Kronosaur

By Tom Stockwell

Published @ Twenty Thousand Feet

© Copyright 2010 by Tom Stockwell

Kronosaur

In the spring, after the snow and ice had finally melted, Peter Milque quit his old job and drove up the highway through the sun light to take a new one. His job was to program the mainframe computer of his new employer. Since one computer was – from Milque's perspective – much the same as any other, his new job fit him to a tee. For long periods of time he would sit in his windowless cubicle pouring over the numbers and the code that had been printed onto green-bar paper in the smaller adjoining windowless cubicle. Meanwhile, outside, the spring sunlight deepened into the heat of summer.

Sometime in July, during his lunch hour, Milque looked up from his reports and his cup of yogurt and realized that, indeed, the spring had passed and it was now sometime in July. This didn't upset him, of course, time being somewhat ethereal during the heated spells, but it did occur to him that he' d yet to go outside to explore his new surroundings. He made a note to do so the following day and returned to his work.

True to form, the next day did find Milque outside, enjoying his lunch hour in the sun, and as he accounted a good forty five minutes that could not be accounted otherwise, he chose to follow the utility service path that meandered unaccountably away from his office building. So it was that he arrived at the edge of a deep widening channel crossed by a railroad trestle where an old sea gull hesitated on the brink of a granite block.

The sea gull was extremely old; ancient in fact. It was possibly the oldest sea gull Milque had ever encountered. Its plumage was dun-gray, and speckled with white, and the bird looked in need of a good meal. For some time Milque did not move, fearing to frighten it unnecessarily, but after eying Milque for several minutes, the bird thought better of its place and attempted to fly. It couldn't. It gracelessly floundered into channel. After several more attempts to fly it eventually floated and bobbed and drifted out into the inlet. Overhead younger birds circled and called in uncanny unison.