Middle of Nowhere

Some mornings, when she woke up, she felt like she was the dumbest person on the planet.

Being the only person on the planet didn't make it any better. In fact, that just reminded her why she so often felt like the dumbest person on the planet lately. Then again, "planet" may be too strong a word for it. She could walk from one end to the other in just under two hours, even if she counted time for suiting up and stripping down.


She sighed. That was about as exciting as it got anymore. The monthly supply ship had been automated, the live crew victims of the same budget cuts that left her stranded on this miniature rock in Triton's L5, and the Triton lander had developed a fuel leak, leaving her without even the option of wandering the abandoned colony on the moon's surface.


Then again, with the solar collector starting to look like well-aged swiss cheese, she could hardly even run the air reprocessors down there, much less lights enough to see where she was walking and with the sun four and a half billion kilometers away, even the daylight didn't help much.


She sighed again and wondered for the thousandth time why she had volunteered for this. True, the idea of leading the way for the re-establishment of the farthest colony from Earth once the recession was over had seemed quite heroic at the time, and the promise of at least monthly contact with other people had made the loneliness into a bearable future challenge, AND being the only one with the necessary technical experience who didn't have a family at home or here with her had made her the most logical choice...


But five years had come and gone, and the only things that had changed were the crayon drawings on every available wall and ceiling space and the removal of any living people from her monthly contact with the rest of humanity. If only they'd left one of the standard, speed of light vid-comms! But the company's infinite wisdom (and massive cost cutting in every possible way while the minority struggled to leave open the option for resettlement) had stripped her of even an eight hour back and forth with friends back home, leaving her instead with the dry comfort of slow-scrolling text over the TangleTalk. And who's genius idea was that name anyway?


Bah. Maybe she could sabotage something vital and finally get shipped home. But every time she did the math on that, it turned out to be about ten times cheaper to ship spare parts on the resupply flight than it did to send a capsule with supplies enough to get her home.


She glanced at the status panel, then rolled back over to contemplate the other side of the pillow and look at the dismal prospect of another five years as the dumbest person on the planet.


(Opening line courtesy of Mandy and her fantastic Writing Creatively Every Day blog! Thanks Mandy!)

"Yes... yes. This is a fertile land, and we will thrive. We will rule over all this land, and we will call it... This Land." - Wash