Star Rider

Kurt's Journal #1 - Interstellar Exploration

-- "Hi Kurt, DSF 9973, exploration mission of KU-2 category, clock 5119, engine temperature and output are normal, cosmic ray reading 90-9-1, within normal range, need to record this as a logbook?"

-- "I'm Kurt, number 99991. Confirming the log content, authorized to record and send."

-- "Okay Kurt, navigation log has been saved and sent. Also, your coffee is ready."

The wristband blinked orange for a moment as a processing indicator, then switched to a calmly pulsing green breathing light. I unbuckled my seat belt and floated over to the service desk, grabbing the still-warm coffee packet as I drifted towards the rest area on the starboard side. A massive circular viewport took up one entire side of the cabin, and Pluto, now slightly smaller than it was yesterday, was a faint brown dot in the distance. I grabbed onto the handlebar by the viewport and pressed my face against the glass. If someone were watching me from outside the ship, I probably looked like a little kid in a gypsy caravan, gazing out into the endless void instead of an endless desert.

According to the clock on our home planet, today marks the fourth year of our mission. It's been over a thousand clock cycles since we last stopped at a supply station to rest and refuel (Note #1). For pilots like me, this is a lonely task. There's usually about two thousand clock cycles of time spent alone in the spacecraft between supply stops, and while the highly anthropomorphized AI Cube provides companionship, the feeling of solitude is hard to shake. Especially since the interstellar navigation computer handles almost all of the flight tasks, leaving only unexpected events for human pilots to deal with. So except for those pilots carrying out special missions, the ordinary pilots have a lot of free time on their hands, which actually intensifies the feeling of loneliness.

Today's mission is as usual: the exploration computer selects a suitable asteroid in the area and performs multiple laser scans and various spectral analyses to infer the asteroid's composition. This mission cycle has selected 11 suitable small celestial bodies, and my job is to check the flight computer's analysis results and make decisions and reports. It's a job that's so simple and even a bit boring. In the Kuiper Belt, there are over two thousand exploration ships from the same company as mine, and I think the pilots on board are also as tedious as I am, day after day...

A company internal message in the media center is marked as "important," with the title "DSF (Note #2) Accepts United Federation Agreement." This is somewhat interesting, so I open the message: "After years of negotiations, DSF and the United Federation have finally reached a final agreement. The mining work on the G-7717 celestial body remaining in the solar orbit will follow the revised United Federation specifications and suggestions, ensuring the maximization of the interests of the company's shareholders based on the controllable and sustainable supply of precious metals on the home planet. and after nearly 19 years of tug-of-war, we have won the future we deserve!"

The future we deserve? As a deep space exploration pilot, this seems to have no direct impact on me. For so many years, exploration missions have never stopped. For DSF, the acquisition of G-7717 nineteen years ago was a scientific and economic miracle...

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Note #1: Astronauts engaged in deep space exploration typically follow polyphasic sleep patterns, with rest and work intervals lasting 4 or 6 hours. In Kurt's case, he adopts a 6-hour cycle. Using this calculation method, the duration of a parent star's year in relation to Earth is approximately 1500 clock cycles. The clock is reset at the commencement of each new exploration mission.

Note #2: Abbreviation for DSF- Deep Space Fortune, the company where Kurt works.