text: Stardate: no clue. Warp drive is fucked. Life support systems are on life support. Best I can figure, electromagnetic something or other must have flared up. Whatever that means. This area is totally empty of any stars, planets, comets, asteroids, or any other names we've come up with for rocks floating in space. I'm only realizing at this moment what a terrible idea it was of society to start letting dumbasses like me pilot these metal death traps. Looking out, I can see another ship drifting by and I guess it got hit by the same wave of bullshit. I have to assume the other poor bastard in there is as hopelessly unintelligent as me. The only plan I've got is to see if I can jump across the void to the other ship. I've got nothing to change my direction once I take that leap. I am not scared, yet, because I have not convinced my brain that this is real. When I was a kid, we hadn't even made it to Mars. And here I am, with a flat tire in as close to nowhere as one can be. There's no way any of this is real. My mind is racing, and I'm trying to keep it that way. If it settles down, it will start to feel what it has already realized: I'm fucked. I'm thinking back to my younger days playing pool in my friend's basement. I never paid attention in physics or geometry and they say pool is all geometry. I'm not sure if I'm the cue or the cue ball, though. I'm pretty sure that other ship is the pocket. So I guess I'm trying to scratch? The analogy is falling apart. I never played pool by the numbers anyway. Always went by feeling. I open the hatch and the little air pressure left in the cabin rushes out. I lucked out and the angle to the other ship seems pretty well lined up with the hatch. I'm trying to picture everything in such a way that the leap seems easiest. Only my ship is moving, I decide. The other one is stationary. A metal island in the dark cosmic ocean. My mind is starting to slow. The reality is starting to take hold. If I don't jump know, I'll be a huddled mess in the corner of my ship until I asphyxiate. I get my mind racing again thinking about the odds that I am even within sight of another ship. It's got to mean something. Maybe I've got a guardian angel that looked away from the controls for a bit and is trying to rectify the situation without giving himself away. No way that's true, I think, but I trick myself into feeling it just enough that I am ready. I don't think of my wife. I don't think of my kids. There will be plenty of time for those thoughts if I miss. Dammit, I shouldn't have thought that. It's now or never. I jump.