Personal Log 147: 8 January 3303
24 Jun 2017Jemine Caesar
[Author's Note: This log entry is the first of three collections of roleplay posts made in the Ingabar during January 2017. It tells the story from my own character's pov, therefore not all the dialogue and actions in the original posts have been included here. It was also necessary to edit, rearrange and amend a number of posts to aid continuity.I must express my thanks for the permissions to use the following characters in this three-part arc: Marcus Blake, Phisto, Isaiah Evanson, Caitlin Shaughnessy, Apollonia Purduto, Marra Morgan, Idris Gawr, Nicholas Locke, Stryker Aune, and Doctor Glaboski.]
8 January, 3303
The Last Thing did hold together, but only just. My arrival at Citi Gateway was complicated by the ship's starboard lower lateral thruster suddenly deciding that enough was enough and shutting down completely. This made maneouvering to my allotted landing pad tricky; I had to deliberately overshoot the pad twice and turn around in order to make the approach from the correct angle, incurring a stern warning from the control tower about loitering. Worse yet, my landing gear failed to fully deploy, so when The Last Thing finally did drop down onto the pad it came to rest tilting to one side.
The repair bill was absolutely horrendous, and took a huge chunk of my already rapidly dwindling credit balance. The repairs, said the hangar tech, would take the best part of three days to complete, since a replacement inversion coil (whatever that was) would have to be brought in from, of all places, Bactrimpox.
After calling Sam to tell him my latest tale of woe, I changed out of my flightsuit and took a shower, then put on a plain blue lace top and black skirt and a pair of high heel shoes. Slipping into a black leather flight jacket, I grabbed my dataslate, popped it into my handbag, and headed for the Ingabar.
The bar was busy with the usual hustle and bustle of assorted patrons. The holovision screens were playing the customary diet of political news bulletins and CQC highlights, as well as a host of advertisements for all sorts of crap no one could possibly want. Finding a seat in an empty booth, I reflected on the series of mishaps and disasters that had dogged me over the past few days. As I sat wondering what else could possibly go wrong, my attention was caught by a loud voice from the direction of the bar.
"All drinks are on me tonight! All are welcome!"
The speaker was a man aged about 35, with brown hair and a sardonic grin. His clothes were rather tattered, but he certainly appeared confident, even jovial. Laughing, he turned back to the bartender and made some private comment.
I looked at my empty glass. It looked back at me, glassily.
"Oh," I said to myself, glancing back at the tattily-dressed man. "Why not?" I stood and sauntered across to the bar. As soon as I sat on the stool adjacent to his I realised that the man was not only tattily dressed, he also reeked of stale sweat. By this time, however, it was too late to beat a retreat.
"No need to drink alone," I said to Tatty-Man, smiling. "I'll take you up on that offer, if it's still going. I've had a bit of a shitty day, and I'm in need of some light relief."
I asked the bartender for a Toolfa Gin and tonic with ice and slice, then turned to face the generous stranger. He appeared generally calm, though there was an air of agitation about him which seemed oddly paradoxical.
"Go ahead and make two of those," he said to the bartender. Then, giving me a half-grin, he said, "How shitty of a day are we talking about? We can vote at the end whose was worse."
"I found myself on the wrong end of a missile attack earlier," I answered. "My ship was so badly damaged I barely made it back to port. But here I am, alive to tell the tale and fight another day."
Before Tatty-Man could reply, another voice boomed out from across the bar. A slender man, mid-thirties with greying black hair and a twinkle in his eye, was walking towards us and calling out through cupped hands.
"Pardon me, friend! I'd like to take you up on that offer, too. Charity should never go to waste, after all!"
As Twinkle-Eye approached, an empty glass in his hand and an expectant look on his face, two more strangers, a man and a woman, sidled up and took stools at the bar.
The woman's auburn hair was worn in a short, neat style, suggesting she was a pilot. I guessed she was in her late thirties, and about my height. She wore a plain black leather flight jacket and cargo pants, with high heeled boots. Her face was set in what seemed to be a perpetual no-nonsense expression, made more intense by the scar tissue on her nose.
Her male companion's face was set in a similarly brooding fashion. He was athletically built, about 180 centimetres tall, with short brown hair and piercing brown eyes. He, too, wore a black jacket and cargo pants. He followed his female friend quietly, waiting for her to speak to Marcus. From their body language it was obvious to me that they were in a relationship.
"My name's Cait," the woman said. "This is Isaiah. We'll take you up on that offer, too." She held up a finger to the bartender. "Topaz navy rum, if you've got it. The whole bottle."
After noticing a few more people approaching the bar with smiles on their faces, Tatty-Man furrowed his eyebrows at me cynically. "Amazing what a little liquid can do to bring people together." Then, grinning, he raised his glass to me in salute before turning to lean stiffly against the bar. A tell-tale grimace on his face suggested he was in a certain amount of discomfort, if not pain.
"Drink up!" he announced to the gathered crowd of patrons. "If this is my penance for making it out of the mess I just made, then it's a bargain."
With a very matter-of-fact motion he reached his hand out to the twinkle-eyed man. "My name's Marcus," he said. "People call me Insight. Irony at its finest."
Setting his glass on the bar for a refill, Twinkle-Eye returned the handshake to his new acquaintance. "And I am Phisto," he said slowly, adding, "People call me Phisto."
Phisto paused, as if waiting for someone to laugh at the joke he obviously thought he'd just made. Hearing no laughter, Phisto shrugged and continued to address Marcus. "If you are irony, than you have both my attention and friendship."
Then Phisto lazily turned to look at me. "Hello, my name is Phisto. And you are...?"
"My name," I replied in a slow, deliberate monotone, "is Jemine. " Phisto chuckled. He was clearly fairly intoxicated.
"I hope you will excuse me," he said, with a small bow from the waist. "I began... celebrating... quite a few drinks ago. I hope any excessive exuberance is excused."
I looked at Phisto and smiled encouragingly. "There's no harm in celebrating, and it's always better to do it in company, isn't it?"
My drink had appeared on the bar counter, along with a variety of others for the twenty or so people who had swooped down to take advantage of Marcus' generosity. After seizing their drinks and raising perfunctory toasts to their benefactor the drinkers wandered off again to resume their previous conversations. Cait and Isaiah both gave Marcus a rather dour nod and returned to their cubby hole, smiling at some shared private joke.
I picked up my glass and took a few sips of the Toolfa G&T, feeling the familiar warm glow in my throat. I sighed in anticipation of the gin's mild hallucinogenic effects, and was immediately rewarded with the illusory sound of a man's voice whispering into my left ear.
Looking Marcus up and down, I wondered what he could possibly have been doing to get his clothes into such a shockingly tatty state.
"It looks like you've had a somewhat shitty day yourself, Marcus," I said. "Anything I can help with?"
Phisto chuckled and nodded in agreement. "Shitty day or otherwise, those clothes... and odour... most certainly have a story to them."
Marcus carefully took a quick sniff of his underarm, and winced slightly in embarrassment. "Not so bad..." he said, rather unconvincingly. He took a comically quizzical look down his nose at Phisto and me. "Oh, man," he said, "you both must really have needed a drink to be willing to stand this close!"
A gentle laugh of relief escaped his lips. Signalling the bartender, Marcus ordered more drinks, including an Old Sol whisky for me, even though I still had most of my Toolfa Gin and tonic left. I hated whisky, but didn't have the heart to say so, instead joining in the toast to "living to fight another day".
"So," said Marcus, "about my shitty day. Ever heard that expression 'a deal too good to be true'? I hadn't, but I wish I had when I bought that deal of a power plant for my ship! The same power plant that decided to give out on me about half way to the new Colonies."
Marcus lowered his head and heaved an exaggerated sigh. "You sound like you've been in your fair share of tight spots, can you relate to that feeling you get in the midst of one where you couldn't be more positive this one's the one?"
Oh, wonderful, I thought, another cosmic philosopher. I sipped my drink and listened to Marcus' musings, which were punctuated with side glances back and forth between Phisto and me.
"Or worse," continued Marcus, "whatever that unknown greater power behind the universe is might be intentionally excluding you from that long peaceful ride to paradise."
Marcus stared off into nothingness and, as a look of surprise crossed his face, slowly raised his glass towards his lips. "He, she, or it knows me pre-tty well, apparently.."
I took another sip of my gin and tonic and, feeling the figment touch of a hand on my thigh, I glanced doubtfully at the waiting glass of Old Sol. Finishing my G&T and placing the empty glass on the bar counter, I picked up the tumbler of Old Sol and stared thoughtfully into it.
"Tight spots?" I said. "Well... I've been in one or two myself. But I don't believe there's any power, great or otherwise, preventing you from following your heart's desire. Oh, I offer up the odd prayer to Gaia every now and then, but I think that ultimately we're all responsible for our own successes... and failures. The secret is to celebrate the first and learn from the second. A secret I've only recently learned."
I raised my glass of whisky in salute, then drank the entire contents in one go. "Lovely," I said, grimacing at the fire in my throat.
Ordering another round, Marcus wiped his lips and leaned close to me. "We'll call it a tie," he said under his breath, giving my arm a gentle nudge with his elbow. "So, Phisto, what kind of a day have you had?"
“My day?” Phisto raised an eyebrow, “My day…” he looked down into his glass, and paused. “I was hoping I’d find someone here, a merchant, back in the Pilot’s Market. Last time I was here, he had just what I was looking for. Was hoping to do business with him again, but he’s gone off station. Big galaxy, so we all know just how unlikely it is I’ll ever find him again."
Phisto took another drink, and continued; “When I say I’m celebrating, it’s not all happiness, but more than a little... frustrating.” Looking at Marcus, Phisto clenched his free hand into a fist, his body stiffening at the same time. Then, abruptly, he relaxed, smiled, and tipped his glass to Marcus in a salute. “But that’s the dance, isn’t it?" he went on. "Just like you said. We do what we do until we're ferried off to the great unknown.”
Marcus nodded, as three more glasses of Old Sol were placed on the counter before us.
"See," he began, striking a pose as if about to hold forth to a group of admiring schoolchildren, "when you're stuck out there in deep space for weeks, and the only light you have comes from the faint purple glow of a dying star and a tiny flash light you may have accidentally borrowed permanently from some ladies' purse; when you're likely waiting to die a cold, thirsty, innocuously foul-smelling death, you really get time to think about things... you get a perspective. You start to come to some realizations about it all... for instance..."
Marcus took a long pause and raised his glass before delivering the point of his speech.
"Showers..." he went on, unexpectedly. "They don't just benefit me. No, they benefit all of us when I take them. In fact, I'm gonna go find a place round here to take one right now."
Draining his glass of Old Sol, Marcus slapped his fist on the bar in salute to the service, and held out his hand to Phisto.
"I have a knack for finding things," said Marcus. "Let me know if I can help out in some way down the line."
Grinning, Phisto returned the handshake. As Marcus was about to leave, he withdrew a beeping datapad from one of his pockets. He checked the screen and, after tapping a few buttons, raised his voice to address the crowd.
"Hey-- hey... HEY EVERYONE! You better take a look at this." He turned to the bartender, showing him the datapad display. "Can you put this up on a screen?" he asked. The bartender nodded and adjusted the settings on a large holovision panel above the bar.
All at once the whole room was filled with a hubbub of excited voices.
"Sweet mother of the gods....what in the hell's is that?!" said one.
"Only one thing it can be," said another.
"Thargoids!"
Phisto tapped Marcus on the shoulder. "So, d'you think your smell helped them find us, or what?"
Marcus' expression was far more sombre now. "That was a scout," he replied. "And he was awfully close to the bubble. My guess is they've been watching for longer than anyone suspects. Jacques is going to know something about this. More than he's telling Galnet, anyway.""
I turned to look at the holo-display for myself, but all it now showed was an advertisement for Kirby's Kumfigrip Gloves. I blinked twice, and picked up a glass of Old Sol which had somehow appeared on the bar counter beside me. After looking round to see if anyone was going to claim it, I drank it back in one go. As the fiery liquid hit the back of my throat, the third hallucinatory effect of the Toola Gin took hold, and I was suddenly smelling rotten fish. I was feeling quite drunk.
Marcus and Phisto were meanwhile deep in conversation about the news that had just been received. Whatever it was, it had caused a considerable stir. Abruptly, Marcus moved away from the bar and began talking to the couple who had earlier introduced themselves as Cait and Isaiah. After a few minutes Marcus beckoned Phisto over to join them, leaving me alone at the bar in my alcohol-fuelled daze. Then, after a few more minutes of earnest discussion and dataslate thumping, Marcus and Phisto hurried out of the bar without so much as a sideway glance to me.
"Well," I said, watching their rapidly retreating backs. "G'bye 'n. Nice talking t'you."
I listened to the buzz of conversation around the bar for a few minutes more, and reached out for my glass of Old Sol. I was surprised to find it was empty.
"Funny," I said. "Don't rememem... mem... member drinking that. Oh, I need a lie down."
Pushing myself away from the bar counter, I fixed my gaze on the door of the bar and started weaving my way towards it. Halfway across, in the dim light, I bumped into a large, muscular man wearing a white vest, blue jeans and thick black boots.
"Something must've happened," I said to him as I regained my balance, pointing at the holovision panel above the bar. "Probably a lot of fuss about nothing..."
Then, in as dignified a manner as I could manage, I tottered out of the bar and carefully made my way back to my rented apartment rooms.