20060512

It has been years since we’ve seen this kind of activity down below but I’m still not willing to get my hopes up yet. There have yet to be any actual directives from central - we’re not even sure of the mail supply around here. The locals keep re-arranging the numbers on our plot: redistricting, they say, but we don’t trust them. Believe me, the feeling is mutual. It’s why we doubt the reliability of the post, the satellite communications window, our hydrogen supply. It’s not easy being unwelcomed guests. But a package did arrive early this week which we intend to put to good use: absorbers for the engine room. 25 lbs each: 12 in all. I’m going to try to convince the others to do a complete installation tomorrow. Who knows? Maybe it’ll even motivate them to fire the damn engine up again. And another thing - there were these other quasi-hairless aliens passing through last night, but these were real pros. Only two of us caught their work and had quite a lively debate about some of their methods as opposed to our own. Almost had us wrestling on the tarmac but then we realized what we were really fighting wasn’t each other but our desperation. It’s been such a long time we’ve been stuck here, we hardly notice each other any more let alone fuck.

20060507?

We were lost, me and the other mechanics, 10 years into the future from where we’d begun. No charts, no landmarks and no known destination. It had been quite some time since any one seemed to be looking for us. Then today the rumor came from the surface: they’ve stirred. It’s been long since I’ve felt any hope that we could get this vessel off the ground again - she’s half sunk under water. The others got busy with details, as usual. Trying to go from plotting a course to systems check when we haven’t even got gas yet. Where are the ideas going to come from now? Those channels haven’t been fully opened in years and the moderating mechanisms hardly worked when we shut them down in ‘02. We’ve got to repair the mains or we won’t even have a fuel supply, but these guys are the real specialty techs - not generalists like me. I suppose every team needs a couple of each, but with out a kicker I’m not going to balance these two out without some heavy handedness. We’re only three now and as much as we need each other I can’t help but feel outnumbered much of the time. So some of these practical questions I’m going to solve alone. It’s not how I prefer to work but clearly consensus is just not getting us anywhere. The longer we wait, the deeper she sinks and there could yet be a chance for us.