ENTRY 007
SURVIVAL LOG
BEGIN DICTATION:
I am not alone!
This afternoon, I tested my starship - and tried to get comfortable with piloting this familiar, yet unfamiliar craft - by skimming low over the surface of this toxic dump of a planet to see what I could find. Mile after mile of hills, mesas, deep valleys and assorted cacti and fungi filled my screens, when all of a sudden a blue icon flashed on my Heads Up Display: an unknown building to the right.
I swung around and brought the craft to a halt, hovering over what seemed to be a working outpost, complete with a functioning landing pad that was supplying my craft with a touchdown vector. Heart in mouth, I keyed in the landing sequence and brought The Refuge down on the pad, which swung around and brought me face-to-face with the entrance. The building was a green/gray metal - some Ferrite alloy, I assume - that looked for all the world like the outposts back home in the Eden system.
I exited the craft and noted the weather-worn walkway and entry, then steeled myself and went in. There I found the first sentient being I'd seen in days: a Gek trader (or at least I assume he was a trader). He seemed as surprised to see me as I was to see him, and he greeted me with a torrent of unintelligible speech.
My universal translator seems to have lost most of its Gek vocabulary, so we could communicate only in gestures and facial expressions. But it was good to have contact with an intelligent life-form. Maybe, just maybe, this means I can find a way home.
END DICTATION
Thanks so much -- it is liberating not to be able to write without worrying about that. I used to finish an installment and then go back and cut so it would fit the discord limits. This is much better!