First created February 1st, 2024.
Last edited August 12th, 2024.
PARTIAL DATA CORRUPTION DETECTED
OPEN FILE: ███.log y/n?
user@Peregine.Sys> y
…
…
SUCCESS
(PILOT LOG)
(DATE): █████████
(AUTHOR): Kiegan, ████
(TERMINAL ID): ██94█A███1K7
BEGIN LOG:
After all this time, I still kept that lamp lit.
Not that kind of archaic combustible fuel-burning lamps you’d see in museums and such, no way in hell I’d get one of them cleared for zero-g travel, but for one of those little battery-powered dealies you’d find in secondhand vintage joints in little nowhere towns out in the bends, it’s been going for what feels like forever since I last swapped out the ol’ double-As.
Man, still can’t believe those are still around.
Picked up the guitar again, since there’s not much else to do besides wait for nothing to happen. You wouldn’t believe how the acoustics are out here. Played around with a few old riffs I’d written back in college, you remember. Freshman year, you’d caught me out in the arboretum just screaming my heart out and strumming on rusty strings ‘till my fingertips bled, and I didn’t even notice you were there until I collapsed from exhaustion and you ran over to see if I’d kicked the bucket in the middle of the woods. Who knew working yourself to exhaustion was the best way to meet someone, yeah? You’d probably punch me for saying something like that, and yeah, it was probably deserved.
I do miss you, though. I hope you’re doing okay.
I’ve been running low on supplies lately, and the navigation system’s wrecked beyond belief, so I’ve got no idea where I am or where I’m headed right now, and it’s only a matter of time before I’m just a mass of dry bones in a spacesuit. But I’m alright, though. The lamp’s still going, so I know you’re still with me, however many lightyears away you may be. Even with how long it’s been, I still remember all the songs I’d play, and you’d sing along to. All the punkish ballads and the slow stuff. All the memories, good and bad.
That jacket you’d gifted me still hangs in my closet, and I could swear it still smells faintly of citrus and wood ash. I hope you find that CD I hid in your apartment, that little case tucked between stacks of shirts in a drawer that I’d packed full of songs I’d written for you.
I hope you don’t miss me too badly, wherever you are.
That lamp’s still burning, and I hope it keeps going, even after I’m gone.
UPDATE 1 (8/14): apparently I DID actually give this piece a name, but only in a Discord server that I shared it in on March 26th, for some reason. official title is now "a thousand synonyms for longing"
postscript: I actually had to make a couple edits for this piece specifically because of some Markdown shenanigans that broke the first couple bits where I was trying to make it seem like this entry was being accessed on a terminal by someone else, and me using square brackets in this situation caused those elements to break.
Also had to give the hypothetical spacecraft an actual name for the same reasons, since the greater-than sign translates to block quotes.
-LS