Category: One Among the Dead

Day 303:

Remember how I said that when I’d dug up through the roof however long ago that was I’d turned out to be within eyesight of my front door?

Well, I decided to put a door into that other chamber too, because why not?

And remember how, when I first got dropped here, I spent all that time trying to hide the fact that I’m here, in case someone discovers I’ve been breaking The Company’s rules about changing the countryside of the space I’m mining (because so many of our mining operations are quasi-legal at best).

Well that’s about to go away too, because the area where I’m building gets swampy and gross… and if I’m going to build a door there and a door here I’m sure as heck also going to put down some proper roads.

I’ve got all these bricks lying around from that clay I’ve been harvesting. I’m thinking a nice brick road will help me keep my feet dry. World knows the weather isn’t helping.

Day 302:

Finished another chamber. I know that sounds fast, but it really wasn’t. The one I finished today I started weeks ago, but when I discovered that there was ore above it, I dug up there and put work into it instead. So the chamber I finished yesterday allowed me to come back down and finish the one I built today.

Sometimes things have to go in a certain order, is what I’m saying.

Like tonight, I determined that the right order to make a ducken and boiled egg sandwich is ducken-egg-ducken-egg-ducken. The ducken meat does a better job of gripping both the egg and the bread. If you go egg first, then even if the egg holds on to the bread, the ducken just slides right off it. Either way the middle can be a major slip zone, but I think I’ve got it down now. But the order is important.

I wish I knew how to make mayonnaise. I think it involves olive oil and I haven’t seen an olive in this place yet.

Day 301:

When you’re busy processing trauma, sometimes it helps to have something to do with your hands. Which is how I finished another chamber toward the sheep mountain. Soon I’ll have sheep and wool and warm socks and mittens, and I’ll be able to climb the big mountain to the west.

Maybe I’ll be able to see wreckage from there.

Either way, something I did is finished, and other things are still in progress. My story isn’t over, but another chapter, no  matter how mundane, feels like it reached closure.

Wish I felt that way about the ship.

Day 300:

So here are a few things I know:

• If they knew I was missing and they had any intention of coming for me, they’d be here by now.
• If they knew I was missing and tried to cover it up, they’d almost definitely fail. Missing persons reports are taking very very seriously by the Alliance of Miners, and they send out their own crews to investigate anything that even smells remotely like a missing person. There was too much of that nonsense when Sol mining first opened up and the protocols are too strict. You might get away with mining a rock you weren’t supposed to be on, but if you left a miner on that rock, your ship, your career, and even your family in some sectors are all forfeit.
• So either they don’t know I’m missing (unlikely, as it’s been 300 days) or the ship was destroyed.

The ship was destroyed.

I don’t know if it was here on the surface or up in the sky. I don’t know if I got here through a whim of fortune or the protection of a crewmate or the direct orders of an officer.

I do know I’m here, and it’s been 300 days, and they’re not here, so they must be dead.

This has hit me kind of hard… there were a lot of people on that ship that I  – well, loved is the wrong word, but that I respected.

Until now I’ve been approaching the problem as one where people might be missing me as much as I’m missing them, but now I’m realizing that I might be the only one who remembers them at all.

That takes some thinking about.

Day 299:

For as much as some songs are fully stuck in my head and I feel like I’m going to die when they go on repeat in my brain, other songs won’t come to me at all.

Grandpaps used to sing me an oldie called “Livin’ on a prayer” from way back before the space colonies.

Richie Proust on the ship used to sing a bunch of mining songs, old stuff. His family was mining for eight generations back I think, and he knew all the best songs for swinging a pickaxe to.

Maddie Carlison was old mining blood too and she knew all the risqué songs that Richie wouldn’t sing because he was afraid he’d get in trouble with the boss. Stuff like “That’s not a handle” and “Shoot that laser low”.

But I miss my mom’s lullabies the most. I wish I could remember them.