Evangeline Anastasia McDowell

[Bazza]

Entry#: 131
Date: 15 - 01 - 819 AS @ 22:17 SUT
Title: Untitled.

Here I was thinking for a ironically brief period that our lives had regained a vague semblance of originality to them. Locating, sorting, collecting and recycling bits of the leftovers of the Dallas Incident. The old salvager earned herself some time away from home, flying all of us to the mining site deep inside the heart of the dark matter cloud.

Everything seemed to be going along rather routinely. We were scanning and collecting the most valuable metals and parts and stowing them away for "cleaning", whence they are made safe for handling. The dark matter outside would instantly kill any organic being were it not for the thick slabs of anti-radiation shielding the ship posesses. In relative comfort we combed through three-century old debris, scooping up whatever took my fancy.

The general ambience of the region is total deadness. Nothing lives, very little moves. Only vague whispers of light penetrate the cloud excepting the sporadic electrical discharge. As such, one particular and rather surprising standout in the day's encounters was a ship containing a living, breathing pilot, moving under its own power.

We all took some time to re-organise ourselves after being so taken aback by the appearance of this unknown entity we thought we'd seen a ghost; then we sorted out just what the hell someone else would be doing out here.

Much like us - the pilot was looking for something of value to them. After some... casual... greetings swapped beside the wreckage of Dallas Outpost, we extracted the man's actual target - A luxury liner of some description.

It just so happened by absolute chance I'd flown past one prior to the appearance of the lone pilot...

I first didn't pay it any real attention. It was a bit too big to haul off for scrapping as it was, and would have not had anything worth the risk of cutting it up. So I just left it where I found it and moved on.

I figured it was a prison liner that had been caught in the blast wave of the Dallas Incident like everything else out there; turns out it's only a very recent addition to the maelstrom, at least according to the fellow who'd found me.

He very politely threatened my life and, after letting him sweat in his poorly-shielded fighter/bomber thingo for a bit, led him to the wreck site.

Of course he once again very politely requested that I assist him to haul the entire thing out of the dark matter cloud and also very politely suggested I keep my mouth shut about it.

Whatever.

I got paid for it all, so it's no big deal.

That and... the data I flogged from Dallas is probably worth 50 times more than a towing job anyway. You wouldn't think hard drives would survive 3 centuries in a radioactive deep-freeze, but I guess Ageira did - the box they were in was only about 50 feet of solid lead thick...

As for every other matter in my life.... well, little Misaka is sound asleep in my lap with our daughter beside us doing just the same. I find myself - in between paragraphs - gently running my hands through her hair and wondering both how such a perfect angel fell onto a rotten apple like me and who to thank for such a thing ever happening.

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