The Story Retold: Drifting Recollection
16 May 2017Bryan Iscariot
Somewhere in the Scorpius Dark Region, an area of the Milky Way galaxy located between the Orion spur and the Scutum-Sagittarii Conflux, an area also known as the Sagittarius Gap to galactic explorers, floats a ship, drifting dazedly along through the system without the use of its Frame Shift Drive. This specific ship was a Lakon made Asp Explorer whose given name was to a standard the ship didn't deserve. It was a perfect example of 'don't christen your ship before you've at least turned on the engines’. “The Nomadic Wayfarer", as the name would suggest, is an exploration vessel, but what the name didn’t suggest is that it’s a half-working pile of junk. Not one day would go by when something didn’t need fixing. It was probably not a wise choice to explore deep space in such a ship, but one could argue that people who flew glorified fusion reactors with thrusters were not the most sane in the first place. Today, that included the Frame Shift Drive and the Pilot’s Log machine. The frame shift malfunction was nothing major, it just needed to cool down, hence why the pilot had shut down the engines and was continuing to lazily swim through the void with only the forward momentum of the boost he had applied earlier.
On the outside of the ship, things were either tranquil or eerie depending on how you looked at it. On one hand, the silence was peaceful, but on the other, the Sagittarius Gap had a lower stellar density than other parts of the galaxy so there were not many stars that penetrated the eerie inky blackness, just the brownish gold smear of the galactic center could be seen ahead.
On the inside of the ship, things were less…’serene’.
“WORK you son of a-”
Bryan was cut off by the deafening screech of feedback from the Pilot’s Log machine, which sounded comically like the expletive that it drowned out.
“MOTHERf-”
He stopped before he could hurl a second, third, fourth and fifth expletive at the machine, distracted instead by a small blinking red light.
“HAH...It worked?!?!”
He jabbed a button on the console with his index finger and the light stopped blinking. He pressed another and the ship’s systems announced in the usual female voice “Pilot’s Log no.1 January 23rd 3303 04:00 am….” followed by his own voice that echoed back to him “MOTHERf...HAH...It worked?!?!”
He clapped his hand above his head in a celebratory action. Although he hated the sound of his own voice, The fact that he managed to hear it this time delighted him beyond belief. He even momentarily forgot he was still mad at the machine for corrupting and deleting his existing logs in the first place.
He eased back into the pilot seat with a sigh of relief. He wasn't sure how long he'd spent trying to fix the blasted machine but he managed it thanks to the pile of scrap tech he kept aboard the ship to repair whatever happened to break without having to cannibalise his own ship.
With a deft flick of the wrist, he tossed the screwdriver he'd been using up in the air. It spun a total of four times before he caught it by the neck and used the handle to reach across the extra distance from easing back to press the button that started a new log.
He waited for the confirmation of the blinking red light. “Dear diary,” he said. “So sorry to hear that you're suffering from amnesia so I'll start by re-introducing myself.” Each word oozed a sarcastic contempt for the dodgy machine.
Having no further use for the screwdriver he tossed it in a high arc over his shoulder, only to hear it clatter down the open access hatch to the co-pilots cockpit located below. Oh well, I'll get it later Bryan thought to himself. “*Sigh*... Well. I’m Commander Bryan Iscariot of the Independent Pilot’s Federation. And this is the beginning of… well, the restarting of my periodic update on my adventures out there in the void, in an effort to preserve my mental integrity by venting my thoughts and issues.”
He paused before half-jokingly adding, “Maybe whoever finds the black box floating in the void will be able to recover it, and some psychologist can use it as a study on mental degradation due to prolonged isolation…” He already had a bad habit of talking to inanimate objects, which everyone says is the first sign of madness. He had this habit before he isolated himself in the void so he brushed it off as him being quirky. He gave a curt laugh to try and assure the imaginary audience of his mental stability.
“... So….where to begin? I guess the beginning would make the most sense but I don't see my childhood having any relevance to my piloting career, so I'll omit that for now. Maybe revisit the topic if it has relevance to recent events… but for now...hmm...” He sat and searched for a starting point.
“Guess I'll start with flight school then?!?” he asked as if expecting some form of guidance from the inanimate object. “Yes,” he continued after a moment “Well. Flight School was like any other school.” He paused for dramatic effect. “Awful. Too many people crammed into one place. ‘What's that Bryan’, I hear you say, ‘do you hate people?’” he said as if the silently flashing machine had just interrupted him. But really it was because he had gone a whole five sentences without saying something sarcastic. He had a tendency to be very sarcastic whenever he felt vaguely irritated, or tired, or hungry, or cold. Basically, if he wasn't in a good mood he transformed into what people have identified as ‘a sarcastic ass’.
“But au contraire my attentive little friend. I do like people, As in, singular. What I don't like is people, As in, plural. Individual people are interesting. They have stories and experiences that you couldn't even imagine sometimes, and all it takes is a little strategic poking and prodding with questions, supply them with a little personal info, and they're more likely to trust you and spill their guts out. But PEOPLE?! Ugh, when these amazing individuals all meet up together stupidity seems to be the most prevalent trait. Everyone forgets to work as a team and achieve greatness and instead everyone pursues their own interests. Idiots the lot of them. You can probably tell I don't have much faith in human society. Maybe the Thargoids have a better society,” he said with a soft chuckle. At the same time, he heard a soft dunt against the hull which was probably a small chunk of space debris that was no bigger than half his fist, still, having just mentioned Thargoids while alone in deep space a tiny part of his brain started freaking out somewhere to the back of his head. He didn't even have time to label the feeling as paranoia before the rational part of his brain disregarded it.
“Now I know it's a bit of a contradiction, liking individual people but hating multiple people,” he continued, “but I can be a very contradictory person sometimes; for instance, to further add to the contradiction of both liking and hating people, I also love chatting with them, but I'm an introvert... mostly... I'm just weird like that.
I guess it's a side effect of being really good at psychology that you inevitably pick up some odd habits to test the mental reactions of those around you to get a feel for what kind of person they are. That's partly how I managed to become so close to the flight school staff and lecturers. It helped me pass with flying colours.… Legitimately!” he added as if the log machine had eyed him accusingly.
“I didn't need to cheat thank you very much. My flying isn't as bad as my docking… but then again what's the old adage? ‘Any landing you can walk away from…’ which I guess does seem like an excuse a bad pilot would use so maybe it's not the most solid defence.”
Bryan paused and stare blankly at the red light as it flashed rhythmically on and off, on and off for a few seconds. “Sorry, I've lost my train of thought.” He rewound the one-sided conversation he'd been having with the machine in his head. “Where was I? Ah yes. Well I can't boast that I was the best in the class at flight school or anything, but my piloting skills were good enough to offset my…” he hesitated briefly as he searched for a diplomatic word and settled on “sub-par landing skills…. Now I never crashed or anything, but they weren't exactly gentle landings either.” Bryan briefly remembered being shouted at by the flight instructor for damaging the landing gear once or twice, before swiftly deciding there was no point dwelling on those unpleasant memories now that he had his licence. He let slip a quiet “yeesh” that may have been quiet enough that the log machine mightn’t have picked it up.
During the silence Bryan heard a soft thunk which must’ve been the radiator vents that ran along the top ridge of the polygonal ship’s exterior closing. The Frame Shift Drives must have finished cooling down now.
Bryan could have continued jumping again but he had been up a rather long time judging by the timestamp on the ship’s display. He gave a mighty yawn. He hadn’t felt tired at all until he had seen the time, and now that he had a moment to rest after the repairs on the log machine he felt a wash of fatigue rush over him. He looked at the still blinking light, glad that it still was blinking after all the trouble he had getting it to blink in the first place.
“Well, I guess that’s all for tonight. I’m tired and seeing as I’m literally in the middle of nowhere I guess I have plenty of time to resume the story another time.” He leant forward in the chair so he could reach the console on the log machine and thumbed a button on the machine. It was the same button that had stopped the light blinking earlier, and the light did exactly that. Bryan probably should have listened to it to make sure the playback was alright, but he was too tired to care. he knew that if he did discover there was still something wrong with the machine he would likely stay up until it was fixed properly.
He stood up in the cockpit and stretched as if reaching for something just an arm’s length above him but there was only the huge arched glass canopy above him, out of which he could see nothing but the smear of the galactic core piercing the blackness. He opened the right-hand panel and began shutting down all non-essential systems to preserve energy until he jumped to the next star system to refuel and recharge. The cockpit immediately began to chill. He’d turned off all the systems for all the rooms except the bedroom. The crackling of ice forming on the canopy window as the temperature plummeted could be heard along with a frosted whisper seemed to leech all the remaining heat from the cabin.
Bryan had started to feel the chill as he left the cockpit and headed for bed. Heat swept over him when he opened the door to the pilot’s bedroom. The heat began to rush out into the rest of the ship. Bryan stepped inside quickly before too much of the previous heat escaped and, without looking, he hit the holographic button on the panel beside the door. It shut behind him, resealing him and the warmth inside.
It only took him another two steps to fling himself into the bed, twisting as he did, so that he landed facing up at the ceiling. He let out a sigh of exhaustion as he listened. Nothing could be heard except the muted rumbling and hissing of the atmospherics system. The inside of the ship was quiet but not eerily so. It felt rather...
Serene.
(OOC: Cheers to Jemine Caeser for editing my first Logbook)