Progress Bars

Arkay frowned as he checked over each of the consoles. There were three of them total, but only two of them were active. One was waiting for messages from the rest of his crew, the other showed the slowest progress bar ever. The progress was on the ship’s automatic repair systems, but Arkay needed to keep an eye on it. Plenty of tasks could be done automatically, but there were also many things that Arkay would have to do himself. The problem was, he didn’t know when to do them until the progress bar stopped and told him to do so.

So now Arkay was kinda stuck. He HAD to spend large amounts of time watching one screen. But doing so was incredibly boring.

To combat the boredom, Arkay had tried a couple of things. At first, he’d tried to alter the repair program, so it would show all the tasks he needed to do in advance. But when that failed miserably, Arkay defaulted to just finding things to do on his own. However, when Arkay finished a required task before the program had told him to do it, the whole system ended up crashing, and the little Decay Lord had to start the whole process again.

So now Arkay was just waiting. But this was where the third screen came in. With a quick glance at the screen’s settings, Arkay realised he could stream videos on it. This meant he could at least pass the time a little.

Feeling a little better, Arkay fiddled around a bit with the third screen. Didn’t take too long to connect it to his computer and to his favourite video streaming site. But something was missing, and Arkay wasn’t sure what.

A message distracted Arkay, making an annoying beep noise as it came in. Arkay immediately checked it.

“We are entering the castle. There is a Life Goddess here that wishes to speak to us. Please maintain standard protocols, and send us a message when the repair systems are done.”

Arkay shrugged, kinda expecting a little more from his crew.

“Yeah, sure thing boss! Gonna be a while but I’ll let you know as soon as it’s finished.”

“Thank you. Speak soon.”

The little green icon by Galyn’s name faded to grey. Arkay was alone again. But Arkay wasn’t too bothered. Now he had something to keep him occupied while he waited for the repair system to finish, he was much happier.

But there was still something missing.

Sighing, Arkay checked the messages, then checked the progress bar again. Nothing had changed. The progress bar was chugging along very slowly. On a more positive note, the first video Arkay wanted to watch had loaded up already.

Suddenly, Arkay realised what he was missing. Food. After a quick double-check of the other two screens, Arkay left the cockpit and headed to the kitchen. He returned moments later, with a big bag of popcorn and a drink. Arkay had also grabbed a couple of bars of chocolate for good measure.

Feeling rather satisfied, Arkay leaped into the captain’s seat, turning the chair to face the three consoles. Now he could watch the progress bar and not get bored to death.

“Let’s just hope Galyn doesn’t urgently need me…” Arkay smiled, chowing down on popcorn as his video started. “I love this show…”