I haven't been lost. I've been sitting beside a home made transceiver trying to reach a ship in the vicinity. I've been on board it a few times with no signs of life. Each time I return to my junker it goes off and I race to the comms deck to respond. Each time I do- static.
Each time I board it there are freshly opened meals, a coffee sack still warm, a cigarette drifting with flecks of ash still floating and clouds of smoke swaying in the recycled air. A saucer and chipped cup and different music playing in the background over the public address. Breathable 65 degree air. A few playing cards that weren't there before. A display still picking up signals from Sol from 1989 when they aren't playing static. A ghost ship. I turn off the distress beacon and return to my junker to figure out what to do with it.
I can't turn it over to the scrappers just yet. Not with people aboard. Their machines will shred it with no regard for souls. If someone is on that ship, I can't forgive myself. If someone is on that ship, I hope to make contact soon. The trade hub orbiting Europa is still four days journey from our position in the Oort. Remember how lovely the grass was down on Terra? If I can bring this thing back in one piece, there'll be a fortune and a vacation waiting for us.
Someone is on that ship. I will find them.
Captain Jexel Hobbes of the Noway Accel- 10201800278
Time has flown by. I've missed so many deadlines I wanted to hit. When was the last time we spoke?
RAM is going to take a serious investment. I know that the mother board can handle it and I've tried a half dozen times different combinations of chips to blow it to the 16 gigabytes that it can do. I've allowed the bottleneck to become a road block on producing art. I fell in love back in March. Sacrificing and sacrificing over and over to try to bring another person into my world, but most efforts have failed.
I've asked her dozens, but not yet hundreds of times to meet me half way. She continues to do the same things she does, not because she doesn't love me as much as I love her, but because it is all she knows and has known since she was small. I do think that it's possible to change, I know it is. Everyone deserves a chance. There is a spark in her. If I can help, I will. I didn't get to where I am in life without help. How can a person conscious of this turn away another and another who actually kind of sort of understands you?
I am beginning to wonder if she actually does or if she is a part of my life because I am so different from everything she once knew and cares more about being truly loved as a person than....... she does love fairly unconditionally. Maybe that's a part of the problem. She can't tell the difference between someone who actually cares for her and someone who is using her. It's a possibility. It can be solved.
How do you speak to someone who is jammed with ultimatums and unwilling to discern? How do you speak to someone who cannot see the consequences of their actions beyond a week, beyond a month, beyond 12 hours? How do you reach an addict? I am one. She's not on another level. She hasn't allowed herself into the terrors of introspection.
She flies away from the heat. She creates reason mazes. Responsibility mazes. Agency dead falls. I understand the fear. How can you explain that fear in your own life to someone who hasn't acknowledged it within their own space? I suppose that goes back to the old adage: how can you love someone, if you cannot love yourself. I don't know what to do when I see her setting herself up for apologies. It's how she's gotten by. The other adage: don't ask for permission, ask for forgiveness.
I never thought that I would fall in love again. I knew I would. I did not believe, however, that it would be more than a passing fancy. Survival is paramount. Survival comes with its costs. One of the costs is you do not get to enjoy stable long term relationships because you must survive. If two survivors meet, there's a match and a stable long term relationship can grow there because there is no dependence. There is only a mutual companionship. Do not tell me you would die for me. Live with me.
I am afraid this will not work and I may have to eject her through an escape pod into the vacuum of space with a few months survival kit, a beacon, and a radio.
The largest red flag wasn't history, or family composition, or addiction. The largest red flag remains a dearth of creative thought. A nagging inability to see what's possible instead of what's here.
One year. One year. I will gift her one year of my life. I was given less to reach further and, for some of it, I destructed because I didn't know what and who I was and a heavy portion was out of my control from the outset. Everyone deserves a chance to grow. Everyone! I know she can do it. We have so much in common and beautifully so. I do love her after believing that I did not have the capacity to love again after everything my circuits have been sheared through. I am a part of my ship, incorporated, built, and breathing, designed, redesigned, scrapped, prototyped, burned, and rebuilt anew.
The larger mission is still to build a map for the sojourners after I am long gone and someone else is stumbling upon my space station and docked junker broadcasting songs no one has heard in decades and curious what the hell a space station is doing 15 light years away from Sol in dead space.
I have compassion. I know that I am a pretty tough ticket 300 out of 365 days, but I can feel and I can be and am conscious of my bipolar schizophrenia. Occasionally it gets away from me, but not nearly as often as it once did. I can protect her and my friends from it (it's impossible to protect one's self).
One year from the day we met in March.
Synchronize watches.
///Way Out West - "
Northern Lights" radiata
