Kerian knows something we don’t, that much is clear to me. I’ve done as promise and found her “by accident” while I was recovering junk. She was with her weird beeping device. I tried to be as natural as possible, I even practiced while alone on recoveries to make sure I wouldn’t come out as weird or too pushy. Paranoia was the first thing on my mind. Probably the only one.
The thing mostly went like this.
Me: What are you doing?
Kerian: Stuff.
Me: What stuff?
Kerian: Work stuff.
Me: Oh, come on, give me some conversation. Aren’t you bored? I sure as Forgetting I am.
Kerian: We are not paid to be entertained, and you know it.
Me: Does that mean we should be bored? It wouldn’t hurt you to amuse me for a second. What’s that beeping thing?
Kerian: Work tool.
At that point I sighed and grabbed the junk I was carrying. I haven’t given up though.
Me: Alright, if you don’t want to talk just say so. See you for dinner then.
And, as clockwork, as soon as I turned, she talked.
Kerian: I’m checking the survavility of the zone.
I was thankful for the mostly opaque glass of our suit, otherwise she would have seen my grin. The thing aboutKerian, and the whole crew at that, was that we had near to no entertainment at our disposal. We had a single deck of cards and Kerian never played with us. So I knew she was reaching a breaking point, because I was. She barely communicated with us and when I saw her on the ship her hair was always undone and had bags under her eyes. She acted as she was not affected by it, but because of her self-imposed solitude, I know she was even more affected than us.
Me: What for? Are you checking if we can go back to living here?
Kerian: Not exactly.
She didn’t elaborate more and her tone was weird. When I tried asking her she dismissed me saying I already gave her enough conversation. I knew better than to push her buttons and went back to recovering junk.
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Kerian knows something we don’t but I can’t say exactly what. I’ll try to pry on what she knows, I have managed to make her open to me a bit, maybe I’ll achieve something more in the future. At the end of the day, we are only the four of us and she’s the only woman. We won’t do anything, but the Remnants don’t prohibit relationships. Perhaps, she’ll do something on her own.
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There’s been no progress in that enterprise, not surprising to be honest. Courtship isn’t something that can be done in a single day, even if it’s only a one night fling or at best a friendship with benefits.
Oh well. I’m more interested answers than pleasure. I value my sanity first than my cock.
I say that, but I became more irritable as of late. I don’t think it’s abstinence, even if we have no room to do our business. Or rather, time. The other day Teradoi came to me and I just responded roughly. Nothing serious, but I noticed it. I think he did too. I won’t go into details, but even if I don’t exactly like the dude, I had no reason to be as aggressive as I did. Zal scolded me for that.
The relationship we have is weird, the whole crew. Kerian is like the bitchy boss, regardless whether she’s polite or not. Zal is like the young brother by sake alone of being the youngest, though I won’t deny he’s rather cute and pure in some aspects. Teradoi is that older brother that bullies you, though once again, he hasn’t bullied us. It’s hard to fit people into stereotypes, they tend to be more dynamic than a given role. For me? I guess I’m the middle brother or the dude you hang at the bar. I will hear you, especially if you buy me a beer, but my opinion doesn’t matter. Well, none of our opinion matter, but that’s what I said, it’s difficult to shove one into an archetype, especially if I’m doing that to myself.
I’m rambling, I know it, but I’m stressed, no amount of playing cards will help me.
The nearest five kilometers around have been stripped clean, and the cargo has still some space. We have no machinery to transport the recoveries, meaning we can only carry things with our two hands. For fuck sake, we don’t even have a trolly. A forgotten trolley!
If we do recover a trolley, I will hide it from the Remnants. And inversion, I’ll return it at the last day, but think, it’s going to make us more efficient! Though I doubt I’ll find a trolly on this crap.
Gravity is lower on the Old World yes, but the suits makes us slow. Five kilometers is around two hours to walk, meaning we can only do like two or three round trips before the sun goes out. And no one wants to stay at night outside. Not even the Remnants. We are explicitly forgiven from going out at night under justified conditions, and I may not know why, but I’m grateful with that rule.
Because of that huge radius, we are always alone now on recoveries. I will only meet with one of the guys if they have found something bigger than one of those metallic white boxes to help them carry it, but that’s all. I cannot even talk to Kerian outside now, only inside the ship. She’s slightly more open, at least giving some trivial conversation, so I count that as a victory.
We are almost two thirds down of our contract now, so it’s a bit useless she’s opening now to us. I guess it’s my fault too, I never tried interacting with her before. Not as a superior, but as a person. We are the same crew but I have alienated her, all of us.
I’ll do better from now on. I don’t want to grow sour this last days because I was an asshole.
Damn, I would kill for a beer, writing this diary is making me a better person.