[Placeholder] (Complete) NaNoWriMo 2016

Bargains

"You're organizing your fan fiction archives again," pointed out the Muse from the couch. She was sharing it with Cat who was sprawled haphazardly across her and the cushions in a boneless nap.

"I can't help it!" The Writer tried to pull herself away from organizing the archives. "It's got cutting and pasting and formatting and spreadsheets and calendars and, and, and..." Her eyes glazed over with procrastinating joy.

"Well leave it be," the Muse snapped. "You've got twenty thousand words left to write and only seven days to write it in!"

"That's only, what," The Writer checked the NaNoWriMo stats page, "2.5k a day? I can do that easily!"

"Only you haven't been." Pointed out the Muse. "And just because you can doesn't mean you will."

"Which is why I lose NaNo's. I know, I know." The Writer sighed and reluctantly put away her archiving tools. "I want to write this story, I do, there's just all these other things I want to do too. Suddenly. For no reason."

"It's just procrastination and you can do them next week," the Muse said firmly. "You made a promise to these fictives that they'd get their story, even if it was a really crappy rough draft. Which it is."

Cat made a muffled noise of agreement in his sleep.

"Alright, fine." The Writer pulled out her story notes. "Where were we again?"

~*~*~*~*~

It took Simon and Cat a few hours to work out enough vocabulary to be able to have the conversation about Ship's request. Ship stayed quiet and out of the way while they worked, but he did flash up helpful comments now and then on the touchpad.

"I still think this is a trap," said Cat with a growl. "Even if it is the simplest answer, there are a lot of unknowns. But there may be people, of a sort, who need our help."

"I don't think we should do this for free," insisted Simon. "It cheapens our contribution and I don't want risking our lives to become something it's assumed that we'll do whenever asked."

"What could Ship give us? Food? Luxuries?" Cat said, dismissively. "It has taken our futures and nothing will give those back again."

"It could make us proper crewmembers," said Simon. "Ones with a vote and a voice instead of unruly cargo that's ignored whenever convenient. There's no way it would ever give us control, but I want some sort of say in my own fate."

"It would be false control," said Cat. "I'm sure there are safeguards in place to prevent anyone from getting true override over the ship."

"False control is better than none," Simon leaned back against the wall, suddenly very tired of the whole situation. Tired of being kidnapped. Tired of having to 'wait and see' for every major event. Tired of having to envision a future where this was all that was left.

He wondered for a moment if the shadow ships really would destroy them when they caught up or if they'd focus only on the ships. But if he hated being trapped on the ship, he hated the thought of having to scratch out a living on a hostile alien planet even more.

Simon had no idea how long he had been on the ship, but he hadn't been tracking the passage of time on purpose. Once he realized that he would be spending the rest of his life on the ship, he couldn't bring himself to care. Without other humans, cultural touchstones of time were irrelevant. Birthdays, holidays, what did any of it matter? No day was any more important than another now.

It might be an illusion of control, but he knew where they were, what they were doing, it would give some structure back to his life.

He could only hope Cat agreed.