cut-up poetry by tin the meaningless
the final voyage of the moronic
The steamer SS Moronic was a stately passenger liner operated by the little-known Hapsburg Jaw Line which enjoyed its maiden voyage on a nondescript day of a forgotten year. With only a single steam engine turning a single screw, this single-funneled liner operated in obscurity, and then one day it didn't. No headlines announced the tragedy at sea when the Moronic sank to the bottom; indeed, the tragedy was already well understood by anyone who took the time to notice.
On the morning of her final voyage - it was always morning, but the light was so dim it hardly mattered - the SS Moronic set out at precisely the wrong hour, which is to say, it set out. There was no one to see it off, no one to wave handkerchiefs embroidered with regrets. The passengers, all immaculately dressed, carried on with expressions as hollow as the empty sky. Some, for reasons unknown to themselves, clutched umbrellas despite the still air and cloudless horizon. The Moronic chugged along with its funnel puffing solemnly, as if the sea itself were an afterthought.
In command of the Moronic was Captain Septimus Ignatius Nullington-Shrug, when he could remember it. The name, like everything else in his life, had eroded over time, reduced to the more fitting "Nully." As a child, he had been burdened with all the expectations of such a grandiose name, but over the years, from voyage to voyage, it had diminished both in importance and in length. No one on board ever used his full name, and even in the ship's records, it was misspelled or omitted entirely. Fitting, perhaps, for a man whose existence seemed to hover in a twilight of inconsequence.
Captain Nully stood on the navigating bridge as the compass gestured vaguely in no particular direction. The navigation charts before him were blank, but he studied them with the intensity of a man trying to remember a forgotten word. On the bridge with the Captain stood Chief Officer Percival Drudge, whom everyone called "Perish." Perish cut a somber, sepulchral figure, and believed every voyage was a rehearsal for disaster. He was known for long, melancholic pauses before offering suggestions (for he never gave orders) and was most often found staring wistfully into the horizon, muttering about "the inevitable sinking of all things."
As the clock struck another interminable hour, the next watch was taken up by First Officer Taskless Grogg. Aptly named for his profound inertia, Grogg was rarely seen doing anything of note. He believed wholeheartedly that any problem would eventually solve itself, provided no one made the mistake of addressing it directly. His most notable contribution was his ability to sleep through nearly any crisis, including those he himself had caused. In the wheelhouse, Quartermaster Aloysius Fobble stood at the helm, constantly adjusting the ship's course by infinitesimal degrees, convinced he was correcting the ship's path as the Moronic meandered endlessly.
In the crow's nest, Lookout Lionel Perch rarely looked out to sea. His vision was as foggy as his mind, and there was nothing of consequence to be seen, at any rate. Instead, he was often preoccupied with contemplating the nature of seeing itself, often remarking, "Do we ever truly see? Or do we merely imagine?"
Below decks, the passengers gathered in the grand saloon for activities neither prescribed nor desired. Miss Piffleworth, an elderly spinster who had never once left her native village, sat playing cards with no one, shuffling the deck with a growing sense of futility. Across from her, Lord Blithering stared into a cup of tea that had been cold for days, trying to discern the pattern in the leaves. There was none. He knew this. But still, he stared.
"The sea is eternal," Blithering muttered to no one, as though this explained everything.
Meanwhile, the steward, a man known only as Mr. Soporific, shuffled through the saloon offering refreshments that no one ever accepted. His tray, piled with biscuits of indeterminate age and slightly sour lemonade, circled the room like time itself - persistent, indifferent, and largely irrelevant.
By the second night, if there could have been such a thing, the passengers began to wonder aloud where they were going, though no one had any recollection of ever being told. Captain Nully, when asked, would simply wave his hand at the blank charts in answer. And so, the Moronic steamed on, not toward any particular destination, but away from the notion of destination itself.
One morning - it was always morning, and it still hardly mattered - there was a curious disturbance. It wasn't a storm, nor was it anything so concrete as a malfunction. The ship simply began to tilt. Slowly, imperceptibly at first, then with the deliberation of inevitability. The passengers took note of this, but it seemed best ignored.
The sea grew darker, or perhaps it was the sky. Somewhere in the distance, or maybe only in the mind of Captain Nully, there was the faintest sound of bells, chiming not for the dead, but for those who had forgotten to live.
In the boiler room, the firemen had stopped feeding coal into the furnace. No one could remember why they had started, and now it seemed absurd to carry on with the pretense. The ship, listing at a precarious angle, continued its descent into an invisible chasm, the water rising, though none were wet.
Miss Piffleworth, clutching her umbrella as the deck slanted further, asked no one in particular, "Is this the end?"
"Of what?" replied Lord Blithering. He had given up on the tea leaves.
No one answered, for the end, like the beginning, was a thing too meaningless to contemplate.
The SS Moronic slipped quietly into the mirror-dark sea, without so much as a splash. The passengers, still seated at their tables, continued their conversations in silence.
The lifeboats remained unlaunched, not out of panic or confusion, but simply because it had never occurred to anyone to use them.
Captain Nully, now quite underwater, continued his study of the blank charts as though they held all the answers he had never sought.
As the ship descended into the abyss, all became clear, and then was forgotten.
The Moronic was gone. Probably it had never really been there, but it was certainly gone now.
Today, a memorial stands in nothingness where the Moronic never was. It reads:
"What happens will happen, and what won't happen, probably already did."
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