Groundwork

“This is how I see it. If you asked me six months ago what I’d be doing now, I’d have exactly one item right.” Over the past few days, the routine had fallen into Carbon feeding him and then disappearing for long periods of time. She was giving him regular updates on what she was doing in regards to the engines. So far it was mostly cleaning up the damage, with the occasional technical task that went way over his head.

Dinner Conversation

“I cannot understand how so fractured a society managed to reach space.” Carbon shook her head and offered up the straw to the bag of food to him again.

“I hear that a lot.” He took a pull of passable beef stew and swallowed. It had been covered in school, actually. They - the Tslao, Eohm, and Tkt - all had apparently homogeneous cultures. The Tslao in particular had a difficult time wrapping their heads around the panoply of humanity. “Not that specifically, but something similar.”

Working Order

After things settled down and Carbon had departed again, autosurgeon still latched on to her abdomen, Alex managed to get some sleep.

Then he woke up hungry.

Given that his injuries didn’t extend much beyond his limbs, the mediboard should have extruded a feeding tube into his nose and been squirting a food-like substance directly into his stomach. Not exactly a pleasant thing to consider, but it took care of the issue of starvation.