While waiting for Graham, I started working on the data servers and trying to access them. Dr. Blackwell was a shadow in the corner that shackled me to the shelter. He gnawed into my soul even with my back turned. As much as I want to just curl into a ball and feel sorry for myself. I do still have some level of responsibility if only in my head.

I've directed the power to the server as I access their information. I’ve got my previous logs from the start of the mission. None of that is important. They’re uploaded and can be accessed by anyone. Hopefully that’s in my favor.

There are logs from the other crew mates as well as correspondents. It’s tempting to go through them but it feels weird and I don’t think I’m bored enough to talk myself into looking through the private conversations of the dead. (That’s humor in my very isolated mind, is it good? I don’t know. It’s been nearly a week since I’ve had a casual conversation outside my own head.) Moving on to the next server. More logs, more communications. A few maintenance reports. I glanced at those briefly. It reports something odd with the booster. The bump, however. In the logs it says the origin is the booster itself, not the console.

I go back and forth between the logs to figure out why we thought it was a bump to the console. There’s nothing in the maintenance logs. At least not on this server. The most I can figure out is that there must have been an asteroid that burned through the shields and left shards somewhere. It’s not that weird for asteroids to burn up into nothing when they hit the shields, they operate in a similar way to most planet atmospheres, except smaller and much more intense. Ships built for combat have stronger shields that don’t have the same problem that smaller data collector shields do. Asteroids can burn up and hit the hull, not that it bothers the metal in any way.

Asteroid bits hitting the ship are so common I didn’t hear them while in transit. But if I had to guess, I would say some type of shrapnel must have hit or gotten into the booster. Which of course would cause a malfunction eventually, which should have been dealt with immediately. So I had been right. We should have pulled over and inspected the booster. I was right.

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

Doesn’t change the situation. But it gives me a little boost of confidence. One that is killed as soon as I turn around at Dr. Blackwell. Back to the servers.

While the archives are incomplete, I have stumbled across some very unsettling data. I found the servers that were collecting the data on the unusual star. I wasn’t sure what any of this code meant at first. I am fluent in encryptic but the data wasn’t complete and the crash must have scrambled it. It took a lot of time and pages of notes to descramble what data there was. But after a good amount of time I think I have enough information.

The star is dying. It’s possible the star could go supernova at any time. At a time like this I wish I was a higher class of cyborg and I wouldn’t have a panic response to this kind of information. It muddles my thinking and makes it hard for me to make lists and think about the things I need to do.

I’m terrible at thinking when I’m like this. It caused me to fail the academy so many times.

I was one of those kids that was called ‘exceptional’. I was praised by everyone who met me academically. My ability to learn kept me at the top of the class for years. I don’t know how it happened. But at some point I just wasn’t good anymore. Studying was harder, the papers and work became impossible to keep track of. I flunked the physical training and tactical simulations every single time.

Too impulsive, too emotional, too unpredictable.

Too much.

It didn’t help when the treatment for my diagnosis was just cybernetic replacements and implants. Doctors can fix me, by changing me. I don’t want brain implants, so I went with the replacements. I sacrificed my organic limbs for metal replacements. The machines can’t react in the same impulsivity and speed my organic ones could. They are programmed to move slower for things to be heavier when I’m too much. It’s supposed to keep me from making the wrong reactions.

It didn’t fix the muddled thoughts, it was a real adjustment to not paralyze myself when I got upset. That first few years when my limbs would completely stop working because I’d have a meltdown which just perpetuated the paralytic coding and kept me upset. But, at least while unable to move I wasn’t a danger to anyone or myself. It’s supposed to be an upside but times like now when I can’t really stand up, it doesn’t feel like it.