Memories may be beautiful and yet…

(Penny’s voice loudly in the background)

“What are you doing? Are you doing that ECHO log thing again? You gotta put that thing down. I’m right here, you know”

(Jax’s voice can be heard, a little muffled as if turned away from the ECHO log device)

“I’ll be just a minute”

Personal log, star date… uh… one more than yesterday, I guess? I used to think I sent all those logs to Penny as a way to connect with her, to make sure she knew I hadn’t forgotten about her. To make sure she could remember there was another part of her life that wasn’t all hate and anger. But  I was wrong. These past few days in this vault, locked in close quarters, have forced me to accept some things. I think I need the logs. I skipped recording a log last night and just stayed up talking with Penny about some of the old days… and I could barely function the next day. I couldn’t remember things, simple things, like where I’d left my hat. Or the name of that short guy who got hired to work the piloting console on the bridge. I even forgot my passcode for the cafeteria! So for now, the logs will just have to happen. 

We got the place here set up comfy enough, and it is great having Penny here, even if the whole time I’m more worried about how we can get safely to this Junpai planet and get that thing out of her head. So far, no issues with charging the implant, luck has been on our side with that. I feel like some of Penny’s personality is starting to come back again, but then again, maybe I’m just imagining things? What I do know is I’ve slept a few times and still woken up, so that’s a good start.

A new worry is starting to take hold over the crew, though. I heard chatter that we were starting to run low on fuel. With a ship this big, I would have thought we’d have fuel for months, but who knows how much they burned on the way to Promethea. And I got no idea how much this will cost. Not like we can just find a starship amount of fuel out of some wreck along the way! Buggies are just so much easier to take care of…

In any case, it looks like we need to plot a course for some Dahl station to fill up the fuel tanks before we get to Junpai-7. I was worried that maybe it was Dahl that was behind some of the recent goings on,  but Penny hasn’t learned any more than I did and all she could say about the person who helped her was that they might have been a woman. We’re going to have to just hope that Dahl and Hyperion still hate each other and aren’t sharing security data right now. This ship is a little on the big side and can’t exactly hide!

It is an honor to meet him…

Speaking of hiding, I picked up on another piece of gossip while catching up with the crew. A few days ago, it seems a stowaway came aboard, likely loaded in on Promethea. Sparky was the first to notice and alerted the captain to noises in the cargo hold. Sparky was NOT interested in checking this out on her own, so Fin came along for the trip and apparently made a loud impression on our new guest. I’m told the surprise guest popped out of a cake singing Happy Birthday and asking Fin if they were Jimmy. Which of course led to making Fin incredibly happy, even making him a balloon certificate and introducing him to the birthday car.

Unsurprisingly, the new guest was somewhat worried about Fin. I’m not surprised, though. The first time I met Fin he came in screaming and jumping into lava like a deranged maniac. Not exactly a person from whom you get the calm and serene vibe from when you first meet. Our guest was probably worried that Fin was going to cut him up into birthday cake slices and serve him to the crew!

With all that’s been going on, though, Min didn’t really have time to worry about a stowaway. Especially one who introduced themselves as a legendary voice actor. It didn’t take long for Zoe to put the involuntary crew member to work. Scuttlebutt is that Zoe got this guy cleaning latrines in a velvet crush suit! I am going to have to get my eyes on that outfit, you gotta have class to wear that around here!

I briefly met the new janitor down by the vaults when he unwisely decided to do some cleaning down there. Said his name was Gibson. Actually, he said his name was the “Great Gibson”, and that it was truly an honor for me to meet him. I told him to haul out, double-checked with the crew on this new passenger, and then started looking this guy up.Not much came up on Atlas Vista, but Fin told me to use ASK TORGUE, and sure enough, up came this beauty:

I listened to some of the recordings on the site, not half bad actually. Never heard of the guy, but these types of shows ain’t exactly what’s on in Lynchwood. I showed it to Penny and she might have recognized the name of one or two of the tales, but no real clue who this fella was. I did not like the sound of “Danger on Planet Brain Slug”, given our current situation.

Penny and I talked about a lot of things these few days on route to the Dahl station, and I filled her in on some of the last few years running vaults. It paid the bills, nothing fancy, but I told her how I still hadn’t managed to find who came for us that night. Even the mercs wouldn’t give up their boss when I asked so nicely! My guess is they didn’t really know, and based on what we’ve been seeing lately, I wouldn’t be surprised. If we can’t find out who, then the question becomes: Why? Why come for a couple of law enforcers in a backwater town on Pandora? Did we arrest the wrong suit’s son or something? Or was one of the cartels we shut down part of something bigger? If we could get ourselves out of these constant life-or-death situations we might be able to spend some time digging something up.

I wonder if Zoe could get me a line into a Hyperion comms database? See who they’ve been talking to? I’ll have to ask her when we get refueled.

It’s getting late, time to hit the hay. Don’t forget nothin’!

[The ECHO log entry ends, but there is a new one immediately after it]

Okay, one little addendum of note: seems we’re ditching the ship. We had enough fumes to get us to a nearby trader planet named Hephaestus, looking for some ship dealer named Boris. The shipyard looked like the kind of dump you’d go to for spare parts, but this Gibson fella pulled some sort of strange card trick thingy making a card come out of his pocket and now the crew is looking into the secret stock! A lot of nice hulls back here, but I ain’t exactly well-versed in whether any of these will be good in a firefight. I wonder if we can bring the chef along? I can’t imagine Fin being very happy with us cutting out the ice cream availability.

Seems like we have some choices!

Image credit:

• Cover image: Rhys character from Borderlands 3 by 2K Games. Sourced from the YouTube: https://i.ytimg.com/vi/QONoCwoIfXk/hqdefault.jpg 
• Great Gibson site: Geocities style website created by Jason St-Cyr, using archival audio and photos of Vincent Price