Vox Meditantis

Monday, 1st December 2003

You want the log, you get the log. Observatory record, 22:47 GMT. Temperature outside minus two, inside barely better. The heater’s packed in again and Maintenance won’t come until Thursday, so I’ve got my coat on over two jumpers and I’m still typing with gloves on. Clumsy, but there it is.

Rachel left at nine. Said she’d cover the early shift if I’d take the long watch tonight, and I said fine, though we both know she just wanted to get home before the roads iced over. That’s friendship for you – a fair exchange dressed up as a favour. I don’t begrudge it. She brought me a thermos of soup before she went, which was decent of her, but it’s got bits of chicken in it and I’ve been staring at it for an hour now without touching it. I gave up meat three years ago, not for any grand reason, just that I started thinking too much about what goes into a body and what comes out. Flesh to fuel to waste. Same as the stars, really – burning themselves down, collapsing into something dense and cold. I’d rather not participate in the process more than I have to. Rachel thinks I’m being difficult. Maybe I am.

The CCD’s been acting up since half-ten. Keep getting ghost images on the same coordinates, like there’s something trapped in the sensor. Probably dust, probably moisture, probably my imagination. I cleaned it twice already but the smudge won’t shift. There’s a little figurine stuck to the monitor with Blu-Tack – some Japanese doll Rachel got from a car boot sale, all white face and red lips and dead eyes – and I keep catching sight of it in the corner of my vision. Started to feel like it’s watching the data come in instead of me. Just a bit of plastic and paint, obviously. Still, I moved it to face the other way. Stupid, but there you are.

Companion star in the binary logged at 23:14. Separation holding steady. I wrote it down, same as every other night, and thought about how everything up there is locked in orbit with something else. Held close, pulling away, held close again. Never free, never lost. Must be a comfort, in a way.

The soup’s gone cold.

Bob Lynn | © 2025 Vox Meditantis. All rights reserved.