August 18, 2020
by dvail
“The game is nearly ready once more.”
“The game is lost and cannot return equitably.”
“The exile is returned. We shall have a game once more.”
“There can be no honor in the victory you would win.
The game was lost decades ago.”
The game was lost decades ago.”
“My brother, there will be a game and there will be honor in it. I offer you Zandaka.”
“Have you been able to reach anyone on the list?” Vail asked, a bit too hopeful in tone for Vanessa’s taste. She replied, “Corisca. And that’s only because I DM’d his sister on Instagram. She has incredibly bad taste in makeup, by the way.”
“And worse taste in women,” Vail chided. Chambers chuckled and shrugged. “We’re going to have to choose between burning service time on our real prospects or playing guys even other WIL teams consider bums if we can’t get anyone to return our calls,” he added.
“Our reputation as subpar even by WIL standards is murder on the open market, but desperate players will come around in a few months. We have time before we need to panic,” Chambers offered.
“Right you are. Let’s get an offer out to Corisca – two years, $1.65M.” The Ghosts’ GM continued pouring over the player dossier in front of him as he spoke.
“Two years for a guy that burned out of the PEBA minors in AA? Shouldn’t we be making one year offers?” Vanessa posed the statement as a question to appease the hierarchy in place. She found freedom in not wasting her efforts with interpersonal espionage, but the social graces of cooperation were still new to her. Fake it ‘til you make it, honey.
Vail looked up from his study at Vanessa and replied, “We need to show the market that we aren’t trying to create a temporary team, and are willing to offer multi-year deals to guys that might not have other options. It might spark interest from some of these,” Vail stated, tapping the pile of manila folders made uneven by the bevy of office supplies jammed asymmetrically through the pages they contained.
Chambers couldn’t help but squint and frown as she considered the response.
“Consider Corisca a loss leader. We need players and we can’t afford to sit idly by as we lose opportunity after opportunity,” Vail stated. He was about to consider the matter closed, but the contrarian in his new protégé emitted a nauseating aura of discord into the air of the small office. “Unless you have a better idea, that is,” he relented.
Vanessa, apparently satisfied and immediately dropping the subject, replied simply, “No, that seems reasonable.”
The pair returned to the pile of dossiers. The quiet of their study was as deafening as it was intense, each lost in complete focus. So deep was their reverie that neither took note of the boat horns that began to build from a slow, chaotic symphony to a cacophony of panic just a few hundred meters from their bay-facing window. The sounds made their way to the ears of the Niihama-shi brain trust but were never admitted access to their attention, despite their accumulating fervor. It wasn’t until human screams were drowned out by the piercing sounds of metal grinding on metal that Vail took notice. His glance darted toward the busy shipping bay of the Seto Inland Sea. It took a moment to process what he was witnessing, but after that moment, it dawned on him that he was witnessing a disaster in progress. A truly massive ship, spewing an icy, boiling liquid across its own deck with what appeared to be a geyser erupting over and over, was currently running aground into the Niihama port. The momentum of the ship was carrying the titanic ship’s bow through a series of dock warehouses with no apparent loss of speed. The collective chaos of the scene momentarily shocked the Ghosts GM into arrest, but he soon realized that Oikake Maze needed to be immediately evacuated, as it stood just a short city block away from the Niihama port.
“Vanessa, call security!” Vail spoke with urgency but could not break his gaze from the unfurling disaster. When she did not immediately reply, he turned and saw her continuing to study the team’s dossier of Dave Hurley, the free agent second baseman from Havana. Vail couldn’t help but to be impressed by her focus, but he kicked her chair with alarming force and pointed toward the scene as he reached for the phone to order the evacuation of the Niihama-shi Ghosts facilities.
As they ran out of the offices, Chambers ran the opposite direction as Vail, causing him to pause and yell, “We need to use the stairs!”
“I’m aware!” she retorted, continuing along her path. She rapped violently on the door of the Ghosts owner suite, pulled the nearby fire alarm, and then kicked open the locked door to Vanni’s office. The napping Ghosts owner offered angry confusion to the combination of the violent intrusion and even more violent sound of the fire alarm, but quickly granted compliance to his rescuer. The group checked the remaining offices on the executive level before running down the stairs and out of the building. After running to the Southern end of the block, the group turned and surveyed the situation.
“I think we’re out of immediate danger,” Vanessa declared, “but we should keep moving out of this area. I think that was liquid natural gas.”
“Do you think it will explode?!” Vanni exclaimed between gasping breaths – the jog was not something the out-of-shape, sixty-eight-year-old Sicillian owner of the Ghosts had planned for his day.
“I don’t know, but if it does I don’t want to be within ten kilometers of it,” Chambers replied.
“We won’t be,” Vail added, as a black sedan pulled up to their position. “I summoned my car on our way down the stairs.” The group briskly loaded into the empty vehicle, and overriding the automated controls, Vail accelerated heavily through the intersection and piloted the trio away, heading south and largely ignoring traffic signals on their way out of danger.
The group sat in silence for nearly twenty minutes before Vanessa began cycling through internet news sources on her phone, trying to learn what caused the disaster and how bad it was. Few insights were available, but one detail gave her great relief – apparently the entire dock had been shut down in preparation for a festival the following day. Vanessa held on to that fact with the whole of her mind. She gripped it like a life preserver as she drifted in an ocean of uncertainty and alarm. Nothing else was allowed to occupy her mind other than that solitary thought. She slumped deeply into that passenger seat, burrowing toward the door and peering focusless out the window. She heard her father’s voice, “Ok kiddo, deep breath in: 1… 2… 3… 4… and out 1… 2… 3… 4… Good.” She felt some of the tension and trauma expel along with her breath and allowed a second thought to enter her mind: What the hell happens now?