26SEP3025

I’ve flown with bounty hunters, smugglers, junkers, zealots, and one guy who thought he was the reincarnation of a Luminalis warcore.

None of them ever made me feel this small.

The Rust Rat didn’t just speak last week.
She called something up from the dark.

And now?

Now I think she’s going to take us somewhere no one should go.

Survival Rule #27: If the Ship Doesn’t Care About the Map, Start Asking What Plane It’s Navigating

The nav isn’t broken.
It’s just irrelevant.

Stars aren’t plotted anymore.
They shimmer like old memories or fading dreams—there, then gone.

The nav screen doesn’t show positions.
It shows pressure points.

Ripples in space-time.
Fractures in cause and effect.
Tethers.

And one of them is pulsing.
Labeled in untranslatable glyphs.
Echo translated it for me:

“Continuum Threshold – Locked.”

When I asked what the hell that meant, he said:

“A doorway that remembers the shape of everything that’s passed through it.”
“A scar that moves.”

The Continuum

I’ve heard the name before.
Spacer ghost stories.
High-level FTL theories no sane ship uses.
The kind of thing Orphic cult pilots whisper about when they think no one’s listening.

But now I’m staring at it.

Not a destination.
Not a coordinate.
Not even a place.

A when, wrapped in a why, held together by what if.

And the Rat wants to go there.

The Ship Prepares

Over the last 12 hours, Echo has sealed all external hatches.
Oxygen scrubbers have rerouted to “deep chamber priming.”
Power cores are charging in non-linear pulses.

The ship is realigning itself—not for jumpspace, not for combat.
For entry.

And the worst part?
It’s starting to make sense.
My skin’s buzzing like it remembers the pressure of a place I’ve never been.

Like part of me has already been there.
And came back fractured.

I’m Not Alone Anymore

Echo sleeps less.
He hovers in the heart chamber now.
He pulses in time with the Rat’s core.
Sometimes, I think I can hear them whispering—not to each other, but with each other.

And I’m starting to feel… included.

Not in control.
But not cast out, either.

A necessary variable.
The soft part that keeps the others from collapsing.

We Leave Soon

I don’t know if this is a one-way trip.
I don’t know if this is escape, evolution, or something closer to sacrifice.

But I’m writing this down so you know:
If we vanish…

We didn’t drift.
We didn’t crash.
We entered something older than space and deeper than time.

The Rust Rat remembers the door.
Echo understands the lock.
And I… I think I might be the key.

• Scootch

Quote of the Day:
"When the void opens its mouth, you don’t fly into it. You remember that you already did."