Chapter Seven: The Destruction

By 2000, I meant 1000. Let's try this again...

The very nature of the Descrution, Jonathan Brooke said, keeps me from being able to tell you every detail. In the process, a lot of the history of the world was lost. I can give you an outline of what happened and the story of how people survived.
As near as we can figure it, there was a was somewhere around the year 2400CE. The United States of North America had been in a long cold conflict with The East Asian Conglomerate. We're not sure what caused the two sides to start fighting openly, but I can tell you that, over the years of conflict, slowly almost ever nation was drawn in on one side or the other.
The weapons use caused death unlike anybody had ever seen before. More poeple were dying in this conflict than any other in the history of Earth. The USNA and EAC's leaders, however, never once ordered the use of nuclear weapons. Franklin Greene, the president of the USNA, tried to keep teh war off of American soil, but, for the first time in centuries, a war was being fought on their home soil. General Hung, the leader of the EAC, pushed his soldiers further and further inward, from the Pacific West. The USNA was slowly losing ground. The European nations were trying to push into the EAC's territory with little success. It looked like Franklin Greene was going to lose the war.
A group of radical Chrisitans began to take the war as a sign that the apocalypse was coming. They believed that God saw the world as a group of sinners, and that when Jesus Christ returned, he would not redeem the souls of the people. Unless, of course, he was brought back in the right manner. Their leader, Septimus Jones, began to freely interpret the book of Revelations in a manor never before considered his interpretation was supposed to bring Jesus back, if carried out properly. The book says that the lamb would break seals on a scroll, releasing different terrible things upon the world. I'm not religious, and don't specificaly understand this section too well, but it seems that the lamb was somehow related to the second coming of christ. Either Septimus Jones saw himself as Jesus Christ, or he believe the lamb did not represent Jesus, because he began 'breaking the seals'. the first seal was meant to release the first of the four horsemen of the apocalypse - Conquest. Septimus Jones' group, calling themselves the Apocalyptists seized weapons from USNA forces and stole a colony mine hauler.
The conflict, up until this point, had been contained to Earthly soil. The colonies of both major powers had focused on producing materials to better feed the war effort rather than fighting each other.
The Apocalyptists diverted the colony ship to the moon, and proceed to take over the moon. Nobody's sure how they managed this, the surface of the moon is now radioactive black glass, but I'll get to that.
The Apocalptists found something on the moon that would forever change the course of history. A USNA weapon's development lab was disguised under a large crater (we're not sure which one). Spetimus Jones took controll of the station as his base of operations. He felt that the first seal was effectively broken by his conquest of the moon. The next seal would release the horseman called War.
Not any war would suffice to bring about the end of times and the second coming of Christ. It had to be a war started - and won - by Septimus Jones and Apocalyptists. One of the weapons found at the secret moon base was beyond Septimus Jones' understanding, but he chose to use it anyway. He did not know what it would do, but programmed the weapon to strike every major city on Earth. In twenty-four hours, he could begin his conquest by destroying most of the industry on Earth.
What he did was more terrible than even he imagined could be possible.
The weapon was disguised in the crater. As it began firing, shot after shot towards earth and her cities, it looked as if the moon were spewing balls of blue flame.
Franklin Greene saw what was happening and then did something that had not happened in centuries on earth. Not since the nuclear wars of the middle east had a nuclear weapon been launched. Franklin Greene knew it had to be done. He launched much of the USNA's arsenel at the moon. The warheads would core the moon, ferreting out and killing Apocalyptists. It seemed like a drastic measure, but President Greene knew what teh weapon would do to Earth.
Somebody in the EAC saw this sudden launch of warheads as an attack, and began launching a counter-attack at the USNA. General Hung was quick enough to notice that the missle the USNA had shot off were not aimed at the EAC. Fearing the USNA would retaliate agains the EAC's nuclear strike should any of the warheads land, he ordered that the missles his country had launched be detonated en route. All this served to do was complicate matter for the Earth the radiation in the atmosphere dirtied it to the extent that traces could still be dected when I left Earth a few months ago... over a thousands years after the war.
The missels that President Greene had launched took twenty-six hours to reach the moon. They were more than two hours behind the time when the weapon finished it's firing cycle.
Septimus Jones was powerless to stop the nuclear warheads, and he was wiped out, along with the rest of the Apocalyptists on the surface of the moon. It now glints in the dark, radioactive black glass covering much of the visible surface. We don't know the actual events that happened on the moon, because, frankly, everybody on it was killed.
The blue balls of flame from the moon, however, rained down on Earth. They could not be stopped.
They were a kind of elctromagnetic storm that cause all electronics to be destroyed. A fatal side effect had been noted when the weapon was first tested by the USNA - one that had caused them never to use it. The Elctromagnetic storm it caused destroyed neurons in the brain of humans, causing brain death.
Every major city in the world was hit with one of these. People died by the billions.

Chapter Seven: The Destruction

I just wrote over 2000 words of history. It disapeared on me.

Chapter Six: Harsh Reality

Author's Note: This post didn't get posted the first time... so It's out of order. It shout be read before "Chapter Six: - continued -" and after "Chapter five: unexpected visitors"

The shuttle took off smoothly.
"Who are you?" the man demanded, sitting in a chair, facing Jonathan. Jonathan was secured in the chair by some sort of restraints
"My name is Jonathan Brooke," he replied.
"I'm Captain Ignus Fortworth," the man returned. "Listen Jonathan, I have to admit I was pretty worked up down on the surface. I'm going to need you to explain to me what you were doing on the surface."
"I was following out my orders, I was establishing a colony."
"What do you mean your orders? Who would order a colony on a pre-industrial race's home world?"
"What are you talking about?" Jonathan asked. "If you're here, then you know the mission profile. How did you get here so fast, anyway? I only sent my distress signal two weeks ago. That only accounts for transit time, one way."
"We never received a distress signal from you." Captain Fortworth replied, looking confused. "We picked up a disturbance on our planetary monitors, and I was dispatched to investigate."
"What, are you telling me that somebody was here before me? That's not possible!"
"Why not? This planet and the race on it were discovered over fifty years ago. In keeping with the hopes that their development could tell us more about the Mind, we decided not to interfere with the race. That planet could be pivotal to the next Transfer, and you were there tampering with the locals."
"What are you talking about? None of this makes sense. Was I held outside of time for longer than I should have been?" Jonathan could not understand what the man was talking about. None of it made sense. The only logical explanation was that Jonathan had been held outside of time; perhaps missing years or even centuries of his timeline.
"What do you mean, held outside of time?"
"It's one of the few principals of faster than light travel I do--" Jonathan was cut off when the man stood up and clasped a hand to his head, brushing hair aside.
"Faster than light Travel? Faster than light travel! What family are you with- and don't you dare lie to me."
"My name is Brooke, if that's what you mean."
"What the hell planet are you from, man!" Ignus could hardy believe the seemingly endless ignorance of his captive. Why could he not answer the simplest of questions with a straight answer?
"What kind of a question is that? It's not like there's much of a choice." Jonathan retorted
"With seventeen fully settled plants and multiple colonies, I'd say there is."
"This isn't happening to me." Jonathan said. "What year is it?"
"Thirty-Four Ninety Five. What year did you expect?"
"Oh no. On no." Jonathan looked stunned in his seat.
"What year did you think it was?" Ignus asked the man sitting in the binding chair. The conversation was becoming progressively more and more odd.
"Eleven-Fifty-Two. I thought it was Eleven-fifty-two," Jonathan admitted.
Ignus looked at the man. "You're solidly insane. That's why you don't make any sense."
"I'm not insane! I would never have been selected for the mission if I was mentally unstable. I was the first man to travel faster than light away from Earth in Eleven-Fifty-Two P.D."
"Earth? Did you just say Earth?"
"What else would I have said, Port Orphos, or whatever?"
"It's Orpheus..." Ignus said in a sort of daze. He walked towards the exit.
In the main cabin, two other Spacing Commission officers sat at the controls of the vessel. One seemed to be in some sort of meditation.
"Hey, Cap," the one who appeared to be awake said. "Who's the nut-bar in the back? Why was he on that planet?"
"I'm not sure, Andy. He's made some pretty heavy claims, though."
"Like what?" The eager young officer asked.
"He said he's from Earth, Andy. And that it's the Year Eleven-fifty-Two P.D. Furthermore, he said that he got to the planet by faster than light travel."
"What? Really, Cap? He's got to be crazy."
"I thought so too, Andy. But he seems so sincere. I can't read any lies coming off of him. There seems to be no reason for him to tell such lies, either. For all intents and purposes, I think he’s telling the truth."
"Yeah, but I thought nobody survived the Destruction of Earth. I mean, it was the Destruction By definition, nobody should have survived."
"That's the history I learned, too, Andy. But, we all know the Mind is fallible. And the universe is an unpredictable place. Its useless to try and extract any more information from him out here. I think we need to see the Elders in Port Orpheus. They'll be able to read this situation, discover how we can best proceed. Join Helen in the Mind, Andy, I'll be there shortly after I lock down the vessel. We need to make all haste back to Port Orpheus."
"Yes sir."

Jonathan sat in absolute wonderment. Norman was exploring the room they were in. The man -- Captain Forthworth, had shown them both to another section of the shuttle, what was essentially a state-room. He had said that there had been a grave misunderstanding and that Jonathan would be able to speak to some people who could make more sense out of what was going on soon. In fact, the man had told him that the less Jonathan moved, the faster they would arrive at their destination, the mysterious Port Orpheus. Jonathan did not rightly understand what was happening, but he knew it would be useless to argue. And, he had to admit, it did feel good to be in contact with human beings again, no matter how convoluted their system seemed to be.
Jonathan could find no way to explain his situation other than to assume that his trip outside of time to Sigma had somehow managed to throw him off course not only in space, but also return him at the wrong time. Humans must have spread out considerably in the two-thousand years or so he had been gone. His name, perhaps, would not be on many people's minds, if he had supposedly never survived his first Faster than light trip. And how would they know if he survived, if he ended up so many hundreds of year after when he was supposed to be. He compared his knowledge of two thousand years ago --his years-- with that of what should have been his current time. It made sense; he did not know the names of anybody from the middle ages. He knew people did important things, but not who they were. Perhaps by this time, he had been lost in history.
It was useless to dwell on such things at the time, however. Jonathan soon realised that he really had no conception of what was going on and consigned himself to sleep.
Norman had settled onto a chair in the room. Jonathan mumbled a goodnight to his strange companion, and drifted off to sleep.

Word Count: 9,900/50,000
Days Left: 24
Sanity: Still here
Cafinated Beverages: 1

Chapter six: -- Continued --

Ignus Fortworth flew the ship down into the spaceport at Port Orpheus. The landing was gental and almost imediately, the ramp was down and security officers from the Port Authority were onboard.
"Where is the prisoner?" one very gruff guard asked. He was wearing the traditional armour of The Orpheus family - the founders of Port Orpheus. In the early days, they had been very militant, taking colonies by force. The armour was functional, but looked like aflashback to the eary history of Earth - the breast plates were shaped like a muscular man and the helmets looked more read to deflect a blow from a sword than a gunshot. There were very oppulent plumes on the helmets and each gaurd wore a cape or deep purple. Although these unifroms would never be used in actual combat, the tradition was an old one. Beyond that, the uniforms were very intimodating. It was hard to disobey somebody dressed up as these men were.
"I'd like permission to Escort him to the elder's chambers." Captain Fortworth asked.
"I don't think I should allow you that luxury." the second gaurd said. He must have been the higher ranking of the two.
"Name and rank." Captain Fortworth demanded.
The gaurd snapped to attention as if an invisible hand were commanding him. "Polis, Harold. Luitenant, First Class, Port Authority, Orpheus family," the man said.
"Luitenant Polis," Captain Fortworth looked at the man. He had been conditioned in the miltary for years. He had about as much free will as robot when looking into the face of a Captain of the Spacing Comission. "I order you to allow me to excort the prisoner, Jonathan Brooke, to the Elder's chambers."
"Yes Sir!" the soldier saluted. "I must insist, however, that we come with you."
"Fair enought. Mr. Brooke is in the state-room."

Jonathan was woken up by a gruff looking man in some sort of strange military costume. He found it very imposing and somewhat scary. In his half-dazed state of consciouseness, he was lead out of the ship and onto another world. This one was definetly not earth. The sky was a pale shade of red, like Mars, and the gravity was a little light. The sky was lit by two dusky suns, so close to one another that they bled into one another in vision and formed a kind of glowing elipse that was hard to look at.
Norman scuttled down the ramp after the part of four men. Not understanding why it was so warm, he just followed Jonathan.
Captain Fortworth lead the way to the Elder's Chambers. They were in a large complex, a large building that Jonathan could never have guessed the purpse of.
It was a decadant building. It was nothing like Jonathan had ever seen in his life. He was use to the utalitarian architecture of Earth. A strange future it must be, to revert to the old oppulent day of rich empires on Earth.
Just before they entered the chambers, Captain Fortworth pulled Jonathan aside. "A word of advice. Don't say anything to the Elders unless they ask you to. I don't think you could quite understand how their minds work."
Jonathan did not really understand, but he nodded. He felt it wise to take the man's advice, since he appeared to know the culture better.
The doors creaked open as the two guards bent considerable weight into them. One of the men grunted with the effort.
The room was not overly spectacular. It looked not unlike a court room. Six people sat at a long bench at one end of the room. The rest was an empty floor.
Jonathan was lead forward to a marble cirlce laid into the floor, where he simply stood, not knowing what to do.
"Elders of Port Orpheus, I am Captain Ignus Fortworth," the Captain said.
One of the people behind the becnh gave a dry laugh. "So formal... Tell me Captain, are you from the Bush Family?"
"As a matter of fact, yes."
"We are not as strict as your elders, young man." An old woman said from behind the bench. "We find being open with our citizens can be more effective when arguing points."
"Please," another of the elders said. "Take a seat."
Jonathan could not believe his eyes. There were now comforatable arm chairs in the cirlce. The bench at the front of the room seemed to shrink, become more of a conference table than anything else. The others in the room didn't seem overly impressed. Not sure what else to do, Jonathan took a seat in the chair. It was pushed towards the table, but Jonathan could not say how.
"Captain, I am Lucas." The first elder said. "The other elders here and Marian, Gregory, Gretta, Farhad and Danforth."
"I am, of course, honoured to be in this discussion with you." Captain Fortworth said.
"Tell us," Farhad asked "What it is you find so important?"
"This man," Captain Fortworth indicated Jonathan, "claims to be of Earthly Origin."
"Aren't we all?" Chuckled Lucas.
"Sir, with all respect, I mean recently."
"You're serious." Marian piped in for the first time. "But Earth was destroted in the Destruction."
"Maybe not." Captain Forworth suggested.
"What reasoning do you have?" asked Farhad.
"This man claims to have travelled to DN-94 from Earth by use of a technology that should be impossible - Faster than Light Travel." Jonatha started at this. Captain Fortworth had just attested that Faster than Light traval was impossible. How then, had they come to this plant from Norton? "Furthermore," Captain Fortworth continued "he claims to be from Earth, and apparently has no conception of our society. Lastly, he seems to use another system to measure years than we do. He has listed the year as Eleven Fifty Two, PD."
"Eleven hundred and fifty two years ago? That is not long after we left Earth." Marian projected.
"Exactly" Captain Fortworth said.
"What you mean to tell us is that the Destruction did not destroy human civilisation on Earth?" Lucas asked
"It appears that way." Captain Fortworth said.
Jonathan could not sit mute anymore. "You people obviously have a handle on what's going on around here. Could somebody explain you me why the hell there is a colony on thsi world when i was supposed to esablish the first human colony outside the Sol system? What the hell is going on?"
The elders were not offended by the outburst, as Captain Fortworth had expected them to be. He knew Jonathan would say something eventually, despite his warning.
"What is your name, son?" Gretta asked.
"Jonathan Brooke."
"I think perhaps we can only partially answer your question. It appears our version of the history of the human race is not as accurate as we had once supposed."
"What's the supposed to mean?" Jonathan demanded.
"It means," greogory said with a deep bass rumble "That when we left Earth over a millenium ago, we though we were leaving behind a doomed few people that could never be rescued."
"That was just after the Destruction." Jonathan figured. "Are you telling me that you are all desendants of people left Earth for the starts a thousand years ago?" The conections were starting to make sense. Jonathan was beginning to believe that maybe he wasn't outside of his natural timeline.
"That is indeed correct." Gretta said.
"I believe that the best way to proceed from here would be some sort of mutual education, Jonathan." Lucas suggested. "To give you the best picture of what is going on, I suggest you tell us your history of the desruction and anything prudent to the history of Earth for the next thousand years."
"That's a lot of history..." Jonathan said.
"Please, we have to keep track of quite a lot more, with all of the families different colonies. It can only help us explain to you what is happening to you if you tell us." Lucas coaxed the information out of Jonathan.
"Very well," jonathan sighed. "But it could be a long story."

Chapter Five : Unexpected Visitors

Jonathan did not waste any time getting back to his home base. He knew it was basically futile to hurry, but he did not want to spend any more time than he had to living on a planet alone. The sooner could get a message back to Earth, the better.
The beginnings of a colony that made up his home base looked exactly as they did when he had left them, weeks ago. Thr trip back had been entierly un-eventful. Perhaps the only interesting thing that Jonathan took note of was the fact taht Norman had started to ride in the cab of the cover along with him. Jonathan knew that it was just a psychological way of keeping himself from going crazy, but he talked to the creature quite a lot. Although not much of a conversationalist, Norman was a good companion to have. The vauge communications of different walking paterns never ceased to surprise Jonathan. He was constantly amased at the sheer level of intellegence that the small animal held. It was nothing like anything he had ever seen before. Even the most intellegent animals on Earth came nowhere near Norman. Octopi, although very intellegent, never associated with anything unless they were eating it. Dolphins were friendly, and although they could do some tricks that showed that they were inntellegent, it was nothing like this. Even Chimpanzees, who could learn sign language, didn't seem able to understand as much of the language that Norman did.
"Hey, Norman, maybe I should teach you how to play chess." Jonathan suggested when they were almost back to the home base. Norman sat mute. Perhaps he was sleeping. The physiology of the creature was very mysterious, Jonathan could make little sense of it.
Upon arrival at the base, Jonathan started construction of a probe taht would allow him to send a message back to Earth. The basic component was the faster than light engine from the Starfish. Jonathan used solid rockets from the stores, originally intended for weather satellites, as his main propulsion. He welded on a storage capsule that he could put a message into. The message include letters to family, specifically his brother, technical data on the status of the colony, his situation, and the telemetry from his trip outside of time. hopefully they would be able to send some sort of rescue with that information. To be on the same side, Jonathan recorder the information in several differnet mediums, and sealed them in different compartments.
The probe took a few days to build. What took even longer was the programing for the firing of the engines. jonathan spent days with the calulations and programs, running simulations in the landing pod. It took him quite a while to become satisfied with the results. When it was finally ready, Jonathan had to wait unil the right time of day to send the small frankenstien ship on its way.
He watched the rockets burn up into the upper atmosphere. "Well Norman," he said, still staring up into the atmosphere. "Now we wait. How about that game of chess?"

It took a while to communicate the rules of the game to Norman. He was a quick learned for an animal, but still not as fast as people. The chess board was found in the stores for the future colony. Norman did not prove to be much of an opponent, but it still gave Jonathan something to do. The creature wound his way between the peices and move his with his nose. Jonathan soon learned that three taps on the board meant check, and one time, four meant checkmate. It felt strange playing such an old game with a small creature from another world.
Jonathan knew that a reply from earth would most likely take over a month, if one ever came at all. he was very surprised one day, in the middle of a good game of chess with Norman, to hear the sound of a shuttle engine whining in the atmosphere. Abandoning the game, he ran outside and switched on the landing lights for the landing pad. He stood, scaning the skies for any sign of the ship. The sound was unmistakable, a high pitch whine with a deep bass thrumming.
It made no sense that they had replied so soon. It had only been two weeks since the launch, the probe should only have just arrived at Earth. Still yet, the ship sent should never have had a shuttle.
At long last, it came into view. It sounded like a shuttle, but it looked nothing like any Jonathan had ever seen. For one, it was bigger, and a lot more sleek. If anything, this shuttle looked more advanced than anything he had ever seen.
It landed gently on his pad, and the ramp descended out of the belly of the craft. A man rushed out. "What are you doing here, man! What are you, crazy? Where is your ship?"
Jonathan looked stunned. What kind of a recue was this?
"You know that this planet had been slated as hosting a pre-industrial intellegent race, right?"
Jonathan stood mute. He understood the words, but they made no sense. What was this man talking about?
Norman glided out beside Jonathan. He was dragging an energy bar with him.
"You started communication with one of the creatures? He domesticated it?"
"I was stranded. It found me. What was I supposed to do?" Jonathan retorted.
"That's it man. You're under arrest. What family are you with?"
"Family?" Jonathan asked.
"Don't play dumb with me, buddy. You and your little pet are coming with me, and you've got a lot of explaining to do to the Spacing Commision. You should know the laws."
"What are you talking about? I got sent off course. How did you get here?"
"How do you think?" The man drew some sort of weapon out of is holster and pointed it at Jonathan. "Now, get in the shuttle. I'm taking you back to Port Orfeous."

Chapter Four --Continued--

It did not take Jonathan long to travel outside of known territory. With all of his construction duties, he did not have much time to explore beyond going from pod to pod. As he went, Jonathan left the cartographer program running on the onboard computer in the rover.
he made good time across the land, the rover had a high speed. It was unfamilair territory, but the land was not hard to navigate. Once, he came across a frozen river, but that proved to be little obsticle. his real worry was a mountin range or some sort of large gorge. Jonathan had no knowledge of what he was driving towards.
The first morning in the journey, Jonathan had his first encounter with local wildlife. As he stood outside, stretching his legs, he ate an energy bar. Out of the corner of his eye, he caught a movement of some sort. It was so odd to see something move that he had not sent into motion that he started as it went out of vision. He dropped the bar and moved after whatever it was. It looked as if it had gone under the rover. Jonathan crouched down and peered under the vehicle. At first, he didn't see anything. Then, it shifted. It moved like a millapeed; it had uncountable legs. It was covered with small horns and it's colour matched the dirt almost perfectly. Jonathan wondered if it wasn't a chameleon of sorts. He waved at it, but the creature did not flinch. It wasn't acting like any animal Jonathan had ever seen before. His lack of knowledge got the better of him, though, and Jonathan moved away from the creature. He left it under the vehicle and his energy bar on the ground and climbed back into the vehicle and started the engine, moving on his way.

For days Jonathan travelled, and every time he stoped he found the same creature somewhere near the vehicle. He could only assume that somehow the animal was travelling with him. He wasn't sure how, but he was still comforted by it in a strange way. It started to give the world a bit of familiarity. Althought it seemed against all semblence of logic to try and domesticate a such a harsh looking creature, and although the food might have killed it, Jonathan fed it part of his energy bar one day. The creature seemed to enjoy it, so Jonathan began to feed it regularily. It did not grow noticably, nor did it die, so Jonathan figured that it couldn't be that harmful.
The creature proved to be remarkably intellegent. Jonathan studied it out of bordom. It fould navigate a rudimentry maze at remarkable speed. In fact, it had crawled over the walls of the original maze. It could solve puzzles. Jonathan gave it an image of three blocks, and let the creature into a box with three blocks. It did not take long for the blocks to be pushed into a pattern closely resembling that of those in the picture. Jonathan could not hekp but feel like he was the one being tested every once in a while, especialy when he wondered how the creature kept up with him day after day.
After a while, Jonathan named the creature Norman. Jonathan did not have the most original imagination when it came to names. Remarkably, Norman recognised his own name. Jonathan never heard him vocalise in any way, but all the senses of the creature seemed to be the same as those of creatures from earth.
And so Jonathan and Norman travelled across a vast amount of land in search of the Starfish. Once they reached the projected landing zone, Jonathan stopped and set up a search grid for the area.
"What do you say, Norman? It's got to be around here somewhere, right?" The creature just walked in a circle, clockwise. Jonathan was beginning to suspect this meant something. Norman had a few patterns he (Jonathan had ascribed the creature a sex for the simplicity of pro-noun use) would walk in when Jonathan asked him these questions. They were always the same. Jonathan made a note to test Norman and try and figure out what he was saying, if anything at all.
"I think we'll leave the search until tomorrow. It'll be dark soon." Jonathan had learned the plant's cycle. Indeed, he lived near the equator, the most temperate region on the planet. It sat at about minus eight degrees centigrade, and the average daily temperature had been dropping. Jonathan assumed the seasons were changing. It seemed preverse that plants flourished at that temperature, but he figured it must be warm for the planet. Day and night both lasted for about eight hours, making the day considerably shorter than Jonathan was used to. He had begun to adust to the strange hours, however.
He slept in the bed in the back of the rover that night, in anticipation of the next day. The search grid could take up to a week to explore, but Jonathan was feeling lucky.
It took him two more days to locate the wreck of the Starfish. To his surprise, a lot of the bulk of the ship remained.
With a certain amount of surprise, he found a few peices that appeared to still be in tact. It took another few local days to salvage what he could, but Jonathan started back for the base camp in hight spirits. He would not be able to go home, but he just might be able to send a message there. That was his best option to date. The light-drive, a surprisingly small machine, appeared to be intact. If he could cobble together a probe of sorts, set it up with the Starfish's transponder signal and send it back to earth, he might just be able to engineer his own resque. Once the ship with the fifteen colonists arrived, there would be a shuttle that could take people back and forth between the systems. The pile of rubble that once had been the scientific marvel of an age might prove to be the only thing that could save Jonathan.
"This is it, Norman" he told his strange companion, who had taken to riding in the cabin with him. "I might just be able to rig this up to take a message back home. I can leave this place. You could even come with me."
Norman moved in a clockwise motion. This was the motion Jonathan had come to recognise as meaning 'yes'.
It was with high spirits that Jonathan made his way back to his base camp. Perhaps it would not be long before he could go home.

Words: 6,365/50,000
Days Left: 28
Sanity: Ebbing at times
Caffinated beverages: still 0

An Author's Note

I feel it is time for me to interject the story and punctuate a few things.
1)This story is by and large UNEDITED - all spelling and grammatical errors are left as is for now (corrected on second draft on my computer)
2)For some reason, maybe because I'm making it up in a rush job, some events are out of place or numbers do not stay consistant. I know about this, I noticed them. When I'm writing, I can usually go back and change them, however, the sheer volume of writing I do in one day with this project is beyond what I normally do (with the occasional 2,500+ word day being 'very productive') normally these inconsistancies don't turn up, but for some reason, with this story, I can't keep my own facts straight.
3)It's a pile of crap. I know. It's meant to be. If Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson can publish the Butlerian Jihad trilogy, I can write this drivel. Allow me my indulgence.
4)The story doesn't match the description! You can say that, I know it looks like a futuristic Robinson Crueso... give it time. The plot is building up to an important shift.

I apologise for the spelling, I know its pretty rough in some patches.

Chapter Four: Life on Norton

If Jonathan were to give up hope at that point, he would never have been selected to take on the mission. He knew there might still be some chance for him. Somehow, the next mission might also be thrown off course, they might locate him. He might even find the part of the lost Starfish and be able to make some sort of probe that would allow him to send a message home. Depending on where he was, if he started broadcasting a message on strong radio waves, me might just be able to get a message across to Earth within a few years. All in all, the situation did not seem entierly hopeless. Jonathan could not but help the feeling of bitter defeat, however, when he could not communicate with the starfish in orbit.
With nothing better to do, Jonathan went back to the mission profile. He started to build a base camp on an unknown world, hoping that someday the colonists might find him and the begginings of their new town. Maybe. There was quite a lot of equipment to set up and the location of the base wasn't entierly the best one. It would take some time to clear the forest around the landing pod of the Starfish, and then most likely days to haul all of the equpiment back. Jonathan worked on his computer for a while, planning his one-man community. His best options would be to keep busy for as long as possible. He could build a landing pad and a road out of the firest with the materials he had. Part of the equipment landed on this advance colonizationmission was a land-base observatory. In theory, it was supposed to be set up among the buildings Jonathan would erect around his grounded spaceship, but it could also be put in a georgaphically convient space as well; on the crest of a near-by hill, for example.
There was literaly months of work ahead for Jonathan. He knew that it might all be futile, but he set to work anyways. The first task was constructing his own home. It was essentially a pre-fabricated addition to the cabin in the spaceship. The hold hatch acted as a doorway between rooms. It was not a large complex, just some more indoor living space for Jonathan. It had been designed to be able to exist in any environment - it had and airlock and was vacuum proof. It was insulated agains cold or heat. All the buildings were. In theory, the entire complex could be constructed into one large building, but it was unsightly and was only meant to be constructed that way when no brethable atmosphere was present.
Other buildings included a rather large laboratory, which Jonathan put in the clearing with his home. An observatory he built a road to and put it on a near-by hill. A meteorological lab was also included, which Jonathan chose to place a quick walk away from the home colony - so that his influence would not effect the data.
A greehouse was a definite necessity in this atmosphere. As it turned out, the oxygen level was slightly lower than that of Earth's. Jonathan soon learned that he was also in the summer months of his planet. In the greenhouse, Jonathan would be able to grow all sorts of food that would sustain him.
A large storehouse full of materials and supplies that were intended for the future colony was also erected behind the main structures. Jonathan did not know the full content of the stores, as they were mostly packed in crates, but he expected he would open them when his construction duties were completed.
There was machinery for extracting moisture form the air. Not expecting that much, jontathan set it up anyway.
A secondary rover used for exploration as opposed to construction was containted in one of the pods. Jonathan spent two days setting up this rover, knowing that he would probably end up using it some time in the future. When completed, he towed it back to the base for future use, using the beginnings of a road he was constructing out of the forest.
In about a month, the pods were all empty and all the machinery was set up, and it not working, then at least ready to. In one final act of salvage, Jonathan dissassembled the pods and towed the metal back to base camp, in hopes that it might somehow be useful.
Eventually, after Jonathan constructed a road out of the forest compeltely and built a landing pad in hope of resque, he as out of work. he could spend his days processing information in the labs, but that would never help him escape this world.
He was already over his projected time of return. Earth had to know that something had gone wrong by now.
He hoped, by some chance, that in seven more months, the follow-up ship with five crew members would find him. A month after that, a fifteen crew member vessel would drop into the colony, creating a permanant population. Slowly, as the years went by, the colony would grow, eventually becoming self-sufficient and in theory, eventually turning a profit in mining or harvest of local materials of some kind.
Jonathan could not find any reason for his flight off course, not could he explain the damage to his ship. He could only hope that the navigational anomoly would repreate itself and the damage to the vessles would not.

Jonathan made up his mind a few weeks later. He woudl record an automated message at the colony, and then leave in the exploration rover. He would find the crashed remains of the Starfish, if there were any, and see if there was anything worth salvage. He had the last orbital trajectory of the ship and from it could deduce the place where it entered the atmosphere, and thus could determine the general area of the wreckage - if there as any.
Before Jonathan set off, he decided that the planet could not go on being nameless. In his recorded message, in case somebody should stumble across the colony in his absense, he refered to the planet as Norton.
With a cab full of supplies, Jonathan drove down the road aay from his home-base, past his observatory, and out into the wilds of Norton.
At this point, Jonathan had become used to the seeming complete lack of animals on the surface of the planet, even if the solid quite caused him some uneasyness.

Chapter Three: Cosmic Castaway

When Jonathan woke up, it was still dark out. Sleeping for sixteen days outdie of time is certain to cause problems with sleeping scheduels, and Jonathan had not yet adjusted to the local time, which seemed to run on a sixteen hour day.
He knew it was useless to work in the dark, so he sat outside in the cold, eating a few energy bars for a sort of breakfast and looked at the sky. It was a very dark night again. It seemed more and more likely that the planet had nothing orbiting it.
Jonathan again thought of the rings the planet was supposed to have. In theory, if he was in the norther hemisphere and they stayed over the the southern hemisphere, they would be below the horizen. But if that were true, it would follow that he should be able to see them during the day. He could not remember seeing them.
Jonathan stared at the stars. They were entierly foreign. He did not expect to be able to recognise them, but he had seen a computer generated image of what the constalations on this planet were supposed to look like. he could recognise none of them.
"Oh shit" he said as he jumped up and ran inside.
Sigma should be a star just like the sun. Yellow. The one this planet orbited was too blue.
He brought the power online and check his flight records. Something had thrown him off course. He was no on the right Planet; he was not even in the right system.
Jonathan looked at the telemetry and knew that he was lost in space. He was a cosmic cast away.
He knew his fate was not yet sealed. Not yet. Jonathan could still, in theory, cut the mission short. Head back to Earth. It is entierly possible that no dmage would be done other than the fact that he would not have build a home base for the group that was supposed to follow him in a few months down the line. If he went back, told them what happened, the could, in theory, re-program the flight telemetry for the other ships in time for them to come to this planet, wherever it was, instead of Sigma. Ultimately, very little money would be lost that way.
But before any of that, Jonathan knew he had to get a generator. The sun was beginning to creep up over the horizen. Jonathan shut the power down in the ship and went outside to the rover.
He loaded up the map he had of the terrain and knew where to find the next Pod. He still could not identify which was which from afar. In a mental note, he decided to tell the mission specialist at home to give each pod on other vessles their own transponder signals.
he homed in on the likely position of a near pod. He search the country-side and found all the pods but one, and still yet no generator.
He homed in the last pod, knowing that it had to be the one that contained the generator. It was a simple proces of elemination.
Jonathan began to feel uneasy as he approached the location the pod should have been and he could not see it. The telemetry and triangulation had very little margin of error at this point, it should be within a few meters of the projected landing zone.And yet, the pod was novisible.
Jonathan rolled onto a frozen lake. it was perfectly smooth except for a disturbing bubbly ripple forzen in the surface.
It was the lake he had seen his reflection in the other night. The ice was perfectly clear. Jonathan could see all the way to the bottom... all the way to the bottom where the pod lay, waiting for him to retreive it.
The lake looked to be about twenty meters deep. Jonathan knew that he would have to retreive his pod, it was his only option.
He flagged the location on his map and drove his rover off to the pod he had taken it out of. He use the crane to pile mining materials on the bed infront of him, and drove back to the lake.
That day, Jonathan started what was essentially a strip mining operation, extracting huge blocks of ice and working his way, slowly, down into the lake. It was solid ice all the way to the botom. The air didn't seem quite cold enough to facilitate this, but it was a fact.
The pod must have metled it's way down with the heat energey it gained on entry into the atmosphere.
It took Jonathan over a week to get down to the pod, but in theend his mission was successful. He drove around his ice quary with the generator triumphantly on the bed of his rover, and back to his base camp.
It did not take long to hook up the nearly perfectly efficent generator to the ship and set up the uplink to the ship in orbit.
The only problem with the uplink was that there was no return signal.
The starfish had burned up and crashed into the planet during the time that Jonathan had been trying to save it from it's doom.
Truthfully, Jonathan was now stuck where he was.

Words: 4,152/50,000
Days Left: 29
Sanity: Holding
Caffinated beverages: 0

Chapter Two --Continued--

Author's note: I know that there is already a plot hole here... Yes, Jonathan left his ship at the end of chapter one and then, he left it again at the beginning of chapter two... I know it's there. Ironing out those details comes later. Furthermore, I forgot to mention the fact that there are going to be terrible spelling and gramatical errors in the body text. You'll have to forgive that. In the final version, those will be cleaned up.

Again, Jonathan was struck by the dry cold climate of the dark world. A quick survey of the area showed that he was in a loose forest of tall spindly trees. They were trees, too. They were alien, there was no doubt, but they did carry a certain resemblence to those of Earth. There was a glow coming from deep in the woods, so jonathan set off in that direction.
It did not take long to discover just how stragnely familiar the world was. I felt like earth, the gravity was similiar, and the odd resmblence that the trees held to those of Earth was almost unsetteling. There was one major difference between this world and Earth, however. Jonathan could not shake how quite it was as he moved through the forest. He seemed to be alone. Local flora, but no local fauna in this local forest. There were few plants growing on the ground underneath the tall spindly trees. It was covered in dry twigs and dirt.
Jonathan made good time through the woods and soon ran arcoss what caused the glow through the trees. One of the pods had landed and started a fire. for some reason that he could not explain, jonathan noted that the fire had not spread very far in the extreemly dry environment.
The Pod itself had cooled enough to be approached and opened. The hatch revealed this to be the seventh pod in series, a twenty meter sphere filled with the materials it would require to erect a pre-fabricated extension of the cabin on Starfish, giving Jonathan and home base.
Jonathan logged the distance and direction of the pod from the Starfish on a small personal computer. With the two points of this pod and the location of the Starfish, the computer could map out the location of the other fifteen pods with varying degrees of accuracy based upon weak radar signals and entrance tradjectories.
Jonathan made a decision, and made off towards another Pod. all through the night he searched, mapping out the locations of the pods. He did not find the pod containing the signal booster he needed to comminicate with teh rest of the Starfish, still in orbit, until day break.
As he was cresting a small hill a few kiloeters from what would become his homebase in the woods, he saw the sun crest the horizen. It shed a blue light upon the land, giving everything a very alien hue. this sun was not the colout that jonathan was used to. There was something unsetteling about the light that Jonathan could not put his finger on at the time.
The pod sat in a crater it had created, glinting in the blue light. It reflected the hazy blue, almost white sky of the world. Upon opening the hatch, he let out a cry of excitment, there sat what he needed, a satteltite that could let him communicate with his ship in orbit porperly. It was a clunky but very effecient machine. Jonathan would not be able to move it on his own, but he knew that this pod also carried a vehicle that might take him the better part of the day to assemble. Each pod contained a small survival kit that had enough food to last for days.
Knowing that procrastination woudl gain him nothing, Jonathan crawled into the Pod and began removing materials. Some were hard to wrestle out, but after a few hours of work, he had everythning he needed to assemble his vehicle, if not all of the accessories. The basic chasis of the rover would allow him to transport the communication equipment and find the last few pods quickly.
Setting himself to completing the almost insurmountable task of assembling the rover in a day, Jonathan had to keep focused. He knew that every second, the orbit of Starfish was decaying.
The vehicle was, understandibly, a one man model. It had a cargo pad infront of the cockpit. under te pad was the engine that drove the eight articulated wheels. A small crane for lifting supplies and building materials sat on top of the cockpit. On he back of the vehicle many different peices of machinery could be attached to facilitate various construction purposes.
During training, Jonathan must have built the rover at least fifty times. He knew each of the peice, and where to put them. In what was actually about eight hours, but to Jonathan didn't seem that long, he finished the rover and climbed into the pilot's seat. A flick of a switch and a press of a botton brought the machine to life, the batteries powering lights, engine and crane. Jonathan lifted the sateltie uplink on to the cargo bed and started back for the starfish. This was the first step he needed to complete to make that place home.
It took a while to drive back to the starfish, but when he got there, Jonathan knew that he could not go on any longer without sleep. The planet was darkening again, and Jonathan knew he had limited power in both the ship and the rover without his generator, and that the inclusive solar panels on the rover would not work at night.
"Goodnight strange world." Jonathan mumbled as he walked into Starfish, closing the hatch and pulling a cot essentillay out of the wall to sleep.

Chapter Two: The Local Forest

Jonathan put on a survivial suit. It had been designed specifically for this mission, different components could be added or taken away as was necessary to the plant he was on. After strapping on a unitility belt, Jonathan leaned over the pilot's chair and activated the hatch. He was met with a blast of frigid cold air. the local temperature was lower than Jonathan had expected by the state of the forest. It was a dark night and the only light came from the stars. Either the plant he was on had no moon, or it was not visible from his location. This didn't sit right with Jonathan; Sigma Four was supposed to have rings, and he knew from seeing the rings of saturn in person how much they glowed.
Puffs of moisture left jonathan's mouth every time he breathed out. It reminded him of cold winters when he was a child. He was struck by how dry the air felt.
Jonathan shoudl have had enough supplies to last him months in deep space, but the design of Starfish was such that he could not currently access them. The pods with all his gear were on the engine pod, still in orbit.
Jonathan took a close look at the exterior of the Starfish's landing pod. He kept from touching the surface, knowing it would burn him. All the important parts seemed to be intact.
There was a limited amount of supplies available to Jonathan at the time. The landing pod only had a limited amount of power to itself, and only a certain amount of food. When attatched to the Main body of the ship, the enines could power the pod and food could be nrought up from stores.
In a perfect world, Jonathan should have been able to explore the entire system and pick the most suitable planet to land on. His mission was to plot a suitable orbit, and then begin dropping automated parts of the vessle before he landed. the engine body of the ship would serve as a satellite in orbit to help him with scientific studies. the various equipment pods would be dropped onto the surface before he would land, and would have a satellite hook-up and generator waiting for him when he landed, along with various stores and equipment to begin the set-up of a colony.
What he had was the landing pod and. Hopefully, radio contact with the rest of the ship.
Jonathan went back inside the starfish and sat at the controlls. He tried to bring up the engine body of the ship, but the signal was weak. His range was limited, and he ship was hurteling around the plant at a high velocity. there was only a minute or two in which he could communicate with the vessle. His first priority was to attmept to stabalise the orbit. On the first pass the ship made, he ordered a quick burn of the solid fuel maneuvering jets, hopefully helping the orbit out. On the second pass, he prepared the various pods for drop. Athough the orbit was better than it was, it was still decaying fast. Jonathan estimated he only had a few days where the ship would be in a serviceable orbit, and he only had a few hours of power left in the lander pod of the Starfish. His first priority was to get a generator to the surface so he could get power and possibly set up a better communications system.
When the ship made it's third pass overhead, jonathan timed the drops as best he could. Sixteen different storage pods broke off the main vessle and began dropping towards him. He knew that with the bad orbit and contracted calculations, the margin of error was large. The best way he could think to get the supplies he need would be to aim for himself.
Within a minute, he saw firebals dropping out of the sky. It was too dark for him to accurately see where they were landing, he could only hope that they would be somewhere near his position.
On the fourth pass, Jonathan made another effort to shore up the orbit. For the time being, there was nothing more he could do. he shut the power off inside the Starfish and ventured outside to find the first of sixteen storage pods.

Chapter One: Departure

Jonathan Brooke sat, poised at the controls. All the preperation, all the time that had been put into this moment, it felt like an overbearing weight pushing in on the back of his neck. He knew that this moment was one for the history books, he knew that this moment would be just like the tiem Neil Armstrong stepped on the face of the moon, the first time the Colonists threw a party on Mars, the first time Gregor Spinoski found a living organism on Ganymede.
If only he could say something.
The very nature of what he was about to do kept him from being able to speak. The only way that life could survive faster than light travel is submersion in super-dence liquid. Jonathan knew he could breath it, but ti still felt uncomfotatable. There seemed to be soemthing odd about sitting at the controls of a spaceship, seemingly underwater. It went against everything his body had been trained to believe about gravity.
The resistence he felt while moving his limbs was troublesome, but the controls were compact and, for the most part, layed out in front of him. he would be stuck in what he privately called the void for thirteen days, until he arrived in the Sigma stytem. It was a promising place to land his craft and set up a sort of advance base for the next people to go.
Then Jonathan would return to Earth, a hero.
Jonathan would be the first person to ever travel faster thant he speed of light. he would be the first person to ever leave the solar system. In a mirror to his left, up above his head, he could see the numers ticking down.
It seemed like they were going too slow. the seconds dragged on. It would still be a few minutes until the new science that allowed his this marvel of traveling to another place, essentially outside of time, did its job.
Before that could happen, he would have to pilot through the first stage.
Auxilary Countdown One was about to hit zero.
Through the liquid, he heard a muffled voice "AC One at twenty seconds. Remember to hold on to her, Johny. Good luck and Godspeed. We'll see you in few months."
Tick, tick, tick...
With a resounding clunk, his vessle, the Starfish undocked from Space Station 7 orbiting the moon. the ion engines began a lengthy burn that sent his spacecraft directly towards the sun.
Jonathan did not pretend to understand the physics of the machine. Quite simply, it was beyond his comprehention. By no means was Jonathan a stupid man. He had to be intellegent to qualify for this mission, but he could not bring himself to understand how it worked. Intellegence was not the only quality needed for this mission anyway. No probes had been sent ahead, as the telemetry would not have arrived in time to be useful. The only images they had of the Sigma system were those procured by radio-telescopes. That information was already several years old. Light simply did not travel fast enough for there to be an up to date image of the system. Jonathan had to be on his toes and ready for anything when he arrived in the Sigma system.
Auxilary Countdown two was on its last legs. When it hist zero, jonathan knew that he would feel a light electric shock and wake up part of the way across the galaxy. Assuming, of course, that nothing went wrong.
Five. Four. Three. jonathan took a deep breath. His lungs processed the viscous clear liquid as if it were air. he knew he would have to cough it all out when -- if -- he reached a breathable atmosphere. Two. One.

*****

When he woke up, the light was wrong. It was more blue than his eyes were used to, and it stung. He waved his head back and forth, and in a moment of panic, forgot he was breathing fluid and started to cough. he could not understand why he was so cold, nor why his vision was blurrig to red every second.
Jonathan's mind began to clear. The red -- the red was an alarm. There was a hull breech.
he brought up a hologrphaic systems display on the front port. It showed him where the breech was. There was no way he could reach it and repair it before he would be dead. It leaked directly into his fluid chamber at the front end of the ship. The hole had been filled when the fuild froze as it contacted vaccuum, but the temperature was droipping fast. Although Jonathan could not twist around to see where the breech was, he knew from his read-out that the patch of ice was spreading --fast.
A planet was visible infront of him. Jonathan assumed it to be Sigma four, a plant supposedly like earth. It was anybody's guess what the atmosphere would be like, or the temperature, but Jonanthan didn't really have nay other options. he engaged the ion engines and boosted up the heat in the cabin, hoping for the best.
The acceleration of ths ship jostled the already unstable ice patch free. Jonathan's cabin began losing it's lifegiving fluid. The ice still spread through the interrion, making popsicle tendrils reaching for the battery of warmth in the front of the room.
As he approached the plant, Jonathan noted that there was limited cloud cover. He was approaching from the dark side, but could see the whispy white tendrils on the horizen where day started. Although he knew it might be wishing for too much, Jonathan prayed for a breathable atmosphere. It would greatly simplify his predicament.
it was a race agaisnt time, but things were looking good for the Starfish and Jonathan. he looked at the apparent distance and the rates at which he was losing fuild and the temperature was dropping. a quick mental calculation seemed to suggest that he would be able to make it into the alien atmosphere, if not safely than at least alive.
there was a danger that he could skip off the atmosphere is he went in with too much speed. agains his every natural human reaction, he began to decellerate the ship. Teh ion engines reversed their flow and slowed him down, pushing backwards.
he knew if he gave his ship's engiones a sloppy orbit, it could decay and crash into the planet, possibly burn up in the atmosphere. Jonathan did not have the luxury of time. He dumped the huge aft seciont of Starfish and bent the nose of the lander in toward the atmosphere if Sigma four.
The atmosphere met the craft with a jagged bump. It was a rough ride down, but Jonathan had been through some rough re-entries before this one.
Fire curled around the port infront of him. his angle was steep, but there wasn't much he could do about it. the breaking systems were automatice, all jonathan could do was ride the ship to the ground.
As the ship hurrled onward, Jonathan saw a refelction of the fireball, far below. He must be passig over some sort of calm lake or ice. What that patch was made of was yet too be seen. As he approached the ground, he could see vegetation. Life. Non-microbal life outside of the solar system did exist. He was surprised to see that the local vegetation looked astoundingly like trees.
he began to skim the top of what looked like a forest, and seconds later, battered his way in the the limbs and trunks. it was not long before his craft came to a halt. behind him lay a trail of debris and detruction.
A read-out suggested that the gasses outside the ship were probably breathable. The temperature gage was wholly unreliable, as it would read teh heat of the ship.
jonathan knew that he was supposed to wait at least 24 hours for the readouts to get an accurate measure of what was outside the vessel, but the hole was still leaking his fluid. He knew what he had to do.
With an override code and the push of a button, the fluid began to drain out of the cabin and into reseve cells in the ships belly for the trip home. Air was filtered in from outside.
When enough fluid had drained out, jonothan breaches teh surface and exhaled deeply. It was worst than vomiting, for one, it hurt more. He took a deep breath of the local air and coffed. fluid flew out of his nose and mouth. He couldn't breath. Jonathan hated this part. He always felt panic when he transfered from one breathable medium to another. It always felt like he was drowning, in whatever direction he went.
The coffing was so violent it cause him to retch. he wondered if maybe the lack of oxygen would start to hurt him. He wondered if maybe the local air wasn't so breathable after all.
Soon, however, he found himself gaping mouthfuls of the air into his lungs, still waste deep in the lifegiving fluid he had slubmered in for the last few weeks.
He sloshed back to a sealed compartment and opened it, revleaing a bath of sorts. lifiting himself out of the fluid and into the tight compartment, jonathan subjected himself to a cleaning that would remove all traces of the fluid from his body. When it was finished, he rolled out into an empty compartment. the fluid had been sucessfully drained away.
Fixing himself with a warm suit and utility belt, Jonathan opened the hatch of his space craft and steped out into a cold night on an alien world.
"That's one small step for man, one ginat fuck up for engineering kind." he muttered as he saw the rough shape of the Starfish.

Countdown

It's halloween. The clocks have gone back an hour. Modest Mouse blares out the speakers.
If I'm not drunk or asleep, Crisis of Idealism should start tonight. I'm pretty sure Character A needs to be named Jonathan. Don't ask me why.

time till start: 10 hours 10 minutes....