Checking Out Equipment

The first page of the binder was a list of equipment. Annie strained to read it. The pain in every muscle flared as she tried to turn the page. 

"Make sure," he chastened. "That you sign out everything and get approval before you touch any of the company equipment.  It’s very expensive and we don’t like to make our teammates go looking for things.  Have either me or Perm sign for everything." 

Annie didn’t know his name and suspected he would be furious if she asked.

He had the tall, slightly lumpy build of a former athlete. He slammed the door behind him as he left. 

Perm was in the room, strutting around angrily. 

"Um, hey, Perm--"

"Broomapep!" shouted perm, angrily, and snickered.

"Uh, Ok. Um, can I sign out the equipment?"

Perm looked even more annoyed, and barked, "Can you please get it all ready and sign it out first?" 

Annie sighed nervously and went to the cupboard, trying very hard to identify the objects without having to ask.

She couldn’t.

"Uh, what’s this?" to which Perm, who was doing nothing but stomp around the room, was very upset to be addressed and to have to help.

Perm angrily tossed items into the box and stomped off to another corner of the room. 

Annie nervously took note of all of them, including the little orange square with a little screen. 

The door slammed and Annie realized Perm hadn’t signed. She counted the items and counted the list. At least the number was right. 

"Why are you touching the items without getting a manager to sign them out first?" condemned the tall, lumpy guy, who had silently reentered the room. 

"Uh, Perm said--"

"Don’t go blaming other people for things," he scolded. 

She didn’t even know where the sign-out form or book or whatever was, but the guy was angst-fully ripping it off a shelf and slamming it onto the table in the middle of the room. 

He angrily scribbled his initials, which Annie couldn’t quite read and strode out. 

"You have to go now. Your car is here," scolded Perm, reappearing. "OK! OK! OK! Hurry up! Hurry up!" Perm barked every syllable. 

Perm continued to grunt and shout as Annie packed everything into a box and, suffered every second of the way to the car. 

She tried to read the equipment manual in the car, but she fell asleep.

She was jolted awake as the vehicle stopped and someone slapped her, hard.

She fought hard not to scream or fight back against whoever was attacking her. It was just the driver smirking in self-satisfaction.

"Get out now," he shouted. Without asking, he pulled out her bag and her box and depostited them in the dust.  Annie looked around in the vehicle to make sure nothing was being left. The guy smacked her again and pointed at the boxes, snickering some more.

She tried to smile politely, but he gave her a dirty look and hastened to disappear. The last thing he did was point vaguely at the mountains. There was a comical vrroooooooom and he was gone. 

Annie checked the paper map, then the tablet map. The tablet didn’t connect, but she had saved the destination.

There was an arch around a staircase.

She thought too late of running after the retreating vehicle.

Through the thick cloud of pain she felt a minor wave of panic at the circumstances.

She tried reading the binder. It was still too blurry. The cover said "White Drop Island."

She could read most of the equipment list. She saw fuzzy paragraphs. She looked for diagrams. Having tried, she packed it up. 

She arranged everything so it would fit together. The equipment container had straps. She realized with embarrassment that it had been a tall enormous backpack all along. She could fit the sad little bag of her belongings inside with little smooshing. 

She folded up the paper map so she could easily look at it again and again. 

It felt like an hour or so before the stairs ran out. It could have been longer. Looking down, Annie could no longer see the arch or the road. There was only a rough cement path winding through thick leaves. The leaves were broad and oily. They slapped Annie in the face. She held up  her hand painfully to try and protect, but the branches seemed to swing at her from behind.   

Her face felt heavy with the oil, so thick it tickled in some places. She didn’t know what time of day it was. The light filtered through the leaves, but was it growing or waning? 

Could she stop and rest? Could she stop and sleep? She decided instead to keep moving slowly.

Her watch would not show the time. It only flashed the pinwheel of trying to connect. Her tablet did the same when she set the bag down and pulled it out.

The world dimmed, but she couldn’t tell if it was night falling, or just sleep blindness.

She woke up, and panicked again. She felt the bag to see if anything felt broken. She was afraid to take anything out in case it got lost here in the woods.

She hoped she was going in the right direction.  The oily leaves gave way to regular looking plants and trees with bright flowers.

There were deciduous and coniferous trees, and creeping vines. She couldn’t find any evidence of animals, but she had been bitten all over by insects. The itch of bug bites blended with the itch of oil drip, on top of the pain from all of her bruises. 

And then, after all of time seemed to pass, there came more stairs. Or were they the same stairs? No. The path was gravel now, and it had been concrete at the start. These stairs were wood, like they were recycled railroad ties. 

She looked out and could now see a massive green valley.  The light seemed to be...day. She wasn’t sure what time.  There was a full sky of clouds. 

It was cute little well-organized suburb with some adorable bridges over clean rivers and a patina-domed building in the middle.

She thought it was a ripe time to decide what to do. There was a long, flat area a few steps down. She carefully pulled out the binders and searched for contact information. Most of the pages were blanks charts for recording the data and backup for the digital files.

There was no contact information. It just said what was known and believed about Tear Drop Island, and she found she still couldn’t focus on written words. She saw the gray lines of the paragraphs, and she saw words she expected to see, like "electricity," but not much else. 

She wasn’t sure if the tall guy had called ahead. Probably not. She practiced trying to say something as she walked down the stairs. There was a little green area at the bottom. The stairs were sloped in a really annoying way that made her feel like she was going to fall with every step. 

She looked around at the sky periodically to see if the light was changing. What was this place called? White Drop Island? White Tear Island? She looked at the notebook again, and the map.

"White-drop Island," it said.

She reached the green area and sat down, looking at the notebooks and binders. She also checked all of the devices to make sure they weren’t broken. Most of the binders were manuals for using and repairing the devices. There was also a manual for repairing broken equipment in houses that stored electricity.

She woke up again. Had it been another day? It was day. 

She was on the soft, grassy ground. Right in front of her was a pair of feet.

Next Chapter: Hi Muffy