Arquerite

“No, no, no, NO!” Bayes hissed, tapping madly on her cell phone screen. The screen flickered, showing no signal. As it had for the past hour. The Grem drew her arm back as if to chuck the offending object, but was stopped by a hand on her arm. “Now there missy, let’s not do anythin’ drastic,” Kynes said. “And let’s try and keep our voices down…” while they seemed cool and collected, the cowboy Grem’s darting eyes suggested otherwise. “I’ll show you drastic,” Bayes growled, pushing her glasses up the bridge of her snout to glare at Kynes more effectively. “This whole carnival was YOUR idea! I wanted to watch slasher flics in my apartment, not be a part of one.” Her tail bristled and lashed like an angry cat’s. “Not sure how I was supposed to know this rodeo would turn into a ro-die-o,” Kynes said, to which Bayes gave a muffled scream. “I just wanted to eat some caramel apples, play a rigged ring toss game or two, and go on the hayride,” they said. Bayes sighed, exasperation giving

May 30th, XXXX I told myself I’d keep up this journaling thing, but, predictably, I’ve already started to lose interest after writing religiously for about a week. Anyway, I picked it up again because the past few days have been weird enough that I just had to record them somewhere. I’m typing this out on my phone on the bus home... hope my battery lasts, but if I cut off at any point, well, there you have it. The company had a big “spring team building retreat” to a ranch in the country last week. It was supposed to be to help us “synergize” and “build productive interpersonal skills” but it was actually a “gigantic pain in my ***.” Since I’m a contracted statistician, and not, like, a true employee, I thought I could skip out on it, but everyone insisted I come along. Just what I wanted to do - get behind on my deadlines, to what? Do some trust falls and look at some farm animals? EUGH! Having no choice, I packed as many electronics as I could into my suitcase and left with the

Bayes had no idea why she was here. Even on vacation, her to-do list was nagging at the back of her mind, and even now, she couldn’t help the portion of her brain that was devoted to how next to analyze her clients’ data: what statistical tests to try, an email about whether or not the outlier she found was a typo, a scolding letter to a client who thought “three” was an acceptable sample size... She had scheduled this trip in the middle of a city winter, with the wind so bitter it found its way right through her fur and thick leather jacket. Now, here in Pathos, she cursed whatever whim had booked the vacation... the heat was cloying, her fur matted from the humidity, and her leather jacket starting to take on some unsettling smells of the animal it had come from (she couldn’t just take it off... it was her signature look). Bayes wasn’t having any fun yet, but she was determined to enjoy herself, because she had spent money on the endeavor. And the tickets were non-refundable. Even