Excerpt: The Land of Invisible Dreams

“The meeting is adjourned,” captain Okabe Keiko said. “Thank you, team, for the good work.”

The small group of people started to rise.

“John, stay here for a while, if you will,” captain then added.

John Fowler leaned further back in his chair and waited while others went out one by one, giving him with the usual “ahhh, you're having a detention... again” look with various degrees of cheering and contempt.

Okabe Keiko, too, waited for others to leave and meeting room doors to close. After a carefully held pause, she sat down on the opposite side of the table, regarding John carefully.

“You are disrupting the teamwork,” she said.

John grinned.

“You mean me telling Patricia that she has nice breasts?” he clarified. “Come on, cap'n, she didn't mind. She's a pal and gets this kind of fun. I'd never tell you that you have good breasts.”

He held a second's pause and added, “because you don't get this kind of stuff, do you.”

Okabe Keiko managed to get hold of herself.

“No, I don't,” she said. “But your sense of humor is not the only thing that concerns me.”

John swayed his chair back and forth, balancing carefully.

“I've noticed that you have not filed the team evaluation reports,” captain said. “And your participation in the teambuilding games leaves much room for improvement.” She paused, and then added in a softer tone, “Is there a problem? I can put you in touch with your therapist. I know he stayed on Earth but we have a reserved communication space just for occasions like this.”

John let the chair fall back on all four with a loud crash and stuck his fists on the table.

“There is no problem, cap'n,” he said, mimicking her levelled voice. “I participate in your games just in a way that I see fit. And I do not waste my time doing useless reports and following even more useless rituals. I'm here to work, not to build a team or play in the sandbox or whatever your corporate psychological rubbish suggests I should do. I am here to see that damn planet and to figure out whether we can live there before we choke in our own shit there on Earth.”

“We are far from choking in anything,” Okabe Keiko replied. “There is absolutely no crisis back home. Our expedition is primarily a scientific one, and the possibility of colonization Washington-II is not for us to speculate upon.”

John snorted.

“No crisis! Now who needs to get in touch with her therapist?”

This finally tipped the captain off. She leaned towards John, staring in his eyes as a cat preparing to jump and tear the skin off his face.

“I am serioulsy considering removal of you from the landing team,” she said. “We need a system analyst down there, but do we need one that bad? I don't think so. So consider yourself warned, John Fowler.”

She stood up, suggesting that the conversation is over.

“You're free to go.”

John opened his mouth to snap back, but decided against it. Instead, he nodded curtly and strode off the room. He resented the fact that all the doors in this spaceship were automatic. And this was not the first nor the last time when he wanted to leave the room by banging the door.