Empties

The doors shone unnaturally bright in the shadowy recess of the dripping cavern. One bore a fanciful round shape, covered in arcane designs in ornate gold leaf, the other a plan looking but polished wooden square with a number sign on the door.

I frowned at the latter, with its ugly push handle, the mystifying label: `WARD 32.' "Gearhead, which one yields the treasure?"

My clockwork mechanical companion crossed his shiny chrome arms, looking from one door to the other. "They both contain treasure, my captain. Unfortunately, you may only go through one. The moment you pass a threshold, the other door will be lost, possibly forever."

A human sized feline in a dress marched up to the plain one. "Can I paint a picture on it? It would look a lot prettier."

I scowled. "Ms. Kitty, I should have left you back at the ship."

"Then who would have sang you a victory song?"

I shook my head, tapping on the plastic number plate. "This plain tan door does not inspire much confidence."

The gears in Gearhead's brain turned noisily. "Aye, captain, but at times the greatest of treasures are hidden within plain packages."

"Because you said this, I will try this unassuming brown door."

"I do not wish to sway your decision in any way, captain. The door to your right, even from the outside, bears all the trappings of great wealth."

"Thank you for your non-advice," I dryly remarked.

"My pleasure, captain."

Ms. Kitty grinned. "Captain, maybe you should sing a song to decide which one to choose!"

"How about `no'?" I pushed on the ugly metal handle, peering through the door frame. Beyond, a man lay on a white bed in a curtained room, wires and tubes running into his arms. "This is not treasure!"

I slammed the door shut double quick.

Gearhead rattled. "As you say, sir."

This comment unnerved me as much as the sight behind the brown door. I quickly turned the handle of the round one.

Beyond this one lay many objects of great wealth, a dragon's hoard of silver, gold and precious objects. With a gleam in my eye, I rushed in, filling my satchel with its contents.

A moment later, the entire cavern rumbled, great chunks of the ceiling dropping down from above, forcing us to flee.

The other door had vanished, but I had no time to think about it. We rushed back out of the cave, to where our ship awaited on the beach.

They say the seas used to be bright blue, and you could live on the land, the continents teeming with life and beauty. I do not know these times. As usual, walls of massive clouds near blotted out the morning sun.

The feeble sunlight glinted off the shiny cherry red hull of our ship, illuminated its chrome accents, but we needed the prow headlights to see where we were going.

You couldn't have found a stranger looking ship on any sea. Although its port side had the boring uniform tidiness of a military vessel, crazy colors sprang out from every surface on starboard, available spaces cluttered with all manner of sculptures and paintings.

A small army of gnomes, goblins, robots, fairies and winged balls of fur busied themselves with the masts, rigging and general cleanup. 

If I so much as spilled a drop of beer on the port side, one of the flying puffballs would scrub it away, leaving the place as neat as a pin. 

Starboard, though, never got touched. In fact, if I tipped over an inkwell, someone would come along and do fingerpainting with it.

Belowdecks, more of the same division: Messy crew beds on one side, beds on the other looking barely slept in, the ship's galley only looking half perfect, its library (amazingly vast) just halfway organized, starboard containing art supplies and musical instruments.

I climbed down into the cargo hold, home to large amounts of random bric-a-brac, again only half organized.

Miktam, my feathered first mate from Winglana, dug through my recently acquired treasures. "Useless...worthless...worthless...pointless..." 

Now out of the cave, we could see the items were Empties to be tossed off the side of the boat.

"I would have tried the other door," I muttered. "But I only saw a man on a bed."

The large yellow eyes on Miktam's owl-like visage narrowed. "Were there other doors in that room?"

I frowned. "I would have had to go through to find out."

"No use crying about it, then. Let's pull anchor."

Broad sails flapped from the upper decks, but the weather had become so mild as of late that we frequently made use of a magical black Crystal for propulsion.

The thing didn't look like a crystal. It squirmed when I touched it, and I came away from it feeling dirty.

A similar object, though pure white, projected a curious light show on the walls and ceiling in Captain's Quarters. It had a strange calming effect on me, bringing me to the verge of sleep whenever I stared at it too long.

This adventure had been a waste of time, but I preferred it to hellish Tortuga. Even now its antiseptic smells lingered in my nostrils, the monotonous beeping of sea birds forever echoing in my mind.

In Tortuga, we stopped for drinks at the tavern, but no one talked to us, and the buildings proved to be nothing but facades. The whole place made my head hurt.

We had set sail from Tortuga at the first light of dawn. Even that phrase sounded familiar, but I couldn't even remember my own name. I thought the magical treasure of Skull Cave would restore memories to me, but alas...

The Beast roared loud enough to shake the entire craft. As much as we tried to get rid of the damn thing, it refused to leave our vessel. The Captain kept it at bay with a whip and calmed it with book readings, but whenever he stepped away, the creature threatened to rip the craft to pieces.

It resided in a darkened corner of the cargo hold. I couldn't make out many details in the darkness, but its tentacles often lashed out at passing workers, its glowing red eyes always moving wildly about the compartment. It responded to The Crystal, but only so much.

I rushed to the bridge, catching The Captain at steering.

The fat balding man didn't look like pirate material. Although heavily bearded and mustached, his blouse and leggings barely fit, his red greatcoat stretching at the seams. Despite not being able to remember anything at all, I kept having this crazy thought that he looked a lot like my dad.

"The Beast is going to destroy the ship," I told him.

"You have nothing to fear. As long as you feed it, and let it know who's boss, it'll obey you."

"Easy for you to say."

"If you disagree with my methods, you can jump into the ocean right now and join the sharks. Any sailor worth his salt can keep that Beast in line, and if you believe you can't, I'll leave you off at the next deserted island."

I stormed away from him, red-faced.

DAY 2

No wind. We again used The Crystal.

I thought we'd made enough distance from Tortuga to avoid the antiseptic aroma, but it seems to be following us, or Captain is intentionally steering us back to that corner of hell. 

The seagulls also have not abated, maddeningly keeping pace with the Jolly Pearl, perching on the decks to harass us with their tuneless beeping. We've chased them away with brooms and firearms, yet they always sound like they're right in my ear. Gearhead says they make that sound sixty times a minute.

Sick of canned stew, I had the crew help me with some fishing.

Three Norgs fished off the railings. Although I had hopes the winged puffballs could live up to their reputations and bring in a large haul, it took hours before our nets brought up a single edible thing. We mostly found it brimming to the bursting point with junk like I found in the cave.

"I thought you said Skull Cavern was the source of all treasure found at sea," I muttered to Gearhead.

"It is, captain. But you chose the wrong door. It's possible, from now on, what we find in this ocean will be the last of it."

"Ho! Food at last!" cried my fellow fishermen.

Some of the items found in today's catch: A pillow fashioned in the shape of a bear, a skullcap with a duck brim, an idol of a muscular man with a skull face, paper cards depicting uniformed men with bats, a large purple cube with the word Nintendo on it, and a little glass orb with a pine tree design.

I picked up the orb, turning it about in my hands. Within there lay a memory, a child opening a box beneath a similar looking tree, two adults behind him arguing about a divorce.

"You should wait for Cook to prepare that. You'll get sick."

"Yes. I was merely checking to see if we'd picked up any Empties in this mix."

"The First Mate is merely making an excuse. We Norgs would never mistake an Empty for a thing of essence." Then, flying in my face, "I challenge you to recognize essence material when you're paw deep in Coke bottles, 1040 forms, political campaign fliers, socks, and sales magazines! We're up to our necks in meaninglessness!"

I raised my hands defensively. "You're right, Bobo. I was just feeling a little hungry."

"Hmph!" Bobo buzzed off like an angry hornet, returning to his job.

Cook, another floating puffball, tried to work his magic on our catch, but didn't have much to work with. We had some of a "wedding" and "partial childhood", but the "first day at school" had been stretched too thin, and a lot of it had gone sour from age. We had to throw a lot of it out. Not one of us came away with full stomachs. We returned from the galley, setting down our nets once again.

All of a sudden, a massive green figure in a mask and robe arose Poseidon-like from the ocean depths.

Behind him, two other sea giants emerged, a man and a woman.

"Brian, are you in there?" called the man.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                             

"He can't hear you," replied the one in the mask. "His brain activity is minimal at best."

"We can't just pull the plug!" the woman protested. "What if he's still in there? What if he...wakes up?"

The man answered, "He's not going to wake up."

"But-"

"It's a quality of life issue, Sarah. He's been lying in that bed so long, everything has atrophied. He can't even eat or breathe unassisted."

The woman sobbed. "I know, I know."

The two held each other as the masked one caused waves to swell over the sides of my boat.