Marcus slumped into his small desk chair. Instinctively he reached down under the desk and flipped a switch to boot up his work computer. The three felt walls of his cubical were bare. No pictures of family or friends. It was the first day of his second month on the job as a reporter for the New Port Star, and he had no idea what his next assignment would be. The large computer screen flickered to life as he started to unbutton his jacket.

“Marcus!” He jumped at the sudden appearance of his gruff editor-in-chief. “Have you heard of this new health fad in town?” Marcus finished fumbling with his last button as the older man saddled up beside his desk. In direct contrast to Marcus’ youthful, tall and stringing physique the seasoned newspaper man was short, stout and balding. White hair wreathed his head and his white tightly trimmed moustache frequently twitched with annoyance. Marcus watched it dancing knowing the older man was expecting some kind of response.

“Um, no sir. I, um, can’t say I know of any fads,” he managed to fumble out.

The bushy white eyebrows launched up above the tops of the editor’s small round spectacles perched precariously on the end of his nose. “What?” he blustered out leaning forward on Marcus’ computer monitor and despite standing to Marcus’ sitting looking the young man straight in the eyes. “How is that possible? Fads are all around you. Tonics for what ails you. Clothes to stand out in a crowd. Music to make you go deaf. Food to turn your stomach. Endless diets for our sickly society. Do you live under a rock boy?”

“Well, sir, I guess I meant I wasn’t sure about this particular fad you are suggesting,” Marcus offered failing to save him from his now exposed general ignorance of culture and society.

“Oh yes, sure,” replied the editor incredulously. “Full Spectrum Health lad. They are new in town. You say you haven’t heard of them?”

The bottom dropped out of my stomach and the morning's breakfast of coagulated instant porridge whirl-pooled toward the exit. Blood began gushing into my extremities accompanied by bolts of white-hot tingling electricity coursing down my arms jolting through my fingers and seemingly erupting from their tips. Cold perspiration burst forth from pores joining into rivulets trickling along my skin soaking into awkward regions of absorbent fabric. My heart was pounding a persistent, urgent pulsing in my eardrums. It felt as if oxygen was no longer entering the blood stream. I was a fish suddenly finding itself out of water revving up for fight or flight.

I felt completely trapped. My inner animal was hopelessly cornered by the hideous pincers of modern society. One of which was an endless onslaught of bills, bills, bills which rendered flight tantamount to suicide, or perhaps less dramatically, leaping from a stressful frying pan into a flaming crisis. The other was because I am not an animal but a social citizen, well debatably social in my personal case, who is part of a civilized global population where fight, in general, and most especially on a personal scale, is deeply frowned upon.

Now completely light-headed, I leaned forward grasping out to steady myself against the nearest colorful, multiwalled, dispersion-coated, kraftpaper sack. This was not difficult considering the entire aisle in which I stood was a multilevel psychedelic kaleidoscope of thousands of such bags. The packaging crunched in protest as my fingers clenched surging the sudden wave of anxiety and frustration out of my hand. I could feel the dried kibble bits grinding together disrupting into finer particles as my muscles drove my fingers onward.

"Marcus to cash!" repeated the icy tongued mistress of cash management through the multitude of crackling metallic loudspeakers dotting the ceiling of the cavernous hall.

The floor lurched and I suddenly found myself lashed tightly to the mast of a tall ship pitching violently in rough seas. Lightning split the sky all around silhouetting the dripping faces of angry seamen. Their shouts momentarily drowned out by the crashing of thunder. In the brief ebbs in the maelstrom I heard their chants wildly egging on an unseen menace behind me. Another flash illuminated a deck above the men on which stood the sadistic quartermaster her eyes gleaming with furious joy.