Astronomicon 1: Inception Point (Finished)

14 - Day Two

Chris was woken the next morning by someone vigorously shaking his shoulder. Before he was fully conscious, based on the force used, he assumed it was Fletcher, but it turned out to be Kate.

"Come on, Chris. Everyone else is awake!" she urged.

Everything hurt, which was impressive considering that everything seemed to be numb too. Chris pushed himself into a seated position and looked around with bleary eyes. The lights were still on and everyone else was either sitting and eating the contents of another food sachet for breakfast or in the process of packing up their stuff.

"Lucy's told everyone to try carrying one of these batteries and a heating element each because we might need them again," Kate went on.

"That's a good idea," he croaked in reply.

While he pulled his water bottle out of his rucksack, Kate continued to bring him up to date.

"If you want to carry one too, that means we can carry eight of them in total. Fletcher's not going to as he's got the oxygen bottle in his. Lucy reckons we should set off as soon as we can because Melissa says it's another six and a half kilometres until the next module and most of that looks like gravel. God, I hate that gravel!"

Chris took a swig of water, held it in his mouth for a few moments before rinsing it around and swallowing it. Right now, all he could think of was using a toothbrush, a toothbrush which was currently more than eight kilometres away, in the wrong direction.

"I would ask what time it is, but that doesn't mean much here," he moaned.

"Eat some food. You'll feel better," she replied. "Melissa's got an app on the navicom which she's adapted to work with the twelve-hour, eleven-minute cycle on this planet. She's divided the time into twenty chunks and called them 'decs'."

"Decs? Shouldn't there be ten of them instead of twenty?"

"Ten for the day and ten for the night, was what she said," she replied, smiling.

"We're going to have to make major changes to the operating systems of all the computers to work in Lucy's new time system," he laughed.

He was still screwing the cap back on his water bottle when Kate handed him a food sachet she had picked at random from his rucksack.

"None of these contains breakfast foods, so you'll have to make do with...Chilli con Carne...oh dear."

He chuckled. "I think there's a ham and cheese one in there somewhere. That will make a better breakfast."

She rummaged in his rucksack again, eventually finding the requested sachet and handing it to him.

"Is everyone ready?" asked Lucy as she returned through the curtain, already wearing her backpack.

"Let me have another four hours' sleep, then ask me again," grumbled Fletcher, wearily pulling his rucksack onto his shoulders.

"Are you still eating breakfast?" she asked Chris.

"Don't worry," he replied. "I can eat while we walk."

* * *

"How long do we have left until nightfall?" Chris asked, of no-one in particular.

"We're going to have to keep up a decent pace to get there in time," replied Lucy.

"Assuming it went dark yesterday at five p.m., and we got up today at five a.m., we've got ten decs until night falls again," said Melissa.

"And what's that in English?" Chris chuckled. "I'm not used to your new time system."