137 lines
4.6 KiB
Plaintext
137 lines
4.6 KiB
Plaintext
|
Transmission Log - Orestes
|
||
|
Author: Green
|
||
|
|
||
|
---------------------------------------------------------------
|
||
|
Auto-generating preface...
|
||
|
|
||
|
GREEN writes of a visitor.
|
||
|
|
||
|
You've already received my official update about their new guest,
|
||
|
so no need to add anything further to it here.
|
||
|
|
||
|
-END-OF-PREFACE-
|
||
|
---------------------------------------------------------------
|
||
|
|
||
|
|
||
|
Where do I begin...
|
||
|
|
||
|
I'm writing this in the dead of the night as PINK sleeps and NAVY
|
||
|
is out tending to the crystals.
|
||
|
|
||
|
We have a visitor. She, too, is sleeping now. At least, I hope
|
||
|
she is.
|
||
|
|
||
|
After almost three years of nothing happening, I really wasn't
|
||
|
expecting something like this.
|
||
|
|
||
|
As you know (or do you?), we've been having our problems lately.
|
||
|
|
||
|
Well, two nights ago, something magical happened. It was as if
|
||
|
those problems disappeared for a moment. We had reached a
|
||
|
beautiful moment of collectively not giving a fuck about anything
|
||
|
- the crystals, humanity's destiny in outer space, each other,
|
||
|
ANYTHING.
|
||
|
|
||
|
Spurred on by God-knows-what, we dipped into the alcohol and
|
||
|
luxury food rations.
|
||
|
|
||
|
We had a feast. It was wonderful. We talked, we laughed, we made
|
||
|
fun of each other and we made fun of ourselves.
|
||
|
|
||
|
We ate and drank for hours. PINK played us some incredible 'jazz'
|
||
|
selections from the 20th century.
|
||
|
|
||
|
Sometime in the middle of the night - I'm not quite sure when, I
|
||
|
had lost track of time by then - something strange happened; a
|
||
|
reddish glow filled the room.
|
||
|
|
||
|
It just hung there, lingering for about 10 seconds.
|
||
|
|
||
|
We we were terrified.
|
||
|
|
||
|
Even now, we're not sure if it wasn't some kind of collective,
|
||
|
alcohol-induced hallucination. The room we were in, the
|
||
|
recreational space, is windowless. None of us were able to
|
||
|
pinpoint the source of the glow.
|
||
|
|
||
|
Anyway, we didn't have much time to really examine what had
|
||
|
happened, because moments after the glow disappeared there was
|
||
|
the sound of an explosion. Or, what we thought was an explosion
|
||
|
at least.
|
||
|
|
||
|
We suited up as fast as we could and rushed outside to see what
|
||
|
the hell was happening.
|
||
|
|
||
|
There was a woman standing 20 feet from our door.
|
||
|
|
||
|
Now, as you know, outer space isn't really a place where you're
|
||
|
accustomed to meeting 'strangers'. Aside from *expected*
|
||
|
strangers, of course, like other alien species and what not. Or
|
||
|
strangers you meet via communication networks. But, a stranger at
|
||
|
your front door, silently waving at you, now that was weird.
|
||
|
|
||
|
We didn't really know what to do. We just sort of stood there,
|
||
|
gazing at her. She was approaching us slowly. If she had been
|
||
|
coming to assassinate us we wouldn't have been able to do much to
|
||
|
stop her.
|
||
|
|
||
|
But she wasn't.
|
||
|
|
||
|
She was soft in her movements, tentative. When she finally
|
||
|
reached us, the four of us stood there, a few feet apart. She
|
||
|
half-waved again. The sun was coming up.
|
||
|
|
||
|
PINK addressed us through our comms, "What the hell is
|
||
|
happening?".
|
||
|
|
||
|
The woman responded, "Please, I need help".
|
||
|
|
||
|
She had already accessed our comms systems, it shouldn't have
|
||
|
been too surprising. As the sole occupiers of an entire planet,
|
||
|
we never need to bother much with encryption anything like that
|
||
|
for our local systems!
|
||
|
|
||
|
Nevertheless, hearing another voice like that, a stranger's
|
||
|
voice, was unnerving.
|
||
|
|
||
|
NAVY stepped forward, "Welcome". He extended his hand toward her.
|
||
|
I don't know where he got the balls for something like that all
|
||
|
of a sudden.
|
||
|
|
||
|
She extended her hand in return and PINK and I stood there like
|
||
|
idiots as the two shook hands.
|
||
|
|
||
|
Eventually, we invited her in. I'm still not sure it was such a
|
||
|
good idea. Reminds me of those old vampire stories people used to
|
||
|
tell in the early days of technology.
|
||
|
|
||
|
It turned out that her ship had crashed. Later, she showed us the
|
||
|
wreckage and we salvaged what we could.
|
||
|
|
||
|
For the past two days she's been living with us. Making herself
|
||
|
at home actually. She has remained intentionally vague about what
|
||
|
the hell she was doing here in the first place, and we've all
|
||
|
been too on-edge to probe her further.
|
||
|
|
||
|
She speaks English, she's quite tall, and around 30 I guess.
|
||
|
She's just a normal woman. Still, something seems off about her.
|
||
|
|
||
|
She eats a lot and doesn't say much. She has no visible injuries
|
||
|
from the crash.
|
||
|
|
||
|
Oh, and her name is RUBY.
|
||
|
|
||
|
|
||
|
----------------------------------------------------------------
|
||
|
Complied by the Werner H. Young Terminal Emulator
|
||
|
|
||
|
Info: Simple A.I., designed on-site for executing
|
||
|
systems maintenance tasks and exchanging messages between
|
||
|
the Orestes outpost and the Arsinoe.
|
||
|
|
||
|
Built by Werner Young (2113-2151).
|
||
|
|
||
|
Names of persons have been masked to protect their identity.
|
||
|
----------------------------------------------------------------
|
||
|
|