- Joined
- Jan 2, 2013
- Messages
- 2,388
- Reaction score
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August 5, 2341
Time is a flat circle - everturning on itself - eating its own tail as it curls on itself forever and ever.
By the second night the fires had died in the wreck and we could pick through, looking for things we could scavenge, looking for remnants. Shattered plastasteel had melted in the heat of the burst fusion chamber as the ion drives failed - melting, cooling, remelting, finally settling into abstract shapes, nothing but smooth lines and curves. Our cabin had been at the ship's midline - deck twenty-four, two above the storage holds, five hundred yards between the float elevators. In zero-gee it had seemed huge: the ceiling had drop-down grapple holds and fold out furniture - having a chair on all surfaces was a luxury few experienced.
We'd spent everything we owned to buy passage rimward, on one of the ancient colony barges plying the tradelines between the colonies and old Earth. Saving for six years, every credit that we'd earned in our meager jobs and the state pension - no nights spent plying the game tunnels, no food beyond our citizen rations. Nothing. Six years of that endless circle: work, sleep, work, sleep, all to get this tiny bunk and a ticket to somewhere else, somewhere beyond the horror of mounting populations, endless rain and decaying cityscapes. Walking to work in the shadows of six-hundred story, rusted monoliths.
And now here. And now nothing, again.
Time is a flat circle - everturning on itself - eating its own tail as it curls on itself forever and ever.
By the second night the fires had died in the wreck and we could pick through, looking for things we could scavenge, looking for remnants. Shattered plastasteel had melted in the heat of the burst fusion chamber as the ion drives failed - melting, cooling, remelting, finally settling into abstract shapes, nothing but smooth lines and curves. Our cabin had been at the ship's midline - deck twenty-four, two above the storage holds, five hundred yards between the float elevators. In zero-gee it had seemed huge: the ceiling had drop-down grapple holds and fold out furniture - having a chair on all surfaces was a luxury few experienced.
We'd spent everything we owned to buy passage rimward, on one of the ancient colony barges plying the tradelines between the colonies and old Earth. Saving for six years, every credit that we'd earned in our meager jobs and the state pension - no nights spent plying the game tunnels, no food beyond our citizen rations. Nothing. Six years of that endless circle: work, sleep, work, sleep, all to get this tiny bunk and a ticket to somewhere else, somewhere beyond the horror of mounting populations, endless rain and decaying cityscapes. Walking to work in the shadows of six-hundred story, rusted monoliths.
And now here. And now nothing, again.