“The best laid plans of mice and men, often go awry …” – Robert Burns

Journal Entry 002

Where do I begin? I can’t go back to the start. I don’t remember it. I’ve never experienced trauma induced amnesia before though I’ve read it happens to those in accidents … I guess this is that sort of accident.

The first thing I remember upon waking is blinking at a painfully bright sky hazed by clouds both above and in my muddled brain.

It took a good ten minutes of laying there before I could lift my head and look around. Rocks around me and oddly neon green grass and trees. The colors felt weirdly over saturated like someone had fiddled with a monitor’s settings. My visor readout wasn’t working so whatever I was seeing on the other side of it was real.

Finally I could sit up cautiously, and a quick self check revealed no broken bones or open wounds to my amazement though my mind still felt muddled and heavy. My suit was intact as well.

I was lying in a crater of some sort, with my starship and what looked to be a hastily pitched emergency landing camp …

Did I make this? Why don’t I remember it or the crash? Then it hit me … I couldn’t even remember leaving the transport ships. There was a niggling feeling in the back of my mind like I should. Like it was right there on the tip of my tongue but then gone, like that bit of a dream you were having when you woke up too soon and then quickly forgot.

Maybe I had a concussion and needed to be careful for a bit. Internal bio-suit scans were reading normal. Everything was normal but nothing was normal. This wasn’t right. I turned to look around the crater I’d crashed in on this unknown planet … and the saturation thing kicked it up a notch more with the craziest sight I’d ever seen:

A cave on the edge of the crater and spilling forth from it was a multitude of neon colored flora of the likes I’d never seen. And inside were hundreds of nodes of some sort of ore hanging down like fancy decorative pillars. Was this organic? It looked almost carefully laid out and constructed. A bizarre neo-modern artwork of sorts.

I quickly brought up my visor scanner, but it was broken. At least my ship’s HUD connection was still online. Survey had been done upon entry and read:

System : Chongxiosar-Rayam

: Chongxiosar-Rayam Planet : Zoutumuk UA453

: Zoutumuk UA453 Weather : Mild

: Mild Sentinels : Minimal

: Minimal Flora : Abundant

: Abundant Fauna: Moderate

As far as crash landings go, it looks like I got really lucky. The air, while not breathable, is clear and clean and no radiation or toxicity. The climate is mild with no rainfall or storms. And since it looks like I might be here awhile trying to fix my systems and ship, this is really good news.

I upload the data from the landing survey and wait for news to come back from above and possibly a rescue plan … though strangely I feel like I already know the answer to that one: There was no Plan A and this is it.

So here I am, I’m stuck with Plan B:

Best to start working on getting the Launch Thrust and Pulse Engines back up and running. Oddly I feel like I should know more about this ship from training but it seems unfamiliar and is even listed in the HUD as “Abandoned” which sets off some alarms in my head. What is going on?

Before I can really think about what to do next, two small flying drones swoop down over the side of the crater lip and begin scanning me aggressively. I start scrambling backwards towards my ship but just as quickly as they arrived, they fly off again to circle slowly around the crater. Are these the sentinels?

I don’t know who is controlling them or why, but they definitely are watching me and they’re not part of our sponsor’s space program. I decide it’s best to stay in the cockpit of my ship for awhile as my head’s spinning again. I keep the air a little cooler than I need and darken the HUD. Just a little sleep should help clear my brain a bit …