Approximately 4131 days (give or take) since Operation Earth Dump

It’s once again fall back in Iowa. Or what would pass for fall these days. I doubt that it looks anything like what I remember as fall when I was a little girl growing up in a rural town outside Des Moines. I briefly remember bright orange leaves dropping from trees when I was very young. But it wasn’t long before the leaves just stopped growing and turning green altogether. They dropped for the last time when I was about seven or so. No longer blazing oranges and reds, instead they fell from quickly dying trees black as night, crumbling as they touched the ground beneath the weight of the incredible amounts of toxicity they had managed to absorb from the air.

Fall today, about twelve years later, is probably pretty unreconizable. Smoky skies, a sickly green glow at night from insane amounts of nitrogen and CO2 in the air, every living thing dead or dying from increased radioactivity, both man-made or natural.

The earth died when I was young. Obviously, I’m still trying to get over it.

I’m guesstimating the date, as you can probably tell. Until I hit the next communication relay that the comm ships drop every few thousand miles along the Yellow Brick Road, I don’t necessarily have a good idea of what the actual date is. But I’m pretty sure it’s at least October by now. It was September 17th at the last Brick I ran into. I lost track, but I think it’s been a good twenty days or so since then. It’s really difficult to keep track when you have no sun rising and setting to mark the passing of the days.

It makes things even harder when, even as all of humanity is fleeing from an expiring planet, they insist on keeping track of time using Earth-based conventions and methods.

Oh how I long for someone to make stardates a thing.

We just ran into a resupply ship a couple weeks ago so we’re doing pretty good on supplies at the moment. Picked up some protein packets for the food synth which should last us a few months if I’m careful. Clang picked up a handful of food synth recipes at the last Brick so maybe I can get him to try his rusty hand at a decent facsimile of the magnificent orange chicken dish I had on my brief stay on a genship a couple of years ago. God, that stuff was incredible. I haven’t tasted anything remotely like it since.

Unfortunately, it won’t be long until the Flying Monkeys stop resupplying us once our official DETACHED status notification makes its way through the entire fleet, no thanks to the fine men and women running Dorothy. Appreciate the support, forward command assholes.

I was hoping I’d be able to continue flying under the radar, so to speak. I mean, we’ve been able to more or less get away with it for about ten years now. In the beginning it was easy, because Clang was caring for a young stowaway and was able to use pathetic sympathy and misplaced compassion to get pretty much anything we needed from any of the Flying Monkeys, or the genships, or any other detached cruisers by just sticking to a pretty believeable story. Clang understood my adamant refusal to trust anyone, and therefore successfully kept anyone from trying to claim me and get me out of my makeshift little home.

Eventually I turned a reasonable enough age for Dorothy to consider me able to care for myself. I’m not sure exactly when that happened, probably around seventeen or so? That’s obviously a rough estimate. But it was around that time that Dorothy sent the order down the Yellow Brick Road, along with their constantly-updated manifest of the entire fleet, including other DETATCHED status cruisers. We are all collectively supposed to be considered “OFF LIMITS” or “DO NOT APPROACH” and essentially “DO NOT FEED THE ANIMALS” to any other cruisers in the fleet. And that includes the Flying Monkey resupply ships.

But the one we ran into recently apparently didn’t have an updated manifest, so they were happy to give us some of their supplies, though they were running dangerously low. We just happened to run into them as they were rocketing back to the Wicked Witch for a full resupply. They’ll get an updated manifest then, and probably kick themselves for giving a detached cruiser any of their stock. I imagine they’ll find a way to keep that detail out of their records. It might end up being a bit embarrassing to their superiors.

I guess now we’ll have to solely rely on connecting with other detached cruisers. But supplies are quickly diminishing for the detached fleet. Due to, you know, being DETACHED and all. Maybe I’ll have to find my way over to a kind and generous genship at some point in the next few months.

Or maybe I’ll just have to pirate some supplies off of the next Flying Monkey I see. My blaster isn’t much — it really only manages to fire off two blasts before overheating and shutting down — but it’s scary enough out in the emptiness of space to be a threatening presence. Maybe as a last resort. You know, if my own adorable womanly charms aren’t enough.

It’s hard to believe that somewhere out there in this enormous expanse of emptiness lies our own little goldilocks planet. Our Emerald City. Our pot of gold at the end of an incredibly long and fucked up rainbow. It’s supposed the most important thing humanity has ever tried to obtain, and we haven’t even managed to give it a good name. We just keep calling it “Goldilocks”, as though associating it with an ancient nursery rhyme will somehow give it meaning and substance.

And then we name everything else in the operation after Wizard of Oz references. Way to mix metaphors, human race.

Hoping I run into a Brick sometime soon so I can upload this damned journal to the full archives. Maybe someone will even get to read it someday.