Saint Joseph School

Entirely IC and Anonymous:

YOUR MOM

NOW

Jane awoke. It was still night...or early morning. She sat up slowly, upon the edge of her bed, and drove the palms of her hands into her eyes; she could not stop crying. She felt herself devolve into great wracking sobs that shook her whole body and made it difficult to catch a full breath ...

...HEAT! It was so, so hot! She was burning, one of the crewmembers had apparently already combusted and what had happened? Re-entry? The Polydimensional? Failed, and the autocorrection routines had dumped them into orbit near the closest inhabitable probability. Only the wreckage of the Nictus ...

She nearly retched as she regained physical form aboard the Nictus Vessel. The shock of passing through the Poly-Dee had nearly torn her matrices apart. The enemy vessel was surprisingly aseptic, though dark, darker even than her own ship in battle-blue. The crew of the Nictus vessel was in shock ...

THEN

The chorus of excited voices, an acrid smell of burnt metal and circuit sheathing, sweat and desperation. Illumination was set to battle-blue, and she felt all eyes on her, even as they rattled off status reports for their failing vessel.

"Maneuvering circuits eleven through ninety-six ...

NOW

Jane flopped down on her bed, grateful for the silence of the room. She pinched the bridge of her nose between two fingers and pressed down hard, remembered to exhale. Brightest Sun has been relatively quiet tonight; the constant screaming pulse of the Kheldian soul intertwined with hers had ...

Jane flopped down onto a chair nearby like a sack of peaches, and leaned dangerously backwards, somehow maintaining a precarious blancing act that some acrobats might envy. She laced her fingers behind her head and screwed her face up, attempting to think of some pithy phrase to utter.

"Listen ...

Handle: Girlactic

First, Last: Jane Doe*

Known as: Jane, Girl, Girlactic, Squid**, Lobster**, "Ma Fille***"

Prefers: Jane ( also "Ma Fille," but she'll never admit it.)

* Not her real name.
** Will obsessively correct "Squid" as "Mefnanim," and "Lobster" as "Kurukt."
*** Picayune only.

*points to the zoom button on the digital camera*

Pica, I showed you like six times where the zoom lens is! Just let me take the picture next time.

Also...pictures come out better during the daytime.

Valerie Atwood, school counselor and psychic, smiles patiently at Jane, known to travel under the code name of Girlactic. Around the school, she was known as one of the "weird ones." You know the kind; the ones who always sat alone at lunch.

"Ok, Jane, let's try another one. Think of something that ...