I’m concerned about the units wrote Captain Jarkuar in his diary. They’re not functioning like they should. Yesterday a hundred of them fell apart, and the day before that, a hundred more did too. I think Borerar is rushing production but I don’t know how to bring it up to him.

Jarkuar closed his book of illegal thoughts and stuffed it in a drawer beneath a collection of other illegal books. One of these days he would have to destroy all this evidence, but not until he could afford to. He clicked the drawer shut with a satisfying click and rolled back over into his bunk.

“Everything ready to go?” asked his bunkmate Bunkster on the other side of the room. Bunkster was a middle-aged man of indeterminate age, unusually interested in everything and not ashamed of it. “What were you doing just now? I’m just asking questions.”

Jarkuar rolled over and turned the light off. He was in his bunk, the small cramped thing they called “quarters” around here. The room he shared with Bunkster was a claustrophobic space, capable of fitting barely two bunks let alone two bodies. The designers knew what they were doing. Roommate Bunkster was a necessary evil. “Yeah, for tomorrow, yeah.”

“What was your favorite part of it? Did anything stand out? When you think about it, what do you think about?”

Jarkuar suppressed a natural urge to sigh. Sighing felt good because it purged the body of pent-up FRUSTRATION, but it also signaled an inability to cope with reality. He glanced uneasily at the NO SIGHING sign that he himself had hung above his head. Daily affirmations: NO SIGHING. “It’s bedtime, buddy. Let’s talk in the morning.”

Darkness did not stop Bunskter. Bunkster liked the dark. “So do we have any vectors planned for tomorrow? I was thinking we could get in the quad simulator early and go over them.”

Jarkuar stared into the blackness. If he could shoot lasers out of his eyes HE WOULD. He didn’t quite believe in himself anymore. He had a suspicion that his life meant nothing. “What am I doing?”

Bunkster continued rolling through his rolodex of questions but Jarkuar repeated the only one worth asking: “What am I doing?” His thoughts went to Amana Lisa, as they always did when he had nothing to distract him. She was out there somewhere, riding the color waves without him. A violent physical shudder roared through him.

“I’m just asking questions. Did you see Messemeer in the meal room today? What was he wearing? Can he get away with that?!” Bunkster could not contain his weird frothy laughter in between questions.

This whole situation was insane. The only thing keeping Jarkuar from a psychotic break was the idea that Amana Lisa would write him again someday, even though her last letter had decidedly been the end of everything. Still, Jarkuar’s fantasies could survive anything real life could serve up. They were resilient fantasies. He had been working on them for quite a while.

“I’m just asking questions. If you have one of the other, did the other have one? I’m trying to figure this out.”

Jarkuar sighed.