Event Horizon

Chapter 11

Did you go counterclockwise? Are you still on planet A?

No, I didn't really bother after like, what, 70% of that stuff was empty. And mercury-filled. Still here though.

Go counterclockwise. The remaining 30% could have something. You've never checked.

Possible? Sure. Maybe not probable. We'd just be wasting time.

Go counterclockwise.

If you say so.

I'm so tired.

Maybe it was the sun here that never set. My curtains are always shut, though. Could be the time– it was as masses of driftwood, floating on a river that isn't sure where it wants to go. An extra hour or two was cut-and-pasted into bedtime; which didn't produce any rest; my dreams were too long, too much like drunken thoughts to have eased me in any way.

I remember one about a flower field. Wind blowing east-to-west, bare feet, soft grass. White dress fluttering, perhaps happy for a minute or two. Not for long– I then started to worry about college admissions and tomorrow's work hours while a man watched from arm's length. There was a corpse on the ground. A guy I went to school with, I think. It was bothering me so I kicked it.

Ah, there was work to be done.

Just because I liked the feeling of at least having done something– regardless of its importance– I wrote a formal-sounding description of my observations on this planet (which I bestowed with the elegant name of MMTM: More mercury than Mercury.) I even sucked up to Liesel by shoving in every inconsequential minutiae from the footage my eyes would permit before my glass lenses felt the need to grow six times as thick. (Great job, Lucas! Excellent attention to detail!)

There were also the tender beginnings of some extremely pretentious fable tossed to the side of the bed, where they remain at present moment. I had to ransack every niche and interstice of my memory to eventually keck something out; the moral I ended up going with described the difference between misery and regret, but you get to learn about it with a pair of obnoxious rabbits. After tripping over words, falling into a rut, and nearly drowning in ideas that were pissed with me for not knowing how to express them, I gave up and decided to schedule the rest of my days on the craft.

Plans are always fun to make, even if they're never meant to be followed.

I carved out a good chunk of the day to dedicate to my personal studies (how to not feel guilty for experiencing time), placed right after when I'd finish every necessary task, and another, smaller fragment to indulge in whatever stupid shit I felt was suitable as a reward. The rest of the day was for my personal thinking time (sitting in the shower and taking too long and/or facing a wall and nothing else) and sleep. This is a good way to spend the day; I know this because I'm not adhering to a single thing I just wrote down.

Time to send out the drone.