Dear Space Diary: Sixty-First Entry

March 12^th, 2037

2100

Dear Space Diary

All jokes aside, this is really rather unsettling. I can’t quite… Astronomical. Hehehe.

Ahem. Anyway.

It’s getting late. I should ask NASA if they have any insight into this. they’re about fifteen years behind in terms of logs, given Mary stopped sending them, but still. Maybe they can think of something. Or do a scan for weird stuff. Can they scan for that?

2107

Heading downstairs. Mary’s room is about five floors above me, so that means I’ve got… what?

2110

This room has Mary’s name on it too!

2115

And this one!

2133

The whole building. Every last room. Belongs to Mary.

What is going on? Why are all these rooms assigned to Mary? What were you up to, NASA?

2155

No time to explore every room of every building, but I’ve checked out a couple more. All the buildings I went in to had the name Mary on the name plates.

Either Mary needs a lot of personal space, or… I don’t know the or, actually.

I shouldn’t panic. It’s entirely possible there’s a reasonable, bizarre, yet plausible explanation for this, probably born out of bureaucracy, incompetence, negligence, or just plain stupidity. Yeah. That must be. NASA will know what’s going on. This is their city, after all.

2215

Back at the ship. Just forwarding the logs to NASA now, and then they’ll make everything clear.

2245

WE GOT NOTHING.

2250

…Great.

I’m going to bed.

March 13^th, 2037

0810

Woke up. It’s still dark out (will be for another 12 hours or so), but it’s technically morning, if you go by Earth time. Paste for breakfast.

There’s a depressing sentence.

NASA sent me through a large, fairly convoluted series of blue prints. These appear to be the designs that are hardcoded into the Lightdogs. Interestingly, it’s not the blue ones that do the building. They’re just the maintenance guys. Apparently the builders are white. Haven’t seen any of them yet, but then, the city looks pretty much complete over here.

Apart from the lack of water and food. You know, inessential stuff.

All NASA’s message said when they sent the files was “Page 997”. Ok, let’s take a look…

0822

Ah ha! I knew it was simple. The city is hard wired to dole out accommodation to registered travellers. Due to a bug in the programming (which they’ve highlighted for future repair), in the event that there are less travellers than rooms, it simply goes back to the top of the list and keeps allocating.

And with Mary the only “Registered” traveller in the system so far, she now owns every single room in the entire city. Posthumously.

Hurrah!

WE’RE WORRIED.

It’s ok NASA, I read your report. It all makes sense.

0900

YOU DON’T UNDERSTAND. WE’VE BEEN LOOKING AT THE PHOTOS OF MARY’S SKELETON YOU SENT US.

AND THAT’S NOT MARY.

Dear Space Diary

Tuesday, March 13, 2012

Sixty-First Entry

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