what?

Caban is so unprfessional, sampling the new cargo. Thnks he's so clever, always smiling at me and thinking he can get away with everthing. Someday he'll... well I don't know. He'll get old and so self satisfied but he'll never let this go. The sky will alwys call him back. And then he'll talk me into it too. I always get talked into things.

No harm though. I can take care of myself, except that ladder gave me some trouble tonight. Regret this in the morning. Could have made more coin if we hadn't dranken it ourselves. Stupid scout. At least we had a good night, I love when Caban thinks he's being funny. He is funny. He tries to make me laugh and its best when it works.

qWhat am I doing?

Set

Its been three months since I climbed aboard Roller with Holmes Caban on yet another one of my fruitful whims. And now we're alone again, Oberon is all in order thanks to Ice's compulsive cleaning, and the days slip comfortably past. The time has passed more quickly than expected, but so too have gone the past fourteen years of my life. I barely notice anymore. There have been periods of time much longer than three months in which I've done nothing; squatted or drifted or wasted my time with petty jobs and nothing new. I look back in this log and see what I've written...and everything I have yet to relate. I seem so sad, sometimes, but so hopeful. Earth-born optimism, Tambor called it.

Caban sits hunched over at the control desk, searching for something on the often faulty Comweb connection. He is lean, mostly muscle, only a few inches taller than me. Not big enough to shield me from anything, but strong enough to pick me up and force me into an escape pod. That shouldn't be how I judge a man's size, but now it is.
He hasn't been onworld anywhere long enough to lay down a tan, so the fact that he's mostly unmixed is as obvious for him as it is for me.
He's noticed me looking at him, now, his brown eyes searching for the clues he always manages to find in my face. His own is thin, with strong cheekbones and chin. His nose has been broken at least once and reset (or not set at all) at a slightly rakish angle. There is arrogance, there, confidence in the way he moves and speaks. As I write this he rubs his hands tiredly through his cropped brown hair and tries to lean the chair back, forgetting once again that it is bolted to the floor.

Now he is accusing me of being a spy, so I'll lay off the log for now.

diets

Despite the fact that most of this culture is swept up and buried in massive cities, I sometimes forget the advantages to metropolitan life. So many lives come here, so many stories reach a landing place. So many objects change hands and wind up in junkheaps. Treasure mines, to the informally educated. There are old things here, not everything here is tabbed and marked and counted like on border planets. Its possible to scour the markets for things I didn't know I wanted, things no one else does want.
Its been some time since I had coin to spend. The requisites for this are a ship in good repair, a tank full of siphoned water, contacts selling cheap supplies, and a good job ahead of us. My pockets are considerably lighter, but new amenities fill the ship and a ragged old cookbook joins the small stack in my satchel. It is full of words I don't recognize and ingredients I've never heard of.

Its amazing how many of humanities problems can be solved with a simple change of diet. Keep a population well-fed, or atleast in general good nutrition, and their productivity bounds spaceward. In the decades before the Space Age began, food supplements because available almost everywhere, and the rest, everyone assumed, is history. Nutrient factories became some of the first built in the modern style; today anything the human body needs can be found in pill, gummy, shake, or bar form. It is tasteless and engineered to be full of vitamins, such that most times we don't know what we're swallowing. But it keeps us healthy. Even asteroid miners have clear skin and glossy hair. There hasn't been a famine since Africa, and even that was generations ago. It could happen, if we're not careful with shipping, or if the Frighties don't remember we need food, not just metal. I've seen Runners think they could live on coin alone. They tried, and failed, and died.

Most new planets, though, can barely sustain enough arable soil to keep crops enough to feed them, much less support livestock. Earth used to strain to keep fresh meat in all the markets, until everyone gave up on it. Meat is now for the very rich, the recently colonized, and the well-connected. I've eaten fresh meat only a handful of times. Truth be told it was...strange. Better than gummies, leastways. But there was something primal about it, something unheard of. Savagery, in some form. In this world of Running, savagery keeps us alive.

Feasting on flesh...what else has been lost in the pursuit of practicality?

Some assembly required

Docked in Target City this morning, or what passes for morning in standard time. It has been a few months since I was here last, and it’s a proper city. One of the first off-world, the first to have called for independence. The cities of Mars were built on the coin or Corporations and even know are not free.
But there is business to be had in Target City, everywhere you look. Its well patrolled by Feds, of course, but the docks writhe with Runners. We can restock, find fresh water on sale, re-establish some contacts. They’ll shake their heads, recognize us as having just gotten in from Deep Space. There is something about a person, “Obvious as a hull breach”, as they say.
Caban says after we sell off what we have, we’ll hire someone to help us make the deal. I wonder who he’ll pull from the rummage, if it will be a stupid thug, or a gem, or someone I already know. Knowing Caban’s luck, it will be all three.
We’re here with a name and a credit account card, courier to the contact back in Hadrian. He only wants one thing, and found someone to sell it but no one to bring it. That’s where we Runners come in. We’re more than happy to fetch whatever lies at the edge of the ‘verse, for the right price. Today we’re buying a water processor. A Runner’s pillow, that. The only one in the Hadrian system not controlled by Feds or Corporations, our contact will make a proper fortune with it.

The thing of it is, since we’ve got to smuggle the entirety of our ship back in past the Point, we’re going to have to come up with a way to pay the miners. That much coin could be acquired only through selling the miners half of the processor parts, but that’s not part of the deal.
Flying with Caban is never dull, I know he’s thought of something when he grins and says that our contact overlooked one miniscule detail. He never agreed to buy the construction or operating instructions from us, so he’ll end up paying half again as much to the miners, after we give them the instructions to pay our passage. He’ll be satisfied with his crates and parts and ducts and Tabchinski pumps and hydrogen tanks until he realizes he has no idea how to put it all together. By the time the miners make their opening offer, we’ll be booster end to Point Hadrian and waving a fond farewell.

Asleep at the wheel

It seems that we've come across some sort of circle, being back to the way things were some months ago. Back down to just two. I can't say that I much miss The Roller, but for the time spent with Caban. Oberon is a bigger ship, more empty space and systems harder to run with only two pairs of hands.
I woke this morning to Caban's frantic voice in my ear, and when I blearily opened my eyes his panicked look brought me instantly awake. I found myself in the pilot's seat with a terrible bend in my neck and Caban's hands on my shoulders.
"She's gone!" he said. I paused a moment before asking if he was sure. He nodded, eyes wide with frustration. "I searched everywhere, and when I got to the bay, Roller was scraped right out of it. She cut the sensors so we didn't hear anything. Sabotaged the ship, the rusty bitch, and left us to shake!"
The pain in his voice was real--he had not expected such a betrayl from her. From anyone, for that matter, but not from someone who had managed to work herself so far into his life. Maybe there was something more between them than I had expected, the way she was so proudly, almost jealously, defensive of him...had something happened? No, I can't speculate.
I'm surprised too, while I've seen countless men and women slip away, double cross, set others up and let them down...each time it is a shock. I've done it more times than I care to relate. Ironic that the one man I swore to stay with until the end left me so alone. An accidental betrayl, really. Maybe I didn't suspect Ice because she had always suspected me. Just because she somehow knew something about my past, she thinks she can make a draw on my future?
She'd been suspicious lately, with this quick new deal that brought us off course, we didn't question it. Something was wrong with it but I kept my mouth shut. I've had enough captains tell me I'm a nag or a worrier or a mutineer just becuse I let them know that something isn't right, but hadn't offered proof. Never mind what they said when I turned out to be right. In this life we've got to hold with what information tells us. Had a captain who screamed at me for bothering him with details, so I docked out that night. His ship exploded a day later.

Good Runners pay attention, bad Runners pay.

"Do you think she'll come back?" Caban asked me.
"We've got a job to do." I replied, and started programming in the jump to Target City. He looked at me with reproach.
"That's heartless, Scout."
"So is stealing our ship and putting us at risk." He nodded, ignoring the 'our' I hadn't meant to say, but still looked concerned. Curse the man for always making me consider things again. He was worried whether we'd be able to pull of the job, concerned about his effectiveness as a captain. And more than that, he was afraid for Ice, afraid that his talk of hiring a crew had set her away.
"Caban," I said, "Ice knows what she's doing, she always makes her own decisions for her own good reasons. If she wants to come back, she will, and she knows how to find us. If she doesn't, then don't think she hasn't thought it through being the best decision. She'll be fine."
The man nodded thoughtfully, then smiled as he always does, and said, "And so will we."
"Of course." His good cheer is more than blind optimism.

So Caban proceeded to promote me to First Mate, a rank I've not had in some time. Its back to the two of us clanking around on this big ship, maybe we'll hire up some hands to help with the Hadrian's Point run, or maybe we won't.
We're back on course, but its a new course.

the finite

Its strange to fly through civilized space again, as civilized as an infinite void of dust can be. In the past decades we've made space almost homey, cushioned and lit and neatly charted.
There are no new places in space, only places new to us. There is always someone out on the border, looking out into what might be. They send out Feds and Frighties and settle new planets, burrow into new asteroids. So quickly now I wonder who is keeping track of it all.
Edward P. Furoighties will go down in history (whatever history is left) as one of the most important scientists ever born. The ones they still teach in schools: Newton, Da Vinci, Einstein, Lee, Hawkings. The Evollo team, bringing us modern flight engines. Michaela Tabachinski, who developed the system used in water factories. And Edward Furoighties, who worked for years perfecting the terraforming system used by each and every Earth-sent territory. He was not wealthy, his work barely understood by the majority of his fellow humans. Every terraformer bears the label of "Frightie" in his honor, though sometimes I wonder how flattering this actually is.

Beyond these words, beyond the names and labels we've pinned on cold places no skin will ever touch...there is a continuous, ancient expanse. When I look at what we did to Earth, what we'll do to Mars and all the rest...I'm glad we'll never get everywhere.

Jameison grew up on the edges of space, staring out through thick panes of plastic at the inconceivable wilderness. I never knew much about it, I never knew much about Jamie, but he took me there. When we had been jumping so hard and so wildly that we couldn't see straight, he'd set us out into nowhere. The first time we passed through the border of the known, I panicked. The coldness in his eyes was not reassuring, though I learned to trust it. I learned not to care.
It does something to you, living out in the borders. If you get lost, there is nothing you can do but choose a direction and hope. No North or South, hardly even an up or down. I've made my living making maps, figuring things out, but remember what it was like to plunge into nothingness and survive on hope and ferocity. Its all he had his whole life, and he filled me with it. It wasn't the ship that made us able to jump and fly like we did. It was him. He made us believe in the possibility of the impossible.

Here in the inner worlds, heading to Target City, it is easy to believe that everything is safe and secure. That everything is mapped out. Its not. Its just that the borders are invisible.