Prompt 13: Dealing With It
Snoball sat behind the counter of Donaldson's Toy Store. After a busy afternoon, the customers had all finally gone home, and in thirty minutes the shop would close. Snoball pushed at his fake glasses, adjusting them on his nose. At least he had been able to take lunch during the hour when Mr. Donaldson and the soldier, Cane, had closed the store "for reasons." And then when he came back with coffees for everyone, the store was a wreck and customers waiting outside the door. What a day.
He rested his head on his arm lying across the counter and leaned against the warm hum of the cash register as if it were a pillow. Outside the shop windows, people and cars passed by in a rush to the work day, and for some reason all Snoball could think about was that he sure did his jingle hat. Coincidentally, the jingle bell ring tone on his phone began to ring. He retrieved the tablet from under the register and drew the green Answer button across the screen.
Galacial's angled but graceful face appeared, her eyes heavily coated in ice blue makeup. "Hello, Snoball," she said without smiling. Her head filled the screen but around the edges Snoball identified the glass square tiles of Glacial's office window that looked opaquely out over the laboratory deep underground at Santa's workshop. "Mr. Donaldson isn't answering his phone and I need to speak to him immediately." As director of the technology division, she was usually quick to get to the point.
Snoball nodded, already sliding off the stool. "Sure, sure," he said. "I think he's just in his office." He turned down the corridor and stepped over a trail of large wooden blocks strewn about the floor that ended at Donaldson's closed office door. He turned the phone so that Glacial could see what he saw.
"What am I looking at?" she asked.
"Toy blocks, looks like. And that's his office." Balancing the outward-facing tablet in his left hand, he knocked on the door and then without waiting turned the knob to enter. The office within was dim with the lights off and the shades drawn halfway down the window behind Donaldson's large desk.
Snoball stepped in, using the illuminated face of the tablet to search the room. "Mr. Donaldson? I have Glacial on the horn."
The bluish light panned over a short wall of dark brown building blocks built in a semicircle against the blank wall to the left. Standing on top of the wall was a brightly colored Buzz Lightyear doll and even brighter colored Woody. Someone behind the toy brick wall was holding them steady at their feet.
"Stop right therrrrrreeee," Mr. Donaldson said in his best Woody imitation voice. "There's a snake in your boot." Then he shook the Buzz doll. "Out, out and away!" He lifted the spaceman toy menacingly. "You heard me -- out, out and away!"
"Mr. Donaldson!" Glacial snapped commandingly. "You're going to have a breakdown now, Mr. Donaldson, now, in the middle of a mission?
Donaldson peeked his eyes over the wall between the two toys. "I'm not having a breakdown! I'm ... thinking." He disappeared again behind the wall. Snoball figured that his boss had to be stretched on the floor to hide so well.
Glacial made a noise that sounded like a grunt a doubt. She chose to move on instead of arguing. "I looked into the somberium, as you asked," she said, returning to her flat tone. "There isn't much, we're still tearing down the organic structure of a pebble found on the Dwarvonians so we only have the notes from the original incident. we're lucky to have those, the shop apparently wasn't very good at paperwork back then."
The Buzz Lightyear doll appeared above the wall. "We weren't very experienced with criminal investigations back then," Donaldson said through Buzz. "Or war. No one wanted to write down those things."
"Unfortunate," Glacial said. "Somberium is a rare metal discovered by the dwarves at the turn of the first millennium but they kept it secret because of its unique qualities. In its powdered form, it causes deep and meaningful depression in humans, and makes them highly susceptible. As a mixture in gas, it renders its victims unconscious and extensive memory loss. That's how the Dwarvonians were able to take you captive in the first place. You had no recollection after going to bed that evening."
Buzz disappeared behind the wall, replaced by Woody's head poking up over the edge, his head shaking and twisting from one side to the other. "Do you - do you think that's what they're digging up in the mine? Why are they using kids, and why does nobody care?"
"Well, I think your first question answers your last. They've somehow poisoned the entire town with traces of somberium, enough to numb their reasoning."
Woody stopped shaking back and forth. Donaldson, unseen, pushed up the doll's articulated arm so that Woody's pointed finger pushed up the front of his cowboy hat. "Well, that sounds downright dastardly."
"So can't we just wear gas masks to rescue Biscuit?" Snoball interrupted without thinking. Mr. Donaldson stared at him and he heard Glacial clear her throat.
"Yes, probably," she said. "If we need to. Have you heard from him?"
Buzz was raised above the wall. "We have not heard from him," Donaldson said, gesturing with Buzz. "But we have a source who’s talking; he says no Biscuit is in no harm. They're just mining somberium."
Glacial snorted disapprovingly. "In no harm, unless they use too much gas."
The Buzz and Woody dolls turned to regard each other, and then Mr. Donaldson sat up again behind the wall. "We're going to need a cure," he said to the phone. His face was less red than Snoball had ever seen. Less jolly. "Is there enough of a sample for that?"
The white-haired elf shrugged. "Just a pebble's worth. We'll do what we can."
Donaldson nodded. "Thank you. Send it with Comet when you can."
"Yes, sir," she answered, and the line disconnected.
Snoball cradled the table against his chest. Donaldson continued to sit in the middle his toy block fort. "Do you need anything, sir?"
The large man put the dolls aside and dug his phone out of his shirt pocket. "I need to make some phone calls. Why don't you track us down some dinner?"
"Will do," Snoball answered, backing out of the room. He shut the door as Donaldson started punching at the buttons on his phone. He returned to the shop floor and the comings and going of the world outside the windows as he turned the "Open" sign to "Closed."