It was at just about the same time that I was stopped at the wicket in the door to Deck 21, and after Rowan and Billy had finished their dessert at Le Lapin et l’Homme Mécanique and gone back to the rooms, that Captain Myron came down to the empty restaurant.
He was looking for a midnight snack.
There was something very wrong with Captain Myron. Cogs are not supposed to eat cogs.
The minions of their race.
If machines could get sick, Captain Myron had come down with a bug that had been fed to the Tennessee by approaching visitors.
The Worm had traveled very far, had been coming for centuries in the twisting folds of time that raveled through the endlessness of space.
And as usual, Captain Myron was outraged. He was particularly set off by the unresponsive Clarence, our maître d’, who had green beans coming out of his nose.
“What do you think you’re doing to me?” Captain Myron howled at Clarence. “You are making a bear trap of hatred and rage in my soul! I am the captain—not you! Me! Me! I am in pain! What gives you the right to abuse me like this?”
But Clarence didn’t say or do anything. Billy Hinman had frozen Clarence’s processors earlier with his fictitious argument about cheese and Alsatian history. Clarence was broken.
“Why? Why? Why are you treating me this way? I am the victim! You are not the victim! You are victimizing me by acting like you’re the victim, when the victim is ME! You cannot intrude on my space! This is my space to be a victim! Get out! Get out, you bastard!”
Captain Myron, no stranger to throwing himself onto the ground in a dramatic tantrum, flung himself backward, thrashing and grunting as he flopped his arms and kicked his legs in tremendous spasms of infuriation.
Captain Myron pooped himself.
“I am so angry! I am on fire!”
Then Captain Myron stood up, unstuck the seat of his pants from his cog rear, and bit Clarence’s nose completely off the maître d’s face. And Captain Myron did not stop eating until he’d chewed away Clarence’s entire face from the cheekbones down to his Adam’s apple, and one of his ears.
The left one.
And Captain Myron, satisfied, his pants sagging with the weight of his cog turds, left Le Lapin et l’Homme Mécanique and went to the control room of the Tennessee, where, still seething with rage, he switched several of the ship’s key systems off and on.
Captains get to do whatever they want to do, including having the final say about who the victim is.