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| Recovered Log - Day 8 |
Audio recordings of a play-through of Chris Bissette's solo journalling roleplaying game.
Day 8 - 4 cards
- 2C - you find the journal of one of your crewmates. What thing from home were they missing most?
- JC - you gather up the bodies of the crew you were closest to and seal them in the remaining airlock, saying a few words of remembrance over their bodies, but you can’t quite bring yourself to jettison them. What words do you say, and why is it so hard to send them out into space? 1 block
- 2H- the water purification system still works, but its noticeably less efficient. What does it feel like to taste water with a taste of ammonia?
- 10S - you find something left behind by the creature. Blood or a body part. Describe it. 1 block
Day 8, salvage ship ‘The Wretched’. Flight Engineer Dom Mooney reporting.
Awful hangover this morning, so I lost myself in work trying to forget the pounding in my head and the creature outside. The ship is noticeably starting to deteriorate in subtle ways. The water system still works - I’ve drunk a lot today - but it’s developing a tang of ammonia. Water with a hint of urine is never going to catch on, but it’s all I’ve got and it did the job. The tests say it’s drinkable so that’s what matters.
I moved all the remaining bodies to the airlock, but held off venting them. Just in case it drew the creature in. Plus these were my friends; the engineering crew in the main. I said a few words, more for me than them.
“I am standing upon a starship.
Below my feet, her engines catch the solar winds and start for the vastness of space.
An object of beauty and strength.
I stand and watch until the blue dot we left behind starts to fade
Just where the stars and the nebulae come to mingle with each other.
Then someone says, “There she goes!”
Gone where?
Gone from our sight, that is all.
Memories may fade, but
Life remains, scattered through the universe,
All formed from the same stardust, all one.”
I found Janey’s journal when I moved her body; in it she talks about how she only needs to do a few more tours then she’ll have saved enough to settle down on the Delta-Pavonis colony with her sister and family. She can buy into one of the engineering businesses. I kind of felt like I was violating her privacy; I’d never have dreamed of doing this before, but now I’m just grasping for some touch of humanity. Anything to keep my mind off my situation. There was a broken claw lying there as I moved the bodies. It had scraped the hull plating. What good will a rifle be against that? How did it break?
This is Dom Mooney, the last survivor of the Wretched, signing off.
___
Poem is a hack of
A Parable of Immortality
I am standing upon the seashore.
A ship at my side spreads her white sails to the morning breeze and starts for the blue ocean.
She is an object of beauty and strength.
I stand and watch until at last she hangs like a speck of white cloud
Just where the sea and the sky come to mingle with each other.
Then someone says, “There she goes!”
Gone where?
Gone from my sight, that is all.
She is just as large in mast and hull and spar as she was when she left my side
And just as able to bear her load of living freight to the place of destination.
Her diminished size is in me, not in her.
And just at the moment when someone at my side says, “There she goes”
There are other eyes watching her coming
And their voices ready to take up the glad shouts,
“Here she comes!”
By Henry Van Dyke
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