Moby Dickhead - Part One

Foreward: This is part one of an epic saga describing the Airlite as the doomed ship, the Pequod led by the obsessive nature of our own Captain Ahab to shatter the daily agreement record while, in the course of fulfilling his destiny, subsequently sending all of our lives sinking to the murky depths of unemployment. Without further adieu, I bring you the story of the white whale:

Part One - "Loomings"

Call me Ishmael. Some months ago -- never mind how long precisely -- having little or no money in my wallet and nothing in particular to interest me in Iowa City with regards to employment opportunity, I thought I would venture back home to Omaha and explore the world of possibility offered by the Railroad. In spite of our deepest desires to sit around the house all day, when faced with the grim reality of boredom that comes with lack of money and an excess of free time, oft do men such as I find ourselves invariably drawn to work. The urbane activity with which a man receives money is really marvelous, considering that we so earnestly believe money to be the root of all earthly ills, and that on no account can a monied man enter heaven. Ah! How cheerfully we consign ourselves to perdition!

Whether this choice was governed by an act fate or free will, I found myself consigned to a small warehouse in the near North side of the city dubbed, "The Airlite Plastics Facility," though my fellow cartographers and I have since affectionately christened our sinking ship as the Pequod. The Monday I first arrived was a very dubious-looking, nay, a very dark and dismal February morning, bitingly cold and cheerless. I knew no one in the place. With anxious grapnels, I had sounded my pocket, and only brought up a few pieces of silver, -- So, thankfully, I said to myself, I need not plug a parking meter, as I stood in the middle of a dreary trash-lined street and comparing the gloomy prospects of my place of employ towards the north with the darkness and boredom towards my home in the south. On this day, I continued to tell myself, wherever in your wisdom you may conclude to dine, my dear Ishmael, be sure to inquire the price, and don't be too particular. Come Friday, however, and each Friday thereafter, my pockets would be lined with silver, and I would need not worry about such frivolous things, in stark contrast to the unemployed and shelterless frame of a man lying on the steps of the church opposite the Pequod. Never did there exist a more startling allegory of polar opposition with regard to my decision to return to work. Though I was aware beforehand of the short-term nature of my contract, I had to be grateful that I would be able to provide food and shelter for myself at least through the remainder of the cold season.

Looming just over the horizon, and across the street, were two very different prospects: for one, I was lured by the promise of full-time employment should I perform my duties to the best of my extent and to the complete satisfaction of my employer; the other prospect involved a similar future to that of my companion laying on the steps. One prospect was based on a hollow promise yet to be fulfilled, and the other was based on a near certainty, but at the time I preferred to remain optimistic about my future and thus gambled on the possibility that I would continue to be the one safely aboard the Pequod looking down upon the drifters amongst the flotsam of the church steps and not the other way around. Had I the foresight to witness which circumstances I am currently surrounded by, I would have at least requested that my seat cushion double as a flotation device.

Moving on, I at last settled into my chair inside the hull of the Pequod, holding the rank of FNG. In my exploits as a fledgling young cartographer, I was shown the ropes by a legendary old salt by the name of Bryce. He told of a time long ago when boxes were as bountiful as the sea is vast, and the agreements were ripe as cherries waiting to be hand picked. In the early days before the expansive sea of agreements was exhausted by over harvesting, a record was once set. To some folks, the number was simply a fishing tale -- ramblings of a man gone crazy as the combined result of several years spent geo-locating legal agreements and living in a bleak land known as "Kansas," but Bryce claimed to have set the record himself and experienced firsthand the simultaneous feelings of grandeur and horror that accompanied the sight of the white whale of record. It was, indeed, an attainable number according to Bryce, but we were forewarned about setting out to witness it for ourselves, and that rather we should aspire only to geo-locate just enough to sustain a comfortable living so as to make sure we could hold tightly to our shelter and provide food for our families for years to come. Though it was often preached not to over exert ourselves, Bryce would routinely set out with the same goal in mind, haunted by his past efforts and forever doomed to repeat them.

Others had come within sight of the great white whale, or so they claimed, but my mentor was the only one who had ventured to such a depth of numbers and survived to tell about it without first going mad with boredom and loneliness. Nonetheless, the experience left a scarred impression stained upon his countenance, and he seemed to lack any personality that he once may have had, now at times falling into pits of rage and despair for seemingly no apparent reason. Alas, the old curmudgeon passed on before the Pequod took wind to its sheets on my maiden voyage of cartographic experience. Some say he packed up and set sail to finally seek vengeance upon the whale that had since destroyed his life, but his sudden departure still remains an unsolved mystery, and the idea of Bryce has since faded into such relative obscurity that he himself is thought by many to be nothing more than a figment of the legend of which I speak. The few of the remaining crewmen of the Pequod that served with Bryce, myself included, continued to keep his lore alive, not knowing that it would one day spur one ambitious cartographer by the name of Ahab to embark upon a voyage in an attempt to bring in the legendary white whale and avenge Bryce's consequential loss of identity.

One really can't blame Ahab for trying, for it was seemingly a noble cause, but in his youth and inexperience, Ahab didn't fully understand the consequences of what was to be our collective fate via the actions of one. It is understood of most seekers of the holy grail that they initially set out on their arduous journey with the full intention of benefiting all of humanity, but in the end, the quest consumes them to the point that they succeed merely in deceiving their own selves into believing that their cause truly is one of nobility. The prize is built up to be more than that which they first set out to attain, and the promise of the unattainable inevitably steers them off course. Beneath their facade of righteousness and benevolence lies a more sinister emotion fueled by greed and self-entitlement, thus leading to the their own tragic downfall. Such is the story of Captain Ahab and the Pequod, which is a story intimately interwoven with my own, and that of my fellow crew, by the strands of fate and consequence that binds our crew together...