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[MiniKitty]

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You are the one who died in that crash!

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I am alone. All alone.

I cannot find Kristoff.

He is likely dead.






I tried to find him. Took me a few days to reach the crash site. But he was not there. No corpse. Most of the debris of the Kay was already moved away. Tried to find out about what happened. Local news only reported about the crash, with little information at all. I scanned the net for Kristoff, but nothing.

I asked around in the regional hospitals, but they did not have anyone called Kristoff. Some did not even want to give me a response. It was all useless.

I decided to send him some PDA messages. No responses.







That was it.

Aspen is gone. Kristoff is gone. My two best friends are gone.







I am all alone.























I do not know what to do. My ship is gone, too. I have nothing left anymore. Everything I built up since leaving Pittsburgh is gone.

What is the point of all of this? Such an irony. I got a chance to live by fleeing from Pittsburgh. I left everything behind and just left.

And I got to meet these two wonderful people who helped me just like that. And now both are gone. And the Kay is gone.

I have nothing left.











I was wondering whether I should try to contact anyone else. Yoshiko, Lea... Kimiko? But I did not. Nothing matters anymore. It is all pointless.

I decided to stay on Denver. There was this small town I found. Between a forest and a coast. Got myself a place to stay. Not much money left on my account, but still enough to live decently for... who knows how long.

830 ended like that. Met a girl. Then another. Then another. It never went anywhere apart from them coming over to my place to hang out and just exist. One of them offered me some illegal stuff but I rejected her offer. She consumed it at my place, sometimes with friends. Before I knew it, my place became a meeting place for... people who looked for a time to relax. Some brought drinks and got drunk. Some smoked. Some did other stuff. I did not care. Most of the time, I was up in my room. I barely cared for the names of the girls.

831 went by. Apparently something happened out there in space that messed with the gate network. Nothing I cared about. At some point, I felt really lonely. I sent another message to Aspen, knowing she is dead and would never listen to it. I sent it anyways, telling her that I miss her. That I do not know what to do.

In 832, I bought a violin. Never got good at it but I learned to play a few songs. I let it slide rather quickly. A girl, Lucy, decided to stay for longer at my place. She asked me to play for her, so I did a few times. She said she liked my style. We grew closer. I never told her about what had happened.

Lucy moved in. Beautiful woman. Rather slender and short. She asked me about my age. Told her I am almost 20. She was... good.

Then, at some point, I found out she emptied my neural net account and left. At least the rent was paid for another year. Another girl moved in and she was insisting on me starting to eat other stuff than Synth Paste, so she cooked for me and some others. Took me a while to overcome my little oddity when it comes to eating food, but eventually I complied. Still, I prefer Synth Paste.

Serene stayed with me until early 833. She realized I had no interest in a relationship with her apart from a physical one. Saddened, she left, but it did not matter to me. My place turned more and more into a slum. We played games, every now and then I picked up my violin. Partying hard. Sometimes I was able to forget about everything. No Kristoff, no Aspen, no Kimiko, no Yoshiko, no Lea. No Gemini Kay. I was living the moment.

But it never lasted.

Even now, I miss them. Both Aspen and Kristoff. I wanted to have them both on the Gemini Kay with me. I wanted to have fun adventures with them. Watch Plasmaball with them. Have a harmonica duet with Aspen.

The girl in bed next to me asked me why I am so sad. For some reason, I told her. I told her about Kristoff and Aspen. That I miss them. That nothing feels real anymore. Getting drunk meant nothing. Having sex meant nothing, at least not in the long run. Nothing mattered.

When she left, in anger and frustration about my apathy, she said

You are the one who died in that crash!

Weirdly enough, that got looped in my mind, over and over again. Maybe did die in that crash.

It was a random thought, really. I did some research and ask around. And as it turned out, I did not die. As it turned out, for three years, I was a patient in a hospital. A patient kept in medical stasis...

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