Fri, January 10, 2003

Call me Reynaldo. No one else will, and I've always really hoped it would catch on. What follows is a comprehensive account of my time on the island of Mata Nui, among its people. The reader will have to forgive the odd disagreement between my accounts and the popularly circulated stories of "Bionicle." What I write, you see, is what actually happened. Other, less virtuous, chroniclers have seen fit to tamper with the facts for their own selfish purposes or the selfish purposes of others by whom they wish to be regarded as eager and servile.

Also, while every attempt has been made to account for this, the names I use to refer to the people of Mata Nui are not the names with which the reader will likely be most familiar. Again, the unscrupulous few who chose to rework history have chosen to fill their stories with fanciful names for these people – towards what end I can only imagine. Be assured that the names I use are the actual names these poor creatures use and any other names are merely cruel concoctions. But, because these thoughtless profiteers were blessed with a deadline that I did not have and a drive to meet it that I could not muster, their work has entered the record first, and it has become my laborious but dutifully accepted responsibility to set things straight where I can.

Now that all that is settled, we shall begin at the beginning.

I came to Mata Nui quite by accident. I am a cruise-ship events coordinator by trade and it is one of life's lucky mysteries that in my free time I have taken up anthropology as a hobby. My cruise line has an annual tradition of sending all of its fourteen-star staff members (if there is time, I will describe the star rating system in greater detail in a future entry) on a "reward cruise" around the south Pacific. On the year in question, I had only attained six and three-quarters stars, but the crew was light one events coordinator and I was called to fill in. The trip was rather pleasant, although the fourteen-star event coordinators who were on board as guests liked to give me a hard time.

One evening, after returning to my cabin early to wash mustard out of my socks and underwear (the pranks from the other ECs were constant), I found that all of the cabinet hardware in my state room had been removed and fed to a great dane puppy that the captain's daughter had just received for her birthday. Obviously, I came prepared for such an eventuality with a special letter opener that my grandmother's new safari-adventurer boyfriend had given me after a recent penguin-hunting expedition in western Kenya (not a success). It had a poached ivory handle and an unusually wide blade and was extremely helpful when a cabinet became stuck or, in my case, had no knob. (This sort of tomfoolery was rather common among cruise-ship personnel.) On this particular evening, I cursed myself for having stowed the letter opener in one of my cabinets. This meant the mustard would have to wait.

Ever resourceful (we anthropology hobbyists have been known to get into our share of tight spots), I capitalized on my knowledge that Gerry was working the rudder maintenance crew on this trip. Gerry was an aging Slovenian man with one eye and a girlish giggle that was quite off-putting when he would break into it seemingly unprovoked. He had seen a rough life, and developed a few unusual habits along the way. One of them was shaving the eyebrow above his missing eye and fashioning an elaborate combover between the remaining eyebrow and the opposite sideburn. Another was that while on board he would only eat his salads with a special set of silverware that his father had brought over from the old country, and which he would store for safekeeping in a bag of his own design that was hung overboard by a long rope and pulled through the water behind the ship at a distance of roughly sixty yards.

I knew that to ask Gerry's permission to borrow the cheese knife from his special set would mean enduring another of the forty-five minute mnemonic riddles that were his only form of verbal communication, so I silently begged forgiveness for my trespassing and lowered myself off the stern of the vessel.

The water was icy cold but refreshing because by this time the spicy mustard had begun to irritate my scrotum to a nearly unbearable degree. In the dark, I found Gerry's rope and began to work my way backward along it toward the mesh sack that held the cheese knife I so desired, along with a butter knife, dinner fork, salad fork, dinner knife, bottle opener, teaspoon, and soup tureen. The churning water behind the great ocean liner gently bobbed me up and down as I carefully inched my way down the line. I had heard that porpoises often liked to swim in the wake of the ships, and I remained alert in case one should collide with me and knock me free of the rope. By and by, I reached the bag and removed the cheese knife, tucking it securely into my waistband before cinching the drawstring and tightly knotting it back the way I had found it.

I had nearly reached the ship on my return trip when some movement ahead of me caught my eye. I strained in the dark to make out what I had seen, but at this proximity the ship's wake was more powerful and I was doing all I could to cling to the rope. I convinced myself that it was nothing and began moving forward again. Another few feet and I was convinced that I'd seen movement in the water ahead of me! Again I steadied myself as best I could and squinted to try to make out a shape. This time, I confirmed it. Someone else was coming down the rope toward me! I knew it couldn't be Gerry because he would be tied up with paperwork after the semi-daily rudder crew staff meeting, but the fact remained that someone else was on the rope and if I didn't do anything, we would soon be upon one another!

Thinking back to my childhood in front of the television, I realized that the best solution would be the old railroad switch. If I could divert this swarthy interloper onto a separate track, I would be saved! Quickly, I began sawing at one of the three main strands of the rope with the cheese knife. I planned to unbraid it from the other two, and float to the side at a safe distance while this unknown intruder passed me by unawares. I worked feverishly yet silently in the dark, as he approached me nearer with every passing moment. As he grew closer I noticed clenched in his right hand a tiny silver sugar spoon. It dawned on me that the bag had seemed a little light – clearly I was not the only one with occasion to dip into Gerry's stash. Once I realized that the other man was in the same situation as I, I resolved to introduce myself on the assumption that he only wanted to return the sugar spoon to its rightful place and intended me no harm.

I stowed the cheese knife back in my waistband and straightened up to try to make myself visible. Just as I was clearing my throat to initiate an introduction, a massive shark surfaced from my immediate right, grabbing the other man in its immense jaw and severing the rope with its razor sharp teeth as it dragged the poor soul below into the briny depths. As soon as I recovered from the shock, I was treading water backwards as fast as my flailing limbs would take me, trying to avoid a similar fate. By the time it set in that the rope was severed, I was well out of reach of the half that was still attached to the ship and left floating, alone, with a bag of silverware on the end of a rope and a large puddle of mustard in my shorts.

Recalling my training, I worked my way onto my back and remained as motionless as possible in hopes of avoiding the detection of further sharks. Six hours later I washed ashore on the beach of Mata Nui.

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