Aboard the blimp, the fugitive temps push buttons. The supervisor tells us when to push which button and where, and how, but not why. I’m still in training, so daily I observe the process.

“Push the fourth button from the left,” she says. “Push it twice, then hold it down a third time for twenty seconds. On my count.”

After pushing buttons, we take our dinners and sleep on cots, all the while sailing through galaxies of birds, of stars. I understand this location, as hidden as humanly possible, authorities on the lookout and fugitives going right over their heads.

On my first day of training, I recognize the man pushing buttons at the end of the row of button pushers.

“Barnacle Toby?”

“Oh hey, it’s you!” He gives me a big, unexpected hug and a punch to the shoulder. “You can call me Harold. After all, I’m not a barnacle anymore.”

“Harold,” I say, “what are you doing here?”

“Kicked out of the ocean for changing the emotional pH of my sector. My feelings were killing all the surrounding aquatic life. I have that effect on people, and apparently also on shrimp.” Harold hands me a cup and fills it with coffee. “The AFT assigned me here about a month ago.”

“It’s so good to see a familiar face,” I say, but I’m surprised I even recognize him without his strata of crabs and shells and seaweed. I’m surprised he recognizes me.

“Same to you, buddy! What brings you to this esteemed locale?”

“Oh, you know, a botched murder situation.”

“Right, right, right. Well then, you’ll fit in here perfectly.”

“What does that mean?”

The supervisor walks by and Harold goes quiet. He waits until she’s out of earshot. “Ah … You don’t know what the buttons are for, do you?” he says.

“No, I didn’t think anyone knew.” Frankly, I was starting to wonder if the buttons did anything at all. It wouldn’t be the first time I’d worked a job with no discernible impact.

Harold leans in close, so his mouth is nearly touching the edge of my ear. “Bombs,” he whispers. “As in, dropping them.”

Each combination of button maneuvers drops a bomb on a specified location. The sequences are verified and predetermined by the owners of the blimp. Harold thinks the owners are a conglomeration of allied countries, or a single evil billionaire, or a supervillain, or a real estate mogul bombing his own properties and making hay with the insurance money.

Harold explains that if the supervisor doesn’t touch the buttons, then technically, she doesn’t drop the bombs. And if the supervisor doesn’t drop the bombs, then neither does the owner of the blimp. And since fugitive temps are hidden and without recourse, we technically don’t exist, at least not in the eyes of the law. And if no one drops the bombs, no one can be blamed for dropping the bombs, and no one can be tried, and no one can be hanged, and no one can be held accountable, and it’s maybe as if the bombs were released by none other than the wide and wondrous sky itself.

On his cot, Harold gets philosophical. “You know what they don’t tell you about being a barnacle?” he asks, unprompted.

“What’s that?”

“They don’t tell you that you never stop feeling like a barnacle, not really. Sure, you can walk and run and jump again. You can give your fellow temp a hug or a cup of coffee. You can climb aboard a zeppelin. Your dick can even return to its normal, totally average size. But that saltwater kick is still in your veins. It doesn’t go away.”

I wonder if it’s still in my veins too. If I summon it, could I feel the ocean in an instant? Am I still a pirate, somewhere deep? Am I still a mannequin? Am I still a girl pretending to be a ghost? Thank goodness I’m sitting down, because the feelings rush over me like a large, violent wave, and for a moment I lose my balance and can’t breathe. Then I remember what Harold told me about his feelings, their way of changing the pH, expanding, infiltrating. Hurting.