Shipwreck Chippy cursed. His crew had never heard him speak like that, and looked at him in wonder. He cursed again. And then he tore off his shirt, which was only in rags anyway, and beat his chest.
“Crew,” he said, “I’ve had enough of being lostat sea. We are only lost at sea if we think we are lost at sea. We must not let ourselves think that. We must fight. We must set sail! We must have hope in our hearts. Give me that paddle! We can do this. All we need is one more day!”
He knelt on the flimsy raft, and paddled with a vengeance. He handed the oar to another crew member after a while and stitched a sail, fixing it to a pole. A fair wind gave the raft something resembling momentum. Then he took up hammer and nails, and lengths of rope, and set to repairing the raft’s timber deck and fixing it more firmly in place.
He worked and cursed, cursed and worked. The crew heard the squawk of an albatross; some said it sounded like their former captain, Jacinda Ardern. They began to believe. They took heart. They kept their eyes peeled for the one thing that would interrupt the dreadful sight of sea: land.
It was as though the entire craft were experiencing a mass psychosis.
Spaceman Seymour
Spaceman Seymour was floating in his tin can far above the world.
One more day and he would return to Planet Earth. His spaceship, he was sure, knew which way to go.
Truckin’ Luxon revved the Detroit Diesel DD16 engine of his Freightliner Cascadia 126 6x4 logging truck with a leather wheel and leather seats.
He could see the open road ahead of him. He was about to conquer it. He was about to set off across the country and transform it. He was about to fix the dreadful state of it – the potholes, the red tape, the threat of co-governance – and get it back on its feet, rescuing it from six years of vandalism and straight-out incompetence.
Someone asked him a question about tax.
He revved the engine louder.
Someone asked him a question about the disabled.
He hooted the hooter.
Someone asked him a question about dinosaurs.
He emitted another kind of noise that perfectly expressed his scorn for the puerile inquiry.
All he had to do was wait one more day. The land was his to conquer. The only problem with his powerful and gleaming Freightliner Cascadia 126 6x4 was that it needed someone to give him a push.
The Abominable Peters
The Abominable Peters pushed on.
The great veteran of polar exploration swore he knew the way to the promised land of the South Pole. Now and then he could see the brake lights of the Luxon Expedition ahead; but sometimes they dimmed, when visibility was less than 5 per cent.
Doubt crept in. He wondered whether he was lost. He made camp, cooked a hot meal of fish heads in penguin lard on his little Primus stove, and tried to get some rest.
But then a terrible wind came up, followed by a blizzard so cold and so white that he could not help but feel afraid.
‘One more day’, he thought. His entire life was based on the principle of one more day.
