Taking it Slow
21 Jul 2021Spark Chaser
-Personal Log-21 July 3307
I barely remember limping back to the ship. High on a combination of oxygen deficiency and sulfur dioxide exposure. I do remember the pain and the sensation of being out of breath. My lungs and eyes burned, every tear felt like acid on my skin. I was 6,000 Ly from the bubble on some god forsaken planet, 5th from the second in a binary-star system with just a location catalogue number to identify it. I was the first person to discover and map this planet and I almost didn't survive to tell anyone. Every pained breath I took felt like it would be my last. Remind me to thank the wonderful people at DeLacey for engineering a lift to access the airlock in the Phantom, I highly doubt I could have climbed stairs in that state. Being in an oxygen-nitrogen atmosphere again did little to remedy my ailment but my COVAS increased the oxygen content in the ship's atmosphere whilst I just laid on the deck wheezing and panting. It took hours until I was able to shower myself clean, and days before I was able to feel good enough to sit in my chair again and pilot myself home. It took roughly 6 days to jump home because I could barely stay upright for longer than a few hours. Even with automatic systems, it was still a handful to get myself home.
Chelomey Orbital has always been good to me, and this time was no exception. I spent a few days in station's medical facility, being treated for various acute symptoms of sulfur dioxide exposure, then a few days at home to recover there. Who should buzz my quarters by chance on my second day of home bedrest? None other than that wonderful man who'd been my companion my last time back. I think I scared the life out of him, poor man got white as a ghost as I tried to explain what happened as best I could. I was not the only one whose thoughts drifted to the other every now and again. We barely spent more than a day together before I left but we'd both made quite an impression on each other.
We went out twice more since I've been back and my health returned to normal. He reminds me a lot of... well... nobody. He's quite unlike anyone I've met to this point. Even without the promise or hint of "personal time" later, it does nothing to diminish my desire to see him again and presumably doesn't bother him at all either. We just get on. With my last serious boyfriend, well the stress would build up fast around him and we'd be fussing at each other within days without any relief. With this new beau of mine it seems different. He seems quite relaxed all the time I'm around him, even when he's a bit nervous with me he's still easy-going. We don't live together, so that might be a factor as well. We're going out again tomorrow and I'm very excited about it now that I'm back to top form again. Things sure are starting out good, but I'm taking it slow.
The maintenance people finished the investigation today and said they found a weakness in the neck joint on the suit I wore. That weakness allowed the suit integrity to slowly leak to the planet's atmosphere and a malfunction in the suit's life support system plumbing allowed the sulfur dioxide and carbon dioxide to enter the suit, despite the pressure differential. It was a freak occurrence, and so unlikely to occur that peace with Thargoids might be more certain. Normal suit checks might have detected the leak, and I did them, but the leak was so barely above tolerance. I should have caught it and I didn't. Lessons learned: don't skimp out on suit checks, no matter how brilliantly that algae out there seems to glow in the sunlight. I could have died out there in the black and I honestly thought I might. The one saving grace is I'm inherently lazy and didn't feel like running a long distance so I landed close to the algal bloom I wanted to examine. I faced down my own mortality that day and barely lived to learn from it. I wondered when I was in hospital if I would ever go back out into the black. I'll bounce around the bubble when I get the strength to go back out and see what needs done around here. Eventually my wandering toes will return and point me in some other direction, to some other point of light in the vast blackness of space. I'm taking it slow in that regard as well.