Quartday, Bertzia 14th 067.M42
Malik hasn't been to work in four days. He's not in my row so when I didn't see him the other day, I just assumed that he'd reported to Scribe-Adept Tarila, that he was ill or something. But then today Tarila reported to Warders that Malik had missed three shifts with unreported absences. You get three strikes across the entire span of your career, on the fourth you're terminated.
He's got a fiancée - it's not like he doesn't have someone who could call in for him. When we caught up to talk about the scrumball group the other day he was just talking about how they'd recently gotten a new holopicter for their hab, trying to encourage Criston to upgrade his older non-stream model. I know he's been here longer than me… and he hasn't used a single unexcused absence in that whole time. This is really out of the ordinary for him.
I asked Tarila if she'd called his hab, she said that she'd tried both his hab, his private vox and his fiancée's private vox frequency but none of the three were answering. His brother is listed as his emergency contact, but he says that he hasn't heard from Malik or his fiancée in several weeks - but that is apparently not out of the ordinary for them. Rather like me and my siblings I guess. I can go months without speaking to either Arlean or Cordell, and now that Lizzy has joined the Priesthood I can only imagine I won't speak to her that often either.
Nobody around the office has seen him since the 10th. It's likely that Criston, Armand and I were the last people - at least from here - to see him before he just disappeared. Tarila hasn't said anything about whether the Magisters have been involved, she's rather quiet on the matter apart from reporting that Malik has been terminated and that she'd tried to contact him. I'm starting to find this rather worrying. Minos is a big hive. People go missing all the time. They fall foul of financial problems, they meet with mishap such as robbery or an unfortunate groundcar crash or they just decide for whatever reason that they want or need to go. Throne, not long after I started Eren Masters got up in the middle of a shift one day, walked out and a year later we heard he'd transferred to one of the Agri-Combines at Tartarus.
But still. Warders got her ascension because Atwater disappeared. Daisy disappeared without notice. That girl from my Shrine. Now Malik. I've never known so many people to just… go missing. Even people I knew tangentially. I know that I shouldn't borrow trouble and go leaping at shadows that just aren't there. But it just feels… odd. Like there's something else going on here, and that nobody seems to be recognising any pattern to it but me.
Maddy seemed especially concerned when she heard. I didn't even know that she knew Malik that well, apart from talking to him occasionally when we were gathered as a group. But she seemed really intent on finding out what I knew, what Tarila had told me about him and his disappearance. She even asked if anyone knew what district he lived in, if anyone had visited his hab or contacted the Magisters down that way. When I said I didn't know and asked why she wanted to know, she seemed really upset by the question and said that Malik was my friend, and that I should be more worried about him just being gone like that without warning, especially when we'd been so busy trying to work out this scrumball thing.
Maybe she's right. I might poke around and ask Tarila a bit more about what's going on in terms of finding out what happened. I'm just a bit worried that now he's terminated, the office in general are just going to wash their hands of it. I'm already looking into Daisy's disappearance… Maybe I should follow up Malik too, even if it's just for my own peace of mind.
Thought for the Day: Wisdom keeps one out of danger. Bravery is the ability to selectively ignore wisdom.