, Cap’n? Wha’s’it?”

“I think he said... ‘Terminal’,” responded his cap’n with slowed enunciation, unable to break the trance put under.

“What? You know what it is?”

The captain drew his hand up and palmed the terminal, feeling a strange and unnatural warmth as if the thing were coals shoveled in days long past--though the screen did not necessarily hurt. If Fugger were religious, he’d have thought it holy. More, thinking straightforwardly, Fugger pushed his finger against ‘>REPAIR’. The terminal accepted the command and displayed a simple yet damning response.

REQUIREMENT: 72 GOLD

Fugger shifted his gaze back to Bellhound, inquiringly.

“Is seventy-two gold a lot in worlds under words?”

“What? What’s ‘at mean?”

“Costs seventy-two gold to fix her.”

“How can you know that?”

“That’s what it says,” shrugged her captain.

“The artifact?”, his first mate asked incredulously, breaking eye contact to take in the holy thing once more. His torch lit the screen white. He looked back at his captain continuing something of a strange glare. “Don’t mess with me,” he shot. Fugger took his first mate’s wood and plunged it into a bucket beneath a breach, the sound of coal made cold brought Fugger back to younger years. The room then near black, Fugger faced his first mate forward the sole green glow.

“Can you read, Bell?”

“No, Captain.”

“It’ll cost seventy-two gold. You see those numbers?”

“Yes, Captain.”

“Is seventy-two gold a lot here?”

His first mate hesitated. Fugger understood. He gestured around his burnt palms in the dark.

“I haven’t really given this place a thorough sweep.”

“So she is plunder.”

“Don’t worry about what she is or isn’t, we only need what’s inside.”

“What, scrounge the place for coin?”

“That’s right. Top to bottom.”

“Why don’t you go do that, captain, while I board more these leaks?” asked his first mate, not really asking as he set about collecting nail and plank. Fugger drew himself up to argue, thought better, and began scalping barrel and box...

The waves went dark, the sun losing its footing, Fugger learned as the portholes he relied on transitioned him to torch. Another bout of nostalgia washed over as he rifled through the belongings of others’ aboard his ship. He didn’t bother with a justification--not that Bellhound required nor asked for one, his focus continuing on repairs. Fugger explored purses, chests, wardrobes, pantries, cabinets, jewelry boxes, briefcases, cots and mattresses, and crate after crate after crate all sickeningly bolted together using the same warped wood of the ship, thought Fugger. In his youth he had operated wearing similar shoes, and he did so happily. There existed no explanation in Fugger’s mind then except that he wanted to, and he could. A weary smile did creep up across his face though he’d face no mirror to confirm. Perhaps, he wondered, this was heaven.

By the time Fugger reconvened with Bellhound, the latter had successfully patched up a number of hull breaches--all this while navigating the ship toward ‘SHORE’. The fixes didn’t appear particularly professional, thought Fugger, but he appreciated the multiple talents of his navigator. He expressed the latter.

“Yeah. You find any coin?”

“Yes,” Fugger smiled. “More than enough--79 pieces.”

Bellhound blew a floppy curl away from his forehead fruitlessly.

“Wow, captain. So you’ll have... 7 coins afterward?”

His captain no longer wore his smile.

“Yes. I guess I will. Try to sound more enthusiastic for your captain.”

“That’ll cook one meal in port.”

“Hmm. Good thing the ship’s stores are so plentiful then.”

“Won’t be forever,” advised Fugger’s first mate.

“Did you say we’d be at port soon?”

“No,” said Bellhound, “Won’t be going anywhere if you don’t givva hand salvagin’ your loot, cap’n..”

“I will be,” affirmed Fugger,” Just watch.”

He drew up to the terminal and nearly raised to touch “REQUIREMENT” when Fugger noticed a discrepancy.

“How much is a meal at port?” he asked.

“5.”

“Your repairs paid off, Bell. Dropped to 67. Join me for two?”

“Ok. How?”

“This, I bet.”

Fugger pressed the gold requirement. The words on the terminal swirled into a coin slot, Fugger struck by the familiarity to gumball machines of his youth and, secretly, adulthood. He dispensed the gold he collected to an exact amount, pocketing the remaining twelve pieces into a sack tied tight. He grasped the handle protruding out from the monitor and cranked it to a full rotation. All this Bellhound watched with uncertainty. A pale veil of blue soon stretched itself over the wood of the hull and lower deck around them, vanishing nearly as soon as it’d arrived. In its wake, the two realized Bellhound’s repairs had been replaced with a job so particularly clean the ship seemed newly manufactured. Neither heard a drop.

“Well, Bell,” started Fugger.

“What...” started Bellhound, unable to finish articulating.

“How soon ‘till port?”

“Day.”

“Smooth waves ahead of us.”

“Cocky attitudes sink fast,” offered Bellhound, thoughtfully.

“Not yet.”

“Not yet,” he agreed.

A seagull cried out, the last of the vessel’s guests. It flapped away then, too. Across the horizon, dark figures approached.