A composition book.

So, last night.

Last thing I know, I'm passed out in the hotel with Tania, Racquelle, and Lara, then we're all getting shaken awake by Aaron's handlers and told to grab our shit. Probably another departure nobody bothered telling us about... We're just the bodyguards, right? Never mind that the last time some donkity shit like this happened, I had to spend four hours explaining to a very patient customs official why Aaron's team of specially-trained cuttlefish should count as carry-on baggage.

If we're flying to another goshfucked meet'n'greet he forgot about, I'm going to be so pissed.

a.

 

We've been up here for hours. Nobody'll tell us where we're going, or why... Hell, even Aaron seems confused, though he just kind of rolled with it. He's watching his own videos, popping champagne corks, and trying to have fun in what appears to be a sleepy haze of boozy bonhomie. I don't think he actually has any idea what we all got woken up for, but that doesn't really surprise me.
Sometimes I'm kind of amazed he can make it out of his front door without accidentally putting his pants on his head.

It is weird to see everyone in one spot, though. I mean, yeah we travel like this, but usually the wardrobe guys hang out with the stylists and makeup people, the techs hang out with the techs, etc. I'm beginning to doubt anyone knows what's going on.

Still pretty peeved about being woken up in the middle of the night for some bullshit trip to complete fuckoff nowhere. Rac, Seth, and them are lucky-- they don't get travel-sick like I do. Might have to hit up Tania for some pills, I used the last of mine on the last leg of the tour.

Ugh. This is going to suck.

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So, everybody else made a huge pot of... I dunno. Something. It smelled good, but that's not all that surprising. Aaron's always pretty particular about having his boats, buses, and such stocked with some decent food. He even keeps a bunch of that weird artisanal violet soda he has written into every rider (I'm convinced he's the only person keeping that company in business, because what the hell even is violet soda).

Rob tried to offer me some food. Said it was macaroni and cheese... I don't really even eat cheese on land, but I swear I'm going to yak if I have to look at it when I'm already feeling queasy. I said no thanks, so he waved the bowl under my nose and said it was "really gooooood."
Rob is actually kind of an asshole.

Tania didn't have anything for travel sickness, but Jaime did. It's some kind of weird herbal preparation, and every time I hiccup it makes everything taste like an old lady's sock drawer, but I think I can get through this without making a spectacle of myself.
We've got one bathroom for way-the-hell-too-many people. The last thing I need is to be locked in it any longer than strictly necessary.

a.

ETA: So, apparently we're not allowed to look out the window? I don't know. My seat's next to one, so I kind of leaned over to look at something that wasn't the "master-feast of artistic visual delicacies" (Aaron's words) that was the video for "I Wanna Rock Ur Body 2 Bby" playing on repeat. Reggie(? I think that's his name, we don't really ever talk or anything), one of the PR guys, came over and yanked the shade down. FFffffffffffffffffgod I wish we would land already.

 

Serial #s

Pkg # 156846031848 27408-91652 9452361 041607073149

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I don't know what's going on. Everyone's asleep now (except Jaime) so there's time to write shit down, but not much.

Something had to be wrong with the food. A bit after dinner (hours?) Joanna said her hands and face felt kind of tingly and weird, and now she can't breathe. Now everyone's down except the people who didn't eat anything-- me, Jaime, and Tania. I don't think it's an allergy... Could everyone come down with a food allergy all at once like that?

Jaime said maybe it was poison, but I don't want to go putting on that particular piece of aluminum headwear just yet. Tania said poison didn't make any damn sense, because it would be hell of difficult to explain why everybody in Aaron's camp decided to go on a fabulous-fucking-mystery-ride-to-nowhere and then oh, by the way, eat several pounds of arsenic noodles.
I don't ever use much from college microbio, but some kind of microbial contamination makes the most sense to me. I always believed that you should never attribute to malice what could be adequately explained by dumbfuckery, so I dug the packaging out of the soon-to-be-jettisoned trash and wrote down the serial numbers. We're taking turns finding all of the affected packages and tossing them, and we're going to have to be hell of careful what we eat and drink from now on.

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Tania's on nursing duty. I think Joanna passed away. We haven't talked out loud about what to do about her so it wouldn't upset anyone else. She just kind of pulled a blanket over Jo and kept going.

Tania's not the only one with a secret, though... We've been radioing for help nonstop, and getting a whole lot of jackshit fuckall in reply. Supposedly, craft like this aren't that hard to land even if the transporter's unable to beam you down (there's a sequence you can engage for emergency water landings and whatnot, Jaime's got the manual spread out over half the floor trying to figure it out). I looked out the window to see where we were in relation to Earth-- over water, over which countries, how far.
I don't see anything.

I mean, I see some things I don't recognize, but not the big, swirly blue ball. I don't know how the hell we got so turned around, but this is a goddamned disaster and I don't think anyone knows how to fix it. I'm not even sure how we're going to coordinate anything between trying to keep everyone else semi stable and making sure that, if we're stuck up here any longer, we don't end up banqueting on bowls of some kind of violent space botulism. Whatever this trip was supposed to be, it was a mistake. Now it's a mistake with a body count.

a.

 

999997, 999990+?

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Taking over radio duty. There's one distress signal that's pretty strong and clear, but it also seems hell of far away... Based on the dealy connected to the radio jaunce (idk what any of this shit's called), it's traveling outward on a straight path along the y axis of the navigational whojaflinkus. I told Tania and Jaime. I think we're going to try following it. Maybe, if we get closer, they'll be able to pick up our signal.

(Okay so this is totally the part in the news story where you hear about the young couple who tragically died while hiking and would have survived if only they hadn't left their campsite to go find help, but we're seriously getting zilch-point-shit sitting here. All of the distress calls are either getting fainter and harder to make out, or just going to static. Some of them, I can't even tell what's a distress call and what's just some kind of ambient space particle bullshit. There's no response from Earth at all.)

Reggie and Frank died. Tania waited for everyone else to be asleep (or else so far gone that they wouldn't know what's going on anyway), and she and I dragged Joanna's body to the airlock. I don't know how we'll explain her suddenly being gone when everyone wakes up, but I don't know how the hell we were going to explain the smell, either.

Jaime says it might be safer to just limit ourselves to foods that aren't likely to accidentally grow anything deadly. I agreed, though that means foods that are very acidic or salty. It sounded like a good idea at the time, but I think antacids are going to turn into some kind of prison currency up in here if we have to keep this up.

a.

 

I haven't written anything in awhile. I guess there hasn't been time.

There's time now, though. We're at the end of the first aid kits, so all of the emergency blankets, sterile water, etc. have pretty much been used up. Jaime, Tania, and I are still okay, but the definition of "okay" has gone through hell of changes.

We followed the signal out to wherever we are, and then it disappeared. How fucked up is that?

I couldn't take it. Not after all this. I felt like I was going to have some kind of nervous breakdown and airlock myself, it would've been easier than going back to Tania and Jaime and saying, "Hey guys! Remember the shred of hope we had awhile ago? Well, as it turns out, I'm actually a moron."

Okay, so I didn't actually say that verbatim.
They took it well, though. Jaime said it wasn't my fault (I don't believe him) and Tania said it could've just been some kind of weird resonance echo we were picking up, and there was no point in dwelling on it because we weren't getting any responses from anywhere else to begin with anyhow (I believe her a little).

We're orbiting a planet right now... I don't know where we are. This ship is so beat to hell, it's not even funny. Aaron bought the damn thing to show off. He never knew how to fly it. Not, like, fly fly it. It's set up so anyone with the IQ of a dead sponge can get it to take off and orbit for awhile, but it definitely wasn't designed to do much more than that. It's got an FTL drive, but that seems more like an afterthought... Actually using it (Jaime and I managed to fudge it, after a hell of a lot of trial and error and consulting a manual that appears to have been translated to and from sixteen different languages) makes it pretty painfully obvious that none of the software was installed with it in mind. I'd be shocked as hell to find out that engaging the FTL travel didn't destroy half of the hardware components, too.
This rich kid seriously bought a goddamn FTL drive for bragging rights.
Mother. Fuck.

So, our options are this:

1. Stay on the ship and keep trying to radio for help while we slowly get rickets or scurvy or whatever the hell, hoping we don't accidentally contact some alien race that decides to eat us instead. And, by the way, continue sharing the cargo hold with several very ripe corpses and the living space with several future dead people that there's no room for, because operating the airlock uses resources we can't spare.
2. Try to land, hoping we don't end up on some kind of horrible hellscape without breathable air or drinkable water, and buy ourselves a little time to figure out what to do. (This part of the plan could use some work tbh)

We're running out of clean water and safe food. If we stay up here much longer, we're going to have to start dipping into stuff that's less likely to be pristine, and (after watching what happened to everyone else) that's not even something I want to think about too hard.

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We're out of fuel, and soon to be out of power. Our solar panels aren't picking up enough to keep more than the bare minimum of things functional, which means no lights, no radio (unless we can find whatever the "manual power adaptor" is), and no oxygen going to anywhere other than the cockpit. The cockpit can fit maybe Tania, Jaime, and I if we sleep all huddled, but there's no way we'll be able to bring anyone else. We talked it over, and Jaime said that Aaron, Justin, and Seth are barely clinging to life anyway, so maybe shutting the O2 off might actually be kind. Tania seemed on the fence. I don't know... I couldn't do it. If that's what they want to do, good luck to them, but I'd rather take my chances on the planet.
All three of us are pretty much boned at this point, so does it really matter whether we die down there or up here?

a.

 

The last of the sick passed away. We decided to go planetside.
It's not as weird as I expected. The air definitely isn't quite right-- it smells like rotten eggs (hydrogen sulfide, which is hell of bad for you, but only at sufficiently high concentrations), and I've noticed that I feel winded a little more easily now. But it's not like we all started grabbing our throats and turning purple or anything.

The water isn't right, either... It has that same weird fart smell as the air, and it's crystal clear. Clear water always weirds me out because natural water isn't really supposed to be like that... If there's nothing living in it, there's probably a damn good reason why and several excellent reasons why you shouldn't drink it.
We're going to have to set up some way to distill it.
Well, I. I am. That's my job while Jaime and Tania figure out where to put everyone else. Distilling's basically just boiling water and condensing just the water vapor, though, which I think I can handle. It's going to be hell of wasteful when compared to an actual distillation apparatus (which wasn't included in the ship's emergency kit, because that would've made sense), but at least nobody's going to die of drinking farty arsenic suspicion-water.

There are some trees here. There are some tall plants with what feels like bark and woody tissue (which I will for simplicity's sake refer to as "trees" because this isn't a thesis on xenobotany okay), which we've kind of been breaking bits off of to use as tools.
We're basically cave people.
Really terrible cave people in expensive pants.

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I built a fire (really I used one of those cheapo stick-up lights to start a small electrical fire in a pile of dead twigs, and then added more dead twigs until it was a regular fire), and the three of us managed to cobble together some kind of hut out of pieces of trees. We're def screwed if it starts to rain (especially since it's probably going to be acidic as hell when it does), but we're okay for now. It was tricky having to take breaks to catch our breath so often, and Jaime started feeling a little lightheaded, but I'm actually feeling better. I don't notice the smell so much anymore (though that could be because I'm either getting used to it, or dying of hydrogen sulfide poisoning), and I only really notice my breathing when I'm exerting myself, or find myself taking an extra breath to try to "catch up." It's weird, and I guess we'll find out if survival is even possible before too long, but I'm feeling pretty optimistic. More than I was on the ship, at least.

Tania went to find something to plug up the holes in our hut. I didn't ask her or Jaime how the grave digging went. I don't really want to know. There are a lot of people I'm going to miss, but... I don't know. It's overwhelming. I feel like I need to find a space for my brain to breathe before I can even think about feeling sad.
There's just too much.

a.

 

Day ??

I told Tania about this book, but not all what was in it. She said it was a good idea, and at least it'd help us keep track of how long we've been away from Earth.

So... My bad, I guess. I never really had to worry about dating things before.

I haven't written in here for awhile. Years, I think (or just months that feel like years). I have no idea how time passes on this planet, I just know that I wake up, perform several tasks to keep from starving to death, and then go back to sleep. I guess in a weird brainy-brainfood way it's liberating, you know? Like, I don't really feel anxious that often anymore. I used to. I'd work myself up about bills, my job, all kinds of stuff, until it was just completely unmanageable. I can't do that anymore, though. I mean... It's not that I don't have bills (I don't) or a job (I sort of do) or anything to worry about, it's just that it all seems so much more imminent, you know? I don't get to waste my time sweating about what might happen in the future, because I have the hell too much to do today.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not turning into the kind of person who thinks all of humanity's problems would've been solved if we'd all gone back to living in yurts and eating sprouted things. I would still give my purely metaphorical left nut for some antibiotics or a grocery store. There is a definite difference, though.

I don't know if anyone else feels it. Jaime seems more withdrawn, paranoid almost. All he does is pace around camp planning repairs and additions. Tania seems like herself, but Tania's always a rock. I'm convinced you could wake her up in the middle of the night with a bucket of ice water and she wouldn't be any different than she is in the middle of the afternoon. We don't really all sit down and talk about psychological stuff, so I guess it's alright as long as nobody's going all Lord of the Flies on anyone else.

We found the manual power adaptor for the radio, and managed to bring it down here with us. There aren't any antennas or anything here to help us get a decent signal, and Jaime thinks the composition of the atmosphere or planet itself might be causing some interference, but we've been having no luck. The manual power adaptor's not very efficient (not as efficient as the ship itself at least), but it's our only hope at this point if when the radio's portable power fails. We can't even count on beaming up and down to the ship to send out signals, because there's no guarantee we'll have enough juice for a return trip.
I was thinking that we might not be having any luck getting a reply because there's nobody out there to hear us, but Tania and Jaime don't need to hear my pessimistic bullshit right now.

a.

 

Day 210?

Tania and Jaime went out to try to forage again today. Two of us go periodically, usually to this one spot where we know that these edible things grow. They're sort of like... Idk, some kind of fruit-egg. Like imagine a durian, only instead of a prickly ball that's full of almond custard and smells like a million buttholes, it's smooth, most of them are sort of heart-shaped, they don't smell like much in particular, and the inside is sort of eggy. So I guess not actually like a durian at all.
Never mind.

We didn't know if they were edible or not, but some of them had bites taken out. Kind of like how rabbits would go through a garden, and just nibble a bit off of everything? Like that. I know that seeing what the local wildlife eats is (often) the first step to identifying things that aren't going to screw your biology six ways to Sunday, and Jaime said he'd learned how to do an edibility test during a wilderness survival camp overnight when he was a teenager. Anyway, long story short, unless we're all going to come down with some kind of horrible chronic egg-vegetable related health condition in the future, these things seem okay to eat.

They came back with an assload of the things, which is good. They seem to keep alright here if you keep the roots intact, cover them in a little soil, and don't sit them directly in the sun. We'll have food to last us for a bit.

Jaime managed to get a splinter. It was a tiny thing, he didn't even notice it until he got back to camp. I already had some water boiling, so I made a hot compress to draw it out. It bled a little bit, but we still have bandages left over.

If I haven't been keeping up with this journal, this is why-- things have become pretty mundane now. We keep busy, we find food, we eat it, we wait for help that never comes. There's probably some kind of really elegant metaphor for the futility of existence in all of this, but I'm exhausted and it can go elegantly metafuck itself.

a.

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Jaime's wound is infected.

He came back to me tonight and asked me to rebandage it for him, because it was too tight and uncomfortable. I know that it wasn't too tight before, and when I unwrapped it, all I could see was an angry, throbbing red. I tried putting on another hot compress and seeing if there was some kind of pus or discharge I could let out and relieve the pressure, but it feels like a solid mass.

I don't know what to do. Tania and I are taking turns putting compresses on it and keeping an eye on him. We aren't doctors. We don't have any antibiotics. Even if we did, would they work against this? I don't know what to do.

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He has a fever now. It isn't much of one, but it's there. He wants us to move him closer to the fire, says he's cold. He was sweating when I checked on him, though, and his face was so pale.

There are red streaks going up his arm.

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Day 213

Jaime died.

Tania and I took him to where they buried everyone else. We scratched at the dirt with the branches they'd used to dig the graves, put his body into it, and marked the spot with a piece of tile. All of the graves are marked like that-- Jaime and Tania found some replacement tile and insulation material in the cargo hold, and brought it down when we first arrived. It works, too. The headstones aren't marked at all, but they're as bright and pristine as they were the day they were placed.

We stood there for a long time afterwards, not saying anything. I don't think either of us had the tears to cry with. Just dirty faces and the sudden realization that this was how it was going to be. Unless we received a reply, one of us would inevitably die here, and the other one (if they were strong enough) would bring them here to be buried and forgotten about. Then, that one would die, and there would be nobody.

Tania cooked some food when we got back, because digging is exhausting and calories are at a premium. I don't think either of us could bring ourselves to eat much, though. We talked a little bit about how things would be different, how we would have to change how we'd been doing things. With three of us, there could always be someone here to look after the fire and campsite while the other two got shit done and looked after each other. I don't know what we're going to do now.

a.

 

Day 300+?

I'm sorry, I haven't been keeping track of anything worth a damn. Tania and I are alive and well still, though it's hard to effectively divide things up sometimes and we still get winded when we try to do too much. Sometimes we fight, too, but it's the kind of fight that old, married people have. We can never stay mad for long, there's too much we need to rely on each other for.

I went to pick some eggs while she made some repairs to the hut we're still staying in (the rain strips the bark off of the wood, and makes the wood swell and go soft and pulpy underneath). She wasn't done when I got back, said she was tired today. I helped her finish, and we made dinner.

Still no responses on the radio. I tried taking it to higher elevations with me, but that didn't seem to help...

a.

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Even if I don't write in here consistently, I really should divide the pages up smaller. It's not like I can just go buy a new notebook when this one runs out, or anything.

I'm starting to worry about Tania. She's tired all of the time now... I thought it was depression at first, since it didn't happen until after Jaime died, but maybe it's always been there and I just never noticed. I don't know. Even simple things, like preparing meals, wear her out. One time I looked in to check on her, and she wasn't even sleeping. Just staring at the side of the hut. It was probably just a trick of the firelight, but she even looked thinner.

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Tania doesn't get out of bed anymore. There are some days when I'm not sure she even knows who I am.

She'll eat if she's fed, and will relieve herself if she's helped, but I can't leave her alone. Even if she could do these things herself, she can't defend herself. There are things out there, and I won't let them come for her while I'm gone.

She's lost more weight, too. Her cheeks look so hollow, and her eyes look so dark... They're always bloodshot, too, but I don't know if that's the sickness. I hear her crying sometimes. I don't know if it's from pain, fear, or confusion.

I know what Jaime would say if he was still here. He died in pain, but it was quick. Two days, maybe three? I could flip back and check, but fuck it. This has been going on for months. I make myself feel better by thinking I'm taking care of her, but I have no idea if that's what Tania wants. I don't even know if Tania knows what Tania wants anymore. I don't know if I'm cruel for keeping her alive when she's in pain. Then I realize that I'm just using Jaime's memory to rationalize doing something that would only make the rest of my life easier, and I want to crawl into a hole at the bottom of the sea somewhere.

I'm going to keep taking care of Tania as long as I'm able to. I think she would've done the same for me... but would she have? She was undecided about whether or not to cut off the oxygen supply on the ship rather than waiting for everyone else to die naturally. Would she look after me, or would she make it quick? Is what she would've done the same as what she would want done for her?

I need to sleep.

a.

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I buried Tania today.

She's by where she and I buried Jaime, adjacent to Aaron and everyone else. I didn't feel bad when I did it, which... I guess made me feel bad afterward? Feels like I did most of my mourning for her when I saw what was coming, so everything else was just some kind of formality. I don't really know how to feel.

I'm scared.
Tania was the strongest person I knew-- whether I was already grieving for her or not, it feels like the idea of losing her didn't really sink in until now. That now I'd really be alone. There was nothing either of us could do for her in the wilderness here, not even anything left in the ship's first aid kits to make her more comfortable.
If someone like Tania could wither away like that, what kind of a chance is there for me? Or anyone else like us?

I don't know if anyone else is like us, though. I still haven't gotten a response.

I guess what I'm writing this to say is that, if there's any other sentient species who comes across this, we were here. We didn't want to be, and it was damn near a miracle that we were, but we were here.

(Also sorry we ate all of your egg-fruit.)

I'm going to try to fix the radio, I think. If it works, it works. If it doesn't... I think I could be okay with biting the grass. I mean, everyone else did. I'd be in good company.

a.

I'm going back aboard the ship. The way I see it, I'm back to two options:

1. I can stay here, and live as best as I can for as long as I can with a dodgy radio and virtually no hope of getting a response.
2. I can beam back aboard the ship, knowing full well that I probably don't have enough power to make it back down. I should have enough juice to send out one last call for help without relying on the radio's battery or the adaptor, though. If I'm outside of the planet's atmosphere and off of its surface, maybe it'll go through. If it doesn't, I will definitely die once the power's gone.

It's Hail Mary time, I guess.

a.

((... And that should account for the time between Earth's destruction and Aissa appearing in-game. ))

 

-There's more scrawling, in very obviously mismatched ink from the previous entries.-

Dear Diary. I guess I have time to write something now that I'm in an actual building again (and even likely to stay for a few days).

Distress call was picked up. Ended up meeting a Russian cyborg named Omega and a female Glitch named Annie (I think). They talked for awhile, but eventually Omega managed to straighten out the software conflicts that kept the FTL drive from actually communicating properly with the rest of the ship. It was nice actually seeing what it's like when it works properly-- all told, it isn't a bad little ship.

Of course, then the hardware decided to shit the bed with the lights on a week or so afterward. Found some physicist dude named Joro to look at it. He explained a bunch of the problems the ship was having, even offered to repair it once we tracked down the right parts. Haven't managed to do that yet, though.

Needless to say, this all happened in orbit around a barren icy hellhole of a planet. I found an abandoned cabin there, so I didn't spend the entire time alternating between wearing out my ship's life support and getting chillblains. Met some new people, too... One lady named Clarrissa, and another guy who brought me a crap ton of wood so I could try to shore up my digs and keep the ceiling from collapsing on me every time it snowed. Ended up meeting someone named Silskeer, too. They ran a few more diagnostics on my ship, confirmed what Joro had mentioned, and even managed to give me a tow to a planet that doesn't completely suck donkey butts. Supposedly there's a facility on here that'll be able to fabricate some of the parts I need, so it might even shorten how long I have to wait around.

I need to stop writing before I give myself a migraine again.

Long story short, it's Valentine's day today (or so I've been relentlessly reminded). Went to a party, met some more people (Zeera (Xeera? She never showed me how to spell it...), Mal, Barbados, and Kelly), drank a lot. Woke up today simultaneously thinking I was about to die, and afraid I wasn't. Now staying in an Inn. Still waiting to hear back about my ship, but I think I'm actually getting used to this. I mean, the risk of being murdered aside, it might be way more effective for me to sell my ship for scrap and just catch rides when I need to.
Also I think I may have accidentally joined a cult.

Just in case I was under the mistaken assumption that things were going to calm down if I was rescued, this has definitely been one hell of a wake-up call.

a.

P.S. On the plus note, I've been able to pick up a little extra work designing some murals and helping a group of monks figure out how to best incorporate the design of an ancient, recently restored bit of stained glass into a new window. It's been interesting.

 

(The next page is stiff with paste. There isn't very much written, just a title and a large photograph glued to the middle of the page.)

SELFIES WITH FRIENDS!

​

 

"What is your dream?"

Is it bad that I feel like an idiot when I have to answer this? Like it should be simple-- a dream is whatever you aspire to do or be, or however you want things to end. Instead, every time he asks me, I just make excuses.

I guess I could tell him that it feels like it's taken every ounce of my energy just to get to where I am now. That that kind of planning was a luxury I always felt like I couldn't afford, or just wasn't relevant yet. That if I had to come up with a dream off of the top of my head, it would be to just rest for awhile. That would be the closest thing to the truth.

If I really had to answer, though... I guess all I want is to not have to worry anymore. I like traveling, but it'd be nice to have a home base somewhere that I could always rely on returning to. It'd be nice to not have to worry where my food or fuel is going to come from. I'd like to be able to see the people I enjoy spending time with, explore untouched worlds, and work on the things I used to enjoy doing. At the very least, it would be nice to not have to worry that every conversation I have is going to result in more news about lost friends.

Franz is dead. His squire and man-at-arms are nowhere to be found. Another Glitch told me that Levitz probably wasn't responsible, but I don't know if I believe that. Whatever the case, I guess I can take some comfort in the fact that the way Franz went meant that he didn't end up a collection of specimens for that man...

I hope Squire Raul and the cat are okay. I can imagine them both being very lost. Especially Raul, who Franz deposited with me like a stray puppy that'd been rescued from a puddle (before spending a good chunk of the evening teasing him by pretending it was a ruse on Raul's part to try to get me to have a drink with him, no less).

Hell. It took a little while for everything to sink in, but I catch myself being upset by it at odd times. Sometimes I'm not even sure why-- Franz and I didn't know each other very well. He gave me some good advice, though, and I remember how bravely he faced the thought of his own mortality. He was a fine metal person to drink with, too.

It seems so silly, but I really feel like this might've been so much easier if there had been something for me to see. Some grave site, or memorial, or something else that could give this some closure. I have a feeling I'm going to be losing more friends in the time to come, and I've never really been able to grieve, really grieve, any way but alone... I might try to sneak out and do something small here. Some tangible marker, but unnoticeable enough that I'm not likely to end up having to explain my craziness if it gets found. I'm sure Jackton's probably already wondering what the hell he's gotten himself into without also having to reconcile my apparent need to go occasionally be sad outside by myself.

There are a lot of names here that I should have spent time putting faces to in this book, I know. And I know that, years from now, I'm going to regret that I didn't. Still... at least I have time to write now that I didn't have before, and a shelf I can squirrel this book away in where it isn't likely to be noticed.

a.

 

I think I'm going stir crazy.

Aissa promised to play it safe and keep herself out of harm's way.
Maricela didn't.

I need to find something to do.

a.

 

(There is a sticky, pink-hued fingerprint in the corner of the page, and a note tucked into the spine of the book.)

There is cake.

I went to Velocity's bar the other day. I wish I could say I was out taking care of some other business, but in all honesty... I was starting to go a little stir crazy. So, Velocity.

I hadn't planned on doing much. Getting a few drinks, maybe dancing a little. Thought I might play the guitar if nobody else objected. I ended up talking to some guy who gave me part of a bottle of wine, so that was nice. The conversation turned a bit strange after that, though (he was taking about his life, and things began to get pretty dark). I decided we should both go downstairs to listen to some music instead. No big, right?

Anyway. Nobody else was dancing, that I recall. I started to, figuring (as per usual) that I probably wasn't going to see any of these people again anyway... so what's it matter? Fortunately, I wasn't the only one making alcohol-fueled gyrations in public for very long-- this other girl got up and began dancing with me. She even offered me some champagne, too, which was nice... I hadn't had any of the good stuff since getting on the ship with Aaron, Tania, and the others. It was a little more nostalgia than I bargained for, but I like the stuff too well to avoid it for the rest of my days.

So, I'm dancing, she's dancing, it's all well and good. That's when I notice this one particular guy I've run into a couple of times (one of those being when he was full of painkillers, drunk as a lord, recovering from hypovolemia, and chucking pixels at me to get me to strip... but that's neither here nor there). Long story short, he ends up passing out. Just hits the floor like a sack of flour.
I'm checking his pulse, airway, and respiration rate, making as sure as I can that he's just drunk, when some dipshit in a uniform comes up and drags him outside. I figure they know each other, so I don't think anything of it... Until the drunk guy staggers back in, soaking wet, and says the other guy dunked him in the fountain to revive him (since aspiration pneumonia's the new "sleeping it off," I guess).

I start talking to the guy, trying to get a bead on his situation. I figure he obviously has something going on if he keeps turning up to places drunk and/or bleeding heavily, so I ask him a few questions. The other girl offered him the use of her ship to get cleaned up a bit and try to wait out some of the alcohol, but only as long as I went with. I didn't think anything of it-- why would I? Here's a strange, drunk dude, and she's nice enough to offer him the use of her ship. She's got every right to feel like she wants a little backup, you know? So, off we beam to her ship.

We're all sitting around, and everything's fine. She makes Drunky McWhiskey some food, I'm just sitting at the table making conversation, she makes a couple jokes about wanting to shower together. No harm, no foul. He goes off to take a shower, and she and I chat for a bit. I figure once all of this is done, he's got some food made of actual nutrients in him, and he no longer smells like four hundred breweries, we'll head back down.

As per usual, fate had other plans in store.

Drunk guy comes out of the shower, looking a little less drunk and considerably less disheveled. She's leans over, I guess to say something to him, and all of the sudden things get weird. And I have a fairly high tolerance for weird shit at this point in my life.
He starts (badly) faking yawns, talking about going to sleep all of the sudden, and leaves. She asks if I'm tired, and I say no. She insists that I should get some rest, since she's not going to be able to sleep knowing that I spent the night awake. My body's not on local planet time, of course, so I don't think I could go to sleep even if my weird-shit-meter wasn't setting off all of the alarms at this point. Still, I can take care of myself and there's no sense needlessly ruffling feathers, so I go upstairs and get in the spare bed.

Naturally, I can't sleep. I'm kind of staring at the ceiling, when the other girl gets out of bed and starts walking around... Not normally, though. Kind of loose and strange, like a sleepwalker. I hear her go downstairs, and I think there's a little bit of conversation. Really muffled, though, and I could've just been imagining it what with all of the ambient noise from the ship, but it doesn't do much to settle me down.

To recap-- I'm on a strange ship orbiting a strange planet with a drunk guy and a sleepwalker entrenched in what seems to be rapidly approaching some kind of sobriety-themed kidnapping/hostage scenario, because I have the character judgment skills and self-preservation instincts of rock salt. Awesome.

I get out of bed to see what's going on, and almost trip over her on her way back up the stairs. I mumble some bullshit about needing a drink of water, and end up in the kitchen. Of course, the drunk guy's there, and I'm there, and I'm in my underpants, and I don't really want to go back upstairs, and everyone's trying very hard to look at absolutely anything else while pretending that none of this is happening.
This probably would've been successful, but the other girl came back.

She starts talking in her sleep, kind of hugging me a little, and then she just... collapses. Like flan in a cupboard. Hits the floor (still talking in her sleep, by the way). I don't know what the hell to do, so I run over to Drunk Guy and order him to move the hell over.
I've shared a bed before. I can handle drunk people. I did not sign up for somnambulists.

So drunk guy's practically crawling inside the wall and I'm curled up on the far edge of the bed like a prawn, when he points out that she's probably going to murder him if she catches us in a bed together. I hadn't even thought about that-- I mean, yeah, this is easily one of the stranger nights I've spent in recent memory, but I figured I'd just tell her he started to choke in his sleep and needed babysitting. He doesn't want to take any chances, though, so he climbs out and runs downstairs like his ass was on fire and his hair was catching.

In the end, she woke up in her bed, I woke up in his, and he woke up in a chair. I also woke up with a splitting headache and the disconcerting feeling that a small demon had spend the entire night using my sinuses as a potty chair. She made pie, I got dressed, she gave me some cake to take home and a note with her private frequency on it, and I beamed out with as little awkwardness as I could muster.

Kind of reminded me of my first set of room mates. Made me feel all nostalgic and shit.
I might call her some time.

The cake was pretty good, too.

a.

 

NO IDEA where the HELL I put my goggles.

I've got rooms all over this fucking galaxy, and I'll be damned if I can remember where I keep anything anymore. I really have to start keeping some kind of inventory... I don't even know where my yoga pants are. Thank god I don't have any houseplants. I think. If I do, they better learn to think like a cactus.

So... I talked to him today. I think it went better than I'd expected. I tried to lay some things out. Explain that, even though I was incidentally working at a bar when he met me, and even though the smiles and blushing and flirtation was all genuine, there is more to who I am and what I do that might go against his idea of me as the "sweet girl who worked in a bar" that he knew. It's not me changing. It's me making sure that the Aissa he knows is the Aissa that actually exists.

I talked to Eira, too... Well. Had breakfast with her, really (veggie burgers. Either the girl has a titanium digestive tract, or she spends an absolute fortune in antacids). I ended up having to eat and run, since there was an absolute horrorshow of a distress call coming through. I will make it up to her, though... I told her I'd pass her name along to some people, and I will, and I think she'll be a good fit. I just hope she doesn't change her mind.

Now, this distress call.

First, I ended up on a ship with a Glitch whose name I still don't remember... He mistook me for an intruder, but we smoothed things over and met up with another group on what looked like a derelict hull made out of scarred-up metal and congealed corpses.
It was bad.

Ended up meeting a "Technomage" from the Helios something-or-other, an Apex doctor named Pan, and a couple of teenagers. One girl had been kept in stasis for awhile... I mean awhile. The Technomage and the Glitch went to try to piece together what had happened to the ship (which I wasn't entirely down for. I mean, we can see how all of the inhabitants ended up, why stay any longer than need be?), only to discover that "what happened" appeared to be one very unstable individual. I don't really want to get into it, so I'm not going to... but I'll be sleeping with the lights on for the next few days.

We came to the unanimous decision to hop on my ship and decide where to go from there, largely based upon the criteria of me a) having a bed, b) having a toilet, and c) having a refrigerator with things in it. The girl, Alicia, stayed in my bed and was tended to by the Technomage... Poor kid seemed exhausted and dehydrated, and I'm surprised she didn't drop like a rock sooner. She managed to drink some juice and sleep a little while, though, while we set out for a colony on a volcanic planet (and me in a long, black coat, gloves, and boots. Smart, A. Fantastic fucking wardrobe choice there). Also ended up talking about language, briefly... I think Leon, the one boy, speaks Spanish. If he does, his is probably better than what I picked up as a kid... I'm going to end up losing the bits of French that I know, too, if only because I doubt that there's anyone alive who speaks the dialect my family knew.

The colony itself was nice. Pan led us to a sort of restaurant, where we could manage to get comfortable and rehydrate for a little while. Things like this get funny, though... In the moment, it isn't really important who people are. As long as someone isn't going to crack, fuck up, and do something stupid, I don't care. Later, getting to actually know them a little bit, it was... well. It was kind of weird. The doctor hugged the girl, then Leon tried to teach the doctor how to hug properly. I sat in front of Alicia while we both acknowledged that this was very strange and awkward.

Things got a little stranger once Leon, the doctor, and I were the only ones still up and around. In a sort of roundabout way, I guess, we ended up talking about scars. I think Leon's like me. I could see it in his defensiveness, in the kind of excuses he offered up. It made my heart hurt to see it... Is that what Jackton thought when he saw the marks on my arms? I don't know. It reminded me of being his age, though, and all I wanted was to help him sneak away to where he wouldn't be asked questions, properly bandage him up, and pat him on the head while telling him everything was going to be okay. That help would be there when he was ready for it.
What else could I really do? I waved him aside and showed him my marks. Then I told him to relax, nobody would try to force his secrets out of him. Later on, I hugged him goodbye and asked him to talk to someone about it. Some professional who knew how to properly handle that sort of thing. I still gave him my frequency, though... I'm not a psychologist, but maybe talking to someone who's been through it and won't judge might help. I know it helped me through some rough patches in the past. Sure doesn't seem like this galaxy has a crisis line for scared, hurt people otherwise.

Oddly enough, as I was leaving, the doctor was talking about offering therapy. It kind of surprised me, since she struck me as being so... stiff. Not unfriendly, but just not very open or expressive, I guess. I was about dead on my feet, so I left her and Leon to it.

I told Alicia I would try to put in a word for her with Carroli, maybe see if there's an internship or secretarial position she could fill when she was ready. And I need to talk to someone about Eira. And I've got information to gather, ends to meet, and cracks to fill.

Damn, but didn't my dance card get filled up in a hurry?

a.

 

I feel like I've been hit by a tree, I helped oversee shoving a dead body into someone's freezer, and I will be sleeping with a nightlight until I'm eighty.

This is literal.
There are no words that could possibly better express the truth, considering how I feel and what I spent this evening doing.

My curiosity piqued about the Helios Technocracy after the events of the other evening, I decided to ask around and see what I could find out.
Nothing, as it turns out. Fortunately, the same Technomage-guy from the other evening was hiring excavation and demolition people. Naturally I put myself forth (I figure all of the digging and such that I had to coordinate for the Powerhouse has to be worth something, right?).

The good news is, the job paid very well and my curiosity was (for the most part) sated. The Technocracy is, according to Lorem, a semi-democratic technocratic republic whose primary interest is the acquisition of rare technology. This is achieved through research, discovery, or, on occasion, through capturing it from pirates or criminals (or what the Technocracy perceives as pirates and criminals. Those terms tend to be extremely elastic, depending on who you're talking to). Lorem seems like he'd be rather pleasant to talk to, too, when he isn't being all leadery.
The bad news is, my entire body aches and I think someone almost died of hypothermia.

The first issue was, I think, separating us into two groups. Lorem wanted he and I to switch off of digging and security, Leon and this other kid to dig, and an Avian (Lagorell? Something like that) to be dedicated security. Okay, fine. Except, at the end of the day, that left Lorem and Leon going in one direction, and the rest of us in another.

Still, everyone had enviro-suits, we had sufficient equipment, it was all good. The terrain was cold, and it kind of sucked having to find ways to eat and drink while we worked, but it wasn't any more than I'd bargained for. Then the ice storm started.

Somehow, we lost contact with the Avian. Even more bizarre, the kid in my group managed to have his enviro-suit damaged by the ice storm. I didn't realize this, since I was working in a natural snow cave at the time... But let me tell you, even with a properly-fitted and well armored enviro-suit, getting beaned by a chunk of ice is no joke. I realized this the second I stepped out of the cave. Still, the suit took the worst of it. I waited for my ears to stop ringing, and kept on.

A little bit later, the kid says he's going to scout ahead. We're just filling holes at that point, and he says he has a gun, so I don't try to argue with him. I start leveling the ground again (the ground he'd presumably scouted over) when... all hell broke loose. Ice, snow, a tree, all of it came sliding down at me in the dark. I panicked and froze, not even sure where the awful noise was coming from, when what felt like a solid half of that goddamned tree knocked me on my ass. I put my hand out to catch myself, and ended up whacked across the top of my shoulder... Again, the suit took the worst of it (I'd be a red smear in the snow without it, probably), but I could feel the shock run all through my body when we all hit the ground. Snow, ice, the tree, and me. I'm lucky I didn't snap my collarbone like a twig.

Long story short, Lorem came back for each of us. He got me to his ship and gave me a place to rest for a little until we could get to an actual medic, and I was bandaged up (and drugged to the gills). He tried to pay me for the entire job, but I wasn't feeling inclined to take a full job's worth of pay for half-done work for a variety of reasons. I said I'd heal up a little, and be ready when he was ready to finish.
Of course, I also suggested that maybe we don't all get separated this time.
And having a medic might not be a bad idea, either.

As for the rest of it... Well.

I went back to the bar when I got tired of convalescing by myself (besides, there's not much to convalesce-- if I don't run around actively trying to fistfight Glitch or lift cars, I'll be fine before too long). Talked to a guy named Dante who's forming a mercenary group called Blue Nova, which may be worth remembering in the future.

Then someone found a stiff in the bathroom.

A young adult male, with short brown hair, hanging by his neck from the ceiling (honestly, it's squicking me the hell out just to think about). The first inclination seemed to be to just dump the body, but I radioed for a coroner. I mean... if a dude's going to commit suicide, why would he do it in a public bathroom? It just seemed too weird... especially without a note, or anything.

Fortunately, someone responded. Not a coroner, though-- just a regular doctor. Unfortunately, it was Doctor Levitz. Still, we managed to get the corpse down and give it a look over (after I had to go sit down and hyperventilate for a few minutes... I don't care how many of them I see, I can never make myself feel at ease around bodies). The arms were bruised and cut-- not just blood pooling or skin slip either, but honest to god bruises and lacerations. I pointed out that, if they were from a struggle, it'd be worth seeing if he had anything under his fingernails... Skin, hair, blood, shreds of fabric, anything he might have torn off whoever he was fighting when he got himself all torn up. The Doctor (David. I should start calling him David) also found a gash across his shoulder blade.

With no investigators coming, and no ability to perform a full autopsy, we needed a way to keep the corpse in some kind of stable condition. Since we also didn't have access to a morgue, that mostly consisted of figuring out whose ship had a bigger refrigerator. David and this other guy, Dre, carried the body. I (and my jacked-up arm) supervised. I have no idea what we're going to do now...
I'm hoping it isn't the "Frenchie" everyone's been whispering about.
That guy's made it hard enough to be a francophone in this galaxy as it is, hélas.

Speaking of David, he and I had a long talk. As it turns out, not remembering me was another put-on (this is my shocked face). Now he wants me to talk to Evan about helping him, based on the reasoning that Evan knows all about this, has expressed being okay with it, and somehow owes David for his help in the past. I don't know what to make of it... I said I'd talk to Evan, but I had some stipulations.

If Evan goes anywhere with David, I go too.
I go armed.
I maintain radio contact with people I can trust to back us up.
I bring my own ship, so Evan and I can leave when we please.

I spent what feels like an eternity having to worry about David following me, trying to punish me for supposedly lying to him about Tallest Tree. If I can get him off of my back, I'll be happy... but I'm not going to do it at Evan's expense. Ultimately, the decision of whether or not to cooperate with David is up to Evan. Evan has his problems, but I'm not going to let him get tricked if I can help it. Lorem still owes me for the rest of the job... Once I complete it, I might see if he's willing to trade me some more effective comm equipment than my radio. It certainly wouldn't hurt.

a.

 

(The handwriting and spacing here is sightly off, as though it were written with very poor visibility.)

Eva n -----> Levi t z

Lev itz -----> th is secr et proj ect ? Meet Jul i an.

Ha ve Jackton, home, and Heli os on a udio/v is ua l feed.
Fi nd out more abo ut th i s Io n p ers on. Hol oage nt?

wha t is Bl ue Nov a re all y?

fuc kin he ad's killi ng me​

 

stupid stupid stupid

what a complete CLUSTERFUCK I mean I just can't even

(The lower portion of this page is covered in dark, violent scribbling, some of which tears through the paper to the page below)

 

This isn't so bad
I can salvage this

I have enough extra hands knives guns pairs of eyes

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

After accidentally causing the destruction of much of David's work by involving Lorem's people, David seems to have come to the conclusion that I am better off on his side than repeatedly and purely accidentally ruining his life in a variety of confusing ways. Of course, he might also be lying. It's probably that second one.

Evan and I went to his clinic, and I met "Julian." If you can really name a brain in a jar... I remember an old thought experiment that asked you to imagine two people, one of whom had their brain removed and transplanted into a new body, while the other had someone else's brain transplanted into their body while retaining all of their other organs. Which one is more themselves? Brains are just another organ, so why wouldn't someone who had most of their original meatparts intact be more themselves than someone whose brain was the only original piece? I don't think I have a satisfactory answer for all of that, but I still say the one who's most themselves is the one whose brain was transplanted into a new body.
Still felt weird introducing myself to a jar with a brain in it.

David and Evan did their thing, while David locked me on the other side of a blast door (while my audio and visual feeds, courtesy of Lorem's people, kept running. Just so there'd be ample concrete evidence of what a useless moron I am). I never got to see what he actually did, all I could do was wait... Evan emerged, seemingly in one piece. I asked him for proof that he was him, and not just a facsimile, and he said he'd try to kiss me, I'd shoot him, and we both had a weird experience with Eira.
Fair enough.

After we left, though, the feces hit the proverbial turbine. Lorem's people, who I'd had as backup (not that I was given much of a choice), decided to move in. I beamed back down to stop them, but it was too late. The last I heard was David accusing me of betraying him and swearing revenge.

In the end, David and I met up again. To keep things fair, he gave me an X coordinate, I gave him a Y, we chose the nearest system to our agreed-upon coordinates, and we each beamed down to the first habitable planet from the sun before the other could make a move to call for backup. I didn't tell anyone where I was going-- I couldn't, as per the terms of our agreement. I may have managed to convince him that the raid on his clinic was a mistake (it was), and that I could help replace some of his equipment (I might be able to). Then again, he could be entirely unconvinced and waiting to spring a trap on me. In any event, my hands are tied and now I have to keep the rest of the galaxy off of his back... at least long enough that he won't mistakenly think I've sent anyone after him.

I spoke to Lorem after that. It looks like Ion's going to be a problem after all, which creates several complications for me.
This is going to take some finesse.

a.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

I think I know what my dream is, now.

a.

 

(The handwriting on this page is legible, but slightly smudged, irregular, and obviously written with a heavy hand.)

Fuck, Jackton.

How did this happen

I can't even try to enhance the video to make anything out
I have no idea where to even begin looking otherwise

why am I so useless

fuck