Journal Entries
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Update
Posted Jul 8, 2003
[Transcription by Words To Print Inc. status: private, leader, crypto]
Jeez, a week in night school it takes me just to figure out how to get into these f***in' things - pardon my French here, I'm not a natural polite kinda guy, an' I hate f***in' House Rules... where I come from, I own the house an I make my own rules. You don't like it, don't burn my ass. F***in' techs, always they gimme the creeps.
Anyways, as the guy says, it's been a long time. Long enough that it's about time maybe somebody gets their head together an tries to find out what the f***k's been goin' on with this weird orbital s**t.
See, me an my family, we're havin' a sweet time out on the boat, just me Veil and the baby, oh, and you know, the help - Evan and that sourpuss with the heavyweight grafting job - built like a f***in' 18 wheeler but always with the nasty - like a bulldog suckin' a wasp, Veil says - jeez that always makes me smile...
So what happens is I get this tightbeam cast from the pharmaceuticals guy with a proposition. Lets not go into details, but it's the new stuff and the price is attractive. 'Attractive' - don't that look pretty in print! But there's a rider, see. There's this guy in the military hospital needs to get in touch with a friend. He's calling in a favour... So what the f**k, why not? Every now and then you need to do something you can feel good about. You know what I'm saying? Karma, that's the sh**. You gotta pay your dues - and also, business is business, yada yada yada...
OK so now you understand where I'm coming from. If I can help, ask - I'm kind of interested. The pharm guy will connect us if you need, you know, somthing.
Sh*t, I just got a call, there's a tracer moving in, we gotta go. So this is the message, right: [leader: end]
[status: public, content, key]
Sylvia from Higgs says 'Hi Cjob; contact me. Secure link - joint key follows. Djob sends regards'. [content: end]
[status: key, public, no track][key: end]
[Transcription: end]
Logs out
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Latest reply: Jul 8, 2003
Free!
Posted Jan 8, 2002
Well, I'm finally getting some idea what's going on. It looks like some of my updates have fallen foul of the bureaucratic military censorship that's sprung up around all off-planet activities. Still, now I can fill in the gaps.
We were up caretaking the Higgs research station, waiting for the overdue, superannuated automated resupply ship. Bored out of our minds by the same old music discs (only the narrowcast spacenet signals get through the Higgs ionization shield, and they figure music is just a misuse of bandwidth!), with nothing but the mildest weed and a few simple pharmaceuticals to distract us from the mould and stink of stale sweat, we just zombied through the same old maintenance routine cursing quietly to ourselves... anyhoo, the resupply ship arrived unexpectedly early, with a full recrew aboard. It wasn't the little robot shuttle we usually emptied and stuffed full of our garbage and the solid waste we couldn't compost (don't ask), and it wasn't the ageing LEO crew transporter with its flaking thermal tiles, but a big shiny military orbital transport, bristling with projectile launchers and laser turrets, and carrying six unsmiling shaven-headed special corps dudes with 'A Job To Do'. Something was very definitely up.
We and all our personal junk were unceremoniously bundled out of the habitation quarters into the offside 2 and 3 equipment bays, and given four hours to prepare for Earthside transfer. Cjob found this a little impolite and remonstrated with the smallest bald guy. The little fella (I say little, but he was bigger than either of us - although small stature is usually considered an advantage in restricted living space) showed him an authority from the OS Federation C-in-C, smiled his first cold smile, and said 'please' very nicely, so we shut up and got on with it. After all, we were going home. The new crew shutdown and disconnected Sylvia and threw her rack in with us before replacing her with some new-tech gizmo that gabbled an incessant running commentary on the state of the instrument logs the moment it was switched on. We decided to take Sylvia with us for sentimental reasons (hell, she might be worth something as an antique), and then there was just time to harvest Freddy and George before transferring everything else to the military shuttle for the journey down.
Almost before we knew it, the battered shell of Higgs was receding to a bright pinpoint, and then it was just another faint star fading into the Earthshine. In spite of my relief to be out of the tiny, festering tin can, I felt a small lump came to my throat. Cjob had a little moisture round the eyes too, although he claimed it was irritation due to the unaccustomed dehumidified air in the transport. I don't remember much about the transit, except that the big machine was smoother cutting through the atmosphere than anything else I'd travelled on, with just a distant rumble and a gentle vibration that made my teeth buzz. We were pretty mellow but stunned with the suddenness of it all, and didn't speak again until we'd touched down and were taxiing to the safe area and the disembarkation facility.
More later...
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Latest reply: Jan 8, 2002
Update
Posted Dec 18, 2001
I'm not sure how much of this will get past security, but we'll see...
Cjob has been moved to a JSRF (Joint Services Rehabilitation Facility) some 150 miles away, ostensibly to be nearer his family. If I sound a little suspicious, it's because I woke up yesterday morning and he'd gone, without notice and without leaving a message. Not like him at all. We don't have access to communications while in recovery and debrief, so I can't really find out what's going on (although there's a very sympathetic nurse who might be persuaded to help a poor astronaut talk to a friend).
The debriefing was perfunctory, just a summary of the tedious mission timeline, but with quite a bit of interest about what we might have seen on our EVAs (nothing unusual). There seems to be a lot of talk regarding unusual near-space activity, but no-one is saying enough for me to figure out what's going on. The TV news is its usual bland, uninformative self, but I can sense a certain tension in the air, as if they're all waiting for something... Whatever it is, it looks like I'm not going to find out until I'm out of seclusion.
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Latest reply: Dec 18, 2001
Earthside at last!
Posted Dec 12, 2001
Looks like I've got some catching up to do.
The last few weeks we've been on pretty heavy dosage sleeping tablets overnight. The schedulers didn't like it when we finally started sleeping the full seven hours, but the medics got the final say. It was just the accumulated stress of the orbital environment screwing with our sleep patterns. Up in that smelly container there's no sensible day-night cycle, we see many sunrises and sunsets in a 'day', and we can't cover all the windows. If you've ever dreamt you're falling, think about waking up and finding that you really are falling... falling continuously and never hitting the ground. That's what waking up in zero-G is like. You also tend to let yourself get dehydrated because no-one wants to wake up in the 'night' and use the suction toilet half-asleep! Then we get up and try to eat a breakfast that won't stay put.
It's strange though, for all that it sounds like a nightmare existence, at least we had each other to moan to, and now I'm Earthside I miss it intensely and can't wait to go back - once I'm fully recovered. Talking of recovery, I have to sleep now, gravity is still sucking the life out of me. I'll fill in the blanks of the last few weeks later.
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Latest reply: Dec 12, 2001
Troubles Groundside
Posted Oct 10, 2001
A better day today, but I'm getting a little worried about groundside support.
It was Cjob's turn to do the weekly solar panel and general inspection EVA - 'State of the Ark' he calls it, ha ha. It's really just an amble around the outside of the station, tougher than it looks in zero G, to make sure it's all holding together. The solar panels can warp in the steep thermal gradients between sun and shade, and they're much more sensitive to MMS than the rest of the structure. With all that junk flying around out there, we have to keep a weather eye on them. Still, sooner him than me, although to be fair, you do get a few hours to yourself in the best suit.
With him on EVA, running over the rig with Sylvia, it was down to me to prepare the food. OK, it's mostly dried stuff, and we don't have the full hydroponics they have on that Japanese orbital 'hotel', but we've got a few greens and herbs - enough to give the mush a taste of home. It's fairly simple work, and only takes a few minutes to prepare, so I got a chance to give some tender loving care to Freddy and George, our pot plants. There's not really enough light to produce quality hash, in spite of the good CO2 levels, but we can't smoke in here anyway, so we just use it for cooking. Mostly the buzz comes from looking after the little monsters...
I also spent some time 'window shopping', gazing down at the blue-green-white-brown Earth below. Even though we pass over the same ground time and time again, it's always different, and always beautiful. You can never tire of that.
News from groundside is that the resupply has been delayed (again!) for a couple of days, due to unspecified 'technical' problems, and more worrying, the full recrew that was supposed to get us caretakers out of this place in two month's time and replace us with the full complement of flyboys and eggheads, has been postponed indefinitely. There's something going on down there that they're not telling us, and it doesn't smell good. The usual politics and funding problems is my guess, but there's something else. Obviously they don't want to worry us, but any fool can see things aren't right.
I talked it over with Cjob over dinner, and he agreed. It's a worry, but there's nothing we can do about it, at least for now. Ho hum, I only wish we could get some new music up here; they don't realise just what that resupply means to us. They're sitting down there with all the latest technology, and we're up here in yesterday's smelly tin can...
Anyhoo, it's another night, and another night's sleep - "perchance to dream."
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Latest reply: Oct 10, 2001
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Higg's Bosun
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