As the ship crashed into the atmosphere of the hostile planetary body below them, Ira stumbled to his feet. He swayed with the rapid motions of the rattling ship under his feet and fought his way over to the door to his quarters. Slamming his hand down on the button beside it, the door slid open with a loud hiss before stopping halfway. Ira frowned, his eyes shifting to the small gap that he now had to squeeze through. On the other hand, he could just... not.
Actually, that sounded like a great plan.
Turning around, he stumbled his way back to his bed and fell down on it. His fingers grappled along the edges of his bed until he managed to get a hold of the belts that were currently trapped under the bed. Pulling them out, he strapped himself onto the bed so that he wouldn't be thrown about when the ship inevitably crashed.
The light above the door was giving off a blindingly red color. Alarms echoed throughout the entire ship, constantly reminding everyone to strap in and prepare for impact. Smoke drifted in through his still open doorway, setting off the fire-alarm in his room too.
A gigantic quake shook the ship and Ira felt his brain rattle in his skull like loose change. Luckily, his ability to sense pain had been turned off, and the impact against the atmosphere didn't bother him. Searching for his Host using his map, Ira frowned when he found him on the bridge of the ship.
The ship shook again. Ira's body pressed harshly against the straps holding him in place. The combination of the bright lights, the loud alarms constantly warning about fire, loss of life-support, hull breaches, and the smoke that kept on flowing throughout the entire ship, was disorienting. Ira had no trouble dealing with it because he wasn't human, but all the humans on the ship were panicking at the moment. Even the ones that pretended they weren't.
The planet they were crashing on was about Earth size. Which was good — significantly smaller and they would sort of float, like on the moon. Too big, and the gravity would be so great that they wouldn't be able to move. Earth size was just about right for the fragile humans scattered across this doomed vessel.
But the planet was nothing like Earth. A hostile atmosphere with less than enough oxygen, deadly plants, two suns with one side of the planet locked to one sun. Not enough water, too much methane — from a distance it might look like Earth, but it very much was not.
As the people of this ship were about to discover.
And, of course, that wasn't mentioning the aliens.
With one last tumbling shake, the ship broke through the final layer of the atmosphere. Hurtling at top velocity toward the planet, all that anyone of them were able to do was strap in and hope for the best. Naturally, so did Ira's Host.
Meanwhile, Ira was hit by the devastating fact that in a world like this, Silas probably wouldn't be able to bake any of Ira's favorites.
He decided to just lay back on his bed and wait for death.
The crash was as unexpected as it was expected. For a moment, his new body lost consciousness and Ira was trapped in a black void. Then he got it back with a whimper and reawakened to a crumbling ship.
Blinking up at the low ceiling above him, Ira tested the restrains keeping him in place. The ship wasn't moving anymore, so it was time to get out of them. Slowly, his fingers hit the latch and the belts loosened and finally fell off him completely. They clattered to the floor before they were pulled in by the automatic function under the bed that they had first appeared out of, the handle only sticking out a few centimeters.
Pushing himself off the bed, Ira groaned as the movement made every bone in this body protest. But there was nothing broken, so he decided not to worry about it and left his quarters.
Outside, the smoke was thick enough to obscure his vision. Ira squinted and turned his range of sight up, walking through the smoke-filled hallways with a hand against the wall. It wasn't only his door that had spazzed out, it turned out that many doors required him turning up his strength in order to force them open on his way to the cafeteria.
Obviously, the first order of business was to secure the food. Any other priority order was senseless to him. Edging along the narrow corridors, Ira zoomed in on his Host and made sure that he wasn't dead yet.
After a crash like this, he guessed that it was to be expected, that Ira would check in on his Host.
It had truly been a very bad one.
His Host was only just beginning to awaken. Covered in bloody gashes, with a dislocated arm and severely bruised ribs, his Host looked like a character from a horror movie as he painfully stood up from his seat. Like all others on the bridge, he had been strapped onto a seat at the moment of the crash, and the momentum had not been kind to him.
When his Host finally managed to stumble to his feet, most of the other people on the bridge had woken up again. Except for the ones that were dead, obviously.
"What's the status?" the captain demanded, stumbling toward the nearest console like he wasn't bleeding a river from his head. He wiped it off his eyes with a hand that became covered in blood, only for the blood to replace itself almost immediately.
The pilot said, "We crashed."
"No shit," the navigational officer drawled out.
The captain threw xem1gender neutral pronoun: xe/xem/xyr/xyrs/xemself, a comparison for easier understanding of use: he/him/his/his/himself, more comparison: they/them/their/theirs/themself an annoyed look. "Don't be antagonistic, we need to work together. Do a head count of the people and recourses we still have. If we're lucky, we can still get off this rock."
Entering the cafeteria, Ira immediately veered off toward the storage room. Some quick typing on the lock and the door slid open to an atmospherically controlled room that appeared, at first glance, to be perfectly intact. Smiling, Ira walked further in and stared with hungry eyes at the shelves full of food.
His radio crackled. Pulling it from his belt, he asked, "What?"
"Status report," the navigational officer requested.
"No bleeding, nothing broken. Location: the cafeteria storage facility," Ira answered, deciding that it wasn't worth it to antagonize them. He wanted to have a front-row seat to the horror that was about to befall these people when they realized what a cursed planet they had crashed on, and to do that, he needed to not get chased away.
The radio crackled again, the signal weakening. "What's the status of the food?" the navigational officer asked.
Ira picked up a can and bounced it in his hand. "At first glance, it appears to be intact. Further investigation will need to be made."
"Roger," the navigational officer said.
The radio crackled one final time, and then he couldn't hear anything at all from it. Ira put the radio back on his belt and put the can on its shelf. He walked over to the screen interface right next to the entrance to the storage and tapped it gently with his finger. Nothing happened. Narrowing his eyes, he pressed more firmly upon it. Still no reaction. Ira didn't have his tablet with him, but he was willing to bet that it wouldn't work either.
Which meant that they couldn't access the food manifest. Rolling up his sleeves, Ira opened the cabinet's door and pulled out a thick notebook and a gaggle of ink-pens. They were for case of emergencies, and Ira reluctantly gave the humans' foresight a gold star.
Then he started taking stock. It took hours to go through and count every single food-related item in the storage room. The shelves were high, and this was only the first room. There were more rooms for food that required different temperatures in order to store longterm.
While Ira was counting and dutifully marking down it all in the notebook, the captain of the ship was busy with locating and rescuing all the crew members still alive. Ira hadn't been the only one to have the doors fail on him. Ira's Host, who was only a lower officer and had only been on the bridge at the time the crash due to coincidence, also followed after the captain like a dog. In the end, they managed to rescue twenty-five people out of a crew that was one-hundred-eighty-three members strong.
Counting Ira and the people from the bridge, that was thirty-two people still alive.
Not exactly the desired result.
When Ira looked up, his internal clock told him that he had been at this for over six hours. Ira blinked. "Huh," he breathed out and closed the notebook. With this, he had finished.
The crew still alive had assembled in one of the cargo holds that still had functioning life-support. Seeing as he was done with his self-appointed job, Ira elected to head over to the rest of the crew and watch first-hand how it all went to hell.
Walking through the dark and smoke-filled hallways, Ira avoided any of the compromised areas easily with the help of his map. He reached the cargo hold safe and sound. Inside, he could see his Host standing uneasily by the side as the captain argued with his core crew (basically, the people who spent time regularly on the bridge) about what they should do now.
The rest of the crew were in different states, but all of them were injured to some extent. Ira pressed down the code and the door slid open. It was the navigational officer that first spoke to Ira.
"You have the food manifest?" xe asked and stood up straighter. With xyr words, the captain also looked over at Ira and quickly started approaching him.
Ira held out the thick notebook and easily let go when the captain almost tore it out of his hands. Ira decided to be magnanimous and let it go, as he would soon be seeing Silas. For this one time, he would be generous and showcase his kinder side.
The human should be grateful.
The captain instantly started leafing through the pages. Nodding and smiling, the captain said, "Good work, Petty Officer Blair. You can get some rest now."
Ira wasn't about to argue with that. He walked over to one of the crates and sat down on the floor with his back against the one-meter high metal crate. It wasn't very comfortable, but he would take what he could get.
"So then, are we agreed?" the highest-ranking medical officer left alive said.
Ira had no idea what they were talking about. But he came here for a reason and there was no TV in this world (well, there was, but not on this planet) so he would simply make do.
The Captain was still looking over the manifest that Ira had given him. When he heard the medical officer's words he looked up, a furious frown on his aged face. "We'll get a good meal in us and decide after. We'll be more clearheaded when we're not hungry," the Captain said. Some of the crew sent each other looks that Ira couldn't decipher, but no-one raised any objections.
So a small team of three left the cargo hold in order to get food from the cafeteria. Ira wasn't among this group as the Captain asserted that he had done his duty for the day. What was the use of arguing that?
While waiting for the crew members to come back, Ira looked over at his Host. His Host had a fiercely troubled expression on his face where he stood leaning against his wall, blood still covering him. Ira was not so ignorant that he didn't know why. After all, this time, the mission was to escape from this planet of death.
Publish it love, I'll buy it when it comes out and is available.
Thank you!!
@FantasyDeath seconding what cvc said. Please post a status when/if it's out, so I'll get the alert and won't miss it owo
Edit: nvmd, I reached the chapter where you wrote the note about the paperback edition. I got one
Good work.
I hope to not offend you, but would it be possible to use "they" instead of "xe"? To understand what it meant I had to search for it and honestly it is pretty cacophonic. I think that the classic "they" would be more reader-friendly.
Obviously you are the author and yours is the choiche. Mine was just a suggestion.
1) yes, that is offensive. saying i shouldn't use a pronoun because you have to go through the trouble of looking up how to use it is.... just really offensive
2) you did not need to look it up. it's a footnote (with "they" as a comparison to understand how to use it) in the text itself
gender neutral pronoun: xe/xem/xyr/xyrs/xemself, in contrast for easier understanding of use: he/him/his/his/himself, more contrast: they/them/their/theirs/themself
@FantasyDeath, if you found it offensive I aplogize to you, but it is just that doing the research (if one want to understand a footnote is not enough) I read that most people use "they" as a neutral (79.5% against the 7.2% of xem), so I thought that it would be more reader-friendly.
Said so, in the first comment I said that you should do what you want to do and your decision is indiscutibale (you are the author and yours is the choiche), so I never even dared to think to say you what you should do, but I made a simple suggestion. So if it was what offended you I fear that you misunderstood what I meant.
To you change a word with a more known synonyme may sound silly, but I assure you that it is more helpful than one can think. One of the most problematic aspect of add new words to the dictionary is get people used to them, because by their own nature human reject the new and the different (although I think that you know this better than me), so using new words may cause a feeling of alienation. I personally don't care (although having been exposed to this word for the first time I find the sound unpleasant, but for me this feeling go away in a few days), but if you point to a bigger public it may be something to consider.
To conclude I apologize once again and I say once more that I didn't want to offend you. Not being well versed in english I may have expressed my thought in an not adapt way, making it look like I was telling you what to do. For that and the misunderstanding by that born I apologize.
P.S. I found the footnote a bit confusing because I didn't understand what you meant with "more contrast" and "contrast". I imagined that it was more informal than "they", but I wasn't sure, so I looked up to understand if they were different or not. As I said my English is a fair bit lacking, infact even to write this comment I had to use the translator quite a few times. Plus, even if it may sound as an excuse (and maybe a bit it is) my language totally lack gender neutral words, so LGBTQ+ community have to change the last vocal (from one the gender is understable) with an *. This cause problems when used out of the circle, so I thought it would better avoid a similiar problem by using a fully accepted synonyme. I apologize again (although I think that you are already sick to read it) and quote "the road to hell is paved with good intentions".
@verdenero97
1) i acknowledge the footnote might be confusing. I'll change it from "contrast" to "comparison"
2) the joy of English is that you can literally just make up pronouns
3) here's a link on gender-neutral pronouns if you want to know more: https://uwm.edu/lgbtrc/support/gender-pronouns/
4) my pronouns (atm, I change them sometimes) are xe/xem, so yes, your comment was really offensive on every level. even if those aren't my pronouns, it's super offensive
5) if people stay away from writing characters with different pronouns because it might "alienate" the audience who's not used to it, that audience will **never get used to it**
6) I think the wildness of English gender-neutral pronouns is super cool (the only gender-neutral pronoun in my language is super boring) and will definitely be playing around more with them in the future
7) I know you weren't trying to tell me what to do, that's not the impression I got, it's fine. the problem is that you said I should change the pronouns of a character to appeal to a wider and more narrowminded audience that would hate this book anyway and why the hell should I try to appeal to them in the first place?
saying I should **change the pronoun to make it easier for other people** is the problem with your comment. that's the specific part that's offensive.
English is not my first language either and I still regularly have to look up how to use gender-neutral pronouns. i have to check with a little chart whether it's "xe" or "xem" or "xyr" in this one specific instance. i haven't used them enough to know how to use them without cheating.
but that's the point. that's why I will continue to use them and any other fun pronouns i want to try, repeating them enough until I do learn it off the top of my head. exposure to something is the only way to get used to it, to learn how to use pronouns without looking them up. and because of this, we can't ever default to "they/them" just because it'll be easier for readers who aren't used to other pronouns.
I'm not saying I never use they/them, I'm saying that when I make up a character and decide their pronouns, I'll pick what fits the character, not what fits the reader
@FantasyDeath, I'm sorry that what I said about the pronouns is so offensive. Like I said in my country at most we change a vowel, so I thought that them were just more or less used synonyme and not so bound to one identity. Thinking so I considered more useful use the most known and accepted one (a capitalistic point of view). Cultural differences are very problematic because things that in some places are very important in others don't even exist.