The Consultiger

Illustration by Lynda Richardson

Tiger trails, where tourists are driven through the Indian jungles in the hopes of seeing real-life tigers, are not exactly the best holidays. Several days on an uncomfortable and mosquito-infested coach, and generally the closest that you come to seeing any actual tigers  is when one of the guys at the back, in the midst of a dodgy Indian food fever dream, thought that he maybe possibly saw some orange in the undergrowth. So, the coach stays there for another half-hour in the vain hope that there is something to see in the obscured shrubbery. There isn't - nobody sees tigers on tiger trails, and an explorer can't help but empathise when he is assigned to shadow a Consultiger.

Found, or rather unfound, in most regions of the Healthcare Habitat, Consultigers are an elusive species. There are many incidences of explorers attending the first day of placement, arriving at the location where their Consultiger is scheduled to be, only for it to turn out that the individual is away on annual leave, or has gone to attend a conference on the other side of the country. This makes shadowing difficult, so said explorer's seek out other vicinitous species to follow instead.

These species tell of the Consultiger's famed kindness and teaching ability, but once again the individual is absent on days two, three and so on, until the explorer begins to doubt whether they exist at all. Is this some elaborate joke by explorer command? Or is this some Fight Club scenario, and (spoilers - but the film came out in 1999 so really you should know by now) the Consultiger is your Tyler Durden, a hallucinatory manifestation of your impulsive actions?

Sadly, for most explorers this is not the case, and the ultimate truth is that they are merely subject to the cruel hand of fate, assigned to a consultant species who just happens to be taking a lot of time off when you arrive, or whose schedule changes so frequently that it is impossible to conclusively pin them down to a location at a specific time. You might catch a glimpse of them down a corridor one day, but like any half-decent mysterious figure in a movie, something will cross your line of sight and they will have instantly vanished, as if they were never there....

An explorer's best bet at maximising the quality of a placement with a Consultiger is through early and prompt communication with both the individual and their specific ecosystem. Though elusive, even a Consultiger cannot evade an e-mail - the seeker missile of communications, pursuing them relentlessly and inevitably arriving in their inbox, an inescapable beacon to them that must be read.

If an explorer knows through communications that the Consultiger is away on leave, they can adjust their plans accordingly, thereby minimizing the time spent awkwardly waiting for an individual to arrive that will never come. Furthermore, if the Consultiger is made aware that they are expected to have an explorer assigned to them, but know that they will not be there, they can arrange alternate plans, making an explorer's quest to find opportunities that much easier, and reducing wastage of time in the Healthcare Habitat.

Shadowing a Consultiger can be frustrating, but the species has no malicious intent in its absence. A pragmatic and early stance on communication with Consultigers can help turn what may be an inefficient and inconsistent placement into one of great benefit to an explorer's education. Just pray that the Consultiger checks their e-mail - if they don't, it is going to be a looooooonnngggg placement.