Dear Diary...
Title: Dear Diary...
Author: fragrantwoods
Rating: M (mostly for language)
Word count: 4300
Setting/Timeline: Earth, Post-Daybreak, A/U, take place over 12 months or so
Warnings/Triggers: Death, loss of family, OC
Summary: Laura was not quite as dead as Bill thought when they landed. As she took an unexpected breath, he saw the air a few yards away start to shimmer and kind of...split.
A/N: In this A/U, around the year 2300, English-speaking nations merged into a militaristic Federalist system. Early 21st century slang has made a comeback. Journalling remains a popular hobby/outlet. New discoveries of the natural world re: time-space continuum has led to creative sentencing. KIndle/Nook devices endure. The OC has a mouth on her one would expect from a hard-core career military person who is really, really mad and has a snarky streak.
This is the first piece I've ever done in the 1st person and in a diary format. If it just hits anyone really wrong, please let me know.
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Dear Diary, or future reader, or archeologist, or whoever,
I guess today is the first day of the rest of my fucked-up life. Or, to be specific, the day before yesterday was, when I got my ass booted through the Rift. You think they’re going to escort you, or have drummers or something, because, damn, it IS the closest to an execution you can get…but it was more shove-y than I expected.
And the bullshit about setting me down near a pre-Industrial Revolution English-speaking area? It is to laugh. I guess they really meant the “pre” part, because they Rifted my ass so far back, the indigenous pop lacks anything that looks like language, as far as I can tell. I guess it might be a really early, point-and-grunt language…wish I’d studied more linguistic development theory. Might’ve been safer, too, career-wise.
So there’s pretty much nothing here except wild grasses and animals (I’m not counting the indigenous pop because for all I know, they could be cannibals and things suck enough already, so I’m leaving them alone unless there’s a major change in circumstances, and no, I don’t know what those might be, okay?).
I should erase and start over, but…I forgot the main unexpected thing and I don’t feel like re-doing what I just recorded.
When I came through the Rift, there were two people here already. Two people at our level of development (maybe even beyond, since they don’t seem to dump alleged miscreants back in time without a fucking trial-not that I am bitter!).
I’m still trying to process their tale of woe, but guess what, Diary/future reader? They’re from a whole other galaxy, or universe, or something. They (well, he…the chick is pretty much too sick to say hardly anything) were on twelve planets, and everything was chugging along pretty well, then some robot-slave thingies they invented evolved, apparently, and started a war. Reminds me of the Planet of the Apes flick, except they made these critters themselves.
Anyway, they (these guys I’m here with) won the first war, and things were cool for forty years, then the Cylons came back and nuked the shit out of all twelve worlds. Think about that, future reader, next time you think your life sucks.
A bunch of people were up in space and missed the nuke-fest, then got chased for some time, then tried to find a place to light. Finally they made up with the Cylons, or some of them (details are sketchy here) and a bunch of folk hit dirt in this here-and-now, but then they scattered. I really don’t get that part, but I think it has something to do with the sick chick.
They seem okay, and the dude helped me get my gear inventoried and I found a bunch of hidden pouches in my duffle (thanks, Brian…you’re the best quartermaster ever! I’m so glad I hooked up with you last year. And don’t think I don’t know you seriously risked your own ass to set me up with some major supplies. And if anybody reading this is related or descended from a quartermaster in the FMA named Brian, just skip over the hook-up mention, okay? Main thing is, he was righteous).
Oops, sidetrack time. The point is, Brian slipped a bunch of contraband into my gear, the main thing, according to my new friends, being the medkit. Because, get this…and I’m not trying to be smart, but…these guys were colonizing planets and flying around in space and doing faster than light travel, but they still had cancer! Really?!? To me, that’s kind of fucked up, but who am I to judge, right? Just another sad sack Rifter whose medals and awards still couldn’t keep my ass out of a sling when it counted.
So, when I said “medkit”, the guy (Bill) thought I meant bandages and ointment and shit. Diary, I thought about keeping my mouth shut, because I have no idea how long the charge will last, or if solar recharging will really work, and, being honest here, I did think about needing to diagnose and treat my ownself and the medkit being dead, or empty or whatever, after using it on them. But…Brian packed some “best friend” pills (also contraband), so I figure if I get bad off, I’ll go that way and have a good deed or two in my ledger.
The sick chick (Laura) was cool with letting me scan her with the medkit, but Bill was annoyed that I couldn’t explain how it worked. Damn, dude, it’s a battlefield medkit designed for FNGs to heal each other! Point and click interface…and at my age, I probably should have learned how it worked by now, but as long as it could green-light whatever was wrong with me or mine, honestly, I didn’t ever care how it worked.
I think he’s on the over-protective side, since he hung on my shoulder the whole time watching the screen and asking questions, but I get the impression she’s been sick for a long time and it’s jacked him up pretty bad. He kept wanting to hold it and read the diagnostics out loud, while I could feel the power draining…arrgh! He finally just let it do its thing and we ended up with about seven FUBARs that got the green square! The medkit red-squared arthritis (if you fix it, it just comes back, and what can you do about wear and tear, right?) and yellowed an old collarbone fracture…I figured the juice needed to hit the cancer and then we’d see what was left.
I’d never had anything healed like this…I was always grabbing my medkits for broken bones, wounds (stabbing implements and projectiles, mostly) and poisons, but this was amazingly cool. It took about ten minutes for those cute little check marks to hit each green square, so in about an hour, we got the “now give the body X hours to sleep and heal” screen (for Laura, it said four hours, FYI).
So of COURSE this guy was wanting to rescan her every five minutes!
“Is it gone yet? Can we scan now? How about now? “ Damn, like one of my kids on…
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Back.
Dear future reader, I’m not going to have much in here about my kids, and Christmas, and birthdays, and my old man, and…stuff that’ll make me cry. Did not expect that, and it freaked Bill out a little bit, I think. Sobbing like a baby is not what folk want to see from the bad-ass time traveling RIfter with a history of…a thirty year career of service with the FMA. Knowing about my skillset tends to make people jumpy when I start to lose my shit.
Killing time here while we wait on the full four hours, Bill, before we wake up and scan his old lady again.
*************
Nice gratitude, man! Jeez!
Bill wanted to look at my ebook (my fault, I told him Brian had loaded 4,000 books on this thing before I locked the journal part). Dude says I write like I’m seventeen! Told him I had grandkids that were seventeen, thankyouverymuch, and since it seems I’m curing his old lady’s CANCER, he should not worry about how I fucking write.
Honestly. If I’m going to get royally screwed over, quasi-executed, etc. etc., I think I get to write however the fuck I want to. Future archeologists can kiss my ass, or dig up one of Bill or Laura's journals. Damn!
He was all “What’s FMA? What’s FNG? How are people going to understand this if they find it?” Dude is such a C.O.
Okay, Dear future reader, FMA is Federalized Military Agency (or Fucked My Ass, or…there’s some other versions, I’m sure) And I worked for those assholes for twenty years in wetwork (that’s when you kill people on orders, not because you personally thought it would be a good idea) and another ten as an instructor, including, if I can brag, three courses on the psychology and philosophy of political and military assassination that I designed myself.
My family better get a cut of those tuition fees, dammit (although there’s probably something in all the paperwork I signed over the years that waived copyright protection, yadda, yadda. Dirty bastards.).
And FNGs are what this guy refers to as “nuggets”, which just cracks my shit up. They must not have Micky D’s where these guys are from…. In case, future reader, you have had no exposure to the military whatsoever, FNG is Fucking New Guy, okay?
And also, future reader, if you really have avoided exposure to the military, God bless you and keep you and I must’ve stepped on the right butterfly, since I can’t remember a time when the average Joe or Jane didn’t know way too much about military life. Maybe you’re reading this after my time, and the major powers are getting along, and there’s no back-stabbing or double-dealing or “enemy-of-my-enemy-is-my-friend” shit. Which, by the by, is what got me Rifted.
Not a leak by me, not an unsanctioned kill, not any of the bullshit they hung on me. I was a fucking sacrificial lamb so our guys could make a show of good faith to their guys. Twenty years in the field and ten in the classroom, and a plaque here and there for service above and beyond….Future reader, be warned, if you’re in the same system I was…it won’t mean jack in the end.
Now that I’ve locked this from Bill (and I guess, from Laura, although if she’s cool, that might change) I can dish about them…
Both were really important for a few years. He says she was the President of Everyone Left or some such, and he was Admiral of their space fleet. It’s obvious they’ve been together for quite a while, but then he said something about arresting her and throwing her in the brig…so either kink is popular throughout all known galaxies, (stop judging me, future reader!) or they have had some serious ups and downs.
Historical/Anthropological footnote: They speak standard English, but they say “frak” instead of “fuck”. And they (or at least he…she’s still asleep) say “frak” a lot.
Personal goal for the week: refrain from giggling when either of them says “frak”.
Both of them are about my age, apparently. He’s about as scarred up as I am (I did use enough juice to scan him with the medkit, in case he had some funky disease that would fuck him up long-term, but he was clear except for a shitload of scar tissue). I took more to my face (Note: a dude quartermaster will NOT remember to stash concealer in the secret compartments) but he took some shots to his chest and lung and has a scar alllll the way down the front of his body (and mind out of the gutter, future reader {and Laura, if you end up reading this}; I was medkit-scanning him, remember?)
She (Laura, don’t get “the big head” as my Daddy used to say, if you read this) is really, really pretty, although she’s skinny as a rail and lost all her hair. An unbiased, objective observer would note that when fully nourished, she’d have a helluva rack and killer legs. I hope her hair comes back okay. Bill said she had an amazing head of red hair before she got sick enough for chemo. And future reader, when he talks about that kind of thing, he is so obviously, totally in love with her it’s insane. Can’t wait for her to get well enough to talk about him.
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Wow, dear Diary/future reader! Been busy since I added to my entries here. Less time waiting around, I guess.
Laura’s fixed; the medkit came through for us, although I suspect it’s depleted past the point of no return. She says it felt like tingling and burning, but icy-cold at the same time. I did a scan four hours post-medkit and the scan came up clear, so Yay! Science!(except for the science that found and enhanced the Time Rifts so the powers that be could clear out the prisons, etc. etc. That science still sucks.).
Within a week, I swear she was getting peach fuzz on her head, and it was coming in red. I think she’s gained some weight already but I don’t want to use up scan power for that. She can go by her clothes getting tight like everyone else!
Bill’s tearing chunks off their space-plane and incorporating it into this cabin he’s building. Awkward moment: how big to make the cabin?? I told them I’d be happier in my tent a little ways away. They looked relieved…makes me wonder how long it’s been since they hit it…
Brian the Amazing Quartermaster came through again: there’s snares and material to make small animal traps. So good to have protein again. There’s some roots and berries and a stream…God, I miss salt. And pepper. And…I probably shouldn’t make lists of things I miss.
They’re loving the beasties we catch. They said they had to eat ALGAE for years!! Gah.
This part’s double-password protected because it’s best it doesn’t come up again, and I might come back and erase it…I asked Bill what they had to hunt with, since he flew both of them away from their posse. He didn’t say anything but he looked at his gun.
Dear diary, I stuck my foot in my mouth and said something about not being able to hunt much off one clip of ammo. If looks could kill…I figure he was going to hang around until she checked out, then do himself. I thought it looked like he had gathered more rocks than grasses and grain. Dude didn’t figure he’d need to eat much after he buried her…how sad is that??
I wonder if my fam had a funeral for me? I don’t know how hard the FMA tries to sell the “he/she’s not dead, they’re just in a different time” bullshit.
I hope they at least had a memorial. And got my effects. I bet FMA screwed them out of my pension, though. I met a girl last year, her dad had been a Rifter. She said her family didn’t get squat.
Speaking of family…Bill says he’s got a kid (well, two, but one died a long time ago) but he’s elsewhere on the planet. And there was a girl who was like a daughter to him…I think he loved her a lot. Not sure why they’re not around.
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Dear Diary/future reader:
It’s been crazy lately so not many entries. Bill and Laura are doing awesome…she’s building up quite well (I still remember some PT from back in the day, and so does Bill) and the animal protein is helping. Bill can run a snare as good (maybe better) than me.
We eat together most nights…he’s added another room onto the cabin after he got some more wood seasoned. They’ve said I’m welcome (not sure exactly what that means) but…I guess my tent is some kind of link to where (when?) I used to be. At night, after they’ve done their thing and quieted down, in the silence, in my tent, I can pretend, or at least imagine, I’m just on a field assignment, headed home as soon as my tour’s done. And I can think…
Okay, I’m doing what I said I wouldn’t do. And if she hears me crying she’ll come out, and he’ll wake up, and then I’m fucking with their happy times. Soldier on, soldier…and STFU.
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Note: I don’t know if it’s the medkit or the genes. But Laura looks ten years younger! I told her that her halo of red curls (OMG, how girly is that?) was gorgeous and she giggled like she was the one being all seventeen. He’s lost the belly he had (not that it was much and not that I was checking him out, Laura!) and they look like they could live another twenty years. It’s a joy to see.
************
I un-passworded the ebooks…Bill likes to read to her before dark. They love my mystery books! They seem to like the stuff my old man and I used to like. Brian the Amazing Quartermaster did good by reconnoitering with my old man about my tastes in literature…wonder if that was awkward.
Okay, now I’m wondering if my old man gave him suggestions on non-battery-operated sex toys, because it’s funny that he knew exactly the right do-dads to stuff in one of the secret pouches. Now that I think about it, I wonder if Bill felt any suspicious outlines and skipped that pouch on purpose? Laura thinks he probably did, which she and I both thought was adorable.
Bill’s a good guy…we’ve never talked about poly issues but I get the feeling that would be a no-go if they had their druthers. And, truth be told, if I tried to get with either of them (or both, for that matter), I’m pretty sure that’d stir up stuff about how my old man and kids took the news…I think these (Laura and Bill) are the emotional types, and…no. Not ever again, for me, I don’t think. Guess I’m the maiden aunt of this triad…and that’s fine.
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Dear Diary, future readers, etc….you should have asked for a better journaller.
We’ve been all caught up in trying to get some crops (tubers and grain) planted. Found some fish in the stream and the pioneer survival guide Brian added (can’t thank that guy enough!) said to stick a dead fish in with the plants. I think it’s nasty but Bill says he’s heard of something like that from his home world. We’ll see.
I wish we hadn’t drained the medkit…I haven’t said anything but I think I fractured my hip bone a little bit screwing around in the stream on my own. Hairline, I’m pretty sure, but it hurts like a mother-fucker (mother-frakker? That will NEVER fail to crack me up!)
They’re planting flowers now…just for the colors and smell. For two people stranded at the ass-end of nowhere and no-when, they’re almost obnoxiously happy. But then I think of her cancer, and their homes being nuked, losing everybody they knew…I can’t begrudge them their happiness.
Sometimes, I dream that my old man got in some terrible trouble (probably because of me!) and got Rifted to this exact time and place. And we’d build another cabin. Invite each other over for dinner…
I wonder if he remarried.
I wonder how long he waited.
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Dear Diary/future reader:
Seems like there’s a little climate change, or maybe it’s just me. We’ve started curing animal hides (no idea what they’re called but they look like miniature horses) and bone needles and sinew thread and shit…Laura’s given up on the rags she came with and is all cavewoman couture these days. She worked some reeds and feathers in a design and it looks pretty cool. Bill’s rocking the leather pants and a tunic-looking thing now…suits them both.
She offered to make me an outfit, but bless my field-grade togs…they look pretty grungy but they’re holding up. She’s a lot taller than me, and I’d hate her to spend her time on something she couldn’t use later, if I didn’t want it (or need it) anymore. Her fingers are torn up from the bone needles anyway, and I have no idea if her immune system got compromised from the cancer. Best not to risk it.
Weird…they don’t ask for my ebooks much anymore. I can’t really explain it but they watch…the sky, and the stars, and everything, like I used to watch flicks. If I was in anthropology mode, I’d note that they don’t talk as much as they used to, but they’re so…together. Like they don’t need to talk.
Maybe that’s where we went wrong, as a species…we started to talk too damn much. I bet half my wetwork had to do with someone talking too much or not enough. That would have made a great seminar...
********
Dear Brian: I have no idea how I feel about this…Bill was fooling around with my ebook and pulled up the “notes” pages by accident.
I found the rest of the survival guides. Very helpful, and Laura was very happy to find out that the psychotropic plants she found are safe in moderate amounts (I mean, we all three were happy, but she was REALLY happy!)
I wonder how you got so many people to write things in the very short time between the accusations and my Rifting. I can’t believe my old students would risk the repercussions of supporting me, even in secret. Dude, you have no idea how good this makes me feel.
And I’m glad you loved me. I hope it was worth it. I hope you and my old man raise a glass over me from time to time. But, you know, not where the FMA could see you and nail you both for conspiracy or anything.
Laura calls Bill “the Old Man” sometimes. I think it’s from his military days. It’s not “my old man”, like I’d say, but “The Old Man”. It started making him sad, though…she doesn’t say it much now.
She found some crazy red berries the other day and dyed a hide dress a reddish-pink. Bill beamed all day, telling me about some OTHER world they’d found and she wasn’t the President, she was a teacher, and she had this awesome red dress. And then she was a POW. Of Cylons…sometimes I swear they’re making this stuff up to keep me entertained. Oh, and sometimes the Cylons looked like robots, and sometimes they looked just like people.
See what I mean?? I just nod and smile…
Dude, I wish you were here. You’d like Bill and Laura. Hell, I wish all y’all were here (or that I was there and the FMA were on a planet getting ready to be nuked).
I hope you get out of the FMA, babe. The more I think about what happened to me, the more I think that “F” should have stood for Fascist. Sure wish I hadn’t let them put so much blood on my hands.
Believe it or not, I’ve talked to Bill and Laura about the blood on my hands thing. They both have their crosses to bear (not that their culture had that kind of cross, but you know what I mean). They’ve both gotten bloody, and it’s weird, but that’s a comfort to me. They’re good people. They… get all the stuff you’re supposed to get, as you go through life, if you’re doing it right. And they sure as hell didn’t come by it easy.
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Dear future folks… and Bill and Laura, too, probably…
No…Bill, Laura, this is going to be just for you guys.
I never liked writing these things…we used to have to do this before major field missions and it felt so phony.
If you’re reading this, then one of you went through my gear and found the sets of passwords (and I’m betting it was you, Laura! Or if Bill did it, you encouraged him…).
Even without the medkit, I could tell there was some bad infection setting into the bone where I fractured it a while back in the stream. And (I know, I suck for not telling you) I fell again when I was out with the snares and I could tell something shifted. So please study the guides for anti-infection plants and TELL EACH OTHER if you get an injury, okay?
Anyway, I’ve started a fever…low-grade, I bet you couldn’t tell when you hugged me, but this old war horse knows a systemic infection when she feels one.
Realistically, although you both look great for your age and condition (and Laura, I can’t believe your hair is down to your shoulders already…it’s as pretty as Bill said it was before), there’s a limit to how much time you have, and I don’t want you to waste it tending to me and worrying.
What time you have, I hope you spend it loving, and hugging, and looking out over the horizon, and frakking each other’s brains out as long as you can.
I’m heading out to forage in the morning. I’m taking my packet of “best friend” pills with me, and some of your home-rolled herb. I plan to go as far as I can, (due to the obvious) but not so far that you couldn’t come after me later. If you can’t get to me in twenty-four hours, I’d give it a couple of weeks at least.
I’m not a religious woman, but if you could lay me towards the sunrise, maybe do a cairn or something, that’d be great. Do whatever rituals you feel like doing (you know I don’t offend easily!)
I was going to ask that this journal be buried with me for future generations to find, but you’re going to need some of the guides in the front, so keep it for yourselves. The future generations probably wouldn’t get most of what was in here anyway.
I love you guys, and I feel privileged to have shared this part of your lives. I’m glad I had the medkit, and glad I got Rifted when I did. I hope you have many, many years of health and happiness, and that when you go, you go together. I can’t imagine a world with only one of you in it.
Peace,
Lt. Col. Angelina Melana Loren, FMA, Ret.
2nd A/N: I hope the narrator didn't come across as a Mary Sue (I was shooting for an outside observer who didn't know the whole backstory) , but if she did, feel free to tell me.
Author: fragrantwoods
Rating: M (mostly for language)
Word count: 4300
Setting/Timeline: Earth, Post-Daybreak, A/U, take place over 12 months or so
Warnings/Triggers: Death, loss of family, OC
Summary: Laura was not quite as dead as Bill thought when they landed. As she took an unexpected breath, he saw the air a few yards away start to shimmer and kind of...split.
A/N: In this A/U, around the year 2300, English-speaking nations merged into a militaristic Federalist system. Early 21st century slang has made a comeback. Journalling remains a popular hobby/outlet. New discoveries of the natural world re: time-space continuum has led to creative sentencing. KIndle/Nook devices endure. The OC has a mouth on her one would expect from a hard-core career military person who is really, really mad and has a snarky streak.
This is the first piece I've ever done in the 1st person and in a diary format. If it just hits anyone really wrong, please let me know.
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Dear Diary, or future reader, or archeologist, or whoever,
I guess today is the first day of the rest of my fucked-up life. Or, to be specific, the day before yesterday was, when I got my ass booted through the Rift. You think they’re going to escort you, or have drummers or something, because, damn, it IS the closest to an execution you can get…but it was more shove-y than I expected.
And the bullshit about setting me down near a pre-Industrial Revolution English-speaking area? It is to laugh. I guess they really meant the “pre” part, because they Rifted my ass so far back, the indigenous pop lacks anything that looks like language, as far as I can tell. I guess it might be a really early, point-and-grunt language…wish I’d studied more linguistic development theory. Might’ve been safer, too, career-wise.
So there’s pretty much nothing here except wild grasses and animals (I’m not counting the indigenous pop because for all I know, they could be cannibals and things suck enough already, so I’m leaving them alone unless there’s a major change in circumstances, and no, I don’t know what those might be, okay?).
I should erase and start over, but…I forgot the main unexpected thing and I don’t feel like re-doing what I just recorded.
When I came through the Rift, there were two people here already. Two people at our level of development (maybe even beyond, since they don’t seem to dump alleged miscreants back in time without a fucking trial-not that I am bitter!).
I’m still trying to process their tale of woe, but guess what, Diary/future reader? They’re from a whole other galaxy, or universe, or something. They (well, he…the chick is pretty much too sick to say hardly anything) were on twelve planets, and everything was chugging along pretty well, then some robot-slave thingies they invented evolved, apparently, and started a war. Reminds me of the Planet of the Apes flick, except they made these critters themselves.
Anyway, they (these guys I’m here with) won the first war, and things were cool for forty years, then the Cylons came back and nuked the shit out of all twelve worlds. Think about that, future reader, next time you think your life sucks.
A bunch of people were up in space and missed the nuke-fest, then got chased for some time, then tried to find a place to light. Finally they made up with the Cylons, or some of them (details are sketchy here) and a bunch of folk hit dirt in this here-and-now, but then they scattered. I really don’t get that part, but I think it has something to do with the sick chick.
They seem okay, and the dude helped me get my gear inventoried and I found a bunch of hidden pouches in my duffle (thanks, Brian…you’re the best quartermaster ever! I’m so glad I hooked up with you last year. And don’t think I don’t know you seriously risked your own ass to set me up with some major supplies. And if anybody reading this is related or descended from a quartermaster in the FMA named Brian, just skip over the hook-up mention, okay? Main thing is, he was righteous).
Oops, sidetrack time. The point is, Brian slipped a bunch of contraband into my gear, the main thing, according to my new friends, being the medkit. Because, get this…and I’m not trying to be smart, but…these guys were colonizing planets and flying around in space and doing faster than light travel, but they still had cancer! Really?!? To me, that’s kind of fucked up, but who am I to judge, right? Just another sad sack Rifter whose medals and awards still couldn’t keep my ass out of a sling when it counted.
So, when I said “medkit”, the guy (Bill) thought I meant bandages and ointment and shit. Diary, I thought about keeping my mouth shut, because I have no idea how long the charge will last, or if solar recharging will really work, and, being honest here, I did think about needing to diagnose and treat my ownself and the medkit being dead, or empty or whatever, after using it on them. But…Brian packed some “best friend” pills (also contraband), so I figure if I get bad off, I’ll go that way and have a good deed or two in my ledger.
The sick chick (Laura) was cool with letting me scan her with the medkit, but Bill was annoyed that I couldn’t explain how it worked. Damn, dude, it’s a battlefield medkit designed for FNGs to heal each other! Point and click interface…and at my age, I probably should have learned how it worked by now, but as long as it could green-light whatever was wrong with me or mine, honestly, I didn’t ever care how it worked.
I think he’s on the over-protective side, since he hung on my shoulder the whole time watching the screen and asking questions, but I get the impression she’s been sick for a long time and it’s jacked him up pretty bad. He kept wanting to hold it and read the diagnostics out loud, while I could feel the power draining…arrgh! He finally just let it do its thing and we ended up with about seven FUBARs that got the green square! The medkit red-squared arthritis (if you fix it, it just comes back, and what can you do about wear and tear, right?) and yellowed an old collarbone fracture…I figured the juice needed to hit the cancer and then we’d see what was left.
I’d never had anything healed like this…I was always grabbing my medkits for broken bones, wounds (stabbing implements and projectiles, mostly) and poisons, but this was amazingly cool. It took about ten minutes for those cute little check marks to hit each green square, so in about an hour, we got the “now give the body X hours to sleep and heal” screen (for Laura, it said four hours, FYI).
So of COURSE this guy was wanting to rescan her every five minutes!
“Is it gone yet? Can we scan now? How about now? “ Damn, like one of my kids on…
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Back.
Dear future reader, I’m not going to have much in here about my kids, and Christmas, and birthdays, and my old man, and…stuff that’ll make me cry. Did not expect that, and it freaked Bill out a little bit, I think. Sobbing like a baby is not what folk want to see from the bad-ass time traveling RIfter with a history of…a thirty year career of service with the FMA. Knowing about my skillset tends to make people jumpy when I start to lose my shit.
Killing time here while we wait on the full four hours, Bill, before we wake up and scan his old lady again.
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Nice gratitude, man! Jeez!
Bill wanted to look at my ebook (my fault, I told him Brian had loaded 4,000 books on this thing before I locked the journal part). Dude says I write like I’m seventeen! Told him I had grandkids that were seventeen, thankyouverymuch, and since it seems I’m curing his old lady’s CANCER, he should not worry about how I fucking write.
Honestly. If I’m going to get royally screwed over, quasi-executed, etc. etc., I think I get to write however the fuck I want to. Future archeologists can kiss my ass, or dig up one of Bill or Laura's journals. Damn!
He was all “What’s FMA? What’s FNG? How are people going to understand this if they find it?” Dude is such a C.O.
Okay, Dear future reader, FMA is Federalized Military Agency (or Fucked My Ass, or…there’s some other versions, I’m sure) And I worked for those assholes for twenty years in wetwork (that’s when you kill people on orders, not because you personally thought it would be a good idea) and another ten as an instructor, including, if I can brag, three courses on the psychology and philosophy of political and military assassination that I designed myself.
My family better get a cut of those tuition fees, dammit (although there’s probably something in all the paperwork I signed over the years that waived copyright protection, yadda, yadda. Dirty bastards.).
And FNGs are what this guy refers to as “nuggets”, which just cracks my shit up. They must not have Micky D’s where these guys are from…. In case, future reader, you have had no exposure to the military whatsoever, FNG is Fucking New Guy, okay?
And also, future reader, if you really have avoided exposure to the military, God bless you and keep you and I must’ve stepped on the right butterfly, since I can’t remember a time when the average Joe or Jane didn’t know way too much about military life. Maybe you’re reading this after my time, and the major powers are getting along, and there’s no back-stabbing or double-dealing or “enemy-of-my-enemy-is-my-friend” shit. Which, by the by, is what got me Rifted.
Not a leak by me, not an unsanctioned kill, not any of the bullshit they hung on me. I was a fucking sacrificial lamb so our guys could make a show of good faith to their guys. Twenty years in the field and ten in the classroom, and a plaque here and there for service above and beyond….Future reader, be warned, if you’re in the same system I was…it won’t mean jack in the end.
Now that I’ve locked this from Bill (and I guess, from Laura, although if she’s cool, that might change) I can dish about them…
Both were really important for a few years. He says she was the President of Everyone Left or some such, and he was Admiral of their space fleet. It’s obvious they’ve been together for quite a while, but then he said something about arresting her and throwing her in the brig…so either kink is popular throughout all known galaxies, (stop judging me, future reader!) or they have had some serious ups and downs.
Historical/Anthropological footnote: They speak standard English, but they say “frak” instead of “fuck”. And they (or at least he…she’s still asleep) say “frak” a lot.
Personal goal for the week: refrain from giggling when either of them says “frak”.
Both of them are about my age, apparently. He’s about as scarred up as I am (I did use enough juice to scan him with the medkit, in case he had some funky disease that would fuck him up long-term, but he was clear except for a shitload of scar tissue). I took more to my face (Note: a dude quartermaster will NOT remember to stash concealer in the secret compartments) but he took some shots to his chest and lung and has a scar alllll the way down the front of his body (and mind out of the gutter, future reader {and Laura, if you end up reading this}; I was medkit-scanning him, remember?)
She (Laura, don’t get “the big head” as my Daddy used to say, if you read this) is really, really pretty, although she’s skinny as a rail and lost all her hair. An unbiased, objective observer would note that when fully nourished, she’d have a helluva rack and killer legs. I hope her hair comes back okay. Bill said she had an amazing head of red hair before she got sick enough for chemo. And future reader, when he talks about that kind of thing, he is so obviously, totally in love with her it’s insane. Can’t wait for her to get well enough to talk about him.
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Wow, dear Diary/future reader! Been busy since I added to my entries here. Less time waiting around, I guess.
Laura’s fixed; the medkit came through for us, although I suspect it’s depleted past the point of no return. She says it felt like tingling and burning, but icy-cold at the same time. I did a scan four hours post-medkit and the scan came up clear, so Yay! Science!(except for the science that found and enhanced the Time Rifts so the powers that be could clear out the prisons, etc. etc. That science still sucks.).
Within a week, I swear she was getting peach fuzz on her head, and it was coming in red. I think she’s gained some weight already but I don’t want to use up scan power for that. She can go by her clothes getting tight like everyone else!
Bill’s tearing chunks off their space-plane and incorporating it into this cabin he’s building. Awkward moment: how big to make the cabin?? I told them I’d be happier in my tent a little ways away. They looked relieved…makes me wonder how long it’s been since they hit it…
Brian the Amazing Quartermaster came through again: there’s snares and material to make small animal traps. So good to have protein again. There’s some roots and berries and a stream…God, I miss salt. And pepper. And…I probably shouldn’t make lists of things I miss.
They’re loving the beasties we catch. They said they had to eat ALGAE for years!! Gah.
This part’s double-password protected because it’s best it doesn’t come up again, and I might come back and erase it…I asked Bill what they had to hunt with, since he flew both of them away from their posse. He didn’t say anything but he looked at his gun.
Dear diary, I stuck my foot in my mouth and said something about not being able to hunt much off one clip of ammo. If looks could kill…I figure he was going to hang around until she checked out, then do himself. I thought it looked like he had gathered more rocks than grasses and grain. Dude didn’t figure he’d need to eat much after he buried her…how sad is that??
I wonder if my fam had a funeral for me? I don’t know how hard the FMA tries to sell the “he/she’s not dead, they’re just in a different time” bullshit.
I hope they at least had a memorial. And got my effects. I bet FMA screwed them out of my pension, though. I met a girl last year, her dad had been a Rifter. She said her family didn’t get squat.
Speaking of family…Bill says he’s got a kid (well, two, but one died a long time ago) but he’s elsewhere on the planet. And there was a girl who was like a daughter to him…I think he loved her a lot. Not sure why they’re not around.
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Dear Diary/future reader:
It’s been crazy lately so not many entries. Bill and Laura are doing awesome…she’s building up quite well (I still remember some PT from back in the day, and so does Bill) and the animal protein is helping. Bill can run a snare as good (maybe better) than me.
We eat together most nights…he’s added another room onto the cabin after he got some more wood seasoned. They’ve said I’m welcome (not sure exactly what that means) but…I guess my tent is some kind of link to where (when?) I used to be. At night, after they’ve done their thing and quieted down, in the silence, in my tent, I can pretend, or at least imagine, I’m just on a field assignment, headed home as soon as my tour’s done. And I can think…
Okay, I’m doing what I said I wouldn’t do. And if she hears me crying she’ll come out, and he’ll wake up, and then I’m fucking with their happy times. Soldier on, soldier…and STFU.
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Note: I don’t know if it’s the medkit or the genes. But Laura looks ten years younger! I told her that her halo of red curls (OMG, how girly is that?) was gorgeous and she giggled like she was the one being all seventeen. He’s lost the belly he had (not that it was much and not that I was checking him out, Laura!) and they look like they could live another twenty years. It’s a joy to see.
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I un-passworded the ebooks…Bill likes to read to her before dark. They love my mystery books! They seem to like the stuff my old man and I used to like. Brian the Amazing Quartermaster did good by reconnoitering with my old man about my tastes in literature…wonder if that was awkward.
Okay, now I’m wondering if my old man gave him suggestions on non-battery-operated sex toys, because it’s funny that he knew exactly the right do-dads to stuff in one of the secret pouches. Now that I think about it, I wonder if Bill felt any suspicious outlines and skipped that pouch on purpose? Laura thinks he probably did, which she and I both thought was adorable.
Bill’s a good guy…we’ve never talked about poly issues but I get the feeling that would be a no-go if they had their druthers. And, truth be told, if I tried to get with either of them (or both, for that matter), I’m pretty sure that’d stir up stuff about how my old man and kids took the news…I think these (Laura and Bill) are the emotional types, and…no. Not ever again, for me, I don’t think. Guess I’m the maiden aunt of this triad…and that’s fine.
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Dear Diary, future readers, etc….you should have asked for a better journaller.
We’ve been all caught up in trying to get some crops (tubers and grain) planted. Found some fish in the stream and the pioneer survival guide Brian added (can’t thank that guy enough!) said to stick a dead fish in with the plants. I think it’s nasty but Bill says he’s heard of something like that from his home world. We’ll see.
I wish we hadn’t drained the medkit…I haven’t said anything but I think I fractured my hip bone a little bit screwing around in the stream on my own. Hairline, I’m pretty sure, but it hurts like a mother-fucker (mother-frakker? That will NEVER fail to crack me up!)
They’re planting flowers now…just for the colors and smell. For two people stranded at the ass-end of nowhere and no-when, they’re almost obnoxiously happy. But then I think of her cancer, and their homes being nuked, losing everybody they knew…I can’t begrudge them their happiness.
Sometimes, I dream that my old man got in some terrible trouble (probably because of me!) and got Rifted to this exact time and place. And we’d build another cabin. Invite each other over for dinner…
I wonder if he remarried.
I wonder how long he waited.
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Dear Diary/future reader:
Seems like there’s a little climate change, or maybe it’s just me. We’ve started curing animal hides (no idea what they’re called but they look like miniature horses) and bone needles and sinew thread and shit…Laura’s given up on the rags she came with and is all cavewoman couture these days. She worked some reeds and feathers in a design and it looks pretty cool. Bill’s rocking the leather pants and a tunic-looking thing now…suits them both.
She offered to make me an outfit, but bless my field-grade togs…they look pretty grungy but they’re holding up. She’s a lot taller than me, and I’d hate her to spend her time on something she couldn’t use later, if I didn’t want it (or need it) anymore. Her fingers are torn up from the bone needles anyway, and I have no idea if her immune system got compromised from the cancer. Best not to risk it.
Weird…they don’t ask for my ebooks much anymore. I can’t really explain it but they watch…the sky, and the stars, and everything, like I used to watch flicks. If I was in anthropology mode, I’d note that they don’t talk as much as they used to, but they’re so…together. Like they don’t need to talk.
Maybe that’s where we went wrong, as a species…we started to talk too damn much. I bet half my wetwork had to do with someone talking too much or not enough. That would have made a great seminar...
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Dear Brian: I have no idea how I feel about this…Bill was fooling around with my ebook and pulled up the “notes” pages by accident.
I found the rest of the survival guides. Very helpful, and Laura was very happy to find out that the psychotropic plants she found are safe in moderate amounts (I mean, we all three were happy, but she was REALLY happy!)
I wonder how you got so many people to write things in the very short time between the accusations and my Rifting. I can’t believe my old students would risk the repercussions of supporting me, even in secret. Dude, you have no idea how good this makes me feel.
And I’m glad you loved me. I hope it was worth it. I hope you and my old man raise a glass over me from time to time. But, you know, not where the FMA could see you and nail you both for conspiracy or anything.
Laura calls Bill “the Old Man” sometimes. I think it’s from his military days. It’s not “my old man”, like I’d say, but “The Old Man”. It started making him sad, though…she doesn’t say it much now.
She found some crazy red berries the other day and dyed a hide dress a reddish-pink. Bill beamed all day, telling me about some OTHER world they’d found and she wasn’t the President, she was a teacher, and she had this awesome red dress. And then she was a POW. Of Cylons…sometimes I swear they’re making this stuff up to keep me entertained. Oh, and sometimes the Cylons looked like robots, and sometimes they looked just like people.
See what I mean?? I just nod and smile…
Dude, I wish you were here. You’d like Bill and Laura. Hell, I wish all y’all were here (or that I was there and the FMA were on a planet getting ready to be nuked).
I hope you get out of the FMA, babe. The more I think about what happened to me, the more I think that “F” should have stood for Fascist. Sure wish I hadn’t let them put so much blood on my hands.
Believe it or not, I’ve talked to Bill and Laura about the blood on my hands thing. They both have their crosses to bear (not that their culture had that kind of cross, but you know what I mean). They’ve both gotten bloody, and it’s weird, but that’s a comfort to me. They’re good people. They… get all the stuff you’re supposed to get, as you go through life, if you’re doing it right. And they sure as hell didn’t come by it easy.
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Dear future folks… and Bill and Laura, too, probably…
No…Bill, Laura, this is going to be just for you guys.
I never liked writing these things…we used to have to do this before major field missions and it felt so phony.
If you’re reading this, then one of you went through my gear and found the sets of passwords (and I’m betting it was you, Laura! Or if Bill did it, you encouraged him…).
Even without the medkit, I could tell there was some bad infection setting into the bone where I fractured it a while back in the stream. And (I know, I suck for not telling you) I fell again when I was out with the snares and I could tell something shifted. So please study the guides for anti-infection plants and TELL EACH OTHER if you get an injury, okay?
Anyway, I’ve started a fever…low-grade, I bet you couldn’t tell when you hugged me, but this old war horse knows a systemic infection when she feels one.
Realistically, although you both look great for your age and condition (and Laura, I can’t believe your hair is down to your shoulders already…it’s as pretty as Bill said it was before), there’s a limit to how much time you have, and I don’t want you to waste it tending to me and worrying.
What time you have, I hope you spend it loving, and hugging, and looking out over the horizon, and frakking each other’s brains out as long as you can.
I’m heading out to forage in the morning. I’m taking my packet of “best friend” pills with me, and some of your home-rolled herb. I plan to go as far as I can, (due to the obvious) but not so far that you couldn’t come after me later. If you can’t get to me in twenty-four hours, I’d give it a couple of weeks at least.
I’m not a religious woman, but if you could lay me towards the sunrise, maybe do a cairn or something, that’d be great. Do whatever rituals you feel like doing (you know I don’t offend easily!)
I was going to ask that this journal be buried with me for future generations to find, but you’re going to need some of the guides in the front, so keep it for yourselves. The future generations probably wouldn’t get most of what was in here anyway.
I love you guys, and I feel privileged to have shared this part of your lives. I’m glad I had the medkit, and glad I got Rifted when I did. I hope you have many, many years of health and happiness, and that when you go, you go together. I can’t imagine a world with only one of you in it.
Peace,
Lt. Col. Angelina Melana Loren, FMA, Ret.
2nd A/N: I hope the narrator didn't come across as a Mary Sue (I was shooting for an outside observer who didn't know the whole backstory) , but if she did, feel free to tell me.