NaNo -- 41,308

Hello. I'm not doing very well at NaNo so far. Russ is gone, but now I have a horrible miserable cold and all I want to do is crawl into bed and sleep for a few days. It doesn't help that the cats unplugged my computer in the middle of work last night and I lost about 400 words. I'm just about back to 40k, though. Yeah, it's been that kind of NaNo.

Tomorrow morning, the people come back to try and fix the gas line in the other house. Having it only partially fixed is kind of stupid, even if I don't move over there this winter. We need the heat on, at least low, so that we don't have more frozen water pipes. Besides, the washer and dryer are over there, and that would be a real nice thing to have!

Oh -- I just took a little turn in the story and it is now going VERY well. So, I'm off to get some writing done! Yay! Throughout the story I have referred to the Journal. I decided to step back and look at the people who wrote that journal -- the people who awoke on the ship to find themselves trapped, lost -- what could they do?

Here is a short excerpt from that new section:



I woke up to hear the alarms. That's what I remember most about those first few days -- the alarms, and the growing feeling of dread and despair as I realized how bad the situation was.

The gravity was failing. It surged and died several times as I tried to get out of the pod. I saw others doing the same, but I could smell burnt metal and plastic everywhere. We were still in space. The engines were working -- I could feel the dull throb of power corsing through everything. I remember all those feelings that came even over the panic.

Panic helped to clear my system. I finally was able to stand. Gravity only bumped up and down a little now, which told me that the computer -- thank whatever gods watched over us -- was still working.

I remember thinking all of that in those first few minutes. Or maybe it was hours. I'm not certain how long it took me to really calm enough to look at the situation.

It wasn't good.

Mark was the first person I saw -- or maybe the first person I acknowledged seeing. I think there had been others, but we were all so stunned and frightened that I don't think anyone really connected for a while. But I found Paul sitting in the auxiliary office and trying to get to the computer to come up on line. He looked up, startled, when I came into the room. He had a cut on the side of his face. I wondered if others were injured, too.

"What the hell happened?" I asked.

I think those were the first words I had said. Mark looked at me, and then stood and pushed me into the chair by the desk. I don't know how I must have looked right then, but I settled down and took a deep breath. The air still tasted funny.

"Something came through the side of the ship, Dora," he said softly. "It took out almost all the pods."

"No!"

I think everything went dark for a while after that. I think I might have shut down. Others came into the room. I heard crying, denial, fear. But I was not part of it again. Not for a long time.