16MAY3025
I’ve come to the conclusion that sanity is optional out here.
No, really. At a certain point, when the lights go out, the air gets thin, and your ship starts whispering your name in the voice of your third-grade math teacher, you just have to make a choice:
Cling to reality like it’s not already slipping through your fingers
Or just… invite the madness in, offer it coffee, and ask if it wants to help fix the comms.
Guess which one I picked.
Survival Rule #5: Talk to Yourself. It's Safer Than the Alternatives.
I’ve been drifting since the last emergency burn. No clue where I am, no nav lock, and no working long-range sensors. Basically, I’m doing space travel the old-fashioned way—by feeling incredibly lost and praying not to die.
With power rerouted and external lights still dead, I decided to spend some time in the engineering crawlspace—mostly to check for hull fractures and partially to hide from the growing suspicion that I’m not alone on this ship.
That’s when I started hearing it.
A soft, barely audible whisper, repeating the same phrase over and over again.
“We see you.”
Cool. Great. Absolutely what I needed.
Now, could it be some malfunction? Maybe a corrupted audio file playing on loop? Sure. That’s the rational answer.
But that theory kinda lost weight when the whisper started responding to things I said.
Example:
Me: “Stop it.”
Voice: “We never stop.”
Me: “You’re not real.”
Voice: “You are.”
Me: “…Fair.”
So, naturally, I’ve decided that until proven otherwise, the whisper is my new co-pilot. His name is Gary. He’s deeply unsettling but surprisingly supportive when I’m trying to reroute power through fried conduits.
Survival Rule #6: Don’t Check the Mirror
Here’s a weird thing. You know how my external sensors are dead? Well, for a brief moment during a routine system bypass, they flickered back online.
Just for a second.
And in that second, I saw another ship behind me.
A sleek, black vessel—completely unmarked, no heat signature, no running lights. Just there. Watching.
And then it was gone.
I don’t know if it’s stalking me, if it’s real, or if it’s just Gary messing with me. But here’s the part that actually bothered me:
When I went to check the rear camera feed, the screen flashed an image of my own face.
Only… it wasn’t me.
Same face. Same eyes. But there was something off—a little too still, a little too perfect. And the expression it had?
Pity.
Now I don’t know what’s worse—that it looked like me, or that it clearly thought I was doomed.
Survival Rule #7: Laugh or Scream. Pick One.
So here’s where we’re at:
I may or may not be haunted.
I may or may not be pursued by a stealth ship that may or may not exist.
I’ve named my hallucination and assigned him engineering tasks.
And I just made coffee with water I found condensed on a pipe. It tastes like copper and sadness.
Honestly?
This might be the most peaceful I’ve felt in weeks.
Scootch
Quote of the Day:
"If your hallucination starts giving good advice, is it really a hallucination?"
