The Whale's Song (Book 1)

Chapter Three. Flashback: Absent Barbecue

'Name?'

'Oscar Wilder.'

'Occupation?'

'Modern history teacher. Listen, are you sure all these questions are necessary? I've already bought my passage. I'm not enlisting.'

'Modern history teacher?' The red haired woman in the skin tight, navy blue dress looked up at him. Her thin pencil scribbled the line down while her eyes blinked at him.

'Yes. I teach history,' confirmed Oscar, stepping lightly from one foot to the next to ease his aching feet. 'To kids,' he added, as an afterthought.

'So, like, when the space race began, the presidents of ancient America, that sort of thing?'

'No,' Oscar shook his head and transferred the strap of his bag over to his other shoulder. 'That's ancient history. I teach modern. As in the Galactic Presidents of Thera, the colonisation of Mars, the day Jupiter ascended from being merely a dot in the sky to a holiday destination. Which, speaking of holiday destinations and Jupiter, am I done? I've been on my feet since 3am travelling, I'd really like to get to my cabin and have a shower and lie down.'

'What's the one where people nosey in to other people's lives?'

Oscar sighed, removed the strap of his bag from his left shoulder back to his right, sighed again, and let it drop on the floor. 'Psychiatrist?' he offered.

'No, not that one. It's to do with history, looking at links and stuff like that.'

'Oh. Sociology? Anthropology? That's in cultural studies. That's a subject I don't teach. I did a bit of sociology, but that's not my field.'

'Lovely.' The flight attendant nodded and returned to her absent scribblings in front of her. 'Date of birth?'

'Look, we've already done this!' exclaimed Oscar. 'I put in all these details when I sighed up for a cabin six months ago. All my details, birthday, place of work, name and occupation should already be in your computers. I'm already on the ship for goodness's sake! I'm just here to collect my key.'

'Oh! So you've already booked?' the attendant asked, eyes widening. Her hand paused, pushing the tip of the pencil onto the pad. The lead tip broke and the jagged end went through the page. 'Why didn't you say so?' Pushing back her chair, the attendant pulled out a key with a mini 'Whale's Song' keychain attached to it, and the number of his cabin, and pressed it in to his hand. '52nd floor, corridor Absent Barbecue, room 105.'

With a nod of relief and thanks, Oscar took the key, tossed it in to his pocket, picked up his bag and turned to go. He stopped halfway across the floor when it hit him and he turned back. 'Absent Barbecue?'

'Corridor AB. When we run out of letters we just double up and repeat,' the attendant explained happily.

'But Absent Barbecue?'

'It's code,' she explained. 'A for Absent, B for Barbecue, C for Chicken, D for Duck and so on.'

'I guessed it was code, but Absent and Barbecue? What happened to the original NATO phonetic alphabet? You know, Alfa, Bravo, Charlie, Delta.'

The attendants face fell with a look of shock. 'You mean someone else also thought of the same idea for using words to spell out the alphabet?'

Oscar stared blankly back at the girl. She was, he guessed, maybe mid-twenties, not much younger than he was for sure. He nodded in disbelief. 'Yeah. It was created back in the 20th century*. It's the most popular form of alphabet code in the history of human civilisation. It's still used today.'

'Hah!' exclaimed the girl, rising and pointing a long, painted nail at him. 'Gotcha! That's Ancient history!'

Bewildered, Oscar could only nod, his brain feeling numb under the strange exchange of words that had just gone between them. Grabbing his bag, he trudged out of the room, his feet weighing a millions tons as he searched for an elevator to take him to 52nd floor, corridor Absent Barbeque, room 105.

~

*Don't believe me? Look it up. It's all there on Wikipedia.