Gone Fishin'
23 Feb 2018Harry The Hatchet
Stagnation3221
Homeworld
Using our meager pensions, myself and my wife lived on a hydroponics farm, way back when. It was based in the south end of a dusty continent on an earth-like planet around a blue star. There was a kilometer wide pond down the road from my farm in the south end of a dusty continent on an earth-like planet around a blue star. I spent saturdays and sundays (four hours each day) fishing there.
I hated it.
I grew to dislike the tranquil peace of it all. The still lake, the gentle wave of the grass, the smug blue sun hanging over head. It was all just so soft and lovely. It annoyed me greatly after a few years. Every weekend I sat in Nature's graceful embrace and sighed and grunted and swore. My wife would comment that I looked so much more relaxed after a weekend of fishing, and I would nod and agree. Then I would go out back and throw stones as far down the range as I could.
A thousand and something years ago, Frontiersmen took on the harsh environment of the Americas. They tamed it and they lived within it. On their weekends, they probably sat upon the side of a lake and fished in tranquility. I bet they hated it too. They hated it so much that they created a space faring utopia on top of it and blasted off of the planet in rockets. So if you think about it: by comparison, the universe got off lightly with my mid-life crisis.
We, humankind, did not get off so lightly with the Thargoids. They have driven us out of Pleiades, destroyed stations, wrecked mega ships. And so on.
I tried my best to resist profiteering off of the wreckages and I even helped where I could. But eventually I gave up and headed back to the Bubble. That was months ago. That's 'goid territory now.
Hyper Contact
3304-02-23
LHS 3114
On the way in to the Bubble, on the last jump, the local nav beacon beamed me a stack of messages that hadn't made out to Pleiades yet. It was old news, obviously. Most of it was junk, Influence changes, ship insurance offers, material storage advertisements and the like. But the last message was from my wife. Technically it was from my ex-wife.
It read as follows: She hoped the message would reach me safely, and she meant it. She always did. She missed me, and she meant that too. She always did. But she had accepted that I resided in space now and had to move on. To that end, she had met a man who sold solid-manufacture landing gear for Lakon Spaceways. They were preparing to marry very soon and she hoped that I could make it to the wedding. The message was star-dated four months ago. So no, I would not be attending, evidently. I was genuinely sorry, however, and I mean't it. I always did. She had sold the farm we bought together and moved into a surface space port where work boomed. Together they lived happily, working and laughing, skipping and frolicking, eating and celebrating and so on. We never frolicked, but it's never to late to start. I genuinely wished them all the luck I could offer. She deserved the man. He probably deserved her. I deserved this. Finally, she signed the message Yours Forever and she meant it... She always did.
Movement
3304-02-26
Deicat
Several days later I docked at Deicat's main station on my Lakon Spaceways solidly manufactured landing gear. Errands are the call of the day. With the Thargoid war, most of my best clients went into hiding. I signed up to a ferry mission, transporting goods. When the goods were loaded I could not help but laugh.
Several hundred tonnes of fish.
The universe has a sense of humor, even if I don't.