metislog

[metislog]

Week 11

There was a radiation storm. The computer alerted me about it. Scrubbers still aren’t done so I’m still trapped in the supply room but there’s sacks to crawl into while the storm’s happening if you get enough warning. I don’t think I’m going to like confined spaces after all of this is done. I’ve been in this room for almost a month now which is too long. I don’t know how people in the Apollo program did it. I know they were confined for shorter periods of time than almost a full month but there were also more of them.

I haven’t been able to check the damage from the storm yet and I’m hoping it’s nothing major. I don’t know if I can fix anything major at all, let alone from in here.

I wouldn’t say that things are better. I’ve passed through being stressed to the point where I’m calm. I’m just sitting in the corner eating a tasteless protein thing and trying to not think about my breathing too much.

You know how it is.

You probably don’t, actually, but there’s no good way to describe it.

It’s a lot of mind numbing loneliness and boredom. There’s a lot of sleeping and a lot of me trying to not think about how much I’ve fucked up the experiment I was supposed to be running.

One prong of it, at least. The other prong of just seeing how isolation will change me is still in progress and since I’m still alive data can still be taken from my logs so that’s. Something. I guess.

[metislog]

Week Ten Entry, transcription under the cut

[ragged breathing and crying throughout]

I can’t do this anymore--I can’t--I don’t know if I’m gonna make it out of here. I have. I have 42 more weeks out here and I’m trapped in a single room while the air scrubbers try to clean up the thing that I fucked up and if anything goes wrong in here then I’m gonna fucking die, I’m gonna--

I’m so sorry, I’m so--I’m so sorry about, I’m so sorry, I--I can’t do this anymore I can’t. This was supposed to be a year long thing and I’m 10 months into it and I’m already gonna fucking die out here and nobody’s gonna know and I’m just I’m gonna be 

It’s just gonna

I can’t--I can’t do this i can’t i can’t do this i can’t do this they should have sent somebody else, they should’ve sent somebody who knows what the hell they’re doing. I don’t--I don’t know how to do anything. I-I-I--

I’ve never been good at things, I just--I’m trying. I’m trying. I’m trying out here in the middle of fucking nowhere in the middle of space with nothing between me and dying except for myself and what supplies they put in this ship and it’s not working, it’s not gonna work, they should’ve sent somebody else I shouldn’t have signed up I shouldn’t

I thought it would be okay out here, why the fuck did i think I would be okay? Why did I think I would be able to do this?

I’m--I can’t--I can’t I-I c--I can’t

I am so sorry. I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry, i’m so sorry i’m so sorry i’m so sorry.

I thought I would be able to do something. I’m not an engineer I’m not even out of school yet. I-I can’t do this, I can’t fucking do this. I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry i’m so sorry i’m so sorry.

[metislog]

Week 9

[metislog]

Week 8

you know what i'm no longer asking for good weeks, i'm asking for not horrible weeks or weeks when nothing bad happens because all of the air filters broke down after the increased load and i've been stuck in the area where i've been storing my food and everything else. there's literally nothing to lie on in here except the floor and i've been doing that a lot but it's always been my choice instead of me trying to fall asleep in the same clothes i've been wearing for a week. i need a shower and half a week's worth of sleep and someone else to take over while i do those things and also to fix all of the air scrubbers so i can breathe

Dr. Parrish,

In the event that I've figured out how to communicate at faster than light speeds or soemone else has and has decided to tell me about it, here is my petition for why I should go home early:

1. Hull breach (see entry for week 5) 2. Air scrubber overload experimental error (see week 7) 3. Literally everything that's happened this week please jo let me come home early please i want to go home i've been sleeping in the storage room next to the lab for the past five days because the air scrubbers completely broke down in the main part of metis and i can't leave without risking CO2 poisoning unless i'm in a space suit which is in the robot bay where EVAs can be done because of course it is

if you don't hear from me in a week, send help. maybe it'll get to my desiccated corpse.

[metislog]

Week 7

Okay who the fuck did I piss off because this is the second thing that's happened in the past 3 weeks and I'm on week 7 of this mission. At this rate I am literally going to die out here and no one's going to know for another year. Is this because of hubris? I think I should be able to blame hubris for this.

So I haven't slept much. I haven't been able to sleep much. It's been an issue. I broke some petri dishes and I closed off the microbiology lab to get the air scrubbers to clear it out and do the disinfectant procedure and then some of the air scrubbers broke down so I've had to replace those and the air's been more CO2 heavy since then so I've been moving slower and even when I do sleep it's not good sleep. I just want to have one good week. One week where something doesn't go wrong and I don't end up sitting on the floor in tears. I want to be able to talk to people when things go wrong and have someone tell me that things are going to be okay or someone else to deal with something while I try and get some sleep because I've been awake for the past 20 hours and it's wearing on me. I feel like I'm going to die. I'm just gonna keel over and in a year someone's gonna find this ship and it's just going to be me and 3 robots and a corpse and a bunch of bacteria that've probably taken over the entire ship by now. Or at least their petri dishes and then probably died out when they ran out of agar.

"here lies Feldra: almost a proper scientist died because ve made too many mistakes in a row"

And I almost got my feet cut up by the glass but I managed to sweep up before that happens. There's not really any good way to dispose of trash so I took one of my socks and now it's my glass sock so I can use it as a weapon in case of a crew mutiny. Which I guess would just be me hitting myself in the face with a sock full of glass.

Okay. Here's hoping that next week is going to be better or else I'm going to have to start figuring out how to get home early.

[metislog]

Week Six

I had a dream last night that I was alone in my under grad dorm from my sophomore year. And it wasn’t quite right, like there were doors where there aren’t doors and common areas that don’t exist because it was a dream. And there was no one else there. Like it was completely silent and I tried to look out a window but I couldn’t find any and all of the doors were locked. So I tried to find my room and once I got there I realized I had a bunch of keys and they all unlocked the same door but differently? Or they were supposed to because every time I unlocked the door it was just space and nothing else and I could feel a tug towards it and I wouldn’t be able to catch my breath and I woke up at like 3am panicking and I had to cram myself into my closet to be able to sleep again.

It’s been a bad week.

I want to go home.

[metislog]

Week Five, first incident. 

[transcript is under the cut]

So first off well and second of all fuck so mark those things down. Um. There was an incident this week and it's not a good incident like finding some extra good protein packs or something like that but incident implies that it's a bad thing so I don't even know why I'm clarifying that. [deep sigh] So, you know uh space is big? Um. Space is big And the odds of something hitting Metis are really small and the odds of something hitting Metis and ripping a hole in her hull are even smaller and both of those things happened a few days ago. I've been dealing with it ever since. Um. The hull breach was in the rec section, on the side with the air lock. So there's the um side with the robots, um Corinthian, um Ionic, and Doric and right next to that is the rec area with the pool table that I don't know how to use. Um so it's the side with the airlock which made getting the robots to do an EVA pretty easy but the entire section's been locked down, the entire recreation section. And I don't know if they're going to be able to repair it or if I should save those materials for if something worse happens later which I really hope it doesn't because this is like the least essential part of the ship. Like I need the robots to do EVAs and I need the food section for food and I need the engine for going and I need the microbiology section for the project I'm supposed to be doing and I need the sleep section for where I sleep. [sigh] And I didn't even use it that much but it's a reminder that I'm a single person and the only thing between me and the endless vacuum of space which will kill me in minutes is a bit of metal and a whole lot of luck. and it's only week five and I've only been out here for five weeks and already part of the ship is completely broken and i can't even tell anyone Like. Like you're reading this, you're listening to this but it's been a year since I've sent this message I don't even know if I'm still alive like. [heavy breathing] okay okay okay okay okay okay okay

Um. Virus cultures are still doing fine Um. Corinthian was the one i sent out to do the EVA to check the damage. something in the rec section is blocking the hole in the. The hole in the hull to keep it from depressurizing further and I've locked it all off so like it can't do any more damage.

Um it's just been a bad week I just want to go back to bed and not think about how many weeks are left in this mission because I'm not even close to halfway done. I'm still in month two.

Hey, uh, Dr. Parrish, note this down, being alone for 5 weeks really sucks! It sucks. I miss my TA students, oh, and some of them are just terrible and I miss them I miss being able to talk to people. and I miss my roommate and I miss my snakes. And.

I just want to be able to lie down in my own bed without worrying about waking up not being able to breathe. Or alarms going off in the middle of the night and knowing that something is wrong and I'm not going to be able to do anything about it. Look, I’m not an engineer. I'm. I'm barely a microbiologist and so many things can go wrong in space. Space is terrible we should not go to space i should not be in space I want--I want to go home. and god.

It's gonna be another like 47 weeks until I can lie down in a bed without worrying that if I fall asleep i'm gonna...die because something's gonna go wrong

Ah fuck.

Okay. I. I gotta get up. From the floor. In the microbiology lab which is where I just hang out now i guess and eat something and check on the cultures again because I've just been sitting in here but I haven't been able to concentrate enough to do any work and i guess make sure nothing else has gone wrong.

Okay. Okay okay. Okay. Okay.

Talk to you later.

[metislog]

Week Four

Hey uh who decided to make things worse? I’m a month into this. It’s been like 30 days or however long a month is and I’m still on the floor of the microbiology lab with 50 samples that still don’t have names. Nothing’s gone wrong or anything, everything’s still working fine. I’m just tired and alone. And talking to myself a lot which isn’t a bad thing but everything echoes in here. I want to put up padding or something on the walls to make them less cold but I don’t have a lot of options there. Maybe I can plaster the walls with pages from my lab notebook once I’m through this one and everything’s recorded. “Oh, yes, here’s day 23 when Feldra fell asleep in the middle of taking data. And again the next day and the day after that wow it’s so good we decided to send vis up there to be alone for a year wow”

They put a pool table in here. I’m one person and I’m also bad at pool. I’ve never played pool. And the EVA bots can’t leave their holding area since that’s where the airlock is and they won’t fit through the doorway out so I can’t even figure out how to program them to play me and the viruses can’t do that either and also can’t leave the microbiology lab safely. So instead it’s just me and a big stick trying to hit some things and mostly missing. Maybe I’ll move my lying on the floor time to being in the rec room or the engine room or the place where I sleep.

 Okay. 1 month down, 11 to go. Things can get worse so I’m not going to tempt fate or anything but I hope I get a bit of a break.

[metislog]

Week Three

Things are actually looking up. I think the air filters are getting to me a bit but apparently that’s supposed to go away after a few weeks so fingers crossed. I still don’t have names for all of the samples. There’s a lot of them. There’s potentially too many of them but it’s not like I designed this experiment or anything. If you want to complain about this to someone, send everything to Dr. Parrish (please don’t call her dr. perish, only post docs are allowed to do that). 

“Dear Dr. Parrish,

Feldra keep sending a billion messages to people who won’t get them for another year. Maybe you should consider bringing vis back home early so that ve stops annoying all of us. Also, I’ve heard that ve has named vir EVA robots after types of columns which is probably a sign of mental decline. Also, ve’re lying on the floor of the microbiology lab which is probably going to kill them some day.

Best, [your name here]”

She designed this experiment and nominated me to go. I accepted and everything but I didn’t expect things to be as disheartening as they were the first two weeks. Maybe things are going to get better from here.

[metislog]

Week Two

So out of the first two weeks this has definitely been the worse one. Nothing dramatic has happened or anything but it’s starting to set in that I’m not going to have anyone to talk to for another 50 weeks and all of the messages back to me are going to be out there in the void somewhere and I could die out here and no one would even know.

I gave all the bots names. There’s three of them: Doric, Ionic, and Corinthian. I checked the manual and I’m not actually allowed to stick anything on them so I put the labels above their berths where they hang out when they aren’t outside. No disasters have happened yet. The ship’s still working fine, I haven’t been hurt. It’s just getting lonely.

Also, turns out, microbiology is boring as hell if you’re just sitting around watching cultures grow. I haven’t given them names yet since there’s 5 sets of 10 and that’s 50 more names than I can come up with right now. I’m lying on the floor of the microbiology lab right now which probably isn’t the best thing to do when there are virus cultures above me.

And I’m starting to miss people and really trying to not think about that too much because then I’ll end up lying here all day and I need to eat something. Maybe I’ll name cultures after people from home.

[metislog]

Week One

Things were okay. I won’t say that they’re great because the first week of any long project is bad and you can just see the next 51 weeks ahead of you and if things were a little bit bad at the beginning then there’s no way that they’re going to get better.  Writing things down helps some. I’ve already started talking to myself a bit so things seem less lonely, even though I’m just talking to the EVA bots and the viruses in the microbiology lab. They didn’t give me a label maker but they did give me a bunch of tape and I think next week I’m going to give everything a name so I can stop calling the EVA robots by their serial numbers and make things feel more like a home. I am going to be here for another 51 weeks.

[metislog]

Personnel File: Feldra Maline-Sdelle

Age: 25 Occupation: Lab Assistant (managing long-term projects having to do with microbiology) Adviser: Dr. Justine Parrish Gender: Other (ve/vis pronouns) Personal Statement: This mission, while long, is important to determining the viability of microbiomes in  artificial and/or low gravity environments. This is also a test of long term life support systems with robotic aid and the effects of isolation on the human psyche. My journey will take one full year during which I will have no contact with anyone else. I am prepared to take this mission head on and I hope that it is successful.

[metislog]

The spaceship Metis