Captain's Log: Southport Sector Activity

Captain's Log: Stardate 2026.182

Attention Federation Auditors: The GMS Coastal Voyager is holding position above the Southport Sector this morning for an on-site training exercise.

Intelligence reports indicate that a Federation-class production unit established a forward base in Southport overnight to create what the local population calls a "movie." 

Five of Five, our onboard Adaptive Intelligence system, reports the movie's code name refers to a cinematic adaptation of something called "The Summer I Turned Pretty."

Our mission parameters are simple: Ambassador Genome, supported by Communications Officer Joy, will observe and document the production from a respectful distance, then return without being noticed and without interfering.

Pre-Dawn Departure

Earlier that morning, Chief Anxiety ran the pre-mission checklist three times: once for assurance, twice to confirm the first run-through, and a third time because, why not?

"Captain Amy," said Five of Five, "the away team has left already."

"What the hell! Doesn't anyone on this mindship wait for my authorization anymore?"

"The chronometer records the team departed ahead of schedule," confirmed Officer Reason.

"Of course they did," replied the captain. "Especially with that airhead, Joy, on the away team."

"I suspect the Ambassador's Elevated Mission Anticipation had something to do with it," added Reason.

"At least we'll be ready when they arrive," the captain muttered. "Five of Five relocated the lower-deck remote sensor node to the Ambassador's equipment bag. Not my idea, but I approved it after the fact."

"The feed is coming in clean," reported Major Reason, "aside from what appears to be the edge of a granola bar that has, according to remote sensors, been in the bag long enough to achieve consciousness."

The Bridge Watches the Bridge

The Cape Fear Memorial Bridge appeared on the viewscreen as Coastal Voyager, a mile overhead, crossed the Cape Fear River.

"Beautiful," remarked Dr. Downer, who'd joined the bridge to watch the away team's work. She hummed a tune Five of Five couldn't find in its databanks, but it didn't question her; to do so would have been like diving headfirst into a rabbit hole on purpose.

"Morning light luminosity is nominal," said Major Reason, reviewing dawn-light spectra with the focus of a man who has found, at last, an assignment worthy of him.

"I've filed contingencies for fog, rain, equipment failure, crowd interference, and one specific scenario involving seagulls," said Chief Anxiety from belowdecks. "I'd like it noted I have computed no contingencies involving a ferret. The probability calculation was overtaxing the processors."

"Cadet Reginald has nothing to do with this mission, Chief."

"I'm aware, Captain. I'm simply establishing the record. I don't trust that ferret."

Captain Amy stared at the streaming video. Cables ran across the cobblestones like tributaries of an electrical river. Equipment cases were stacked with the logic of people who know exactly what they'll need. Crew members moved with the purposeful efficiency of specialists who've done this before and will find it no less meaningful for the repetition.

"It's perfect," Joy's voice was the first heard from the away team, and for once no one on the bridge could argue.

Perimeter Established

"Perimeter holding," Five of Five reported, mostly to itself, because presuming to be important is how Adaptive Intelligence systems stay sane.

"The Ambassador is filming," Reason confirmed. "Joy is providing…" he paused, choosing the word with visible care, "appreciative commentary. All readings nominal."

"Bag status?" asked the captain, who'd learned over countless reconnaissance missions to constantly check on the away equipment.

"Bag is secure," said Five of Five. "Bag contents are…" A pause is merely a pause, but a pause from an A-5 system is as concerning as a five-alarm fire. "Bag contents are in motion."

The Reginald Maneuver 

"Somebody check the bag!" The instruction was reasonable, logical, and useless, arriving several seconds after the bag had stopped moving.

On the view-screen, something small, furry, and determined emerged from the equipment bag, paused to assess the production team, then set off across fifteen meters of Southport waterfront with the unhurried confidence of something determined to see what's up.

"It's Reginald!" said Joy, sounding almost delighted.

"That's a violation of Federation Directive Section F4, paragraph 2B," Reason declared. "Hail the Ambassador!"

"I don't think it will help," said Anxiety, with the terrible calm of a man watching a chess clock run out.

A production assistant, wearing an expression of professional efficiency and carrying an official-looking clipboard, said something into her headset. A camera operator turned. A second crew member pointed toward the equipment bag. Two other crew members approached the bag with body language that proved they were enjoying the diversion, but trying to look professional. 

"Is that…?“ said one of the team.

"Dook," said Reginald, confirming the team's suspicions. 

"RAT!" shouted the first production assistant, and the perimeter popped like a soap bubble, all at once and without ceremony.

"Sensor data indicates the Ambassador is no longer on the perimeter," reported Five of Five.

"I can see that."

"He is, in fact, now part of the story."

"I can see that too."

After-Action

"I'd like it entered into the log that I predicted this," said Anxiety. "Not the ferret specifically. But this random fluctuation in the quantum wave."

“So noted, Chief," said Captain Amy without warmth. "I feel so much worse now."

On the main viewer, the Ambassador was no longer recording production activities. He was handling his unscheduled celebrity, not well, and yet with tremendous confidence. He was laughing with the production assistant while Reason's "optimal shot window" datastream showed the cameras recording the kind of footage that can't be scheduled, and can't be faked.
 
"Mission status," Captain Amy dictated for the record. "The away team has made unauthorized contact with the observed population. “The Prime Directive of non-interference has been…” She paused, stiffened her lip, and set her chin. “…revised. By Mindfleet Cadet Reginald.”

Captain's Log, Supplemental: 

Cadet Reginald's presence on the away mission was unauthorized. His methodology was unorthodox. His results were undeniable.

As per Federation protocol: Prime Directive has been compromised. The perimeter was breached, and unauthorized contact was made with the indigenous population. Mission TSITP is a failure.

Field Study Addendum:

Cadet Reginald, via MaT-1 Adaptive Translation System

The Captain logged the mission a failure, but what I do is merely my nature. It may be unorthodox, but failure is procedurally impossible.

The Southport sector is exciting. I plan to return. I'm not saying I have, but I may have already hidden something in the equipment locker.

Reginald out.

“Dook.”

Tracking RJ Decker

We had the production schedule. We had the address. We had eighty-five confirmed crew members, a police presence, and a City of Wilmington filming permit with our names practically engraved on it.

This was, as Amy describes it, the easiest assignment we’d ever been given.

Hold on to that sentence the way you hold on to a receipt for something you’re pretty sure you’ll have to return.

It started somewhere around Carolina Beach, which has apparently decided to renovate every road on Pleasure Island simultaneously.

Wynd Horse Has Opinions

Wynd Horse’s GPS did what any reasonable navigation system does when the world stops matching its internal map: It panicked quietly and started making decisions I can only describe as creative.

“Recalculating,” it said, with the tone of someone who had given up but was contractually obligated to report its status.

“That’s not comforting,” Amy said. “That’s the voice of a system in denial.”

Instead of delivering us to the quiet residential parking near the filming set for this episode of the R. J. Decker television series, Wynd Horse deposited us in a retail district on the edge of the Carolina Beach Boardwalk.

Traffic was thick enough to make one what to chew the rug.

Amy made the executive decision to park and walk rather than take our chances in traffic.

This was the same stretch of Boardwalk where we’d previously suffered the humiliation of the teenager and the ice-cream sprinkles. Returning to the scene of an old embarrassment on the way to a brand-new one felt less like bad luck and more like the universe reusing a set.

The Man with the Lighting Rig

Then hope appeared. Real, tangible hope, wearing a backpack.

A young man emerged ahead of us, pushing a sophisticated-looking lighting rig mounted on a rolling tripod. An equipment bag hung from his shoulder. He moved with the brisk, purposeful walk of someone who knew exactly where to find a film set.

“Eureka!” I said.

“Don’t say Eureka,” Amy replied. “You haven’t discovered anything. You’ve found a man pushing a lighting rig.”

“A man with a lighting rig who clearly works in production.”

“Fine. Follow the man. But I want it noted in the log that I have reservations.”

For a while, following the lighting rig felt like genuine detective work: the quiet, purposeful trailing of a suspect in a movie, except that in movies, the trail usually leads to what you’re looking for.

Ours led steadily away from the residential neighborhood where filming was supposed to be happening.

“He probably knows a shortcut,” I said.

“A shortcut to nowhere, like that swamp road we took after a local told us not to.”

“Amy, production people know all the back routes. This is probably faster.”

Amy didn’t respond, which, in Amy terms, is the verbal equivalent of crossing her arms and pouting.

The man led us behind shuttered beach shops and down a service alley that smelled faintly of low tide and bad oysters.

I want to be clear that at no point did I consider this a bad sign.

“This is clearly a route the production assistants use to avoid congestion,” I said. “Very savvy.”

“Or he’s cutting through here to buy a sandwich.”

“Production people don’t stop for sandwiches mid-shot, Amy. There’s a whole department for that. Craft services. I’ve read about it.”

The alley gave way to a gravel lot designed, apparently, for turning an ankle. The cart’s rollers began making a sound like a shopping cart with a personal grudge.

“He’s slowing down,” I said. “We must be really close now.”

“Or gravel is hard to push a cart through.”

“Both things can be true at the same time, Amy. That’s a very good sign, structurally.”

Nothing tracks

“We’re now four blocks past the last residential structure,” she said. “There’s a bait shop to our left. It’s closed. It’s been closed, I would guess, since before you were born.”

“Bait shops are exactly the kind of unglamorous local color a location scout loves. This tracks.”

“Nothing tracks. You’re tracking someone going somewhere but you don't know where.”

“I am tracking a man with a lighting rig, Amy. That’s the single most trackable thing a person can track.”

Fifteen minutes later, the man arrived at an equipment truck parked so far from both the filming location and the original traffic jam that it might as well have been in another county.

He loaded the lighting rig into the truck, latched the door, and walked away in a direction that had nothing to do with us.

“He wasn’t going to set,” Amy said. “He was leaving set. We followed a man in the exact opposite direction of the thing we were trying to find for fifteen minutes, with total confidence.”

“In my defense—”

“There is no defense. There is only geography, and you have failed it.”

The Great Debate

“There’s only one thing to do,” I said. “We backtrack to Wynd Horse and drive around the construction. We still have hours of filming left today.”

“Or,” Amy said, “we accept that this outing has been cursed since that lame excuse for a navigation system decided it knew better than the actual roads. I say we cut our losses and head back to Coastal Tacos.”

“That’s not the spirit of The Circular Journey.”

“The spirit of The Circular Journey,” Amy replied, “is that we set out for one destination and end up somewhere else entirely. I’m suggesting we lean into that theme a little early today.”

We compromised, in the loosest possible sense of the word, by asking strangers for directions.

This turned out to be its own special category of disaster.

Everybody Is an Expert

“Oh, they wrapped that weeks ago,” one confident stranger told us. “You can watch it already. It’s on NBC. No, wait—CBS. One of those.”

RJ Decker is an ABC production. Nothing about his information was correct, yet he delivered it with the certainty of a man reading from a teleprompter.

Someone else insisted the production was filming downtown, near the courthouse.

“It’s a crime drama, you know. The police are always going to the courthouse to see the judge.”

He was wrong, too, but I admired his confidence.

The Verdict

By the time we made it back to Wynd Horse, defeated, sunburned, and no closer to South Churchill Drive than we’d been an hour earlier, I felt compelled to put the disaster into words.

“Of all the messes, in all the set locations, in all the film productions we’ve covered,” I said, “this is the worst one we’ve gotten ourselves into.”

Amy didn’t pause a beat.

“You have a very short memory,” she said. “This doesn’t come close to the humiliation of you thinking that teenager on the boardwalk was a star in a Disney movie. He thought you were a cop.”

She wasn’t wrong.

She’s very rarely wrong, which is, as I’ve mentioned before, precisely the problem with Amy.

I’m reminding myself that there’s always tomorrow. So until next time, my friend—assuming Wynd Horse and I are still speaking—see you on set.

First Light Dispatch

The world ends every night. Most people don’t mention it, probably because it ends so quietly and returns so reliably that we’ve stopped noticing the miracle. 

I notice because I always wake before the day finds its rhythm, pulled from sleep by a feeling I can only describe as dread with no return address, courtesy of Princess Amy, my amygdala, who interprets the ordinary darkness of 5 a.m. as proof that something has gone permanently wrong.

Amy is the neurological equivalent of a car alarm triggered by a leaf falling on the hood. She means well, of course. In fact, she spends approximately eighteen hours a day trying to save my life. But in the small hours of the morning, her assessment of the situation rarely matches mine. So I do the only sensible thing: I leave her to it, make coffee, and take up my position at the French doors.

The backyard has a particular quality at this hour that resists description but insists on being witnessed. The darkness isn't fully dark; it's that deep blue-grey that belongs exclusively to the half hour when the night has spent itself but the day hasn't yet committed. The oak trees are silhouettes. The fence is a suggestion. The bird feeders hang motionless, empty of visitors, patient as monks.

I stand there with my first cup of Jah’s mercy, waiting for the world to reconstitute itself. It always has, but for a moment, Amy and I wonder whether this will be the morning it doesn’t. It’s one of the few things we agree on at this hour.

A lone dove arrives first. She descends from the scrub oak before any other creature stirs and lands on the feeder platform with a soft, decisive thump. She doesn’t begin eating right away. She simply sits in the pewter light, as though appointed to verify that the backyard is still where they left it. The First Dove of Morning. Inspector of Dawns.

Satisfied with her report, she begins to eat, and her presence seems to give the others permission to follow. A cardinal appears in the crape myrtle, not wearing the vivid red of his afternoon self, but a muted, sleepy crimson, as though he, like me, needs a moment to find his full color. A chickadee arrives, then another. From somewhere in the jasmine, the Carolina wren announces herself with a single declarative note, as if to say, “I’m here!"—which is really all any of us can say for sure.

The light shifts. It begins gradually and then erupts all at once, the way important things do.

Then Breezer appears: the spokesperson for the squirrel homeowners association. Breezer of the first light is not the same Breezer who stages afternoon raids from the fence top or wages campaigns against the crow gang. This Breezer moves deliberately, almost cautiously, as though the morning were something to be handled with reverence.

Breezer follows his usual route from the oak to the fence to the feeder, but without his customary theatrical flourish. No tail-flagging. No pausing to survey his domain with that particular squirrelly expression suggesting he’s already three moves ahead of everyone else. He simply arrives, chooses his breakfast with quiet discernment, and settles on the fence post to eat.

I watch him and think about the night he's just come through, tucked into his drey with the darkness outside and the world temporarily dissolved. What memories does a squirrel carry into sleep? What, if anything, follows him out of it?

He pauses mid-meal and looks directly at the French doors; directly at me. We regard each other across the silver morning air. A moment of mutual recognition passes: two creatures who have once again made it safely to the other side of the night. Amy observes the exchange in uncharacteristic silence. I take that as agreement.

Mr. Woodrow, the woodpecker, lands in his breakfast tree with the gravitas of a judge taking the bench. He surveys the assembled company: the Dove Sisters of the Immaculate Order of Brunswick, now gathered in full congregation; the cardinal, restored to the proper red of day; and Breezer, finishing his breakfast with quiet efficiency. Woodrow delivers three measured drumbeats against the bark. The day may proceed.

From beyond the fence, a dog offers a single bark. It's not an alarm, just an announcement: I'm still here!

The light is fully golden now. The dove sisters glow in it. The cardinal blazes. Even the fence posts look distinguished. Something in my chest, braced since approximately 4 a.m., loosens by a degree or two. Amy, I notice, is begining to pace the floor of my limbic system in anticipation of something that I can only imagine.

And then I see the signal that the opening act is winding down: Breezer’s tail begins to twitch. Slowly at first, just the tip, a subtle oscillation that could almost be mistaken for the morning breeze. But I know better. The twitch is the squirrel equivalent of cracking one’s knuckles, rolling up one’s sleeves, or offering the faint smile that precedes an opening gambit.

 The contemplative creature of five minutes ago has vanished as completely as the blue-gray darkness. In his place is the Breezer I know best: alert, calculating, and radiating the particular energy of someone who has just had a very good idea.

He glances back at me briefly, then races along the fence at breathtaking speed, disappearing into the oak branches in a rustle and flash of tail.

The dove sisters watch him go with what I can only interpret as resignation. Mr. Woodrow delivers another measured drumbeat, which my intuitive neurons recognize as meaning, Here we go again. The cardinal retreats to the crape myrtle. The day has officially begun, and apparently, so has whatever Breezer has planned.

I finish my coffee at the French doors, watching the backyard settle into its daytime rhythms: the negotiations and skirmishes, the territorial claims and peanut politics, the ongoing saga of creatures engaged in the urgent business of being alive.

Deep within my midbrain, Amy clears her throat, which can only mean she has thoughts about the day ahead. She always does.

For a few minutes, as the blue-gray world turned golden, Amy and I were in agreement. The world had remembered how to begin again. And that, on balance, seemed to call for a squirrel causing some trouble. Life is good.

George Takei Believes in Me

Life comes hard and fast, and if we aren't prepared, it can flatten us like a Roomba meeting a sock. But it doesn't have to be that way. Fierce living keeps me free of the tyranny of emotional overload, and I'm convinced it will work for anyone. That’s right, even you, reading this in your pajamas at 11 a.m., silently judging me for oversharing on the internet. 

Sharing my personal life with the general public is a little scary. It's the vulnerability equivalent of walking into a party and announcing, "So, let’s talk about me." But this morning I feel much better about it, because I've been reading George Takei's blog. That's right. George Takei, who navigated the Starship Enterprise to destinations where no one had gone before, using nothing but confidence, a velour uniform, and remarkable comic timing.

He didn't stop there, either. Decades after boldly going, he's still boldly going—posting, advocating, charming millions of people on the internet, which is a feat roughly as difficult as commanding a starship, possibly harder, given the internet's crew is mostly comprised of trolls.

George believes in the power of people to change the world. And I've decided, somewhat unilaterally, that this means he also believes I can reach my goals, provided I set a course and don't waver. I recognize this is a slightly aggressive interpretation of a man's blog, but at this point in my healing journey, I'll take my motivational support wherever I can beam it in from.

Several years ago, I met a man who understood the pain and hopelessness that filled my life at the time. He suggested a different way of living, one that had completely transformed his own. I told him I was afraid to try; afraid I'd fail and be left even more hopeless, which felt like betting my last dollar on a scratch-off ticket.

"You don't have to believe it will work for you," said this man, who I would later recognize as one of life's actual winners, the kind of person who probably alphabetizes his spice rack for fun, "you only need to believe that I believe it works for me."

Which is, when you think about it, an oddly elegant loophole. I didn't need faith. I just needed to borrow his.

He explained that his life had changed dramatically and all for the better, because he'd followed a specific set of guidelines. If I followed the same guidelines, he said, I'd get the same results. It sounded suspiciously like a recipe, and I have burned enough dinners in my life to be skeptical of recipes. But I followed his suggestions anyway, because I believed in him even when I couldn't yet believe in myself.

And it worked. Today I'm free of yesterday's limitations—mostly, and I'd try to be an instrument of healing for others who've suffered emotionally the way I did, but without the burnt-dinner metaphors.

Here's the most curious part of this whole path: when I do my best to help others, I reap the same benefits myself. It's a strange, almost cosmically inefficient-sounding economy, the kind where giving something away somehow leaves you with more of it. I've stopped questioning it and started just showing up for it.

That's why I share the events of my life with others: to help them, and, not coincidentally, to help me. It's sometimes funny, sometimes embarrassing (there have been incidents), and always a little scary. But hey! I believe in George Takei, and George Takei, in my head at least, believes in me. So I just keep on keeping on.

Life is good my friend. Live long and prosper.

Mindfleet Mission Report: Shatner's Puppy

A Mindfleet Mission Report
Stardate 2026.265

Three days ago, FMS Coastal Voyager was in geosynchronous orbit above Douglass Park in Chicago. The promotions board had agreed to reschedule Captain Amy's hearing, not because I was especially diplomatic, but because Captain Amy was annoyingly persistent. Amy was already on the surface, anxious to connect with her hero, William Shatner.

I was left in command of the bridge. Everything that could go wrong was about to do exactly that.

"Status report," I requested, trying to get comfortable in the command chair. The bridge felt entirely different without Amy’s theatrical presence dominating every cubic meter.

"Away team has successfully transported," confirmed Major Reason from his science station. "Captain Amy and three fleet officers are approaching the VIP meet-and-greet. No complications.”

"Famous last words," muttered Chief Engineer Anxiety from the engine room. "Give it time, Ambassador. Something always goes wrong when the Captain leaves the ship.”

"Anxiety's concern is statistically unfounded," Reason countered. "We currently have a 67% success rate for away missions under Captain Amy."

"That's a 33% failure rate," Dr. Downer interjected from her clinic. “Medical Bay is prepped for trauma, injury, and whatever's about to explode in Chicago.”

Lieutenant Joy monitored communications. "Away team is in position. Captain Amy's personal communicator is... very excited.”

Through her speaker, Amy's voice crackled: “Shatner’s Shag Shack dressing room is exactly as specified. Actual shag carpeting! I may weep.”

"There's also an unidentified signal in the comm channel," Joy added. "Some kind of anomaly.”

"Captain is entering the meet-and-greet," said Major Reason. "Shatner's on stage, checking the sound equipment. Visual contact is imminent.”

Through the comm: Amy's sharp intake of breath. Then, reverently: "He's... magnificent. His stage presence. It's everything I've ever— does anyone have a tissue?“

Static cracked through the channel followed by Amy's quivering, almost blubbering voice.

"I'm synchronizing our neural patterns, demonstrating the kinship we share as commanders and—“

“Captain!" Reason interrupted sharply, "What exactly are you transmitting?”

"Emotional affirmation. Letting him know I understand the burden of leadership..."

"Oh no," Anxiety groaned. "She's doing that thing. That emotional synchronization thing. This is not good.”

Major Reason announced, “She's activating his emotional resonance patterns. Broadcasting directly to Shatner's amygdala.”

Joy's console erupted. "Shatner's stress hormones are spiking!"

Through the comm, Shatner's voice cracked with confusion: "What is that? Why do I suddenly feel like I'm about to miss a crucial starship maneuver?”

"Captain," I said carefully, "dial it back.”

"Negative," Amy snapped. "I'm close to parity. He's responding.”

Shatner was now pacing on stage like an actor who'd forgotten his lines.

"This is unprecedented," Reason muttered. "She's causing interference in William Shatner's emotional state.”

Suddenly, Cadet Reginald’s MaT-1 Adaptive Translation System bled through Joy’s comms.

"Yo, this is genius," Reginald whispered. “Imma be so deep in these puppy layers, nobody gonna find me. Peak Reginald energy right here.”

"There's a ferret in here!" someone shouted. "There's a ferret in the puppy basket!”

Alarms shrieked. Festival security converged.

"Away team!" I called. "Emergency evacuation! Transport authorization granted!”

Chaos erupted: "Acknowledged!" Amy yelled. "Moving to beam-up location!”

"Wait, ya’ll!" Reginald panicked. "I'm still in the basket! I'm tangled with the puppies! I got puppy breath all up in my translator!”

"Reginald, where are you?" Joy called.

“In the basket with adoptable puppies in Shatner’s Shag hangout! Security be comin’ now!”

"Captain!" I called. "Reginald is in Shatner’s dressing room. Delay transport!”

"Negative, Ambassador." Amy's voice was tight and pained. "Perimeter's locked down. If we don't evacuate now, we're detained.”

"But Reginald—“

"Is a highly resourceful ferret," Amy clipped. "Transport the away team. Now.”

The transporter engaged. A flash of light over Douglass Park, and the away team materialized. Reginald was not among them.

The bridge fell silent.

"Status," I finally said.

"Away team accounted for," Reason reported quietly, "except Cadet Reginald.”

"This is bad," Anxiety said in his thick Scottish accent. "We left the wee beastie behind. Captain Amy is going to be in deep—“

“Don’t say it; I’m aware," came Amy's voice as she strode onto the bridge, hair disheveled, mascara running down her face like a deranged clown, her whole countenance a knot of devastation and defiance. "We had no choice. The perimeter was sealed.”

"Cadet Reginald's signal is still transmitting," Reason reported. “He's escaped security and moving through the festival at high velocity.”

Through the open comm, Reginald's escape soundtrack played:

"Got security on my tail. These humans don't understand ferret physics; I'm going under the bleachers, they're going over, perfect tactical divergence! DOOK!”

"Reginald!" Joy called. "Where are you heading?”

“Don’t know, but I'm gettin’ there fast! I can see Shatner on stage, and I think we done broke his brain, y’all!"

Amy turned immediately toward the transporter room. "We're going back.”

"Captain," I said carefully, "Chicago authorities are on high alert. Another transport operation will—“

"Confirm we're serious about retrieving our crew member," Amy finished. "We are not leaving Cadet Reginald behind. That ferret is one of us.”

She turned to Reason. "Localize his signal, Major. We need precise coordinates.”

“Way ahead of you," Reason said. "But sending an away team into an active police perimeter risks escalation. May I suggest a covert extraction?”

Amy looked directly at me. An unspoken acknowledgment passed between us; we'd already broken the Prime Directive three times over.

"The Ambassador is going down," Amy said. “Prepare the transporter. Tell Reginald rescue is on its way."

I stood from the chair. "I'm going to get our ferret back,” I said weakly, heading for the transporter room, with Amy's words echoing in my head: the Ambassador is going down, down, down.

Amy came to see me off, her jaw set. "Bring him back, Ambassador.”

“That is the plan," I replied in an undiplomatic tone. I didn’t like the plan and didn’t care who knew it.

Major Reason's voice chimed in: "Coordinates locked. Reginald's signal is highly mobile. You're going in hot, Ambassador.”

“You don’t know the half of it,” I muttered.

Through the comm, Reginald's voice breathed: “...deeper in the park now; security’s circlin’, sirens wailin’. DOOK—it’sa gettin’ real!"

I looked at Reason through the viewport. He nodded.

"Energizing," he said.

The platform hummed beneath my feet.

Captain's Log: Stardate 2026.265

Mission status: Cadet Reginald remains stranded in Chicago, pursued by festival security. The Ambassador has just been transported to Douglass Park for a rescue operation.

Stand by.

Another Day In Paradise

Castle Street basked in the glow of a golden late summer morning. The storm that, two hours ago, had raged through the parks, along the riverwalk, and into the downtown business district was only a memory. In the aftermath, the air was cool and sweet, and the damp earth released a healing fragrance. 

The city, bathed in the clear light of an early summer morning, was an earthly paradise. The skies were blue, the river shone, squirrels raced about the parks with carefree abandon, and as far as the eye could see, pedestrians tootled along behind happy, carefree dogs. 

Scattered thunderstorms might be raging elsewhere, but in the downtown districts, there was the peace that passeth all understanding, that perfect unruffled peace that comes only to those who have done absolutely nothing to deserve it. 

Consoled by the still, dry atmosphere inside the Egret Cafe and Dance Bar and refreshed by the steaming contents of a china cup that read, I’d rather be surfing, I had achieved a Zen-like repose at a table near the windows but not too near the door. 

I took a deep breath and leaned back against the cushions, and the mingled voices around me began to quiet the sounds of the retreating storm. The sound of residual rainwater coursing through downspouts had replaced the drone of soft, gentle rain on the roof.

Island Irv, who was telling me all about his recent trip to the Sunshine State, is not someone you expect to leap from chairs, but suddenly and without warning, he managed a maneuver that almost made it look like a leap. 

Let me make it perfectly clear for those of you who may be new to these pages that the mothers of Shady Grove teach their sons that all exhibitions of emotion are nothing more than rannygazoo, without substance or staying power; we maintain our poise even in the presence of thunderstorms and earthquakes. 

Although conscious of a certain uneasiness when Irv shot ceilingward, I was determined to remain calm. Intending to stay in full control, I took a deep breath and, unfortunately, I exhaled so sharply that a man at the next table who was eating a carrot-and-walnut muffin stabbed himself in the chin with his fork. 

I didn’t like the look that crossed his face, but then I didn't care much for it even before his chin began bleeding. His hands clenched in fists of rage, as I believe the old saying goes. 

I doubt that he'd had a Shady Grove upbringing, but even if he had, it was obvious that mother was forgotten for the nonce, and even great-aunts, those supreme enforcers of proper behavior, were not remembered. 

I realized that a word in time might provide healing balm, and I searched the memory banks for some gag or saw that would soothe the savage beast and prevent a total brannigan. No need for him to punch the weasel, I reasoned.

“How's the weather on your end of the coast?" I said. "Exceptionally clement, I hope."

Not one of my better gags, but I had precious little time to come up with something. We will never know if the words would have brought calm because the man left the cafe without finishing his cappuccino and was last seen heading up Castle Street toward 8th Avenue.

"What about you?" I said to Irv.

"Oh, me?" he said. "I didn't realize my coffee was so hot. I burned my tongue."

"Is that all?" I said. "I thought you'd forgotten to text your wife or something equally as rotten."

"It hurt," he said.

And I'm sure it did hurt, but it seemed to be excessive animation for so little cause. But that's life on the Carolina coast for you. One never knows when the next storm is going to come sashaying around to see what it can get into.

All in all, I suppose it's to be expected from another day in paradise.

Here's wishing you a mild and joyous end of summer and a very pleasant slide into holiday season. Happy summer, my friends. Thank you for supporting The Circular Journey with your time and attention. Don't forget to leave a comment.

PS -- I borrowed that phrasing about growing up in Shady Grove from P.G. Wodehouse, who the author of Proverbs must have had in mind when he wrote: "a word fitly spoken and in due season is like apples of gold in settings of silver." 

Mindfleet: Riot Fest 2026

I approached the captain's chair with the careful deliberation of someone bearing bad news to a Captain who customarily responds to bad news by raising her voice by several decibels.

"Captain," I began, "regarding your request to have the Coastal Voyager assigned to monitor the Riot Fest in Chicago...“

"Approved," Amy interrupted, not bothering to look up from her console. "Excellent work, Ambassador. I knew you had influence.” 

"Not quite, ” I said. "There's a scheduling conflict.“ 

"A scheduling conflict?" Amy swiveled her chair around to face me, her eyes snapped upward with the precision of a tactical targeting system.

"Riot Fest 2026 opens September 18th, Ambassador. The greatest Starfleet captain in all of space exploration will be headlining with his heavy metal rock band. Surely there is no conflict.”

“But you see, the promotions review board meets September 18th through the 22nd," I explained. “Your presence is required for the full duration. You can’t be in both places simultaneously.”

The silence that followed was the kind that happens when a fundamental law of the universe is in question. Major Reason looked up from his science station. Lieutenant Joy's fingers hovered motionless above her communications array. Chief Engineer Anxiety was heard catching his breath in his quarters below decks.

"Cannot?" Amy said quietly. The word hung in the air like a photon torpedo waiting for detonation. "Ambassador, you misspoke, because I assure you, I will.”

"Captain, the logistics—“

"Are not my concern." Amy rose from her command chair with theatrical authority. "You will contact Mindfleet Command and inform them that Captain Amy requires the promotions review board to reschedule their proceedings.”

“Amy—"

"Admiral Amy to you, Ambassador,” she corrected, her eyes gleaming with authority.

Major Reason adjusted his uniform with the resigned acceptance of a man who had witnessed this particular form of stubbornness many times before. "Captain, if I may interject with a mathematical improbability—“

"No," said Amy. "You may not.” Then, addressing me again: “Ambassador, you have forty-eight hours to resolve this scheduling matter. Dismissed.”

The next morning, I arrived on the bridge to find the captain's chair unoccupied. Lieutenant Joy and Major Reason were gathered around a poster draped across the captain's console.

The image was unmistakable: William Shatner, posed heroically with an electric guitar, his expression suggesting he had just discovered the secret to the universe and found it to be absolutely heavy metal.

"Well," said Major Reason, his eyebrows ascending toward an Olympic altitude, “you don’t see this every day.”

The bridge doors hissed open. Captain Amy stepped onto the bridge. "Where did that come from?" she whispered.

“It has to be the work of Cadet Reginald,” Lieutenant Joy replied. “That ferret will steal anything with bright neon colors. I still haven’t found my sparkly boot laces.”

Before anyone could respond, Joy's communications console chimed with an all-hands alert. She rushed to the station, and her fingers flew across the interface with practiced urgency.

"Captain, I'm receiving a priority broadcast feed from a Chicago television station," she reported. "It's routing through my main coms channel. That shouldn't be possible...“

The view-screen blazed to life.

A Chicago news anchor appeared, reporting on the upcoming Riot Fest. But the images behind her held everyone's attention: William Shatner being interviewed about his heavy metal band debut.

"—unprecedented in festival history," the anchor was saying. "Riot Fest founder Mike Petryshyn claims they've been trying to book William Shatner for seventeen years. The performer's rider is... extraordinary.”

The broadcast cut to a list, displayed with apparent humor:

—Fire breathers. Many of them.
—A Montreal Canadiens jersey signed by John Stamos
—An assortment of adoptable puppies from a reputable local nonprofit animal rescue

Amy's hand rose to her mouth. Her eyes were glistening. “Listen up, people! This is not a drill," she announced, her voice quivering and her eyes moist: "Shatner himself has stated: 'I've always believed that music, like space, is about exploration.’ And Riot Fest is exactly the kind of place where anything can happen."

"Captain?" Joy ventured carefully. "I'm not sure how this broadcast is reaching us, or why it's routed through my comms channel, but—“

The answer came from the ventilation grate near the starboard wall. A small ferret emerged, his miniature officer's cap dipped strategically over his right eye. The MaT-1 Adaptive Translation System around his neck glowed with activity.

"Yo, Cap," Cadet Reginald's voice crackled through the speaker. “That poster is straight fact. The TV feed is just me droppin' some knowledge through Five of Five's channels. Dude's ego is huge, but his firewall is... let's say 'negotiable' when you know the right frequencies, ya feel me?”

Major Reason's eyebrow ascended to previously unknown altitudes. "Cadet Reginald. You penetrated the Adaptive Intelligence system's security architecture?”

"Nah, nah, nah," Reginald's translator rendered his response with casual confidence. "I didn't penetrate nothin', Major. I just... collaborated. Fivey likes to show off his processin' speed. No harm, no foul.”

I could see the calculations behind Amy’s eyes, the same process I'd witnessed before, when she was determining whether the impossible was merely a suggestion.

“He’s fronting his very own heavy metal band.” She said in a voice filled with awe.

"Captain," Major Reason said carefully, "I must inform you that the Promotions Review Board meets September 18th through 22nd. The temporal overlap remains—“

"Fire breathers," Amy interrupted, still staring at the screen. "His rider includes fire breathers. Many of them.”

"Yes, Captain, but—“

"And adoptable puppies."

"Captain, if I might redirect your attention to the scheduling—"

"Adoptable puppies," Amy said softly. "There will be adoptable puppies backstage.”

She turned to face me again, and her expression was something I had never quite seen before and hoped to never see again.

"Ambassador," she said, "I will be attending Riot Fest on September 20th. The Coastal Voyager will be there. The entire crew will document this moment for posterity.”

"But the promotions review—“

"Will accommodate my schedule," she finished. "You will tell Mindfleet Command that Captain Amy intends to be in Chicago on September 20th. You will tell them to reschedule the review. And you will tell them that William Shatner—William Shatner—is performing live heavy metal at a rock festival, and I will not miss it.”

She looked directly at me. "Do you understand, Ambassador?"

"I'll contact Mindfleet Command," I said quietly.

"Thank you," said Amy, turning back to stare at the viewscreen, where Shatner's image continued its loop.

From the ventilation shaft, Cadet Reginald's translator crackled: “Yo, that's what I call a power move, Cap. Now, I'm headin' straight for the puppy hookup. Once I'm in the rescue squad rotation, I'm slidin' backstage with the Shatner all day. Diplomatic infiltration at its finest, ya heard? Shatner don't even know what's rollin' up on him. Dook! Reginald out!"

I looked at the Captain. She was looking at me. "Ambassador," she said, "Explain to Cadet Reginald that the Prime Directive exists to prevent ferrets from masquerading as rescue puppies. I will not be reassigned because a ferret violated the Non-Interference Doctrine. Make. That. Clear."

Major Reason looked at me. "Ambassador, I must inform you that you have just been outmaneuvered by a small mustelid."

“I’m aware," I said.

“I will note this in my report."

"Of course you will."

Author's Supplemental:

Riot Fest 2026 runs September 18–20 at Chicago's Douglass Park. William Shatner's debut performance with The *uckers is scheduled for Sunday, September 20th. The festival's roster includes Twenty One Pilots, Alanis Morissette, Morrissey, Iggy Pop, Elvis Costello & The Imposters, Pixies, Sex Pistols, Patti Smith, and Nas, among more than 100 artists.

The heavy metal awaits.

RJ Decker Rides Again

"Genome," Amy said, from somewhere deep in my brain, near my left ear. There was something different in her voice. Not the usual imperious sniff. Something sweeter, closer to caring. "Sit down. Put the coffee away. This is not a casual tête-à-tête."

"I'm already sitting."

"Sit down further."

I knew something was different, not wrong exactly; maybe something was right for a change. It was disorienting. Amy doesn't do sweet. She does withering commentary and the occasional threat to leave me for a more competent host brain. This new tone felt like watching a hurricane pause to hold a door open for you.

So when she went quiet and serious, I set my mug down and gave her my full attention, the way you'd give full attention to a smoke detector that's just started blaring at 3 a.m.

"I have the RJ Decker schedule," she said. "The real one. Not a rumor from a man at a bar who smells like Jamaican rum. Not a Facebook post from a restaurant that closed for lunch. The actual, published, filed-with-the-city, printed-in-WWAY-News schedule."

I felt the way archaeologists must feel when they finally find the tomb instead of another sandal.

The Target

"Next Tuesday," she began reading the schedule, in the clipped, official tone of someone about to announce a lottery winner, "September 15th, from 7 a.m. to 11 p.m., RJ Decker is filming exterior and interior house scenes on South Churchill Drive. Two cast members. Eighty-five crew members. Fifty extras. That is not a skeleton crew. That is a small, well-funded army descending on a residential neighborhood with the confidence of people who have already filed all the correct paperwork."

She gave me a look and waited for my reply, but I was still busy doing the math on eighty-five crew members and wondering if any of them needed a very enthusiastic, if professionally unqualified, assistant.

"Eighty-five crew members, Genome," Amy said. "Do you understand what that means?"

"It means a lot of people will ask me to move."

"It means we cannot possibly fail. Even you, with your singular gift for wandering into the wrong parking lot and interviewing a production assistant's dumpster, cannot miss eighty-five people and fifty extras standing around a house on Churchill Drive. This is the easiest assignment we have ever been given. This is a lay-up. This is Amy handing you the ball directly under the basket and stepping back so you can dunk it."

"I've never dunked anything in my life."

"Exactly my point."

"Maybe a few doughnuts."

"That," she said, "is genuinely the most athletic thing about you, and I say that with love."

The Logistics

I'll admit Amy did her homework, and by "Amy did her homework" I mean I read the article twice, and she supervised, pacing back and forth behind my eyeballs and occasionally tapping an imaginary clipboard.

Equipment parking runs along Churchill between Gillette and Knightsbridge, and along Knollwood Road between Churchill and Gillette, which is, Amy points out, an unusually generous amount of real estate for a production to hand a wandering blogger a map to.

Five police officers are scheduled to manage traffic for the full stretch of the day, which is either five more officers than my track record deserves or exactly the right number to keep me on the correct side of a barricade. A generator and lighting rig are planned for the equipment area, though the paperwork is very clear: there are no special effects. Nobody is blowing anything up on Churchill Drive next Tuesday, which, frankly, takes some of the pressure off, since "things exploded" has never once been the reason one of my outings went sideways. 

That honor belongs entirely to me.

If Tuesday gets rained out, the city's backup dates are Wednesday the 16th and Thursday the 17th. Prep happens the day before filming, and wrap activities are scheduled for the day after, which means this isn't a single, fragile window; we actually have three days of potential filming. This is a production with a cushion, a contingency plan, and, apparently, more organizational competence than I have ever brought to any Tuesday in memory, including the Tuesdays when I had nothing else planned at all.

Amy's Pep Talk, Such As It Is

"I need you to understand something," Amy said, and here her voice took on the tone she usually reserves for warning me about parallel parking. "We have chased ferrets. We have interviewed dumpsters. We have driven to Half Hell, twice, in one afternoon, which I remind you is a geographic and emotional impossibility that you somehow achieved. We have been mistaken for civilians, escorted, redirected, and once handed a popsicle out of what I can only assume was pity."

"The popsicle was kindness, Amy."

"The popsicle was a witness statement waiting to happen. My point is this: none of that was a real opportunity, but this is a real opportunity. A confirmed address. A confirmed time. A confirmed eighty-five human beings who cannot all hide from you at once, short of some kind of elaborate flash mob dispersal drill they haven't budgeted for."

Genome, if you find a way to screw up Churchill Drive, I want you to know that I will not be riding along in your limbic system for a while. I will be finding somewhere quieter to live. Possibly in a Cocker Spaniel's head. I'm not saying I'll vacate your consciousness permanently; I'm only saying maybe."

"That's dark, Amy, even for you."

"I contain multitudes. Also a very detailed exit strategy."

"If you must get away for a bit, you couldn't do better than inside a Cocker Spaniel's brain. I spent a good deal of my own formative years inside one."

The Plan, Such As It Is

"Alright," she said, "we know what we're doing. There shouldn't be any hiccups. Have any questions?"

I shook my head vigorously but not with any real certainty; I thought it best to save my questions for Tuesday.

"Here's what we will NOT do, under any circumstances: Park in the equipment zone. Wander into the Independence Mall base camp pretending to be an associate producer. Ask anyone if Scott Speedman is in the building." (I've been told, repeatedly, that this question does not land the way I want it to. I remain convinced it's a delivery issue.)

"We arrive early," Amy said. "We stay outside the barricades. We are polite to the police officers, all five of them, and you do not, under any circumstances, try the 'act like you belong here' trick again."

"That trick worked at The Waterfront."

"That trick worked once, Genome, the way a coin lands on its edge once in a thousand flips. We are not basing a strategy on the coin's edge. We are especially not basing a strategy on the coin's edge when the coin in question is you."

She's right, though I'd rather eat a magic 8-ball than admit it to her directly. This is, by any honest measure, the best-documented, most logistically generous opportunity The Circular Journey has ever had. A confirmed address. A confirmed army of eighty-five. Barricades that exist specifically to tell me where to stand instead of where I've already wandered.

Of course, we know from bitter, well-documented experience that things never work out as planned. History is not on our side. Half Hell is not on our side. The city of Wilmington's excellent record-keeping is on our side, which is new, and frankly a little suspicious.

So later this week, I'll let you know how it all goes down. I just hope it doesn't turn out to be another cautionary tale. Wish us luck, and if you live anywhere near Knollwood and Hillsboro next Tuesday, save me a spot on the curb. Preferably one with a clear sightline and no dumpsters to block the view.

The Emperor of Woodcroft!

It was early morning; if, like me, you consider early to be relative. I was enjoying a steaming cup of holiday blend when a figure appeared in the doorway of Dulce Cafe wearing a hat that only someone from the South End would consider sporting. 

It was the Emperor of Woodcroft, as beneficent a tyrant as you can find nowadays. I joined him in line, feeling that if one cup was good, another would be even better.

"Ho!" he said in the manner of an English copper. I didn't like it. The tone was all wrong. "Swilling cocktails, eh?" he said.

I could make nothing of this. "I fail to understand you," I said. "Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't this the hour one might expect to hear, 'Good morning'?"

"Out on the tiles to all hours?" he said.

I bridled at the accusation, at least I think I bridled. I'm not sure of the word's meaning, but it sounds good, and I've heard it used in similar circumstances.

"You will have to provide more detail," I said, correcting my posture and straightening the gig line of my shirt to show that I was above all his jibber-jabber. "And I look forward to hearing the explanation. I'm sure it will hold me spellbound."

"I mean you were probably out carousing, getting home just before dawn and waking the entire neighborhood. That's what I mean, Mr. Hoitie-Toitie."

This remark got me hotted up to near incandescent. The nerve! The impertinence! Again, not sure of the definition, but I'm pretty sure it's in the neighborhood of my meaning.

"It could scarcely have been later than two when I got home, and I was seeing an old friend off to spend the holiday in the Catskills." And I'm sure I said it with enough topspin to qualify for hauteur, if that's the word.

"Did you have a cold shower this morning?" he asked, giving me the full effect of one eye.

"I have hot water," I said.

"Did you do Swedish exercises before breakfast?"

"I'm Danish," I said, "and we don't indulge in such excess. At least my grandfather was Danish, and I believe that entitles me to make the same claim."

"Then why do you look like something from the chorus of a touring revue?" he said.

"Ah," I said, "that's easy enough to answer. I just need a second cup of Jah's mercy. That's why I'm in line."

He seemed to consider this, but after a few seconds, his inward gaze looked out again and settled near the lower portions of my facial map. His expression was that of someone who has found caterpillars in the salad.

"Ho!" he said, "what's that?"

"What?" I said, passing a hand across my face.

"You don't wear a beard," he said in the tone of an accusation.

"No, I don't wear a beard, and I'm happy about it. Too many beards are taking up space in the world. I haven't seen so many beavers since the days of Edward the Confessor."

"Ho!" he said. "Real men wear beards, and your face would benefit from a mustache as well."

"I wore a mustache for years when younger," I said, "and it looked horrible, much like a soup stain."

"What does Ms. Wonder think of it?" he said.

"Of what? My shaving?"

"I'm sure a bit of facial hair would provide much-needed relief to someone who spends more than a few minutes in your presence."

"What does it matter what others think?" I said, and I felt the conversation was becoming a bit sticky. I was ready to change the subject.

"That's good. She doesn't like it," he said. "You'll have to grow some hair. Take a few days off and get away is my advice. You'll probably look like Rasputin until the stuff grows in."

"I will not stop shaving, and I'm finished with this conversation.  J'y suis, j'y reste about sums it up for me. The barista is waiting for your order.

He shrugged his shoulders. "Up to you, of course, if you want to be an eyesore."

"An eyesore!"

"Eyesore is what I said."

I suddenly felt the need to practice the three deep breaths. First breath: power and balance to be ready for whatever life brings my way. Second breath: to remind me that I am enough for the present circumstances. Third breath: to recognize that there is more good than bad in the present moment.

"Ho!" he said, "what's that on your chin?"

But if memory serves, this is where you came in, and I don't want to be a bore. Thank you for joining me today; wishing you sweetness and light.

Saltwater Stakeout: A Tale of Two Sets

"Two productions, one boardwalk, Amy," I announced, tapping the wheel in time to the Village People's YMCA. "Two chances to get footage of behind-the-scenes action on a television set. This is what winning looks like."

I said it with the unearned confidence of a man who hasn't captured a single on-location film frame all year.

"Winning looks like pistachio ice cream underneath a beach umbrella," Amy said. "What this looks like is a man about to embarrass himself near a Ferris wheel."

She wasn't wrong. She's never wrong. It's the single most exhausting thing about her.

The Profile

On the drive down, Amy insisted on constructing what she called a "target profile" for the kind of teenager who gets cast in a Disney+ pilot. We were chasing the rumor that Disney's Saltwater, a mermaid series, and possibly a continuation of the Aquamarine story, if you believe the message boards, was shifting locations to the Carolina Beach boardwalk.

"Good hair," she explained. "Suspiciously good posture. The kind of calm that only comes from parents who've already read the contract twice."

"That's oddly specific."

"I'm not your average brain region, Bubba; I contain multitudes. You want evidence? How's this: The kind of kid we're looking for orders sprinkles on ice cream in August; that's a soft tell. Confidence without commitment."

"You've clearly given this a lot of thought."

"I've thought about little else, Hot Shot, since you dragged out of bed this morning."

We parked near the boardwalk, and I want the record to reflect that the salt air, the arcade noise, the general hum of a beach town in high season felt like a good omen and spurred me on. I've been wrong about good omens before, of course, and I was wrong about this one too. I just didn't know it yet, which is the closest thing to happiness I get these days.

The Ice Cream Stand Incident

It took about eleven minutes. I saw him near the ice cream stand; a teenager, easy in his own skin in the specific way that made Amy's "suspiciously calm parents" theory suddenly feel like hard science. Sunglasses pushed up into good hair. A little knot of friends laughing at something on someone's phone. And I want you to sit with this: sprinkles. On an ice cream cone in August.

"Amy," I whispered. "Unless I'm badly mistaken, that's the kid playing August, and I'm sure the two girls are Coral and Mia. This is going to be a perfect day."

"Don't do it, Cowboy."

I didn't listen. I never listen. It's become something of a signature move.

I drifted closer with the loose, unhurried gait of a man who is absolutely not casing a group of teenagers, which, in retrospect, is exactly the gait of a man who is very much casing a group of teenagers. I struck up conversation with what I believed was effortless charm, and asked, casually, whether they were "in town for work."

The kid looked at me the way you'd look at a seagull that had just asked to share your fries.

"We're in town because it's, like, summer," he said. His friends started laughing in the specific, merciless way only teenagers can, a sound engineered over generations to strip a grown man of every ounce of self-respect in real time.

"Right," I said. "Of course. Summer. That tracks."

"Are you, like, a cop?"

"I want to speak to my lawyer," I said, which is my go-to line whenever I'm caught doing something I can't quite explain, and it landed about as well here as it ever has.

I retreated. Not walked; retreated, in the full military sense, past the arcade, past a family arguing about funnel cake, all the way back to the car, where Amy was waiting with the patient, terrible calm of someone who has seen this movie before.

"You've been made, Genome," she said. "By a sixteen-year-old. With sprinkles."

"He could still be an actor."

"He's a teenager who thinks you're a cop. That's not a casting rumor. That's a police report waiting to happen."

Amy's Lead

I sat with my failure the way I sit with most of my failures: briefly, before deciding it was someone else's turn to be wrong.

"Fine," I said. "You take the lead."

I regretted this immediately, but pride is a strange animal, and mine had just been mauled by a teenager, and it needed to prove something— anything, actually.

Amy, to my genuine surprise, didn't gloat for once. She went quiet, thoughtful, the way she does right before she says something either brilliant or catastrophic. There's no reliable way to tell which one is coming until it's too late.

"Beach," she said finally. "Not the boardwalk. South of the pier. I have a feeling."

"A feeling."

"A professional feeling, Cowboy. Drive."

We drove. We parked. We walked a stretch of sand that grew steadily more promising: a cluster of production trucks, a taped-off perimeter, crew members in ballcaps clutching walkies like they mattered more than oxygen. My heart did that thing it does; that hopeful, foolish lift, right before it gets dropped from a height and lands in the basement.

"Amy," I breathed. "You did it. You actually did it."

"I told you I had a feeling," she said, and I could almost see her adjusting an imaginary tiara. "Ms. Wonder's instincts strike again. She practically predicted this, you know."

The Twist, Which You Already Saw Coming

A crew member in a faded gray shirt walked past close enough for me to read the words across the back.

It didn't say Saltwater. It said, RJ Decker.

I stood there a moment, recalibrating, the way you do when reality quietly rearranges itself without asking permission first.

"Amy," I said carefully. "This is the wrong show."

"I said film set," she countered, entirely unbothered. "I didn't say which one. I stand by the feeling. The feeling was correct. You're the one who assumed mermaids."

I flagged down a young woman with a clipboard and the harried expression of someone who has answered this exact question fourteen times already today.

"Is this the RJ Decker set?" I asked.

"It was," she said. "Yesterday. We're just breaking down. Wrapped this location last night."

A day late. Not even the show I was chasing. Two-for-two, if you're counting failures.

"So we found a real set," I said slowly, trying the words on for size, "from the wrong show, a day after it stopped being useful."

"Historic, isn't it?" Amy said. "Truly a banner day for investigative journalism, Biscuit Brain."

Roll the Credits

We drove home along the causeway, salt still in the air, sprinkles on ice cream still in my mind.

"Complete failure," I said, because someone had to say it, and it might as well be me, with feeling.

"Was it, though?" Amy asked. Here's the thing about Amy: just when you've written her off as the pits, she pivots, and you remember she's sometimes actually the smart one.

"You didn't find the Saltwater cast. You didn't find Decker, not really. But you confirmed both shows are circling Carolina Beach this month, which is more than you knew this morning. And you were humiliated by a teenager in front of witnesses, which, let's be honest, is going to be the best paragraph in this whole blog post."

She wasn't wrong. I've made my peace with it. What else can I do? "Next time, we go out it will be with proper intel," I said.

"Next time," Amy said, "we go back with my intel. Mine comes from Ms. Wonder. Yours got us laughed at by a child holding an ice cream cone."

On The Circular Journey, we don't always find what we're looking for. Sometimes we just get outmaneuvered by a sixteen-year-old, and the voice in our own head insists, against all evidence, that she's the professional one.

She might be right about that too. Don't tell her I said so. It only encourages her.

Life Moves Pretty Fast

I had a birthday a few days ago.

I know, I know, hold your applause. I'm the kind of person who treats birthdays the way most people treat jury duty: an obligation to be endured quietly, preferably while keeping my head down and hoping no one in the building notices.

"You do realize you're required to acknowledge your own existence at least once a year," Amy informed me. "It's practically the law."

"It's not the law. I looked it up."

"It should be, Cowboy. You spent your birthday morning organizing a junk drawer. That's not a celebration, that's a cry for help with extra steps."

She's not entirely wrong; the older I get, the more birthdays come bundled with a little melancholy I didn't order. Names and faces and places that used to be part of the celebration and aren't anymore, for one reason or another. That part doesn't get easier. I don't think it's supposed to.

But here's the thing about The Circular Journey; we rarely arrive where we set out for, and yet somehow that detour usually delivers something worth keeping. This year, in the middle of all that birthday fog, I once again found my way back to the same place I always do: an '80s movie that has spent forty years refusing to let me feel sorry for myself for very long.

Enter Ferris

On June 11, 1986, John Hughes handed the world a popular high school senior who fakes being sick to skip school, and in doing so gave several generations of otherwise responsible adults a permanent excuse to romanticize truancy. Ferris Bueller's Day Off hasn't lost an ounce of its style in the forty years since, which is more than I can say for my own '80s wardrobe choices.

"You wore parachute pants," Amy reminded me, unhelpfully.

“They were bat-wing pants.”

“They were parachute pants with a gecko-design all over.”

“Amy, we agreed not to talk about that.”

“I agreed to nothing, Bubba.”

Matthew Broderick doesn't just play Ferris Bueller;  he is Ferris Bueller, so thoroughly that it's followed him through his entire career, the way a really good nickname follows you home from summer camp. 

I know something about that. My childhood nickname was ‘Smo.’ My best friend’s father, called me Cimolio after an outfielder for the Brooklyn Dodgers. My friend shortened it to Smo.  

“The baseball player’s name was Gino Cimoli,” Amy corrected. “You friends spelled it with an ’S’ and then added an ‘O’ to the end.”

“Whatever, Amy! I only brought it up because my friend and his father are no longer around and no one calles me Smo anymore.”

From the moment Ferris talks his parents into a sick day, Broderick breaks the fourth wall, looks the audience dead in the eye, and invites us along for the ride. As the school secretary puts it: Oh, he’s very popular, Ed. The sportos, the motorheads, geeks, sluts, bloods, wastoids, dweebies, dickheads—they all adore him. They think he’s a righteous dude.

Guys want to be him. Girls want to be with him. I, personally, just wanted his ability to talk his way out of anything, a skill that would have served me well approximately every time I've tried to sneak onto a film set.

Ferris can't have a day off alone, of course, nobody worth knowing does. He recruits his girlfriend Sloane (Mia Sara) and his best friend Cameron (Alan Ruck), commandeers Cameron's father's Ferrari, and the three of them descend on Chicago: the Sears Tower, Wrigley Field, the Art Institute, and in what might be the single best scene in '80s cinema, a parade float, a rendition of Twist and Shout, and an entire city that stops what it's doing to dance along.

Why It Still Works

When I first saw this movie, I identified with Ferris, the kid clawing to hold onto his freedom before adulthood swallowed it whole. Watching it now, older and considerably more junk-drawer-organized, it's Cameron who gets to me. Ferris doesn't just want a fun day for himself; he wants to hand his best friend a little confidence, a little proof that he's worth more than his father's approval. That's the version of the story that ages with you.

The film's two “villains," Ferris's sister Jeanie (Jennifer Grey) and dean of students Ed Rooney (Jeffrey Jones) spend the whole movie trying to catch him and never quite manage it, which feels less like a plot hole and more like a promise: some people are just going to have a good day no matter what you throw at them. 

The Line That Still Lands

That famous line early in the film hits differently on a birthday than it does on a random Tuesday:

Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.

I've spent my recent birthday thinking about the people and places that used to move alongside me and don't anymore, and I'm not going to pretend a movie fixes it. But it does remind me to stop and look around at what and who is still here with me. And most years, that's enough to turn the day around.

"So," Amy said, "are we throwing you a party next year, or are we going back to the junk drawer?"

"Ask me again in 364 days."

"I'm setting a reminder, Biscuit Brain. You're not getting out of this that easily."

“I never get out easily, Princess. It’s not in my nature.”