Consistency

"Other books may not be wrong, just different."

--J. K. Bollard, Preface to Webster's Instant Word Guide 1980

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This publishing company is a sinking ship, and I'm a rat, scavenging. Today I nibbled on a guide to the new textbook, an Excel spreadsheet in imitation of other Michigan textbook companies, a lesson-by-lesson breakdown of how the textbook attacks certain subjects. It was a colorful meal, full of complex cross-references and standard formatting: frozen columns, stacks of colored bricks, fun with borders and boldface. Bon appetit.

It's one of my last meals I'll eat here. It's also one of the last meals they'll prepare here. Like I said, the ship's going down, like the Edmund Fitzgerald in chapter eight. "The legend lives on..."

The cook laughs on the phone, but he's dying inside. His father, the senile captain, sits in his quarters, licking envelopes, shuffling and reordering papers as if it mattered. Fifty years on the sea, and it all comes down to this: a slow, steady rising of the water, or a slow, steady sinking of a ship. Half full, half empty, he's going down.

And then I think: rats can only swim for so long. What happens when my ship starts to go down?