I’m awake. Why am I awake?  More annoyingly I’m awake early.  Again, why am I awake?  No, scratch that. The right question to ask is what has woken me? Too young and not long enough in the tooth at this long distance travel lark for it to be space dementia, or any of those other demons the old timers resurrect in their bar room tales. Ding. There it is! That! A soft resonate chime that’s probably been scientifically selected to get your attention in such a way that you’re not alarmed. Just reassuringly letting you know some nugget of information is waiting to share itself with you. More of a gentle nudge of a notification than a harsh alarm.  My nerves are, at least, grateful.  There is also a faint pulsing glow on one of the display panels. A pulsing so faint it was probably selected to harmonize with that damn chiming. I promise myself, not for the first time, that this will all get overhauled or sold the next time I spend any significant time in port.

I ask the AI aboard my long range transport ship to provide the appropriate status update associated with that infernal chiming and to mute the audio notifications until such a time as the first cup of coffee has made it down my throat. Having confirmed the mute command my AI (let’s just call him Eddie so as to protect his identity and not bloat his already exaggerated ego) proceeds to regale me with the tale of how my commanders log restoration has failed for the ninth time. He cites irreversible damage to such and such memory banks and goes on to speculate about a myriad of potential causes; not limited to extreme close proximity to various stellar phenomenon over the last 3 months, or certain museum piece modules which technically should not inter-operate with any of the other ships systems. In other words my fault. So be it. Everything else that happens to this hauler is my fault (at least that’s what I get told every time I shell out for repairs). Why shouldn’t this be any different?

This long distance space travel is a lonely business as a haulier so I continue my banter with Eddie, asking if the regulation security protocols were used prior to engaging data transfers between the port computers at Jacques Station and the rest of the ship. After all Jacques is still recovering from the effects of those unknown artifacts and that misstep of the longest recorded frame shift jump that landed the station some 11 KLy left of the galactic core.  He sounds affronted I would suggest such a thing and I decide to let it go as I know he is bored. The transportation mission out to Jacques was technically beyond the design specification of my Lakon Type 6 ship and he has nothing more challenging than multiple way-point jumps to plot. He’s missing the fun of piloting this brick of a ship through the star port entrance bays and out smarting pirates back in the Bubble.

So here we are. Everything else on this ship is intact but my logs are gone. Ah well, that will be less information for the firm’s psychiatrist to go through when I eventually get back home; wherever I’m calling home these days. Still, returning home is proving difficult.  Eddie, or one of his subsystems, is refusing to accept navigation data that would plot us back to the Bubble. We must press on.  Returning to Sagittarius A via micro jumps and only then can we engage in a convoluted route back to the Bubble.  At least the booze I’m carrying in the hold will not go bad in the interim. There are no contracts spoiling either after I offloaded all that Titanium and exploration data at Jacques.  For now I’ll play along with his little game as it will keep me and my business out of the pissing contest that has erupted once again between the Feds and those Imperial types.

In the meantime Eddie upgrades the commanders log software from model T to model W stating there are enough redundancies built in to it that all my future ramblings will be safe. Wonderful!  We will have multiple copies of my onset of space crazy.  I tell Eddie to plot the next jump and engage the frame shift drive. Who knows what wonders will await in the next system and whether another member of the Pilot’s Federation has been there previously?  The stars around me begin to fade as the transition to hyperspace encompasses the ship.

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Bow Lof Petunias

Bow Lof Petunias

Bow Lof Petunias is a player character in the galaxy of Elite Dangerous, specializing in long range exploration, cartography & prospecting. When he's not aboard his Fleet Carrier, the "DSSA Chrysaetos Refuge", this commander is a confirmed screenshot junkie, a random scribe and an occasional video creator.

“The 400B” was created using assets and imagery from Elite Dangerous, with the permission of Frontier Developments plc, for non-commercial purposes.
It is not endorsed by nor reflects the views or opinions of Frontier Developments and no employee of Frontier Developments was involved in the making of it.

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