Morning Michelle!
Ugh.
She feels dizzy and her body is filled with a burning sensation.
She takes a step out of her preservation chamber and sits down on the
floor in front of it, putting her arms over her knees to rest her head.
I'm gonna ... need a moment.
Water?
She lifts her head and Jack hands her a glass. After taking a couple sips,
she sets it down, unsure whether it helps or makes it worse, and rests
her head again.
Just let me sit here for a moment.
After a while, she lifts her head again.
So what year is it? ... and what's our
mission?
Twenty-one-oh-six. We don't have a
mission, uplink's dead.
You're kidding.
Nope.
How'd you get woken up then?
Technical failure.
You survived that?
That was the least of my challenges.
Jack recounts his side of the events of the past
amount of time as well as some of the things he had read about in
the logs or talked about with Annie.
missing section
They step outside and, following what remains of the old path, start walking. It is narrow and winded, overgrown, and has partially disappeared. Jack walks ahead, only half following the path, half making it up as he goes. Michelle struggles to follow, slowly falling behind.
After a while, Jack stops abruptly, looking down at something, then up, then down again. Then, he turns to Michelle who is catching up to him and says: Well, that could be a reason why the uplink is down – it literally is down.... Michelle reaches the edge and and sees what Jack had stopped for: A huge ravine estends towards the top of the mountain where a landslide had left nothing but a cliff and a huge pile of rubble. At the top of the mountain, teetering on the edge, are two buildings – all that's left of the ground station. The rest of the buildings and the dish lay strewn around in pieces down below.
Copyright © 2023 Jan Danielzick (aka. BodgeMaster) – All rights reserved.