Today’s project was to block the windows on the ground floor. Fort Cass is still far from impregnable, but every bit helps. I wish my eyes would stop blurring.
Saturday, December 15
Buttered scones would hit the spot
After winding wool into a rough handle for the longest of my salvaged knives, and sharpening it by scraping it against rocks, I walked back along the lake to chop long poles of bamboo from a stand I’d passed. It was surprisingly easy, but I’m so tired now and it’s barely lunchtime. I’m the kind of lumberjack who needs nanna naps.
Sunday, December 16
OMGWTF!
There were two people in my room when I woke up.
They were standing at the top of the stair, talking to each other. Opening my eyes in the grey of just-dawn and seeing these hazy black figures, my heart gave such a thump. And I squeaked and scurried backward and then felt like a complete dick as they just looked down at me and turned out not to be monsters after all.
A guy and a girl, dressed in tight-fitting black stuff, some kind of uniform. They looked to be Asian (black hair and eyes and a creamy-gold skin, though the girl’s eyes didn’t have that fold). I couldn’t understand what they said to me, didn’t even recognise the sound of the language, but the tone wasn’t threatening. Annoyed or irritated, perhaps, but I didn’t get prepare to die vibes off them.
They were surveying my room but not touching anything, and didn’t seem too keen on getting close to me, either. I was foolishly glad I’d only just cleaned up, and all my food was neatly separated in bowls with no rubbish lying about. That I was wearing my underpants. One, the girl, started talking to me, asking questions, and I tried talking back, and was trying not to cry because they were people and even though they understood me as little as I understood them, THEY WERE PEOPLE!! It was all I could do not to scream and throw myself at them.
They had a little talk, then the guy went up to the roof and the girl gestured at me to follow her. I put on my shoes first, and packed my backpack since she didn’t seem to mind waiting around, though she kept her distance from me and kept scanning the room as if she suspected I had someone hidden behind a jar. I immediately started thinking about plagues, and wondered if that was why the town was abandoned.
She led me down to the lakeshore and stopped at a rock and pointed to me and then to the rock, and when I sat down she walked off. But that was okay because I was busy looking at the ship on the lake.
Not a boat. A narrow metal arrowhead shaped thing, creamy-grey with dark blue side sections. It’s big enough to be carrying dozens of people, and is definitely not primitive. Whoever these people are, they’re more advanced than Earth.
The two in black weren’t overwhelmingly surprised to see me here, or very interested. They acted as if they hadn’t expected to see me, and put me aside while they went on with whatever it is they’re really here for.
I saw another pair of them, also black-clad, standing up at the central bluff, but then something came out of the ship. A flat platform which floated above the water, and stopped right next to the bank where I was sitting, delivering two women, older than the pair from Fort Cass, and wearing a mix of dark green and darker green, not quite so tight-fitting as the black outfit. Again they were all business, pointing at me and then one particular corner of their platform and very stern about it.
It’s not like I was going to say no, hopping on very meek, and standing exactly where I was put. The platform began moving straight away, though I couldn’t for the life of me figure out what they were doing to control it. Maybe someone back at the ship was steering.
They talked to each other as they went back, and watched me as if they thought I was going to take a knife to them. I saw no more than a corridor of the ship before they ushered into this little box of a room, and shut the door on me. So small it’s practically a cupboard, but every few minutes it grows warmer or colder or hums. Maybe they’re irradiating me for bugs.
I’ve been here over half an hour. I wish I’d had a chance to pee before being rescued.
Monday, December 17
The excitement of butterfly grapes
It seems an age since I could write in this book, though my watch says it’s only been a day or so. Where to start?
On the ship I was finally let out of my cupboard by a woman in yet another uniform – grey and darker grey with a long pale grey shirt over the top. Just like a doctor’s coat, so no surprise that she was some kind of doctor and gave me a medical exam and a bunch of injections. Most of the injections didn’t involve needles, but something like a compressed air cylinder. The worst was directly to my left temple, which ached, and then ached worse, and now is a dull persistent pain.
She talked a lot while she peered and prodded, and we did a little pantomime of her pointing to herself and saying "Ista Tremmar" and me going "Cassandra". Then the best part of the day beyond being rescued: a shower and a toilet (hilarious pantomime explanations). The toilet was weird – it was a form-fitted bench with a hole, which doesn’t flush or have any water in it – you close the lid after you use it and if you open it again it doesn’t smell like it’s been used. I couldn’t properly see the bottom, but it looked like an empty box. The toilet paper is thickish, pre-moistened squares like baby wipes. And the shower – warm water and soap!
I wanted to stay in there forever, but after Ista had gone through this pantomime of pointing to it and making totally incomprehensible gestures, I’d decided I was supposed to be quick. No toweclass="underline" the ceiling blew a gale of hot air at me when I turned the water off.
There was a white shift to wear, and I had to put all my clothes in a plastic bag. I couldn’t find a comb or toothbrush, so finger-combed my hair into some sort of order before Ista led me off to a room full of chairs. In the medical room, everything was designed to be tucked away neatly and take up no more space than it had to, so I was almost expecting some kind of cattle class cramped airplane seating, but instead there were these long, padded and reclined chairs, like a cross between a dentist’s chair and a bed. There were three rows of four, each set up on its own platform. When I lay down the cushions squished themselves in around me like they were trying to hold on – the weirdest sensation ever – but it was absolutely comfortable.
Once I was settled in, Ista gave me another injection, a sedative this time. I was awake long enough to see a plastic/glass bubble thing come up around my seat, and then I was out until waking up where I am now, not on the ship, but on a bed-shelf made of whitestone with a mattress on top, in a small but not cramped room. There’s a window, plastic, unopenable and very thick, which looks out over the roof of what seems to be one huge mound of connected building: blockish and white and eerily reminiscent of the town I was in but all joined together and with only occasional windows and doors. The only other thing to be seen is clouds and a black and choppy ocean.