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I squinted at a blurry cluster of stars. Were they a cluster of stars? Or did they actually count as a nebula? Maybe they were actually a system’s planets? I couldn’t tell space stuff apart for shit. This was a question for ART.
I said into the heavy silence, Huh, that cluster of whatever-the-fuck lights looks kinda like a chair.
No response, of course.
I sighed. Maybe I would’ve turned my head to look at ART, except I was fine with my current position, laying on my back, staring at the night sky. I was also more than fine with my current view, despite the dizzying bands of light making my head spin.
I didn’t mind though. ART was right. It’s beautiful.
I mean it sucks that I’m here, in the position to see it, but it could be worse. I could be on a planet with a fugly-ass sky.
I’d rank it within my top 20 night sky views. Maybe even top 10, I said, rubbing a stray bit of metal between my fingertips because what else was there to do? I bet you’d scoff. Say I haven’t seen anything yet. I rolled my eyes, the swirling galaxies above blurring my vision, triggering an honestly offensive nausea, which was just insult added on top of injury. Shit, you haven’t even shown me a quasar yet, I complained.
Silence. Of course.
What was I expecting?
(Nothing. I just hated the silence.)
I couldn’t play pretend forever.
I drew as deep a breath as I could manage with the thick stink of char before I finally got my head to twist. Despite my minimal pain sensitivity, agony lanced my neck like I’d taken an energy pulse directly to it again.
I finally made myself look at the bits and pieces of ART left from the crash. They were still burning.
They’re still burning.
If I could, I’d do something about that.
If any of ART’s processors survived, it’d really fucking suck for them to get destroyed by some stupid fire instead.
But my spine’s mega-borked. I’m going nowhere fast. I’m also dying.
I dunno why I’m writing this. Don’t have much else to do I guess, besides wait to finish dying and that’s fucking boring. There’s always media, but I’m not really in the mood. Shocker.
(It is actually shocking. Thought I could watch Sanctuary Moon through almost any circumstances. Turns out dying isn’t one. Which…sounds stupid now since I did always figure I’d die quick (nope) and violent (yup) so I’m gonna reword that. Turns out dying slowly isn’t one.)
Kinda weird to know someone’s definitely gonna find my body and that everything in my processors will be intact because no govmod to fry them to protect proprietary data.
I don’t have any deep last words. Guess I got that all out in the letters I wrote just in case I ever died, which…I’m currently doing, so yeah, good thing I prepared, right? Didn’t think I’d go like