It’s A Girl

CHAPTER 1

“It’s a girl!” The panicked static crashed through Hud’s walky-talky and crackled into the well-salted air of the early morning. This, of course, referred to the gender of the puking passenger who it was now Hud’s job to hustle over to, pronto. He had never found gender to much affect the consistency or violence of the stuff once it had gotten familiar with the deck of the ship, but.

The kid was throwing a proper fit by the time Hud arrived, which did not behoove her at all while she had the decorative shoulder pads on. Dad, posed with his chest still thrust out and thinking he was pulling it off quite nicely thank you very much with the imposing columns in the backdrop and his novelty badges of distinguished military service winking in the morning light, seemed reluctant to part with his pleasant daydream in order to address the quickly escalating vomit crisis. Fortunately, Hud knew Section II of Article III of Das Handbook called for all Smilez Soldierz (SS), in the event of any Sub-Optimal Passenger Cheer, to use any and all necessary measures of “Frivolity, Shenanigans, and Rambunctiousness” to return the Passenger to Proper Conditions.

During his downtime Hud sometimes tried to calculate what velocity a medium-heavy midwestern-type guy in his deep thirties at a bare sprint would have to reach in order to break through the recently installed Anti-Jumping Nets ringing the third floor deck. But these were Deviant Daydreams, strictly verboten for all Cheer-Tier employees; so he just did a little dance as the kid wailed on and the sea breeze whispered nonsense over the chattering deck.

The station’s Kameraman (whose problem this was not no sir thank you very much), deep into his own shift, took this opportunity to stare wistfully through the starboard nets thinking god-knows-what as Hud started throwing in some peek-a-boos and Dad seemed to snap out of it a bit and Mom and the siblings shuffled around and fiddled with the Foto-Booth’s matching brown Stormtrooper costumes and eventually the Sub-Optimal Child started to chill out and approach Proper Conditions.

Hudson Dunnle had two months out of five still remaining on his contract (binding) and he was of slightly above-average height. He took some amount of pride in this