Bringing in the Bread, Tag-Team Paralysis, and the Framing of Jason Callis

Good evening, folks.

We are officially in the evening cooldown. Today was a day of plans and pivots, an enforced tag-team medical condition, and finally putting some meat on the bones of our protagonist.

But first, the new house tradition.

👕 T-Shirt of the Day

The Shirt du Jour: A white number featuring Edvard Munch’s The Scream, but with a modern horror twist: the facial features are replaced by a WiFi symbol, with the words "No WiFi" plastered across the top. Highly appropriate for a day spent designing a universe where the internet completely dies at the edge of a solar system.

Act I: Marvin Gaye and the St Helens Pivot

The plan for the day was a geographic triangle in Marvin (the MG EV—the initials are right there on the hood, it could only ever be Marvin Gaye). First stop was a job in St Marys, followed by hauling a heap of new computer components down the pass to St Helens for a client's system build and data migration.

The drive was smooth, but as is often the case with client-dependent IT work, a plot twist was waiting. The client had an unexpected scheduling clash and had to bail shortly after I arrived. Rather than wrestling with forgotten passwords and software purchases on my own, I made a tactical retreat, dropped off the parts, and pushed the actual build to next Tuesday so he can be there with his credit card and accounts ready.

It wasn't a total loss; it kept me from being trapped at a desk until dark, dodging native wildlife in the twilight on the way home through rural parts of the road kill state.

Act II: Feline Paralysis (The Shift Rotation)

When I got back, I sat down at the laptop intending to knock out some app code. Instead, I was immediately struck down by a legally binding, globally recognised medical condition: Feline Paralysis Syndrome. Not the cats, me… trapped.

We have three felines, and they clearly run a tight tag-team shift rotation to keep me hostage. Abby (all black) started the early afternoon watch. Once she clocked off, her sons took over. Duckie (also black) took the mid-afternoon slot, and right now I am pinned down by Tony. Tony is what I call a "Border Collie cat"—he's large, exceptionally fluffy, and black-and-white in the exact pattern of the well known aforementioned cattle dog, right down to the clean white collar.

I swapped the laptop for the tablet for easier access to a keyboard without having to lean so as not to disturb whichever cat was on duty at the time, sat perfectly still and let my brain do the work while my legs went completely numb.

Act III: The Castaway on the Timing Deck

With the family syndicate holding me immobile, I finally worked out exactly how Chapter One unfolds for our protagonist, Jason Callis, and it doesn't involve him starting out as a hotshot pilot.

Jason is actually a passenger on the Argo—a skilled civilian contractor catching a ride back toward the rim after wrapping up a gruelling six-month stint servicing automated orbital timepiece rigs. He’s a blue-collar mechanic who knows micro-tolerances and heavy kinetic gears. He's just counting down the days in steerage until he can get back to his home—a small independent parcel of land he spent his life savings buying on a corporate-owned colony world.

Then everything changes. Just as the Argo hits the system's edge and prepares to shut down its comms arrays for the blind Q-Shell jump, a last minute, high-priority data packet catches the ship.

Captain Helen Kostas summons him to The Cabin (there are many cabins on a starship, only one is The Cabin) to break the news. In a cold corporate boardroom light-years away, the mega-corp decided his colony world was… surplus to requirements. They liquidated the asset, pulled the terraforming infrastructure, and legally voided all civilian deeds. His home has been entirely decommissioned leaving him adrift in the spacelanes.

Before the shock can even register, the ship's master chronometer warnings sound. The Q-Shell shutters are dropping. He can't turn back, he has no destination left, and he's trapped. Seeing a broken man who happens to hold a high-end kinetic mechanics certification, Kostas slides a crew manifest across the desk: “Well, Callis. You can either sit in steerage for two months staring at the bulkhead... or you can put on a jumpsuit and help Gelas grease the primary drive gears. We're short a hand.”

The Evening Ledger

Marvin is plugged in, the client parts are delivered, Tony is still maintaining his shift on my lap, and Jason Callis officially has a tragic reason to join the crew. All in all, a solid Wednesday's work.

Time to kick off the boots, step away from the keyboard, and let the gears rest.

How would you handle a two-month voyage listening to nothing but the heavy whir-tick-whir of a mechanical clock keeping you alive? Let me know in the comments below.

Until next time, Barefoot, Out.