Jacques Recon and Resupply - Day 2
04 Jul 2016James Hussar
Current location "SWOIWNS MW-L C24-32", next waypoint "BLEIA EOHN JG-F C14-32". I unwittingly bit off more than I could chew yesterday and as a result only made it about half as far as I had intended. I got a bit obsessive about scanning the systems through which I was passing, and rather than holding myself to scanning only the clearly worthwhile systems, I scanned also rocks within scanner range of the jump point, and stars and giants that were "pretty close". This extended my stay in each system from a minute when there was no valuable worlds to as much as 10 minutes or more, and the day got way from me. I landed on a 1.1G ringed world and drove around for a while. It was nice to feel actual gravity. Sure, the ship's gravity is just as real - the gravitons and muons are still real even if the gravity is "artificial", but being on a planet just feels different. The inevitability of the gravitational field, while also being able to see the horizon, is just different than on a ship where you can shut it off with the press of a button. It's like looking at the thing itself rather than a VR rendering of it, or smelling the original thing, like coffee or a hyacinth rather that a scented artifact of it.
I called it a loss early and spent some time unwinding in front of the vid screen for a few hours. Yesterday's existential dread took more out of me than I thought.
Ship is holding up well, all systems still at 100% health - and I feel my skin crawl at the thought that I might have just jinxed myself by committing that to record.
I've set a new waypoint, a little farther out, and we'll see if I can keep from straying off the path today. But even if not, this is an exploration trip - yes, with a specific destination, but I have no more control over the path I take than asking for one of the nav. Second star to the right, and straight on till morning.