You’re making it very hard to think.

Timeline/World: New York City – Surviving Earth
Characters: Nave Morgan
Race: Human
Age: 26
Final Word Count: 539 words

---

Some believe that there only are ‘two kinds of people.’ I beg to differ, I’ve met loads of different people but that’s not really the point. I think that, in a situation like today’s, there might very well be only two kinds of people; well, maybe actually three. There will be those who will stop in realization and either apologize or just stay quiet, those who will stalk off because you think you’re the one who’s done the wrong or the third group, the one currently annoying the hell out of me, the group who’ll keep up, despite you asking them to stop.

The issue with Ithai is that he knows he’s annoying. He thrives on that particular fact and he’s made it his mission to annoy someone different every single day. I’ve watched him, I’ve had to. He’s been assigned to my team for a few months now and everyone hates him but he’s an otherwise hard worker. I think that’s the primary issue is that he works hard, he’s good at what he does but the mouth on him never stops. He just talks and talks and talks… while working. So this is a dilemma.

A somewhat ugly one because several members of the team have threatened to leave if he doesn’t get transferred elsewhere but it’s really out of my hand. While I call these folks my team, I’m not the one who gets to decide who stays and who goes, who does and does not do the job. The only thing I could do is lie that he’s shit at the job and my sort of boss would want to know why I didn’t ask for this transfer before. I don’t lie very well, not in cases like these.

I just wish he’d shut up. He’s distracting the rest of the team and I am pretty close to talking it out with the boss for that reason. It might not be a viable reason but if he’s distracting the whole team, we’re not getting the job we’re supposed to get done and then what? Nothing good can come out of this and it’s been this way for months. I figured that like most trolls because that’s what he is to me, a troll like that internet kind before it all went kaput, he’d get tired of this shit and move on but he still manages to get a reaction out of everyone he bothers, so he’s still not tired of this.

I’m pretty sure Evan would have already tried to knock sense into him if he’d had to deal with this. We’re rarely working the same shifts at this point but I guess that doesn’t really matter, I’m glad he doesn’t have to endure this as he’d have gotten in trouble with the guy much sooner than anyone would have wanted.

Maybe just a few more days, a few more days and if he keeps that shit up, I’ll have to report him. He works hard and he works well but he’s a nuisance to the team. There’s no winning in this situation and it doesn’t feel so good to have to be the one to do this but someone has to do the dirty work.

If I hadn’t held you back, who knew what would have happened?

Timeline/World: Darkness of Space – Crewmates
Characters: Percival Crawford
Race: Genetically Modified Human
Age: 27, physically about 22
Final Word Count: 549 words

---

He’s always been high energy and I’ve never really been able to understand where it all comes from. He’s a tiny ball of wonderfulness and it’s been something to learn more about him and the crew when I first landed with them but all that extra energy, and I gotta say anger in certain situations, has a source that I’ve yet to discover, despite the fact that we’ve been together for more than a decade, now.

The one thing that does bother me is that he doesn’t always think things through, he’s very impulsive but it does get things done. I’ve had to learn to be his voice of reason most of the time. I mean, it’s not so bad, it really isn’t.

Though since we’ve come to this planet, after the initial issues, things have calmed down in a way I never really thought would be possible. In pairs, we still go out there and back into the darkness of space every now and again, mostly for small things that we can’t get anywhere else but otherwise, we’re settled here, we leave a life that I never thought would be mine.

I haven’t really had to be his conscience since and I wasn’t sure how I felt about it at first. It was such a foreign sensation. I mean, for months, years really, I’d had to keep an eye on how things were and reason with him to think twice about the plans that were being set out because he would have gone right in there, guns blazing and ready to get it on… but what about the very high and real possibility of getting hurt, of not coming back to me, of not coming back to any of us?

I mean, I get it. We were—are?—space pirates (so to speak!), it was what we did. Transport goods and people, not always legally, ensure their safety; get everything from departure A to landing point B so we could get enough credits to get by and enough credits to feed the crew and all. We don’t do that a whole lot anymore. Still a little but not much, money isn’t really a necessity when we can grow most everything we need and meat isn’t very difficult to come by.

I still remember seeing his eyes light up when I gave him that plate of his favourite wood; it had been worth the mock-slaving I’d done in the kitchen that day just to see him smile like that. I think I’d do almost anything for him and it was frightening at first but not so much anymore. What’s still somewhat frightening is just how deeply I still feel for him. I’d heard so many horror stories while still stuck where I’d been born, stories about the flames of love diminishing until completely extinguished over the course of usually not that long. I was a little afraid this would happen to us but it didn’t. A decade later and I still can’t get enough of cuddling up next to him when we sleep or waking up at his side in the mornings.

No, this has nothing to do with the fact that he’s a little furnace and I crave the heat—well, maybe just a tiny little bit.