Oh. Hey there. I've been neglecting this story because:
A. I couldn't think of anything to write about.
B. Just for the record, this chapter really serves no purpose.
and, C. I started writing a new story and have been giving far more attention to that one. It's basically an epic story that I don't think will be too popular, so I'm writing it all and then posting one chapter per day until it's done. Because, I don't think I could really handle writing a chapter, having zero reviews and like five hits, and then waiting a few weeks to post another which yields the same results. It's untitled as of yet (and will hopefully have a better title than this silly thing), but I think I'll categorize it as General/Drama, but there is romance involved, too. Or, there will be. Later. I think. Or, well, I'm planning on it...
ANYWAY, here's chapter fourteen, in which nothing really happens. I wrote the first, I think, four sentences on a Treo mobile phone when I was trapped in a car and the idea came to me, so that's why it involves PDAs. Or, wait, isn't that personal display of affection? Whatever, I don't know my acronyms, or abbreviations rather.
SORRY FOR THE LONG NOTE!
I will die here. I will die here, between Sam and Toby, and never get to say my final farewell to Donna. They'll pull me out of here on a gurney, never to be heard from again.
It was, to put it quite simply, the longest and most mind numbingly boring meeting of Josh Lyman's adult life, and there was no end in sight.
It wasn't that Josh didn't care about education; he honestly did. He agreed with Sam that education was the silver bullet and that schools should be palaces --- he just didn't enjoy hearing the representatives of the Democratic caucus from Montana drone on and on and on and on and on and on.
They were just so boring!
Josh bounced his pencil lightly on his pad of paper. What I wouldn't give for a national crisis, he thought. What I wouldn't give for anything that got me out of this room!
The fact of the matter was that Josh was going to die in this meeting and it needed to be reiterated. Now, he wasn't sure if anyone had seriously died of boredom, but he was thinking that it must have aided in death at one point or another. Suicide, brought on by boredom. It sounded very legal, and, well, sounded nice, until of course he realized that stabbing himself in the neck with his number two pencil did not necessarily ensure death. And that if he died right then, he'd never kiss Donna ever again.
And we're back to the thought of the gurney.
Maybe we've been secretly brought into a prison.
The room they were in had no windows whatsoever. Josh was fairly sure that they had, in fact, been brought down into the basement. And, it wasn't as if they were on government property anymore. They were in an office building. Or, maybe it was just an "office building". Maybe it was really an embassy of some weird, small country who wanted to cripple the United States and therefore decided to capture its White House Deputy Chief of Staff, Communications Director, and Deputy Communications Director. Yeah, it really didn't make sense to Josh, either, but, if they were in an embassy, or, a consulate, or whatever, Sam, Toby, and Josh were no longer on American soil. They were captives. Prisoners of the War Against Low Standardized Test Scores. No, not Standardized Test Scores. Not really. Not if they're from some small, corrupt country.
But, Josh continued to think, what if we really have been taken hostage and this meeting is all a clever rouse? What if we're about to be executed, broadcasted all over the internet by these --- really white, folksy, Montananian-looking people. Who have mid-western accents and made a reference to something only cowboys and farmers and those sorts of people know about.
Maybe they're just very well-trained. They're actors. They've studied the stereotypical American, especially those in Montana, and they're really from the principality of Ustulakazaberstan. Some place like that. Like the Confederated States of Micronesia or whatever. Somewhere no one outside of the government has every heard about. Except for geography freaks. Or, Cartographers for Social Equality But, they qualify for the geography freak category.
Josh sat back in his chair, weighing the situation at hand. They could indeed be clever masqueraders, but they were clever masqueraders who had studied a lot. Josh hadn't really been paying attention for the last eighteen hours they'd been locked in there, but at least at the beginning that had been making reasonable complaints and scholarly suggestions. Sam also seemed to be still chatting with them. And Toby. So, if they really were trying to kidnap the three of the White House's senior staffers --- well, they had gone through an unreasonable amount of trouble. So, fine, maybe they aren't really trained assassins, or actors, or puppets in an act to torture me to find government secrets and hold for ransom, but I can still pretend they are.
Now, what's the best route for escape?
Josh analyzed the room. No windows, of course, but there was what resembled a ventilation system outlet in the ceiling. And of course, the door, the most obvious exit. It could quite possibly be guarded by thugs armed with glocks, or AK-47s, or some other kind of weapon --- but, even if they could get past the guards, Josh had no idea how they had gotten down there. Maybe they knocked him out. It must have been an elevator. But, how exactly low down inside the building were they? Josh didn't remember seeing anyone else down here. Not even a bathroom.
That's it! The bathroom! I can ask to run to the bathroom --- if they refuse, then the fighting for freedom can begin. Sam, Toby, and I can take these guys. They're weaklings, look at them!
There were four men from "Montana" in the room. One looked to be pushing eighty, two others in their mid-fifties, and one spry looking thirty-something: Josh would be taking him.
He started to reevaluate. Nah, maybe I won't take the young looking guy, he thought, tipping his head to the side staring at the thirty-something, then switching to the grandfatherly one. Pops may be small, but I can't be mislead by his diminutive size. The guy's probably got a black belt, being a trained assassin and all.
The difference in numbers was a slight problem; the ratio of four to three was not in their favor, but they had the power of the President on their side.
Oh, who am I kidding? It's two Jewish guys and a Princeton Tiger, even though Sam has threatened to bust someone like a piñata in the past. … Yeah, we've got no chance.
Josh sighed at his revelation, apparently rather audibly as Sam turned to look at him.
"Something you want to add, Josh?"
His eyes opened widely as he stuttered for a response.
"Oh, uh, no. I was just --- I was just releasing some tension."
"Okay," Sam replied with an air of skepticism as he returned back to conversing with the "representatives".
Suddenly, Josh felt something vibrating in his pocket. At the very least, I have cell reception down here in this labyrinth. He pulled his PDA and unlocked the screen. Damn. He had only received a text message.
He tapped the screen and opened the message, which read:
How's it going?
Josh scrolled down to the sender label. From: Donna.
He furiously hit reply and began to type out his message:
Bored nearly to death. Think I've been captured. Weird building. No windows. Basement.
Finally. Some hope of communication with the outside!
He hit send and began to wait somewhat impatiently. It was easy typing on a PDA with its mini-keyboard, so he expected a fast reply. He held the phone in his hand, wondering how Toby hadn't dropped dead yet. Sam was a bit more patient out of the three. And, plus, he was crazy-go-nuts about education.
Vibration!
Josh quickly flipped the phone over in his hand and tapped the screen again. At over a hundred-words per minute on the computer, Donna had some speed on her Treo. The new communiqué read:
You're hysterical. Building is official MT Dem Caucus headquarters. You're in basement because they have to remove asbestos in other parts of building.
Asbestos! Oh, she's going to hear about that:
Great. So now I'll die from inhaling that stuff.
Why couldn't we just have had this meeting in the Roosevelt Room?
He added that thought to the message and hit send again. He looked up, to see if anyone had noticed his texting. No one had.
A minute and a half passed:
The WH has asbestos, too. You're not going to die. It's snowing outside.
Josh smiled. Donna loved when it snowed in Washington. Probably because it reminded her of the frozen tundra that is Wisconsin, but also because it was pretty, and she and Josh would always go for walks and look at the monuments covered in majestic white fluff.
He replied with a promise:
We'll go for a walk once I'm released in 8-10 months.
A minute later:
Ha ha. Stop texting. Fix education. Love you.
He put the phone back in his pocket and tried to concentrate. After a minute he starting yelling inside his head. The boredom was too much. For the love of God, he yelled, could these people be any more boring!
Sneakily stealing a glance at Toby, he noticed he, too, had finally begun to space out. Sam was still arguing points about government funding and how the Bartlet Administration was doing much better than any Republicans in Congress, to which the caucus replied that they already knew, and then, it happened.
Silence.
Was the meeting wrapping up?
Was it?
Was it!
Time to interject.
"So, we had enough chatting for one day?" Josh asked, a smirk on his face.
"I don't know, Josh," the old guy said. "You've barely said a word this entire time. What do you think?"
"Basically, sir, I agree with Sam on all aspects. Sam here's our point-man on education, and he knows what he's talking about. If you want President Bartlet's strategy for improving schools in this country look no further than this guy here."
Josh slapped Sam's shoulder as Sam and Toby both turned and stared at him. Josh's smirk began to change into a serious face as he realized that both his friends were wondering What the hell was going on.
"But, no, really sir," Josh continued, clearing his throat, transferring into his business visage, "Sam's got a comprehensive grip on the matter, and if you want to get your ideas out in a clearer medium, send a report my way and I'll personally look at it."
The old guy looked as if he was pondering it for a minute, then stood up, extending his arm across the table to Josh.
"Okay, Mr. Lyman, you have yourself a deal."
"Thank you sir," Josh replied, taking the man's hand and shaking it, as the rest of the men in the room stood and did the same with one another.
Josh threw on his coat with lightening speed, grabbed his things, threw them in his backpack and ran towards the door, holding it open for his constituents.
"Thanks again," he said to the caucus before the door closed, and stood in the hallway, the door not guarded by guards, and with some people walking about the hallway normally. Sam and Toby stared at him.
"What?" He asked innocently. "Why are you staring?"
"I'm glad to know you've adopted every one of Sam's ideals on education," Toby replied.
"Oh, come on, guys," Josh said, his voice going up a little bit higher than usual. "I made us all unified behind the President's Education Reform Bill. We looked like a solid group with one mind, one goal."
"And yet you did it with so few words," Sam quipped.
"Hey! In some cases, simpler is better!" Josh said defensively. "And plus, these guys are from Montana. Montana, where wordiness is not a turn on. Where plainspoken is better."
"These are Democrats, Josh, not Republicans," reminded Toby.
"Yeah, but still, Democrats from Montana!" Josh's voice had climbed higher into the stratosphere as he tried desperately to escape Sam and Toby's wrath. "And, for a while then, I didn't even think they were!"
"Didn't think they were what?" Sam asked, walking towards the elevator.
"Democrats. I didn't think they were Democrats from Montana."
"What did you think they were? Aliens?" Toby questioned.
"Well, illegal aliens."
"Mexican border hoppers?"
"Or Canadian? It is closer to Montana, you know," Sam shot in.
"No. I mean, illegal --- I mean, I thought we had been --- kidnapped, or something, taken hostage, in a consulate of some minute country posing as the Montana Democratic Caucus. I thought we were meeting with assassins, puppets of the country's corrupt government, sent out to hold White House Senior Staffers for ransom and find code-word clearance secrets."
Toby and Sam exchanged looks, then turned without a word into the elevator as the doors opened.
"What? Like that's such a crazy theory?"
The speechwriters remained silent.
"We were in the basement! There were no windows! I didn't know I even had cell phone reception until Donna text messaged me!"
"Sometimes I wonder about you," Toby mumbled, as the elevator doors opened once again at the ground level --- they had only been two floors below.
"I'm going to go get us a cab," Sam said, viewing the snow falling heavily from the sky, as Toby and Josh walked towards the doors with Sam and waited inside as he went out.
"You know, it wasn't so crazy," Josh said. "We'd never met these people before and we came to them. I don't think the Secret Service would have approved, had we asked them."
"Uh-huh," Toby said, walking over to the other side of the lobby away from Josh.
"I was thinking like a government operative, Toby!"
Toby continued to walk away and Josh pulled out his phone, calling Donna at the office.
"Josh Lyman's office, Donna speaking."
"Hi."
"You survived. Or, have you managed to get away and are calling me to come rescue you?"
"Very funny," Josh replied. Yep. Even Donna was giving him a hard time.
"You know," Donna started, "I have a plan for us once you get back here and we can leave."
"What's that?"
"We're going to go for a walk in the snow, and then we're going to go home and have hot chocolate."
"On one condition."
Donna sighed. "And what's that?"
"We have whipped cream."
"Okay."
He smiled mischievously.
"But not in the hot chocolate."