Starship Humpty

The Starship Humpty.

By Q. Bradley

Chapter 1 part 1

A Question?

      The immediate viewpoint is that from a lunar dungeon’s security feed, the subject was labeled as an unimpressive specimen, male, middle age, impure, the video and audio was recorded from cell number 8y72, his location was cell block 14. The inmate’s title was 4732, for the Oxian purposes, his name was not needed, as so it was not recorded. None of the impure names were, we now believe the subject in the recordings was Ejfar Jones.

      “You like ships boy--” Ejfar was sure that that was what he had said, but, was the spotted headed bald stranger asking or claiming, that he did? He was standing outside the view-port either saying Ejfar liked ships or asking him if he did, Ejfar was never sure in instances like these, his uncertainty had never before helped him in life, his vapid interoperation of this kind of nuance seem to stay with him until the day he died as historians, authorities of both didacticisms, Oxian and Sobles, often note. There was no inflection in the man’s voice, no indication of one state or the other – question or statement, it was always a miniscule little thing that other people seemed to handle much better than he, but Ejfar never knew which was which.

2

      Ejfar listened though. He was behind the glass and the old man was not -- he was a prisoner, the old man was not. This stranger had been going from cell to cell too, talking to all the other inmates with obvious immunity of the current local conditions. The guards didn’t bother him, he certainly didn’t seem like the other inmates, and he was not a guardsman nor was he a purebred. In favor of that data alone, Ejfar knew he had to be some kind of essential person to be in the dungeons, or even on the moon at all for that matter, without being arrested himself. So Ejfar listened closely.

     

      Doctor Carter Cooley, born 4001-4145, Master of History, Sun Shadow University-2, taught How the philosophical Sobles spread Intergalactic Neo-Expansionism, wrote: “Historians believe that right then, Ejfar knew that he was the proverbial dog behind the window he just didn’t know exactly how to wag his tale.-- (see “ancient Earth references.”) -- The Jones Journals later revealed that amongst the 4200 men set to be sterilized or euthanized in the lunar dungeons, Ejfar Jones was one from of a small handful of captives, who was aware of the Fairchild regime’s plan. The rest of the inferences concerning these events are extrapolated from what is later recorded in the Jones Journals.” (DR.Carter Cooley, Historian of Warfare, 4139)   

3

     

“Are ya ah’asking me if’n I dose-dit, or what space’on?” Ejfar both hated he had to, and had to ask, to which the old man smiled. Something beneath the two men’s surface back and forth seemed to have ignited on the old man’s face, like he had seen or heard something Ejfar couldn’t – which was not too unlikely, Ejfar looked from side to side, through the viewport pass the old man; he didn’t know what made it through the plexi-glass and what did not, the stranger could have heard something Ejfar couldn’t. He noticed the purebred guards making their rounds down the opposing row of cells with a cart of evening meals enclosed in insta-foam spray. Were they talking about the retched state in which Ejfar had been found – trumping through the sewers with his head thickly painted in burnt-black piston grease, after having the wrong size of carcinogenic green glow-in-the-dark contacts shoved into his, by that point, infected eyes – doing anything he could do to appear to be a purebred himself; yet, unable to see in the total darkness of the unlit utility warrens, Ejfar had, to the delight of his captures, endeavored to mimic the Oxians miserably.

Like in that instant, and as in this instant, and most other instances, Ejfar would never be sure why the lunar security team was laughing at the sight of him, nor would he ever know why the old man was now smiling, temping all out laughter – barley retained, Ejfar only knew enough to know he was missing out on understanding normal nuance.

4

From the little Ejfar had seen through the heavily scratch window, he should have been able to tell that the old man acted different at his cell than he had at any of the others. Ejfar had caught site of a new pair of mag-lock boots casting triplicate shadows down the bend, set apart from the throw of the three security lights peeking just bellow the point where the horizon was drawn in the line of sight, cut from the upward curving tunnel’s ceiling.

Ejfar had watched as the old man made his way from cell to cell; each cell he’d move closer to Ejfar, the more of the man could be seen as he gained in view, subtracting what was blocked by the escalating slope. Mag-locks were expensive, usually only worn by people who spent time in zero-gravity, in other words, people who spent time on starships. (Dr. C.C.) “Ejfar made notes in his logs about those boots on several occasions.” – He watched until finally the stranger was at his cell in a nearly full, bran new pressure suite – dressed in all but a helmet. The stranger seemed to have asked everyone the same question, only to move on why they were still answering the stranger. Ejfar couldn’t know for sure that that was what he saw, or even if it was a question at all that the old man had asked, but he could see that each of the inmates the stranger had first visited seemed as if their answers were still coming as the old man continued on, rudely impartial to them as they talked at the stranger’s departing back. And from that little bit of data, Ejfar should have known a few things for sure, and he later records that he did know that the old man was dressed to look the part of a ship-man, or he was a ship-man; and he had not talked to any of the other mutts this long – he seen or heard something different in Ejfar. 

5 

Dated Note, Jones Journal. “I had da, dark dream again, dat-though dis time when I up-woke in my tight-cell I saw’d that my door was a’gape, I could’ah ah’see the light thrown down-fum’ dem three ‘normous ‘curity lights. Them da’lights was ah’all tinted red in dis-dream, in life ah’real they was’ah till, blue, and yellow. In dis-dream, together the three lights was really bright, even so-more again brighter than I ever ‘membered dem ah’being. In life ah’real I s’pected dim bastards had an idea was dat three spot lights being at each ah’contrasting color and ah’bein mounted at dim’three different angles, was so us impure ah’walking back up the tunnels would be too dizzied-up to try noth’n ‘gainst them dumb fuck’n monkey fuck’n Moon-men guards, they made me sick like dim’ lime-miner for the first couple days If’n I recollect it well. Them tunnels dat them above, right-so mentioned monkey fuckers built dim dungeons in --just the same damned sort’ah tunnels they built them haughty Oxian schools in, same as them mass-housing warrens were dem pitiable Oxians housed, same as, hell, anytang else under dat lunar crust. Faultlessly round – shit, all dem tunnels was ah’cut’in out’ah the lunar crust by the same type-doe size of mining boar, the college was built in the same tunnels that dem putrid dungeons had ah’been built on-up in, as for dem-so affluent, well they stayed up dem’there luxurious greenie domes above up on the surface at any rate. Like all my other dark-dreams, when I went up-out dat’ open cell door, on out ah’into the tunnel, floor panes where ah’missing dim-so I seen the creamy grey side of the boar-tunnel in the tricolor beams of light, now ah’shine’n red. On-up the sloping grade a regiment of mag-lock boots, like the pair old Mawpa was ah’sport’n on, came upon me, in a kind of fuming hustle, pair by pair on-up until they began to impede dat red light. On-so, Is ran down the tunnel, the slope kept getting on-steeper as more and more floor panels were ah-miss, exposing glossless empty black where once was dat lush ands creamy moon-dust grey, as it got-on darker them luminous reds gave on-in to a darker color red, like blood is red, like fear is red, on-so just as soon as the floor became to steep the gain no more traction ‘gainst, I woke up-on in the Humpty…”

6

The old man narrowed in on his intentions with an added, clear, pronunciation of the word “do.” Careful not to emulate the prisoner’s heavy asteroidean inflections, he asked. “Do, do you like ships? Couldyou see yourself spending your required thirty as a bona fide ship-hand?”

“I recon-is, I could. On-honest though – I aint ah’ever thought much on it – I recon I’s a-could, it’d be better den this ‘blivion, this shithole.” He said as he gripped the beveled steel edge that was skirting the view port with his right hand, while fanning out his left hand behind him displaying his narrow, dark and confined, assigned aria. “Yeah, on-so I’s could see it.” He added “would den, I be able to ah’visit home if’n I was den?”

“Awe – you have family here?”

“Ah, dem some friends, yeah.” Ejfar cautiously allowed. He didn’t know who this man was, and he wasn’t about to turn in his own twin brother, Tussian Jones, to suffer the same fate he was suffering presently – behind bars waiting for his execution or his confessions. This old man was a mutt too, but maybe he had already confessed and now it was his job to find other mutts, people like Ejfar who doubted this whole roundup wasn’t really about trillolisys disease, like they had been announcing across all the servers, had to be careful not to bring on more trouble than he’d found already. Who was this old man anyway, what did he know and why was he, a mutt free while Ejfar also a mutt was not?

“Why wouldn’t you be able to visit?” The man asked to which Ejfar, with no more than a twist of his head, shot the stranger a brooding glance. “I mean after all this decontamination nonsense is over with of course.” Ejfar leaned to his left and tried to peer bellow the bend in sight to see how the guards, now a few cells up the sloping path, reacted to the words “decontamination nonsense.” They didn’t seem to hear.

7

“Of coarse.” Ejfar repeated the man’s words without any accent, clearly skeptical. “But ships ah’float where’in their captains and their primary merchants say dem-they go. I recon us indents’ ah’burning their thirties would have weight in space to say ‘bout dat, yeah?”

“No, I ‘pose not…” Clearing the highly contagious diction of the people who descended from asteroid mines from his words with a cough, the old man started again emphasizing his correction. I suppose not, but some ships – well the Dradgious for instance, she comes here, shit, nearly twice a year, she has been doing so for a decade or more, and the righteous be raised, she’ll keep on ah’com’n here for another decade.”

“The righteous be raised.” Ejfar repeated the sanctified words even though he was not a true believer him self, then said “The Dradgious eh?”Was the man a fleet recruiter searching the lunar dungeons for indentured men?

(Dr. CC.) “Ejfar wrote later that he had heard tell that the news and agenda of “purification” hadn’t spread very far out amongst the rest of the colonies, it was said to be isolated to the lunar colonies and further more, contained in pockets, and throughout the whole of the untitled colonies, the people who knew of this event at any rate, were up in arms about it. They were exercising these acts under the guise of a mass quarantine, isolating anyone who was at risk of catching trillosys, it was said to only be a random coincident that the purebred Oxians were all seemingly resistant to what was previously thought, a totally innocuous disease. Of coarse that was not what the Fairchild regime had been disseminating across the moon media machines. His thoughts ran rampant but he remembered the questions at hand, and before an unsuitable distance in time lapsed, Ejfar answered without fully agreeing to anything, using a simple statement. “That’s a giant ship – a fast’n too.”

8

The old man showed no surprise, outwardly, of the change in the prisoners accent and in the use of his wording, this just meant he was long-bouncer, bouncing from station to station so much so he had become good at emulation the people he was around, some bouncers didn’t even know they were doing it, but the old man was surprised of how well the prisoner had changed his inflection to match his own, more so, how fast he had did it. Keeping his cards low, the old man spoke on “The fastest, she’sthe United colony’s newest ship of the line, one of a kind, not another like her.” T

he old man impassively examined the tight asbestos-carbon fiber nit-work on the finger tips of his pressure cloves. Ejfar could see thathis was one of the nicer pressure suits made. It was from Krepky Synthetics or at least made to look like an authentic Krepky, it looked bran knew and the way the old man examined it made it seem as though it was the first time he had worn it, Ejfar had thieved long enough to instinctively appear uninterested in anything nice or worth stealing.

“Is it true that she’s so big and fast that other ships ah’take to piggy-back her?” Ejfar paid no homage to the suit, he remained careful not to be seen noticing it throughout the entire exchange.  

Still astonished at the complete and rapid change in Ejfar’s accent, the old man answered “Some times, if the captains can afford the saddling fee – most can’t, but if they can, she is the fastest way to Sun-Shadow from here.”  

9

“I heard the Dradgious was manned by haughty fem-slaves, them what was freed from viceroy Gerber’s harem at the end of the Ore War.” The lunar dungeons were lonely, dark and hopeless places, the purebreds had separated the men from the females, husband from wife, brother from sister and sex was what most of the men there would talk about. As such, it was only natural for Ejfar to hear about the fem-slaves on the Dradgious on almost a daily basis through the recycler vents, even the purebred Oxian guard had been recorded talking about them occasionally.

“Haughty?”

“You know, ah’all hung up on themselves like Sobles gals.”

Maybe, freed slaves, and eunuchs -- and nearly eight thousand other, regular, folk, just serving their thirty.” The old man was dismissive to Ejfar’s lecherous tone; he wasn’t interested in tales of depravity the same way that a man, any man, who’d been locked up for two months just knowing he was waiting to be neutered, might very well be.

“But the officers, they all are ex fem-slaves, aint they?” Ejfar held to his line of questioning, still not entirely convinced that the stranger was a recruiter for the United Colony Fleet. He was either with the UCF looking for indentured ship hands, indents as they were called, or a spy for Zoe Fairchild, either way there was not a lot of chance for Ejfar to leave there. He was convicted of a crime too, he had been charge with felony purebred impersonation in addition to being a mutt, so even if someone paid the exorbitant relocation fees and tricoliysys vaccination costs, he’d still need to serve the crime-time. “I heard that they use ex fem-slaves because they’re so fit.” Ejfar wasn’t going to talk to the possible spy without getting something out of it in return, even if it was only an idea to take into lights-out with him.

“I really wouldn’t know, I’ve heard that before but I wouldn’t know.”

“So, that aint your ship – the Dradgious?”

“Oh no – no, no, no, I wish it were, but – well, I’m sure you’ve heard of the ship called the Humpty.”

“Yep – wait – your ship is a humpty, or ­the Humpty?”

   10

    “The original, the Starship Humpty is my ol’ lady, has been like my fat wife for, lets see, going on 43 years now. So – can you see yourself as a ship-hand?”

Ejfar looked around his cell one last time then said with a confidence he wasn’t use to, “For sure I can. If’n I get to leave here – unscathed I mean?” The old man honestly, didn’t seem to know what Ejfar was talking about when he said unscathed.

Ejfar’s answer came quick but his contemplations about the topic were said to have lasted until his recorded death in mid 3996.

02-27-3980

      “Jokes and fables tend to cross the objects of their muses’ path more often in our world, for we have older things and fewer places to conceal them.” (Taken from a speech latter titled “We’ll Find You” Given by Zoe Fairchild, 32^nd Mayor of the Moon Colonies. The speech was logged as her inauguration speech, dated 02-27-3980 lunar decadal elections)

12-01-3988

Fairchild regime declares marshal law. War soon breaks out between the United Colonies and the Oxian monastery. All men considered impure are rounded up and ransomed, sold, or given the chance to be cleansed or recycled. The UCF admirals denied knowing about the state of the Moon Colonies in an attempt to avoid a third civil war, a war that would prove inevitable, the War of the Giants.

03-05-3997

“Starships and societies are alike, because for both we have long lost all of our massive industrialized factories, so now as every starship flying today is of antiquity or of custom affluent making, so are our few remaining social controllers; and for either, there are no parts to be interchanged. When parts or institutions breakdown, we simply must make replacements, or as it is usually the case, find out that we never needed those things to begin with, but sometimes when something breaks in space, we die.” (Captain Bingaman Mawpa, Terms of Surrender, The UCF vs The Oxian Monastery, CWIII, Dated 03-05-3997, Armistice Day)

Early 3989.

Nearly a year passes aboard the Humpty.

“Nothing ah’changes out here, it’s stagnate. If’n a starship was once labeled fast then it will always be labeled so, if’n it was called slow, then it will always be called slow, and if a man calls your starship the Humpty, you hold your head in shame because it is true, or you kill that man because it is a lie. That’s the way it is and so it will stay.” (Some crap that I said once at a bar, or a whorehouse -- I forget, either way I know I was drunk at the time; but I can assuredly say, that I walked away with my head swung low after having killed no man.) My name is Ejfar Jones, and that was two years ago, sometime in early 3989, right before the war…)

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Learning objectives.

1.            What were the economic-galactic conditions that, if were not the only catalysts, had supported hostilities between the Fairchild’s moon colonies and the rest of the UCF, then know as the United Colony Fleet?

2.            What 3 major parts did the SS Humpty and her crew play in the start of hostilities between the Fairchild regime commanders and the UCF’s admirals, specifically concerning pre-war economic-galactic conditions.

3.            Before the war, how did the universal belief that the Humpty was severely outmoded, and its corresponding low-rating in the Colony’s insurance lottery, indicating that the SS Humpty was the worst ship, then, presently contracted to the UCF, protect the Humpty from pirates, salvagers, and hijackers?

4.            Why did the SS Humpty’s abnormally low ranking in the UCF’s insurance lottery, make it the most significant target for the Oxian Monastery’s minister of war?      

Read UCCA warning before moving on, {CLICK HERE}

LOADING…

United Colonial Central Archive Warning!

(All logs are restricted to approved use, and only available by accessing the central hub. They are intended for use by historians, researchers and history students on an individual approval basis only. They are collected in the UCCA, and United Colonial Central Archive protected, and they are regulated and monitored by I.C.A, Intra Colonial Affairs, and are digitally tagged and identifiable as such. As per intermediate galactic law, anything pertaining to patented or copyrighted data has been by I.C.A. approval, augmented from all use, educational and non profit when accessed outside of the Sun Shadow Orbiter University, and violators who are found guilty of the dissemination of said information outside of legal defined use areas will be prosecuted by the I.C.A. Furthermore, any person/persons guilty of using enclosed ship logs for profit or beyond the scope as herein indicated, will be punish to the full existent of Colonial law.)

You have selected the Jones Journals. LOADING…

Note: The next section was recorded in the data-hold of the UCF’s oldest ship at the start of the CWIII. It’s dated during the last days of the Refugee Era; it belonged to the Starship Humpty and covers in detail, the start and early period of CWIII, however, other volumes from the same data hold also cover the total time span from before CWI and throughout CWII, those logs will not be covered in this section.

The most inclusive records are from before the beginning of CWIII. These records are now the most comprehensive documentation of what has been long known as the War of the Giants, and are often referred to as the Jones Journals. The Jones Journals cover from mid 3989 until the time when the Starship Humpty’s data-hold was ejected in mid 3996, seven years later. (Read Salvager’s DH ejection Note below.)

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Starship Humpty: Status chart

Ship status……………… MIA… Read Salvager’s DH ejection note attached below.

Historical value…………RED/HIGH

Narrative value………… POOR/SLAVE-LEVEL-NON EDUCATION

DHE note

Salvager’s Data Hold Ejection note, concerning MIA disposition: While officially the status of the SS Humpty is MIA, the typical events surround any Data-hold Ejection is from one of which, that usually results in a T.D. or, Terminal Disposition. This fact, along with the large portions of ship wreckage found alongside the Data-hold, should be an indication towards the otherwise incontestable obliteration of the SS Humpty, also known as a T.D. status, the status that is usually assigned to any ship from which a data-hold is found in the same condition that the Humpty’s data-hold was found. However, the SS Humpty, having been a matter highly contested in the Colonial Insurance Lottery, has had its official disposition amended from T.D. to that of MIA, so that those who purchased downstream claims against the Humpty’s insurance ticket received Tech-Creds for only half the amount that they would have otherwise been entitle for if the Humpty had received an official T.D. or Terminal Disposition, otherwise, recorded as destroyed; The MIA, Missing in Action, status resulted in the Colonial Lottery Board splitting the insurance winnings equally with those few people, who had against the highest odds, bought upstream policy dividends towards the Starship Humpy’s insurance ticket rather than against its ticket.

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Chapter Two

A Ship’s Log

A ship’s Log, E.J.

I log about the differences time has brought me because I know that it aint always been this hard for man to breath, and in that regard, maybe it won’t always be this way. My logs are formed the same way as I hear it, see it, or as others may’ah said it to me after the fact. I speak into the receiver just how I think it, or know it to be; because this is how all these things happen.

I can’t read minds, or I’d’ah,logged it that way, can’t tell the future, or I’d’ah log it that way, and I can’t know everything, or I wouldn’t at all spend the end of each day logging away precious sleeping hours for the sake of preserving the bullshit enclosed herein. I am suppose to log each day’s events, its sort of my job to leave chow early and get to bed late to rip an extra ten minute out of each cycle just to get this stupid crap down; crap that I’m sure no one but me will read.

I can always hope for a better tomorrow but today pirates, viceroys, and slave-traders are ah’rule’n this great expanse we’ve been forced to call home – we are all refugees. Now, but for the few remaining Colonial controlled routes, the galaxy is a lawless frontier full of peril and perpetual uncertainty.

As per the Humpy’s Colonial status, Shit, Colonial billing policies stipulate that all them events be recorder, thus all this bullshit I’ve left herein; Within her antiquated log-computer, her data-hold, her black-box, one should note: “The Humpty is an old goddamned ship, she’s been worn down by both time and by the many changes of her commanders; also, one should know from her lasting through the wrenching misuse that each of those men have taken from her titanium plated, aluminum bulkheads, that I am not the first, nor will I be the last slave to record here. I ain’t the smartest, the best or the worst person who has spoken into this little black box, if anything, the only thing significant about me is the complete mediocrity that seems to surround every aspect of my life.  

Also, according to her jumbled ship’s logs, I know that many of her past recorders, them who’d also spoken to this dangling contraption now here before me, believed that they would one day buy, salvage or steel their way onto a newer, safer starship,may the righteous be lifted from the burning Earth; and according to those logs, those men who thought they would move on to greater adventures, all seemed to die inside the Humpty. So it’s ah’fit’n that in these same logs, it seems, most of them folk who’d lived each day only fighting to live another, seemed to move on after their time inside of her. Now, as I also want to move on far past and beyond my own expectations like those lucky few had, I am afraid to materialize these thoughts, I’ve read what ah’happens to the men who had, better men than me have died in this ship. Nope, so besides that one bleak confession of my secret hopes on up above, I’ll do all I can do just to inch by; because as I now know, from listing to these old logs, that a complete failure of hope seems to be the only algorithm worthy of gambling on, it is the smart way about it, the down stream bet in this death trap anyhow.

14

The only one truth that the Humpty ever brought a man is that them their hopes, their acts and wills, in reality, have very little to do with what actually becomes of them – that, plus a dash of bad luck according to legends and according to my own logs from my own time thus far inside her. I’ve been aboard the humpty for about two years now, and this ol’bithc has only ever brought me more trouble than I could shake a plasma-pick at – I wish I were mining asteroids with a plasma-pick, voted the second most dangerous place to be, next to right here – well, that’s what they say.

The humpty has never been a great ship, shit, not even before all this here abuse she’s suffered, not even in her heydays. She is one of a kind though, a prototype. Hell, it isn’t like it was for a lack of a hundred good reasons that her design never made it into the mass assembly lines that marked the end of the 27^th century -- the mass evacuation; it is through an axiomatic condition that there has only ever been one SS Humpty, nor there is there a shortage of good reasons why they won’t ever be another one. She’s the shit, shittiest piece of shit ah’somehow still flying.

Coroner Outer logs. Coroner Outer was registered as a colonial outpost, founded early in the refugee era, Coroner was once going to be the largest ship in the United Colonial Fleet. Hopers were placed in a hard elliptical orbit with the planet Mercury, four hundred and seven hopers as big as the Gandalf’s cargo bay would swing out .5Aus towards the sun after being filled with nickel ore and catalysts, minerals and sodium solvent powder mainly, then the hopers would swing back to the shadow side of Mercury, where Coroner Outer 

From outside, her body resembles a pregnant and legless praying mantis. I guess though, in the total vacuum of space a ship’s aerodynamic symmetry is sometimes considered superfluous, so it must have been in that notion that the designers built the Humpty the way that they did.

She has a large head for the cockpit, where, attached to one side is a tumor-like growth, the captain’s chamber. No symmetry in the head off the Humpty to which a long thin shaft, the only straight length of the ship I might add, runs fifty nine meters back to a large off center midsection, the undersized cargo-bay. When I say she looks like a pregnant and legless praying mantis, I mean one that has been squashed but somehow lives on anyways, one that ekes along somehow exempted from the laws of mortality. In total vacuum, aesthetic symmetry is also not necessarily necessary, but when they built this ship they took that concept and they blasted off with it – building the most austere, bare-boned and worthless piece of shit ship that history has ever known, and here I am with a little less than 28 years to burn in her.

  15

    Besides being the ugliest ship in the United Colonial Fleet, the Humpty was never the technical marvel of her time; she doesn’t have the metaphorical ace somewhere up her light armor sleeve, nor is she equipped with some super secret weapon in her fat, off centered cargo bay, she’s slow, she handles like a fat man in a moon duct, and she’s vented air, if you count the engine room last week, some 34 times. So, besides being as ugly as a nude body finding itself in instant and total vacuum, the reason most people don’t want to find a niche on this ship is because of the chance of dying when she finally fails us, her crew – fails me! She has long been rated number one in standing of the Colonial Lottery. As so, only we, her crew ever pay upstream on the Humps’ ticket. We are quite literally gambling on our own lives, but if we’re dead it aint like they’re going to pay us for paying downstream against our own tickets, cause you know what they say; You don’t piss in a fuse box, you don’t spit on a captain and you don’t pay downstream against your own ticket,may the righteous be lifted from the burning earth, you don’t.

Over the years of her same flight paths, she has been known throughout United Colonial space as the single longest standing game of Russian Rolette in existence, now it’s me here, and her metaphorical barrow is weighing against the back of my throat, clicking against, luckily, empty chambers on almost a daily basis.

I’ve read here, in these very logs, that in here early days her shell had a record of repeatedly rupturing, so now, there was very little skin, vacuum-side, not dressed in Ceram-patch.  Actually, the only spectacular thing about the Humpty is that despite all of her faults and changing of hands, she still holds air within her thin pot-marked shell, she still flies her same routes and she still lets life infect her pressurized chasm while she moves through the sterilized vacuum and radioactive burning of the isolated nightmare that is space. So, to sum it up, as shitty as it may be, this is my home now.

     

The Humpty has no ion drive, she aint got no forward ASEA, or anti shaped explosive armor neither, and she only has the two rail guns – guns which were considered old confederacy design before I was even born; meaning the old girl’s limited battery is vacuum primed instead of the modern-day HE-primed, not High explosive primed, short barrels – sure they are not as problematic as the shorter HE-primed rail guns tend to be and with the longer antique barrels, they come with just a little more wallop than the new HE designs, but they weigh three times as much and they cost priceless breeth’n air every time you fix’n to fire a round. Moot point though, no shots had ever been fired from the ol’Humpty.

16

Other warships, and even newer cargo haulers, come equipped with at least ten and usually more than ten light weight high-explosive primed, short barreled guns; and always, always more armor.

The Humpty couldn’t stop a rail gun round anyway, and only had the two antique guns for which to fight back – if’n it ever came to that. Shit, a full-out battle would be suicide inside the Humpty. The only reason more formidable ships didn’t try to salvage the Humpty for its metal and o2 was because nearly every captain and their crews, everybody alive almost, throughout the entire cosmos, owned insurance tickets against the Humpty. That meant it was more profitable to let the Humpty die on her own volition than to lose out on the downstream ticket’s payoff for interfering with our flight. So captains and their crews, who owned downstream insurance tickets against the Humpty, stay the hell clear of us so’s not to every be accused of sabotage and risk loosing their ever-increasing and believed to be imminent, retirement pay-offs from when the Humpty finally ate it. For some reason, whatever reason is good enough for the likes of me, she’d been solid for nearly 50 years, been holding air and flying true, and hopefully, raise the righteous, she’ll keep a do’n it until I’m far the hell out of here!

That’s all, all good and well for keeping at bay the many ass holes out bouncing from orbiter to orbiter taking what they want when they want it; but it’s bad because, well, “aint nobody ever going to answer our SOS; nope, we’s out here own our lonesome.” Or at least that’s what ol’ Steve said to me once. Steve has been here longer than the rest of us, even Mawpa came on after Steve Cooley. He’s won six upstream pay-offs in that time, too, Steve Cooley is the richest man I know, of coarse, he’s also the craziest SOB I know too.  

17 

  

    So, the Humpty does have a makeshift AG unit, artificial gravity, but unlike other, newer starships, she has to nearly halt her forward movement to use it. Also, her anti decompression armor was from the time when all that the best engineers could do, was, if’n you can’t beat them, let them push in one side and then right out the other – just try to stop them from bleeding out all of life yielding air when they do –them, being micro meteors and small rail-gun missiles.

      This was because she was built before the technology of molecular carbon atomization alignment – the new armor could, by aligning light weight carbon’s atoms in a certain way at an atomic level, deflect most HE-primed rail-gun rounds, hell it’s even said to be impervious to most all other impacts, and likely, as I’ve heard told, especially all micro-meteor impacts – which are the main thing to worry on at night out here. Well, we had the old stuff – “can’t afford the new stuff,” Mawpah’d often say, “Not guaranteed to stop it all if’n we could, anyway what’s the point of stopping a HSM-“ high speed missile, that is “-if the impact liquefies our brains.” He’d say that too when the topic came up, didn’t know if it were true, or what exactly he meant by it, but that’s how Mawpa ended the armor upgradeconversation whenever it’d come up.

      The Humpty’s big trick was to let small high-speed missiles pass strait through, in one side and out the other, it didn’t even try to stop them; her armor was designed to only stop air leaks with expanding foam, that the tiny holes would otherwise cause. While this did good to keep a pea sized, high-speed missile from punching a six-inch diameter kinetic-deflection-hole through the Humpty’s thin skin, it was just a damn-sight unnerving to go to bed and find that at some point during the day, a pea-sized hole had been cleanly punched through the place on your cot where you normally strap down your head at night. But, on the other hand, being run through was better than abrupt and sudden, unannounced explosive decompression – just ask anybody and they’ll tell you so.

   

   18

   If you’re still reading these old ship logs because you’re a-waiting for the big but, it aint ah’coming. In today’s world with these few remaining vintage colonial starships, she is the most antiquated of them all, but she’s always been the worst she used to being the shittiest ship by now. There is a picture of the Humpty in the intergalactic dictionary under the words “outmoded” and “austere.” I aint kid’n bout that, just you look it up and see.

Also, if you was hoping for some ship logs from a clean cut, thin and hansom purebred moon boy, or logs about the most advanced equipment there is, out here thrashing all evil doers with it, well, my logs aint for you. Or if’n you wanted logs from a ship with fazer-cannons and ionic force fields generators capable of ftl-speeds, making short work of all the good looking hero’s opposition, like in the old disc-vids, these logs just wont do. This is real life, this is my account. In real life it often comes down to what is known as the human element. Boy’s like me have to use our wits, and skills to even survive. In the real world it boils down to the confidence and resourcefulness of us men and women who work with the shittiest cards the universe has ever dealt anyone; and some times it comes down to nothing more than luck, or in my case and in the case of anyone who’s spent any portion of their life on the Starship Humpty, it comes down to bad luck and how you deal with piles of shit a-top of shit.

Now, if’n you still want cushy logs about the wonderful ships out there, might I suggest clicking exit on these logs and looking up any of the following.

1.   Saturn’s Kiss

2.   The Gandalf

3.   The Joshua-Tree

4.   Goliath-1, 2 or 4, as it happens, the Goliath 3 blew up a year back.

5.   The Hubbard’s Reach, and

6.   The Dradgious, which ismy personal favorite.

  

But, my ship is the Humpty and she has long ago been labeled the most likely to sacrum her crew to structural metal fatigue, opening up her belly in the dance of explosive decompression, exposing her inners to the total deadly emptiness of space.

The Humpty has the lowest corresponding lottery number. The last I checked it was 1-9, which meant if you bought into the Lottery by paying 10, DCs, or digital-credits that is, upstream to any of the mutant-look’n bar tenders at any one of the many orbiting establishments marked with the UCF insignia, and anothership in the whole wide UCF, besides the Humpty that is, let its metal somehow rupture before the Humpty’s did, or blew up first, crashed, or somehow failed its crew in another type of horrible way that I can’t call to mind at this very moment, then that establishment, or any other Colonial ran establishment, owed you 90 TCs on your 10 TC up-streamer’s insurance ticket.

19

Downstream, meant bet’n on the most likely whatever that is at the time; bet’n upstream of a ship meant betting against the odds, and the only people who seemed to bet upstream against the Humpty t’were us onboard her.

Everyone bets, everyone. The safer betters bet downstream, always the most likely, they bet half of what they have to bet that the lowest ranking ship, the SS Humpty, will fail, and they bet the other half of what they have to bet, that the highest ranking ship, the Dradgious wont fail. Both bets are downstream bets cause the DCs flow easiest, downstream. Get it?

The sure bets never paid very much but they usually paid at least something. As so, the crews who’ve been aboard the Humpty usual get rich pretty quick because they bet upstream against the odds, unfortunately they also had a tendency of dying all at once and for no good goddamned reason; and when that happened, the Colonial lottery would divide all the credits the Hump’s crew won during their hot streak to everyone who bet downstream; so, all the money we won by not dying all them times, gets  divided amongst the people who bet downstream for when the Humpty, with her crew, finally eats it. However, dividing a lot of TCs up with a lot of folk, usually meant a lot of tiny payoffs across the board. When an upstream ticket came in however, it would pay much, much more. So when the Galiath 3 vented a year ago I made, shit lets see, about 650 DCs, enough to set a run’n if I didn’t want to fill my thirty. But I’d been a criminal long enough and I aint about to go on the lamb – don’t mean I cant fantasize about it though. 

That is why, if’n the ol’bitch don’t drop me of in vacuum before my thirty is up, I’ll be rich. The problem with that is, she’s fucking over due for a blowout. It’s been over 50 years since her last unexpected venting.

No, it is not safe here, but it aint like we can just up and go. Where would we go? It’s not like their just a-building new ships or orbiters all the time, people are still fucking having kids ya-know, the moon didn’t want me, the belt mines are pretty much full, Purgatory is said to have room, but its been over ran with cannibals – even when they food shipment get in on time the seem to eat each other.

20

The risk of being here on the Humpty is what birthed the six famous words that they are today, you likely know well the aphorism of which I speak: “I’d rather be on the Humpty.” A motto that has been echoed, shit, long before I found my miserable way into her grimy, blood and sweat stained belly. A saying that is reiterated often but only when the alternative is cleaning clogged sewer vacuum-vent-valves or faced with the possibility of an ALE. that is to say an Airlock Execution. Only then is it when most of us recite the pessimistic dictum “I’d rather be on the Humpty.” You’ve all said it once or twice. Didn’t study for a big test? “I’d rather be on the Humpty.”Came to fast on a pretty new gal’s panties? “I’d rather be on the Humpty.”Shit, I even used to say it as a kid when it was time for bed – I didn’t even know back then what the Humpty was…

The truth is, I used to clean clogged sewer vacuum-vent-valves under the moon colony domes, and I would do that again in a nanosecond if’n I could. And as luck would have it, I only chose the Humpty when it was her air that I had been offered by captain Bingaman Mawpa, who found me down deep in a lunar dungeon, or no air at all via an ALE after my refusal to willingly confess to being inferior and losing my manhood in a racist and satanic ritual, something which, hopefully, by the time anyone reads these logs, everyone will know about. So, those were the other choices offered to me by Zoe Fairchild, the Mayor of the moon, and that was my only alternative to spending, what will probably add up to be the rest of my short life, on the Humpty; and still I often say, “I’d rather be on the Humpty.” But then I realize I am already, and I know a lot of this makes no since but that’s also why I say it. So regrettably, I picked the Starship Humpty and I kept my impure nuts. Had I ever a chance to do it all over again? Shit really? I don’t even know. I’d probably rather be on the Humpty than to be just another nutless, racist moon monk. But you gota admit, what a fucking bleak alternative I had to being here…

21

Soon, well now, lets get to the start of it. You are still here against my best advice, so let me get on with the logs I wrote specifically about mystory. If’n you’re in the mood for some self-loathing hopelessness, you’ve found the right logs. A good read incase you felt just a little bit too sprightly or uplifted.

So now that you know how it is that I came to be on the old bitch the day that this part of the story begins, let me introduce myself; My name is Ejfar Jones and this is how I’ll start the last of the human wars, CW III, Colonial War Three.              

End Ship log – for now.

The Starship Humpty.

By Q. Bradley

Part one.

MORE SPACE JUNK.

E.J. SS. Humpty, Ship Log, 12-12-3983, 03:25:30.

“What is it?” I remember asking when I saw it appear on the microwave sensor-display. I asked what it was because asking was expected of me, I didn’t wondered or care what it was – not at first. I do what I was supposed to do, I never relish it or really care much about these things – something to log and send up to command for that UCF check, I guess.

Everything seemed to be a trivial second place to knowing that at any second you may explode, be fried by gamma-radiation or be sucked through a hole a fifteenth your body’s size – all things that have happened to the Humpty’s past crews over the centuries; and let me tell you, the old bitch is overdue for something like that to happen again. A week ago her engine room vented, I laugh think’n on it, but no one even knew until Steve tried opening the door into the works of the ship. I asked him what the hell he wanted in the motor works but I already knew, he was looking for a quite place to shoot his O’s. Linda has been honing in on his junkie ass, as of late. Luckily he’s so week from never-weight that he could move the door latch.   

23

So back to the timeline… I asked “What is it?” as if I really gave a good god damn about a hunk of trash that could be coming near us.

In 28 days I will have been on the Humpty for exactly 2 years, it was getting pretty crowded and really, really old as of late. If there had ever been any wanderlust about being here, it was long gone before now, besides, I’ve seen stuff floating out here before. Each night fondling my sweaty nuts is all I could do to justify being here, but sometimes I still wonder, are they worth it?

At first on the Humpty, I did feel a bit relieved, what with leaving the moon with all my mortal tools still dangling, happily attached; oh but, soon after that, around the third time the proximity alarms announced how we all almost died, my brief exultation abruptly pasted.

Today, I’ve lost count of all the haul breach, life support failure, and proximity alarms that had me up early from my sleeping cycles. Hell, it’s almost to the point where I’m telling myself just tah’ keep’a sleep’n the next time the sirens go’ah blare’n – almost.

“Warren?” I asked vague enough to skirt his righteous wrath, but he knows why-enough I am’a talk’n tohim, directly. I like Warren, he’s a self righteous dickhead but I liked him – even admired him – to a point you know; but I was well aware how much he didn’t like me, he’d said so, to my face even. “I really can’t stand liars.” He said, “You’re just a coward, a waste of skin.” He’d also said. I thought he was an asshole saying those things right to my face, not having the courtesy to go behind my back to tell Steve, Kodiak or Calvin about all the things he didn’t like about me – the same courtesy I freely gave him. He had the nerve to tell me that I should say all the shit that I say about him, right to his face, like he done me. Hell, I wouldn’t be that rude.

24

 “I figure it’s just a stray satellite or a pile of salvage scrap metal.” Warren said, then he looked up at his portion of the display screen and dials as if his’id’ show something the main display don’t. “It’s probably on its way from the pirates who’ve stolen it, to the scrappers who’ve bought it. Fucking thieves.” I couldn’t help but feel like the last part was somehow directed towards me. I don’t why, I never stole noth’n from no body -- not here.

Officially, I guess “thieves” sounded right. All you had to do to sale scrap is ah’steel it, and then ah’start it moving in the right direction. The scrap metal procedure was like a cosmic game of pool with giant billiard balls, “an object in motion stays in motion” so you just ah’had to call what pocket of space you were ah’shooting it at, tell one of the many hundreds of smelter outfits when and where you thought it would get there, and if the smelters received a load when and where you said they might, you get paid by weight and matter.

I’ve dabbled in the scrap business before I went to live on the moon, I think that’s why Warren Miles sort of speaks my way whenever he’s ah’talking about fucking thieves ordirty scrapers. You know that’s the problem with upstanding men like Warren, they find it much too easy to look down on us under privileges folk, always ah’judging things we ah’do’n to keep a breath’n. I mean the SOB. was born with a silver spoon in is mouth, purebred, so he can trade freely on the moon, and he has the gull to be ah’judge’n me. Well, I use to like him – before he turned into a grade-A dickhead.  

Back to the issue at hand… Warren was probably right. Even though running into the path of stolen scrap goods was rare, it was not sorare that getting caught collecting it by the UCF, automatically meant you were ah’directly involved with the pirates who had ah’stolen it. There’d be chance you had randomly found it. At any rate, all’yah’alls pirated booty was off limits less we wish to become booty ourselves.

25

Because receiving it wasn’t a crime, steeling it, which is a crime, ran rampant despite its less than legal status. The only reason we didn’t worry about someone trying to scrap us was because we were ah’worth trice as much or more, if’n we died on our own, without any help. No one wants to be the asshole who salvages the Humpty and cost the whole United Colonies’ populations their rightful downstreamer’s winnings. It’d be like beating up a crippled man while at the same time, ah’stealing everyone’s tax returns.

But if history is to be logged in the truest illumination, it is most important to note that in our world, anyplace that ah’has air to breath is a nicer place than anywhere that has vacuum in which to die, obviously. In my world when you found somewhere to fill you lungs full, even if it was the Humpty, you was as at home as it gets. That tremendous value of air is how I came to be at home when this story started, and air, that is why my incredibly poor displayed pretense of interest, turned into ah’true concern about what at first seemed to be a pile of pirated space junk.

Air – oxygen and nitrogen, is why we were the first ones to really see it. Imean to actually get ah’close enough and open up the war-visors, if’n you could call the thin tin-blinds on the Humpty “war-visors,” air is why we seen it, and not just ah’seen the standard two-dimensional image drawn out on a microwave display screen – that is how close we got to it. Air is why our crew was the first ones to meet ‘em, the giants.

It maybe a little bit too honest to say it, but important just the same, to explain just one other small thing about us. It twernt our abounding courage or some since of duty we had towards the UCF that made us brave safty’s gap. The fleet took us as a joke just as we, ourselves, took our position in their ranks – as a joke. We didn’t investigate the alleged debris because of honor or because of some sort of suicidal noble since of obligation, nor was it our famous sense of human exploration and discovery that held our attention. It was our collective insatiability, it was our combined greed that had us ah’stop’n for space junk; and coincidently, it’s only in that lust for wealth why I’m ah’still alive to even log about it now.

“Get the listing-laser on it.” I ordered, as per the second expectation of me was still to follow protocol. Weather it be hostile, friendly, or both, every other ship, orbiter or station we approached listened to us and we ah’listened to them, no exceptions, no one was to be ah’trusted explicitly. Reed knew this little bit of procedure too, so he’d had it done before I’d ah’even told him to. Still we all had to follow procedure if we didn’t want the UCF docking our Privateer’s DC salaries.  

26

“It’s pressurized sir, N-O, and O-2. Ejfar! N-O and 45.8 percent 0-fucking-two; it’s a rich, rich mix, it’s filled with our kind of soup E.J.!” Reed was answering my question, making a show of ah’saying my name referring to me, just ah’following the before mentioned procedures, but he was looking right past me like dickhead, and he, for all intent and purpose, was talking to Captain Maypa. He had no reason to take my position seriously, none of the crew did, they all knew I was only second in command because I had to be, and Reed just like everyone else was always on the next boat off the Humpty. Me, well I was trade goods, I belonged to the Humpty now. If Maypa ever ah’sold it, he’d probably through me in with the last upgrades to sweeten up the pot – as if anyone would buy the Humpty, maybe some rich person would, but only as a joke – but I digress.  

“Who’s air is it?” I asked; what I was thinking however was, “what a Humpty!” force of habit yah’know – calling every shitty ship you see a Humpty, and this thing looked shitty enough, I couldn’t even fathom how it was ah’holding atmosphere gas.

“I can’t tell, it, it has no data signature and it, it, it wont, it wont respond.” Reed said though he was clearly only thinking of how he’d spend his share of the DCs we’d get for the air.

We all could tell when Reed was thinking about a big payoff because, besides ah’stuttering like a reject who just ah’found they scored less than a 60 on their ATs and was off to the recycler, both his hands, or at least in this case, his free hand, started acting as though he was a’manipulating an invisible marble betwixt his thumb and two succeeding fingers – no one ever ah’told him about this because it was his tell for when he had a good hand; and only idiots tell tells. Sometime I think Warren would have told him why he sucked so, luckily Warren didn’t play cards, he said he didn’t even buy lottery tickets, but I know he pays upstream on the Humpty. He says buying upstream on your own ship isn’t gambling because you don’t have anything you’ll care about if’n you loose it. I could see though, every time we played cards with Reed and he’d start a stammering and rubbing his thumb to fingers, Warren would be pissed that the rest of the table would hold em’ or fold em’ accordingly.

27

He was given me the evil eye especially bad once when Reed wasn’t even stuttering or air molesting an imaginary marble. Warren eye-murdered me when I put all my chips in. I knew Reed had shit for a hand, so I put it all down, like ya do. Later I asked Warren what the hell his problem was and he said that it aint right how we all play Reed the way we do, but he said I’m the worst – the instigator. Warren said Reed got that way when he closed himself off in a cargo bay and turned the oxygen off in it. Warren said Reed done this fool thing so his wife and kid would live through a problem the ship they were on had with the o2 scrubbers. Warren even slugged me, and not in a friendly way, when I laughed about it – hold on, I know it aint funny that Reed got the breathless-brain, that part sucks; but like I told Warren; I’s laugh’n not cause Reed’s retarded, it’s only funny ‘cause after all Reed did to save his wife and kid, she left his ass on account of his breathless-brain, “trifl’n bitch” is all I said, honest. Well, it was around that time Warren and I stopped ah’talking, except of coarse, for all these little matters of protocol.    

Presently, Calvin Gibson’s attention was peeked as well, “Aliens?” he asked looking at his side of the displays and dials. Calvin was the newest here, still a greenhorn, what we knowd as a “fish” on the Humpty at the time, and he was suppose to be some sort of fucking genius – at least that’s what his transfer papers had said. I hadn’t seen anything yet that I would call “remarkable, top of his class, or the actions of a genius.” He was fresh out of Sun Shadow U. Came with the top marks too, yet he couldn’t figure out how to clear the history on the hand-held; but he didn’t complain much, he was the only one who didn’t, at least not yet and that, that I liked about the kid. Besides that he was the only one who didn’t seem to take me as a complete joke – I guess I liked that too; I just couldn’t figure it – why would he, if he were such a genious,get himself stuck here on the Humpty?

28

To understand Calvin Gibson you should understand that to breathe, we all were force to learn certain things growing up. Things like thermal dynamics and molecular heat exchange were all ah’crammed down our throats; we had to master nanotechnology theory, astronomy, advanced calculus, computer sciences, eugenics and even two electives that we each ah’picked ourselves. So, by the time we turned seventeen, when we either pasted our ATs, adult tests, or we failed. If we failed then were sold into slavery or worse, if we were found to be too stupid for even slavery – scored under sixty %, we’d be recycled and our moisture and minerals would be given to our closest relatives or our owners, so by the time we took our ATs, we were so goddamned sick of learning that most of us drank to excess, smoked chems, or bare-knuckle fought for money – shit, we did any ol’ thing we could just to unlearn all that useless shit after testing day; but some of us, those sick masochistic fucks like Calvin Gibson, needed more abuse and enrolled in higher education courses at either Sun Shadow university -- for those people who met the racial requirements, enrolled with the Oxian universities. Well if you ask me, screw that. I had enough of school by seventeen, not Calvin though. He ah’passed his ATs at 13 and has been in school ever since.

For all his schooling, not once has Calvin ever solved an issue or saved our asses with that gigantic brain of his, if anything he only used that mind of his and board the shit out of me from time to time. Well, at least he didn’t bitch about much like everyone else seemed to. I liked that about the little pervert.

Now I’m no captain, it’s just my job to ask ah’what needs ah’ask’n. I’m the first mate – I’m not brag’n, it’s a job I got only after all other people aboard including Reed and his breathless-brain and Warren with his righteous indignation, who were both rightfully in place for it, had turned it down ah’laughing, flipping off ol’ Mawpa. But, the UCF says we need a first-mate, someone who is officially next inline after the captain, just incase he croaks or something. I’m here for the title, in truth, I don’t even know how to fly this antique, I can’t read the star-maps like Calvin and Warren can, can’t calculate acceleration and descent rates, but at least I didn’t have to choose between being snipped into a eunuch or being shot out an airlock, here on the Hump’. Now as the first mate however, it was up to me to officially collect and document information while captain Benjamin Mawpa listen and watched and rolled over everything he observe in that ol’ age spotted, bald and shiny head of his.  

29

I’ve told you what was expected of me but Captain Mawpa was just expected to sit there ah’stare’n off into space and ponder, not literally staring into space though. His dark brown eyes sort of went crossed while his bushy grey uni-brow would fluctuate between furrowed and really furrowed. I wondered if the hair he once had on his head all migrated down to his eyebrows and to the inside of his ears as he looked in-between where Reed J. Brighton set, toggling through the different wave-spectrums, and where Warren Miles set with his hand covering the same three switches that they always covered--hunched over it, as if his switch board was the last bit of dried food in Purgatory’s mess hall, the old Earth’s orbital penal colony.

Warren was probably wondering if the twin rail-guns on this old ship even really worked. Shit, I knew he was, he told me so back when he still told me things.

We all did what it ah’said to do in the UCF handbook, still, no one knew what the captain was ah’thinking most of the time, rarely did he talk much bout’it. For the most part he was a stoic old bastard who never said much to anyone bout’ noth’n. Just then I was ah’wondering to myself if he was going to holler back and call Calvin Gibson a dumb-ass or not; cause, it was about fifty, fifty for a asinine question like, “Aliens?” and lately, calling Calvin a dumb ass, was the only sounds that the ol’ bastard made.  

Nope, not this time, but genius or not, usually captain Mawpa didn’t feel no urge of respond’n any other way to Calvin’s many ludicrous suggestions, “maybe we can fix the forward wiring harness ourselves.” He’d say, or he also suggested once “I bet we could fix Linda’s ears with the same chipset used in the laser listener’s matrix.” It never ended with Calvin, so the only time Mawpa seemed to talk now’a’days was to call Calvin a Dumbass or just to tell him to shut the hell up -- when he would respond at all I mean. I guess this time he didn’t discount the possibility of aliens.

30

We’ve all studied history, you see that was mandatory. We all knew how we got up here, enough so, we still referred to it as “up here” rather than only ah’saying “here,” all these thousands of years later. These days, both circulars, Sun Shadow and Oxian’s, taught us how the righteous were ah’raised up off the burning Earth by the hand of God himself, we were taught that both the hand of god and the term “righteous” are subjective in nature, and up to an individual to find his own meaning in them, but to me, most folks... I'm lookin foward to rewriting the lost sections. "Lisa"