The Texas Renegade Returns

December


Saturday, December 1

Housekeeping

All this morning I've focused on Fort Cass. First I searched it properly, and took anything that looked useful up to the roof. The bottom of every room is thick with muck, dust and the remains of ancient bug-nests. I'm being extra careful in case of spiders. Or, y'know, mind-controlling tentacle monsters.

Metal objects come in two types: the things that fall into flaky red crumble when I pick them up, and the things which are green-black but whole. Most of the green-black things seem to be decorative, unfortunately. A pretty statue of a pippin, which I've adopted for company. What might be a belt buckle. Some cups. No knives so far, let alone needles. I don't think the tower was a place people lived, but perhaps a place they worked, or a look-out.

After my search I kicked all the big rubble out of the top level and swept it out using the most bodged-up attempt at a broom ever. The handle fell straight off a jug I found, but it would hold water so I sloshed and swept and scraped the floor, and knocked down all the cobwebs. Not too bad.

Next on the agenda are hairy sheep. I spotted them on one of my trips to the lake: a little flock had come down to the bank to drink. They were north, out beyond the buildings, and wandered off when I went near them. I'm pretty sure they are sheep, since they looked woolly, but they had horns, and long hair growing in the wool. The horns make me a bit nervous, but I'm hoping I can go and cut some wool off them. Unless they have pointy teeth, in which case I'll pass.


Sheepses

The hairy sheep are guarded by great big hairy rams. All of them except the little ones have horns, but the rams have big twirling ones, and scarred foreheads from bashing up against each other or anything silly enough to come near their ewes. I bet the ewes would give me a good knock too, and in the end I decided not to risk any of them. They might have been domesticated once, but they're not keen on people now.

I still came back with a haul of wool, though. The sheep live on the hills north of town, the biggest unforested patch of ground I've seen so far. Other than a few trees, the grass is broken up by rocks and berry bushes. These are a different sort to the tearberries, also green but going on pink. More sour than cranberries, so I'm guessing they're not ripe yet either. Anyway, the important thing about them is they're thorny, and snag anything which comes near them.

For the price of a few scratches I filled my backpack with tufts of wool, crammed in hard, and there's plenty more back there. The wool is yellow and grotty, but a huge step up from string made out of grass stalks. I have a thousand plans for it, but first on the list is cleaning it. Which means tomorrow I'm going to have to bite the bullet and try to make fire.

If I can manage fire, I should get lanolin as well as clean wool. I don't exactly know what I'll do with the lanolin – keep my skin nice? – but it can't hurt to have it.

Sunday, December 2

Moonfall

Last night was only the second time I've seen the moon. This time it was full.

I was still sitting on the roof of Fort Cass when it rose. All the buildings were slowly picked out in blueish white and it was like looking down at a ghost of a town, everything a shimmering mirage, not real at all. The circles in the centre of each roof became the brightest part of each building, until it looked like the light was flowing out from them. And it was. I was sitting right next to one, and didn't know whether to stay or run when a thick mist began to creep out from the centre circle. But who could not find out what it was like to touch?

About a year ago I was friends with Perry Ryan. Her parents were hardly ever home, and she liked to drink and smoke. The smoking I wasn't so keen on, but I thought the drinking was great. It made me feel like I had a personality. I really loved it until Alyssa dragged me out of a party at Perry's house and woke me up enough to tell me I'd been snogging Matt Wilson. The kind of jerk who takes photos. Alyssa went all Mum on me thanks to that, and no more Perry parties.

So the way that cold blue light made me feel warm and happy wasn't exactly new, and I curled around the circle like it was a hot water bottle and let myself enjoy it. After that, I was quickly into the everything's a blur stage. I don't know what made me go looking for more. But I went downstairs (barefoot!) and then to a place I'd only glanced at before, an amphitheatre of step-like whitestone seats in the middle of town. When I'd looked at it during the day, the place had been infested with cats, but that night there was just the light. Gallons of it, drifting off all the buildings and washing into the amphitheatre where a huge version of the circles was glowing so strong the light rose in a column. I went and stood in it, of course, and tried to drink the air, which was more like a heavy fog than a liquid. I've never felt better or happier or more alive than last night, standing there with my arms outstretched and my mouth open, inhaling and swallowing light.

So. I woke up, still feeling really damn good, curled in the centre of the amphitheatre. No hangover. It was mid-morning, sunny. My mouth was dry and the arm I was lying on had pins and needles, but otherwise just Cass, feeling amazed at what had happened.

The amphitheatre is cat central. Their home base, just as the tower's mine. There's dozens of them, all slinky, big-eared, mostly grey tabby but a sprinkle of other colours. No fluffy Persian types here. Some really cute kittens, but the whole lot so feral and wild I wouldn't dare try and pick one up. I got myself out of their territory as quickly as I could, and then because I was feeling energetic I walked back along the lake to a stream I'd passed, and watched otters. It's hard to focus on practical plans when you've spent the night drinking the moon.

Nothing about the moon

Before my attempt at fire, I collected another pack of wool and hunted around for something big and metal which didn't look like it would instantly fall to pieces. I ended up with this flat blue and green bowl which was hell to move since I could only just lift it, and had to put it down every ten steps. I didn't want to risk breaking it by trying to roll it and don't know how it will hold up to having a fire built around it. I'm setting the fire up down on the lake's edge, for ease of access to water.

I wish I knew how to make soap, so I could clean up properly. Even though I wash every day, there's a layer of greasy grime all over me, and the less said about my hair the better. If I can get the fire started, I'll at least have hot water to wash in, before I add the wool. The IF is the big problem here. I tried magnifying sunlight with bits of glass, but either the glass isn't clear enough or the sunlight's not strong enough. I'm having a rest right now after taking up the stick rubbing challenge. I can make the sticks heat up, but all I end up with is hot sticks and very tired arms. I shredded a page of history notes before I started, but I'm going to tear it all up smaller and try again.

Department of Acquisitions

So I have a fire. I'm not altogether sure what to do to stop it from going out overnight, or if it rains. It made me realise that these houses don't have chimneys or fireplaces. My wool-boiling went along merrily, and I now have a lot of very wet wool, and a little scummy yellow stuff I ladled off the top. I've spread the wool out to dry.

While it was cooking I made a start on more mats. I want to cover both the floor and the windows. I'm not sure what to do with the top of the stair to the roof. There would have been something which sealed it nicely before, but I don't think I can make a waterproof mat.

I've never been particularly great at arts and crafts. Not useless, but I'm nothing close to as good as Mum. I'm too impatient. I start out with neatish little stitches, then they get bigger and untidier. But I'm going to make myself a clean wool nest and a blanket and I don't care if it's the ugliest thing around. And I'll fix up my room, and explore this town and get everything useful I can find.

And then–?

My long term options really suck the life out of any feel-good attempt.

Monday, December 3

The Sad Ignorance of Modern Youth

I've seen people shear sheep on TV. And I've seen a picture of a spinning wheel. I know a spindle must be pointy because princesses can prick their fingers on them. The mechanics of how wool goes from fleece to thread, though, is something else. And what is carding? When does it happen?

Anyway, turning all the wool into thread and then trying to weave with it is just beyond me. It would take a century even if I knew what to do. Making a big pile of clean wool so I have something soft to sleep on is part of the plan, but I'm also going to have a shot at making a felt blanket. Of course, felt-making was another thing no-one bothered to teach me, but my best guess is that it might work like making paper, and that at least I've seen someone do.

I thought about it this morning, while collecting more wool and chasing sheep. The sheep, the ewes at least, aren't as aggressive as I thought, though they're skittish as anything. I targeted the middle-sized ones, that don't seem quite fully grown, but aren't being babysat by their mums (and don't have much horn!). My paper scissors aren't nearly as effective as shears, but I can get nice big hunks by sitting on the sheep's back and chopping away. All morning collecting wool, and now I have a massive pile of the stuff and am working my way through boiling it while trying to make a mould for the felt.


I'm using the road for the base, a section of large squares where none of the stones have been displaced. Smaller stones and a log gave me an outline of a big rectangle, and I'll lay out a nice even layer of wet wool and then squish and mush it as flat as I can and let it dry.

I don't know if they use any glues when making felt. Probably, knowing my luck. Just pressing the wool together won't be enough – I need to make it stick together. I may have to do a whole bunch of different attempts, adding different things to the mix, but the first time around I'm going to try without additives. Just lots of water, and heat. I figure boiling all the clean wool again, for a really long time, and stirring it up, might make it break down and go gluey and more like paper pulp. Or not. I'm just guessing, but I have plenty of wool to experiment with, and am going to go find some more big bowls to boil it in. My own lakeshore factory.

I'm so looking forward to sleeping on soft wool tonight.

Tuesday, December 4

The Pre-Industrial Mountain

Today I made another, better broom to sweep out the rest of Fort Cass. It's so stupidly hard to make tools without other tools. Try putting together a broom without large amounts of industrial glue, a nicely finished handle, the straw or whatever it is that they make bristles out of, a drill, a saw, nails, a hammer. Everything I do involves a monumental pile of preliminary tasks, and the simplest thing takes so much time.

The scale of it all got a little much for me this morning, mostly because one of the bowls I was using decided life was too hard and fell to pieces, nearly putting out all the fires and sending me ducking away before I was scalded beyond recognition. I about died of fright, then had an epic tanty and stomped off.

Till now I'd steered clear of doing more than hauling water out of the lake and washing at the edge. This place could be this planet's equivalent of Loch Ness, after all, and I'm not keen on monsters. Even in Australia, it's best not to jump into water unless a local has told you whether there's crocs or stingers or sharks. Since I don't have any locals, I've been watching the wildlife, waiting for a fin to surface or a massive toothy maw to snatch up animals which stray too close. So far I've seen lots of waterbirds bobbing about happily enough, and occasionally fish flipping in the air.

So I went swimming. The water's cold, but since the day was hot and I've been hunched over pots of boiling water, this was a good thing. In a proper story, when the heroine goes swimming naked the very handsome prince turns up to try not to watch. Complete failure on the handsome prince part, but lying back in the water staring at a sunny blue sky, I could pretend I was anywhere. Just Cass, on an extended lakeside holiday.

My school uniform has seen better days. Grubby, worn, with little holes burned in the skirt from all my fire experiments. The jacket's a bit better, since I only wear that at night. Probably I should make more of it just nightwear.

Nutbars

This diary is my volleyball. I didn't get shipwrecked, and I don't have a face painted on it, but it's what I talk to. Did Tom Hanks talk to the volleyball because he'd gone mad, or to stop himself going mad?

Reading back, I see I haven't really talked about myself very much. Me before here. I'm seventeen. Eighteen in February. I have hazel eyes and light brown hair with just a bit of a wave. It goes blondish if I stay out in the sun a lot – I guess it's probably blondish now. Using a lake as a mirror isn't very accurate. I'm 172cm tall, and usually feel a complete hulk around other girls. Mum says I have good skin, but my acne keeps making her a liar. I'm okay-looking; not model material but I clean up all right.

I like The Killers, Gwen Stefani and Little Birdy. Escher prints. Orlando Bloom. Surfing (badly!). But mostly reading. Sf&f, but almost anything really. I was going to study English, history and archaeology at university, and hopefully figure out some way to turn an Arts degree into a job. I'm an above average student, but I'm not brilliant at anything. Partly because I'd rather read than study.

My best friend is Alyssa Caldwell. I like Nick Dale, except when I don't like him. I have one brother, Julian. My Dad left when I was ten, but we see him most months. The thing I wanted most was to be witty and confident instead of just hanging about the edges whenever I'm with a bunch of people, thinking up brilliant things I could say if the right opportunity arose. Guess I don't have to worry about that any more.

Being here is amazing. I'm on a whole new world, and the moonlight is wine. Today it was rough, but I'm coping really well, honestly.

And my period's starting and I hate this. Hate it.

Wednesday, December 5

Felt

I'm now officially sick to death of wool. But I have a blanket, maybe. I'm letting it dry, hoping that it doesn't just fall to pieces when I try and pick it up.

Thursday, December 6

Tissue

Mum talks occasionally about the myth of the paperless society. She means people printing things in offices, but I'm being hit hard by a lack of paper products at the moment. With a choice of washing my butt in the lake or using leaves when I go to the toilet (not even mentioning that the toilet is a hole I scraped in the ground), I miss paper every day. My history notes didn't last long and I don't want to use this diary. Add today's blocked and dripping nose and the failure of my history classes to tell me what pre-industrial women used for their periods, and I really really miss the papered society.

So anyway, since I wasn't feeling well, I spent the morning wandering aimlessly about, scaring the pigsies and annoying the cats. There's a tunnel leading below the amphitheatre, deep enough that it's too dark for me to be keen on more than standing at the entrance peering in. The cats, at least, behave just like stray cats – they watch you, and leave if you get near. Even though there's a lot of them, they don't seem at all interested in hurling themselves at my throat or doing other uncatty things. I wouldn't dare try and pick one up though.

Festering Bag of Snot

The day's gone very black and hot. I rescued my craft project, which fortunately was nearly dry and didn't immediately fall to pieces when I picked it up. It doesn't much look like felt – more like a bunch of wool pressed flat and only just clinging together – but it's still much better than a badly woven mat of leaves. A soft, clean (faintly greenish) piece of luxury.

My blocked nose has turned into a chesty cough. By the time the storm started rolling in I felt absolutely rotten, but made myself go hunting in the nearest gardens, bringing up as much 'trusted' food as possible. I won't have to worry about water, since I still haven't managed to block the stair to the roof. I've set some bowls on the stair to catch water, and positioned my bed against the wall without a window. It hasn't quite started raining yet, but it looks like it will be bad. Like my cold.

Friday, December 7

Rain and Phlegm

All day. So hard to breathe.

Monday, December 10

Not Drowning

When I was in Year 10 I sat next to a guy named David in Science. We weren't friends, didn't socialise outside that class, but we got on well. He was funny and nice, acted the clown to hide he was shy. He moved schools the next year, and early this year I heard that he had died. He'd always had a weak heart, was occasionally sick because of it. I didn't know what to say, what to feel.

Mum says there's three bad things about dying: pain and other unpleasantries, the way your friends and relatives feel after, and the fact that you don't get to find out what happens next. Mum's an atheist – she says she's never met a religion that didn't sound made up. I'm agnostic, because I like the idea of there being something more, but the possibility of it working like Mum thinks it does – that you just stop – doesn't particularly bother me.


I don't remember very much about the past couple of days, but through it all was threaded this horror that no-one would know. That Mum would never know. And, yeah, that I wouldn't find out any of the explanations behind all this.

My family's a healthy one. Colds occasionally, minor temperatures, chicken pox. I've never been to hospital. I needed one yesterday. I don't know the name for what I had. I thought you caught colds or flu from other people, not just abruptly developed them. Whatever it was, I couldn't breathe, could barely move. I don't know what my temperature was, since I felt hot and cold at random, but I'm pretty sure I spent half my time hallucinating (unless there really were dragons and sea monsters spiralling across the ceiling).

Last night was another moonfall. The inside of the building glowed, and I could see the light misting past the windows. I couldn't tell if it was exactly the same, since I couldn't get up to go on the roof. I didn't feel drunk either – I was so out of it I'm hardly sure it happened – but I remember feeling warm and relaxed and not having to fight so much to breathe.

Today I'm not exactly better, but most of the gunk clogging my lungs is gone, and the fever, and I've managed to get upstairs to the roof, and sit here and write this, even if it's taken me half the day. Abandoned as it is, I'm so glad to have found this town. I feel vulnerable enough here. I wouldn't have survived the last few days without solid shelter. I'm feeling very small at the moment, but so glad to be breathing.

All the effort making my felt blanket, and now it really really needs a wash.

Tuesday, December 11

Not entertaining

It doesn't get light till past 10am on my watch now. And dark around midnight. Now that I'm breathing better, it seems to take forever for the night to end. All I've done so far today is lie on the roof watching the birds on the lake. I'm worried that I've hurt my eyes somehow, since random parts of the world are blurry and not quite focused.

I'm going to go down for a forage soon. If I feel stronger later, I might even try to clean my wool collection. Survivor Cass needs some time-consuming projects to keep her sane.

Not that the prospect of trying to relight my fire is anything to look forward to. That's going to have to wait more than a few days – it just takes too much concerted energy to do, and I can't even climb a flight of stairs without having to sit down.

Wednesday, December 12

It's not paranoia if they really are watching you

I'm stronger today – woke up incredibly hungry, which made me realise how little I ate while I was ill. I've been getting a lot done this morning, just by stopping and resting every few minutes.

The idea of lighting the fire is still in the way-too-much category, but I've managed to clean out my room again, and washed my wool mound and blanket. The blanket didn't like that, and has developed splits. Once it's dry I'm going to have to be careful taking it back up to my room, or I'll have felt strips instead.

While it dries I'm searching the nearest buildings. I'm increasing my collection of metal and pottery objects, though, and even have a few knives. They're not very sharp, and the handles have all fallen to pieces, but I have a few ideas on how to fix that. In a few days I'll have a go at making covers for the windows. I also want to make another blanket: if it wasn't such a lot of work I'd make a mound of them. Though I suppose I'll have plenty of time to try.

My eyes are still strained. Not everything is blurry, and not all the time, but I'm starting to wonder if I'll end up needing glasses. That's annoying, but I'm more bothered by a sense of being watched all the time. I'm forever feeling there's someone standing just behind me, or trying to catch movement out of the corner of my eye.

It's not the cats, or not so far as I can tell. There's a few about, but they've never been very interested in me so long as I stay away from their amphitheatre. I've been taking a lot of interest in the birds, hoping they have some nests in convenient spots. After weeks living mainly on red pears and washews I'm really interested in the thought of eggs. I'm also going to experiment more with some of the other possible foods I've found – I've been a bit too scared after the vomiting day, but now I'm starting to wonder if missing out on some of the food groups was the reason I was so sick.

Today's mantra

There are no black things

Creeping

In the corner of my eye

And

There are no claws

Glinting

In the shadow of that door

But

There's nothing wrong with

Me

I'm just fine, I'm

Sane

Normal

Not seeing things.

Friday, December 14

Laying their plans

Mum has a CD of this old musical version of War of the Worlds. On that, the Martians make this incredible noise, this 'uulllllaaaaa' howl which is so totally unnatural, not a noise anything on Earth would make.

I'm looking for tripods on the horizon.

The noise isn't the one from the CD, of course, but it is super weird. A mournful wail so deep I feel it more in my bones than my ears. I'm sitting on the roof of my tower, listening, watching, but I can't see where it's coming from. It sounds like the hills are moaning.

Whatever it is, it's big. Could even dinosaurs make a noise like this? After spending the last couple of days convinced that something's been watching me, I was creeped out enough already. I wish tonight was a moonfall, or that I'd at least figured out a way to make a light for overnight. I'm not up for fire-lighting. I'm lying here with my pippin statue, pretending it's company.

At this point, I can't decide whether it would be better to be going nuts, or to really have things lurking around every corner, stalking me.

Mouse-like

Is there any difference between being eaten by a bear or a big cat and being eaten by a huge and spooky monster? The monster might even be quicker. You could say that the bear would be more 'natural' I suppose – but that's just familiarity. Bears and cats are the predators which are real to my world, but does it make a difference if the teeth belong to a dragon?

There might be monsters that kill you slowly, though. Or, if there is any kind of soul or afterlife, things which kill you 'wrong' so that your soul is damaged as well.

So can you tell I spent the night obsessing over what was going to come galumphing up to kill me? For all that, it was a good night. The noise stopped when the sun went down, and everything felt lighter somehow. The feeling of being watched had gone, and then the animals came back. I hadn't realised, but the more I felt I was being watched, the fewer animals I saw. Like they were all hiding, while I wandered stupidly around.

The town's main population is all on the smaller side. Sometimes the grey terriers show up and chase things, or the deer or mondo elk wander through, but I don't think they like staying here. It's very open compared to the forest. Birds dive-bomb the little animals and it's easy to see anything approaching if you're high up. What bushes and trees there are aren't so big and thick that anything large could go any distance without being spotted. If the Ming Cats hunt here, they do it at night.

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 towel: 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.

The door is locked, but I found a cupboard which had clean clothes in it (underpants, grey tights/pants and a loose white smock). Other than that, there was only a whitestone shelf before the window and a chair before it which makes me think it's meant to be a narrow table. I tried knocking on the door, but not in a frantic I'm-panicky-and-bothersome way, and searched about, but there was nothing to do except stare out the window. At least my eyes have decided to stop being blurry.

No greenery visible. I can't guess why these people all live mounded up here when there's acre upon acre of lake and forest left to some cats. I keep trying to spot anything which will show me that it's definitely the same planet. But there's nothing but whitestone buildings and water, and it's too cloudy to see sun or moon. Quite a lot of futuristic air traffic. I bounced up and down for a while, thinking that maybe the gravity was a fraction less, but if there's a difference it's subtle enough to be dismissed as imagination.

None of my belongings were with me, not even my watch, so I don't know how long I sat around, but finally a man showed up with a tray of food. He was wearing the same sort of uniform as the rest, but in shades of purple and violet, and was the first person who acted like I was interesting rather than a little problem which had to be tidied away. He gawked at me, in other words, and asked a bunch of questions I had no way of understanding or answering, all in the time it took him to cross and put the tray on the table. One of the greensuits was waiting outside, or I expect he would have stayed and gawked some more. I felt like I was one of those kids found raised by wolves or something.


I dove on the food as soon as the door closed. There were two slices of warm yellow cakey stuff. Not sweet. Some kind of heavy bread? Fruit in jelly where all of the fruit pieces were like butterfly-shaped grapes. A stack of vegetables in sticks – green and white and yellow sticks, all apparently growing naturally to the thickness and length of my little finger. The yellow ones tasted like carrot trying to be celery, the white was zingy and the green very salty. I spent ages on the last of the grapes, trying to work out if grapes would really naturally grow to look so much like butterflies. They tasted like vanilla apples with grape texture.

The way I shovelled all this down my throat, you'd never guess I once wouldn't eat anything other than chips and gravy for dinner. I didn't grow out of that till I was in high school and still occasionally annoy Mum with things I'd refuse to even try. But when you've spent a good half hour pondering whether to eat the wormy bits of your red pears for the protein – and even tried a bite – then no-one gets to call you fussy any more.

After an age the pinksuited person came back and took the tray, and the greensuit gave me my backpack, so now I have this diary again and my watch and everything. Even my clothes, clean but very battered. And next?

Unobservant

After hours stuck in this room I finally realised that the cupboard wasn't the only internal door. I probably wouldn't have even worked out the cupboard if it hadn't been left slightly open. When it's shut, there's just a bit of a dint and if you push the dint the door moves in then slides into the wall. So eventually I spotted another dint, over near the more obvious door to the hall. And it was a door and I have my own bathroom.

Then, after the world's longest shower, I was sorting through my things and I found they'd somehow recharged my mobile. Even though I'd kept it off almost all the time, the battery had run down after a couple of weeks. I immediately played all my song ring tones, over and over. Five whole songs, and a few partial songs. That made me cry.

And now I have games! No mobile signal whatsoever, which isn't a surprise, but trivial entertainment for the win!

You too can have an exciting career in medicine! Join our Test Subject Program today.

Two greensuits came and escorted me to two greysuits: the same woman and a younger man. I think I'm in some sort of security wing of a military hospital. Everyone's in uniform.

The headache from that injection is worse, and wasn't helped by more poking and prodding and taking blood samples and putting me in odd machines. It was very tedious, interesting only because I couldn't see any way they were controlling all but a few obvious devices.

I tried pantomiming that my head hurt and that I would like some Aspro thank you very much, but though they seemed to understand, they just looked sorry and shook their heads. I'm guessing shaking your head means no here. It's hard to describe how my head feels – like a blocked sinus, but above my left eye. It's started to make my sight go all grey with wormy wiggles. I may be having a bad reaction to whatever they were immunising me against, but they didn't seem at all surprised or worried during my exam.

I'm going to have to lie down.

Tuesday, December 18

Skullburster?

I spent the day curled in the bed, being a complete sook about this headache, and not at all friendly when the greysuits came to check on me. I totally feel like a lab rat. I'm sure they've got cameras in here. I can't even turn out the lights. No switches.

It feels like the front-left of my head is pushing out from the inside. Having showers helps a little, or maybe I'm just feeling the need to make up for lost time. The soap is liquid and very spicy-scented. When I'm not showering I'm peering in the mirror in the bathroom. My left eye looks really bloodshot, but not swollen. And I look horrible. I always thought it would be nice to be really thin, but I'm haggard. I had no idea I looked this bad. It's only been a month.

Outside is all storms, the lightning strange and unreal because the thunder is blocked out. The water looks very black and mountainous and I'm glad I'm not in it, but I'm starting to wish I wasn't here. I just can't figure these people out. They weren't at all surprised to find me in that town, though it's obvious none of them recognised my English. One of the shots they gave me seems to have helped bunches in clearing the last of that super-cold away, and they've fed and clothed me and put me in a room. And injected me with something which I can't believe was just an immunisation. Do they find so many random people from other planets that it's normal to use them as test subjects? They're not even trying to figure out a way to communicate with me.

If my head hurt less I'd have the energy to be scared.

Wednesday, December 19

A Vision of Walls

My eyes are going strange again. Not blurriness on random objects this time, but lines. Symbols. It's like I'm seeing an outline of this room overlaid over the room itself, with squiggles in odd spots. I don't know whether to be worried about seeing things, or if there might be some kind of hologram being projected into the room.

My head no longer feels like it's going to explode, though it still aches a fair bit.

Dotty

My headache is more or less gone, but now I have a dot. A green dot.

As hallucinations go, this is an unwavering one. It looks like a piece from a game of checkers, floating at eye height. I can't touch it, and it doesn't seem to cast a shadow. It's been there at least ten minutes.

I've heard of people who see sounds as colours. And of brain tumours pressing in places they shouldn't be and causing problems. The question of what that injection did to me has gone beyond scary now.

The other thing I've noticed is that it's still night-time. It was day before the storm, but I haven't seen the sun since. Possibly I'm on a different world again, maybe. Is the gravity less, or do I just feel more energetic than before? Has it been night for a day straight, or did I just sleep when it was light?

Thursday, December 20

A shot of words

Escorted again to the greysuits, and OW! They had me lie down on another dentist-style chair, this one with its own little helmet. I can't say I was keen, but the greensuits were waiting just outside. Is it better to be a dignified test subject, or a defiant but battered one?

I was just noticing that there was a green dot in the centre of that room too when they turned their evil torture machine on and all these words began to squiggle across the back of my eyes. If I'd thought my head was going to explode before, that was nothing to having a dictionary injected into my skull.

Someone really has to explain the concept of painkillers to these people.

I think I had convulsions. It was a bit hard to tell, but I remember them holding my arms. There was some blacking out going on as well, and a long hazy time after where they were talking about my heart rate and stuff. After a while I must have passed out properly, and now I'm back in my box.

There's a thousand thousand words sitting in my skull. They murmur at me whenever I look at anything. As I'm writing this there's an awkward echo giving me a different set of sounds, and an image of strange squiggles which I presume mean what I'm writing. I don't think I 'know' this language, but sounds are suggesting themselves to me in response to things I look at and even things I think. So I could on one level understand what the greysuits were saying, in the way you half understand those garbled train announcements, where you get the gist and guess the rest. It's not like having an English-Alien dictionary.

I can even read the squiggles I'm hallucinating around the room, in that I'm sure they read 'No Access' when I glance at them, but if I look at them closely they're not letters I recognise, let alone words. Trippy. Still, having a language poured into my skull will save a lot of time, and I'd be 11/10 pleased if my head didn't hurt so much.