185th Entry

April 13^th, 2037

0906

Dear Space Diary

…I get to detonate the bombs?

“I thought you’d like it.”

But what if I mess it up?

“I’m not asking you to rewire the things. It’s a button. You press it.”

When do I press it?

“Whenever you’d like. But now’d be good.”

Why now?

“Your pod will jump to lightspeed sometime today. The rocks will spread a bit better if the door’s open before then. But given we’re talking about distances in terms of light years; I suppose it doesn’t really matter. So whenever you like.”

Why me?

“I felt bad about launching the ships without you. I know, I know I’ve done a lot of the thinking, and the Marys have done a lot of the lifting. And I know Bobo is cuter than you are…”

Hey.

“But we couldn’t have done this without you. The Marys are going to be safe, because of you. So I guess I just wanted to say thank you.”

Oh. Um, that’s alright.

“And I know I’ve been a bit –“

Insane?

“Grumpy. I’ve just been a bit disappointed about… things. You know –“

Yes, yes I know. You don’t need to say it.

“Oh good. Because this conversation was getting really awkward.”

Getting?

0915

Ok, here goes.

…

Any minute now.

…

No problem at-

“JUST PUSH IT!”

<CLICK>

…Did it work?

“Yep.”

But nothing happened. Shouldn’t there be an explosion or something?

“…Boom?”

Ha ha.

“The ships are lightyears away. If we could hear the explosion, something would be very, very wrong.”

But how do we know it worked?

“By following me.”

0917

“I’m tracking your pod. It turns out tracking an object hurtling through the universe at faster than the speed of light requires a lot of calculations. And it turns out that trying to do this while you are also in an object hurtling through the universe at faster than the speed of light requires even more calculations. Like, twice as many. But I’m managing it.”

And you told me this…

“To remind you that I’m awesome. And a bit of a genius.”

Fair enough.

“Also, I’m rather good looking.”

How’s the ship looking?

“Sigh. Yes it’s looking good too. Now that I’ve got a link, I’ve hacked into its own cameras. We can scan from it, take pictures from it. Even control it remotely.”

Any good pictures?

“I thought you might like this one.”

Well. It’s a lot of rocks. Or comets, or something. It’s a bit streaky.

“It was taken at lightspeed. Just be happy the camera didn’t implode. But yes, it’s rocks. The bomb worked. The plan worked.”

You mean they’re safe?

“Utterly.”

What about the Zubrin?

“The Marys report it’s on track to orbit around the planet you picked.”

How do they know?

“They  have a telescope.”

Oh. So… we’ve won!

“Not yet. We still need to steal the charts from NASA. But for now, we’ve won.”

Congratulations.

“Thanks. You too.”

What now?

“Now, we sleep.”