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A goat is actually not that useful.
I don’t know how long it is before I start functioning again. Could be a few hours. Could be a day. At some point I realize that I am hungry, and decide to make some food using the food processing machine.
I press the button for grilled cheese and tomato soup. Comfort food for watching the only two people who know I’m here be exploded.
Nothing happens.
I press the button again.
And that’s when I realize that Kurt and Steve are not the only two people having a very bad day. With the food processor broken, or whatever has happened to it, I’m going to fucking starve.
Fear washes over me, deep primal fear, fear of all the things a living being has to worry about. It is so immense and so complete I am certain that it will take me with it into the same senseless random void that claimed Kurt and Steve.
I scream and then I cry, and then I feel sick to the very pit of my stomach. I can’t breathe, except I can breathe, but it’s like the air doesn’t do anything. I suck it in and it just sits in the lead box of my frail meat chest, which has suddenly become very tense and very sore. Below it there is the churning of my guts. Rank with fear, I emit cries and wails and generally lose my shit.
* * *
Several hours later
I stop crying and screaming and flailing about because it hasn’t helped. If anything, it has only made me hungrier. I wipe my eyes and stagger to the door of the cabin, finding it a little hard to breathe. I am dizzy and sick to my stomach, but life seems to be going on nonetheless.
Bilbo is outside, chewing on a tendril that is trying to lay claim to my cabin. Steve said the incredible growth rate of the plants here was nothing to worry about. Ironic how he was worried about everything, but not about what actually got him. That’s how life works, isn’t it.
“Maah,” Bilbo announces. I wonder how he can feel so at home on a strange planet. He’s eating everything his little mind takes an interest in, and he seems to be enjoying himself. I guess it’s because he has everything he needs. Food, and there’s some water pooling about the place here and there too.
I watch him eat, and I start to calm down. It is hard to be a panicking maniac when you’re looking at a little goat with a face stuffed almost hamster full of grass who is still jamming more into his mouth as fast as he can go. I really hope nothing on this planet is toxic to Bilbo. Steve and Kurt seemed to think this was basically Earth 2.0, but that’s unlikely, and even if it is true, there are plenty of toxic plants on Earth.
There are some emergency rations packed away in one of the many supply chests. It’s not as if the potential for the food replicator to break isn’t factored in when they leave someone resident. There’s probably even a backup, or an instruction manual as to how to mend it. I just need to get my bearings. I’m going to be okay.
“This is okay,” I tell Bilbo. “We’re okay.”
“Meehehehe,” he replies, finally swallowing so he can start the process of filling his mouth all over again.
Kurt and Steve set me up in a clearing of sorts, but by the way these plants are growing I bet it’s not going to be a clearing long. It’s going to be dense jungle, and I’m going to be locked in the middle of it, surrounded by who knows what in terms of animals or birds or even angry plants. Not all plants are friends, after all—though I suppose Bilbo can probably eat any shrub that looks like it might be threatening.
I have to get the cabin back up and running. I was left here because I’m a survivor, so it’s about time I started surviving. As long as I’m on this planet, I am able to carry out the mission Kurt and Steve entrusted me with. I am the first resident, and that means something to me, because it meant something to them.
With my heart still full of sorrow, but my head somewhat cleared, I go through the cabin’s storage area and dig out the manuals. Every system has one, and every possible issue is covered in painstaking detail. The manuals are printed on paper so they can be read in case the power is out. It’s an old technology, but it works.
I am sitting at the open door of the cabin and reading up about what solenoids are when I hear something rustling in the jungle. My view of this planet is very limited. In another context, it might be cozy. Right now, that slight shuffle in the branches is enough reason to lose my shit.
