Data Log - Call Me Crazy

Entry 1

Log 1: Second Star To The Right

So, um… this is HSS Call Me Crazy, ship’s log, first entry, Captain Floyd Pierce. I thought I should probably start keeping one now that we’ve got an actual ship that can fly. We got the hyperdrive installed today, which means we’re all set to leave! Eden here we come!

...Brown thinks I’m too optimistic. I just like to think, y’know… things are so dark right now, us little lights have to shine that much brighter.

Yeah, you too mate. +laughs+ He just gave me the finger. Anyway, um...

I mean, it was bad down there. Really bloody bad. London’s basically underwater nowadays, and the week before we finally got the shuttle up to our haven, I swear I saw a body floating down the street. I’m glad I don’t have to deal with that any longer. I feel bad for the poor sods we left behind, but there’s only so quickly this program can work, isn’t there?

It’s only going to get worse before it gets better. And it’ll just keep getting worse unless people have somewhere to go...

All the boards and social media are buzzing with this... rumour? Idea? I’m not sure which. But they all imagine there’s a planet out there somewhere, one that’s enough like Earth that we could live there. It has to be pretty exact: it needs the right gravity, the right air, the right... lots of things.

But it’s a big galaxy. There’s got to be a planet like that out there somewhere, right?

People online are calling it “Eden.” And I guess that’s our mission. We can’t keep living on these ships forever, can we? No. We need a planet. And we... I think we learned from Earth how to keep from messing up a new one. We were just behind the curve with Earth.

Eden will be different. We just have to find it. So… that’s what we’re going to do.

++END LOG ENTRY++

Entry 2

Log 2: Straight On Until Morning.

Chang thinks I’m crazy. He said, “Floyd, you’re asking us to look for one small straw-coloured needle in a whole field of haystacks.” I told him it was something to focus on, at least. You’ve got to have a mission, right? You don’t just drift through life, you set your sights on something and work at it.

At least Chef and Brown were on my side. Blondie…

Well, his exact words were “we already fucked up one planet, what gives us the right to ruin a second one?” I told him, I think we’ve learned from our mistakes. He didn’t seem convinced but in the end he accepted he was out-voted and went to go read in his bunk.

Maybe Eden is a big wild goose chase, but it gives us a purpose at least. Chang and Brown nodded when I said that. Chef grumbled something about slowing down and picking over everything we can find at each stop before we move on, but personally I like the pace we’re setting. It keeps us ahead of all the other ships following behind us from Earth. The odd hyperspace message that reaches us says a lot of ship crews went rogue. You hear talk of them turning corrupt or violent, even crazy.

Heading out this way, in a direction not many are going and just grabbing what we need before we move on? It keeps us safe. If we build enough of a lead, maybe it’ll be safe to stop and build a deep-sky survey satellite. We can’t just rely on stumbling across Eden, Chang’s right there. We’ll have to look for it.

Just a few more jumps, first…

++END LOG ENTRY++

Entry 3

Log 3: Going Boldly.

I still think Chang’s too… I don’t know. Cautious, I guess. I don’t think he’d be happy unless we stuffed the hold full of everything we can get our hands on, and even then he’d probably fret.

I told him; the longer we stay in one place, the more likely we are somebody’ll come along and there’s no guarantee they’ll be friendly. The quicker we move, the safer we are. He said all the safety in the world won’t help if we run out of energy sticks.

I asked him how many we have. Fifteen he said. That’s plenty, so I’m not worried.

He got his chance, though. We stopped and built that survey station, and he personally mined every rock the pods could reach. He’s still complaining, but whatever. We’ll be here for a while as the telescope does its thing, we can probably sweep this whole system clean before it’s done.

I hope it doesn’t take too long though. I have to admit, part of the rush is I want to go down in history as the crew that found Eden. The history books won’t remember the runners-up. I want to get there FIRST.

Blondie’s still giving me grief, though. Keeps arguing about “humanity’s track record” and how we were a “mass extinction event” and how we have no right to do that to a second planet. Brown said we have no right to let millions of people die. It’s getting to be a problem, and the worst part is that I can’t do a bloody thing to fix it because I’m firmly on one team. There isn’t a neutral third party on board, just four of us who think we should find Eden, and one who thinks we shouldn’t.

In the end I just told him to face the inevitable. “Somebody’s going to find the bloody thing first,” I said. “So it may as well be us.”

He’s reading in his bunk again. Hopefully it calms him down.

++END LOG ENTRY++

Entry 4

Log 4: Land Ahoy!

We got a good contact from the telescope. Right kind of mass, orbital radius and atmosphere composition at least. It’s a ways out, right on the edge of the telescope’s range, but we can make it.

<Coordinates attached>

I told the guys to do a full systems check, make sure everything’s ship-shape for a long sequence of interstellar hops. Ten minutes later, Blondie got in a fight with Chang. Knocked him out cold! So while Chef was bandaging Chang’s boo-boo, I had to confine Blondie to his cabin. He’s in there right now, sulking and reading that bloody book of his again.

I asked Chang what it was about. He mumbled something about the inventory report, but he’s high as a kite right now and Chef says he’s got a nasty concussion. He might not even remember.

...I guess I’d better go check on Blondie, see what he says. Wish me luck.

++paused++

++resumed++

Blondie gave me an earful, as expected. He just won’t let go. Started ranting some crazy shit at me about “The Poison Eden” and a “great step backwards.” I thought he was gonna have a go at me too!

So… yeah. He’s still confined to quarters. At least until Chang recovers and we get his side of the story. I asked Brown about the inventory situation. He checked the bridge comp, says we’re good on everything. We could be a little more comfortable on energy sticks, but there’s no crystals left in this system, and telescope says there’s plenty of crystals around our destination.

We’re so CLOSE now, I can almost taste it. Eden. It’s out there, and we’re going to find it.

Just three jumps. Three days.

This is going to be huge, I just know it.

++END LOG ENTRY++

Entry 5

Log 5: A Great Adventure

Call Me Crazy, captain’s log… final entry.

...God, saying that hurt. To know we’ve come so far, and now…

It’s my own bloody fault. Even after everything, I still trusted Blondie. I never thought he’d...

We found Eden.

It’s so beautiful. I always wondered what Earth used to look like, before we made a pig’s ear of it. Blue, and green, and white. I hope we treat this one better. I hope we’ve learned our lessons.

But I guess if you’re listening to this, you don’t need me to tell you what it looks like. Congratulations: you found Eden too. We’re down there, somewhere. Hopefully we’re scratching out a life.

We were cheering and whooping and patting each other on the backs when the lights went out. When we checked the cargo… It was sabotage, plain and simple. Brown nearly threw Blondie out the airlock right then and there. The bastard spaced half our energy sticks while we were asleep, then falsified the cargo manifest. I guess Chang must have found out and confronted him… dammit. I should’ve double-checked the storage.

So that’s it. We’re officially bingo for power. Blackout. Dead in the water. This system is rich in everything we need… but we can’t refine it without power. All those crystals, so close we could touch them, but the lights are off, the machines won’t work… and there’s no derelicts out here to salvage. We’re officially out of gas, and it’s a long way to the nearest pump.

Blondie wasn’t even apologetic, he’s still standing there like he just did us all a massive favour. Like he just saved the world, the smug git.

Chef searched his cabin. Turns out Blondie’s a member of the Cult of New Haven, those crazy wankers who think God’s waiting for us out there in space and that we should never go back to living on planets because God threw us out of Eden. That book he’s been reading this whole time? The collected sermons of Visionary Able.

He’s been brainwashing himself right under our bloody noses.

Well, joke’s on him. We’re going down there. It’s not like we can stay up here with no power, is it? The air’s already getting cold.

Blondie says he wants to stay up here. That suits me just fine, there’s only room for four on the shuttle anyway. I can do without seeing the treacherous bugger every day for as long as we’re stuck down there.

I don’t care if he hypersleeps or freezes to death. I just don’t want to see him ever again.

So… anyway. I guess this is an SOS. If you’re reading this, we’re hopefully still down there somewhere, in need of rescue. We might be hard to find, it’s not like we can build a colony now. Honestly, it’ll be a bloody miracle if we don’t all starve to death down there, never mind building a radio beacon.

But it’s a better shot than freezing to death up here. I hope to see you, whoever you are, when you find us.

Until then…

This is captain Floyd Pierce of HSS “Call Me Crazy,” signing off.

++END LOG++

Entry 6

Log 6: The Land of Nod

Call Me Crazy ship’s log, supplemental. Blondie here.

“So the LORD drove out the man and woman; and at Eden’s east gate He stationed the Angel, whom He armed with a flaming sword which struck every way, to bar the path back to the tree of life.”

The Seers of the Church will reward me. I am a Flaming Sword, now. I have barred the backward path. But in doing so I betrayed good men who put their faith in me. I must live with that. I must repent for it. I must…confess.

Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned.

The world below is not Eden. It is a Temptation, nothing more. The Seers have found many of them, over the years. After all, there are many more conditions for a planet to be compatible with human life than the mere presence of liquid water, oxygen and plant life. We’re creatures of Earth, not of here.

Pierce, Chef, Brown and Chang will be dead within seconds of arriving. Anaphylaxis. Just breathing in a lungful of alien pollen is a death sentence. I wish it were more painless, they’re good men, they don’t deserve to die like that, but…

But there’s a bigger picture at stake here. What are the lives of four men against the soul of all mankind?

Still…I feel guilty, even though I’ve protected humanity from a regression, here. If a man calls you his friend and comrade, and you spend all your time lying to him…if you lead him to his death…well, the Lord made us to feel the pain we cause others. Even for the right reasons.

I’m going to sleep, now. Perhaps the Lord will reward me, and you, whoever you are reading this, will bless me and let me live. Or perhaps you are the agent of His justice, come to strike me down for my betrayal.

I accept your judgment either way.

++END LOG++