Kayleigh Tanner 1

5/11, Tuesday.

I found this in room 451 this morning and figured I may as well use it. Don’t have anything better to do and its previous owner’s sure as hell not going to care. So, yeah. Introductions first, I guess?

I’m Kayleigh. Five feet of freckles with some hair on top, though I cut it pretty short on the first day and it hasn’t recovered much. I’m writing this from the top of Saint Mary hospital, looking out over the remains of the city. Under me in their rooms are Jed, Kate, John and Derek. Sarah and Chris are out there somewhere, getting us supplies. The grocery on Second ran out of food on Sunday, so they’ve had to scout closer to the city centre.

The others are pretty alright, took me in. Dealt with all this better than I did, that’s for sure. Jed and Derek are brothers, but you couldn’t tell just from looking. Jed’s all dark hair and dark eyes and silent-broody, you know the type, and Derek’s all blue-eyes brown-haired life and laughter and… yeah. They’re close, though. I guess they have to be. They were here at the hospital first, right from the day one.

Chris got here before Sarah, and both before I did. Chris was here in the real early days, sometime in the first week. He spends most days scouting supplies and when he is here he doesn’t talk much. Sarah goes with him a few days a week, but otherwise pulls her weight around the hospital. She’s the best cook of all of us, though I’d like to think I’m not far behind.

John and Kate are father and daughter. They got here pretty soon after me, just a few days. John’s the oldest in the group by about 15 years (next is Sarah), but he is one hardcore son of a bitch. If this group has a weak link, he’s not it. Kate’s not exactly a pushover either, but she’s less gruff than her old man. Out of everyone, I like her the most.

And then we’re back to me. Short, not exactly strong and with no real useful skills. Mostly I just try to help out with all the odd jobs that need doing: washing, cleaning, scavenging around the hospital, stuff like that. I’ve got a collection of odds and ends in my room, pens and books and a couple of snowglobes, other things that have no real use any more, but help make my room feel less empty and more… mine.

The sun’s going down and my hand’s cramping, so I’m going to stop writing now. If anyone’s reading this… well, welcome to the life of Kayleigh Tanner. 

Stars

• "The stars look beautiful today."

  /they are imperceptibly different from yesterday, Twenty.

  "And they were beautiful yesterday, too."

  /I was under the impression that humans become desensitised to extremes - beauty, horror, pain. Is this untrue?

  "No, not really. I mean, if it was a painting or a song, I might become a bit desensitised, but the stars are different."

  /I do not understand. Is it because it is not made by humans?

  "I don't know. Maybe partially. Iso, people have looked at the stars since we were smart enough to make tools. Probably earlier. In all that time, we never got bored of seeing them. There's something so... I can't think of the word. Ephemeral? They're so far away, and intellectually I know that they are truly gargantuan, but sometimes they look like you could just reach out and... There are so many of them. I think that's part of it. You could spend your whole life counting them and die before you got anywhere close."

  /so it is their number that makes them beautiful? Their uncountability? I could generate a string of numbers larger than you could count in a lifetime. Would that be beautiful?

  "No, it's more than that. It's... How long have we been out here, Iso?"

  /8 years, 26 days.

  "8 years. And we're basically going at the speed of light, right?"

  /ninety nine point nine nine three percent.

  "And after eight years, these stars look no different to me than on the first day. I'm sure they have changed, and you could probably tell me the exact angle and distance, but that doesn't matter. Eight years of nearly-light speed, and we haven't seen a thousandth, a trillionth of the universe. After I die, and my children die-"

  /you do not have children, Twenty.

  "Hush. After my children's children die and their children's children's children die, all of us combined wouldn't have seen a trillionth of the stars. The universe is just so vast, so utterly incomprehensibly massive and unending and beautiful and the stars look like they've been laid out at random, but that's just because of our perspective."

  /I still do not understand why this makes them beautiful. I can identify a beautiful person by the symmetry of and distance between their facial features, or by their knowledge and behavior and moral standing on various key topics. I can identify a beautiful painting by the colour used or the preciseness of the sketched lines or by algorithms based on ratios between focal points. And yet I do not understand why the stars are beautiful. I have searched my databanks and while I have determined that they are indeed beautiful, I cannot find any solid reasoning behind the claim.
  

  "I don't know, Iso. Maybe that's why they're beautiful. You can't quantify it."

  /they are beautiful because a convincing argument for their beauty cannot be made? By that logic, Twenty, you are perhaps the most beautiful of all things.

  "Haha, ouch, Iso. You know, sometimes I forget you can make jokes."
  /I understand jokes. While I do not understand why they are humorous, the concepts of wordplay, irony and subversion of expectations makes crafting jokes relatively easy.
  "Aaaand you ruined it again. No matter how many times I tell you; don't explain a joke."

  
  

  
  

  
  

  
  

  /Twenty?

  "Yeah?"
  /you have not spoken for six minutes. Is something wrong?
  "I'm just thinking. Eight years is a long time. Nearly half my life. I don't know where we're going. I don't even know how long it will take."
  /I cannot tell you. My-
  "I know, your memory files have been scrubbed. I just think about it a lot, you know? What happened to Earth? Why am I the one on this ship? Am I the only one left alive?"
  /I do not know, Twenty.
  "More recently, though, I've been thinking about the stars. I wonder; if there is no one to see them, will they still be beautiful?"
  

The Dying of the Light

So thanks to living in Australia, I couldn't get this on Thursday and had to wait until today. Haven't started it yet, but I'm so hyped.