MRA Dilbert

I have no mouth, and I must Mansplain. Taking the words of Scott Adams and combining them with the art of Scott Adams. This is a work of parody. Duh.

The Loneliness of the Deep Space Cargoist »

It’s been a little while. You’ve probably forgotten that you even subscribed to this old thing. I have a new novella that I’m funding via pre-orders through Indiegogo. 

Since I have the space here, have a taste of the opening for The Loneliness of the Deep Space Cargoist:

Inez Stanton was on the john when the siren started going off. She slapped the comms panel next to her and a cheerful voice rang out, “Saluti, comandante.” Great, something fucked up the language control.

“What’s happening?” she said, a little startled at the loudness of her own voice. How long since she had spoken out loud?

“Мы пострадали от мусора.” It took a few seconds for Inez to remember her Russian. Debris. Shit.

“Where were we hit?”

“Rahtikotelossa.” Was that, fuck, Finnish? Still, given that the ship wasn’t actually destroyed, it was probably the cargo hold. 

Inez finished cleaning up and pulled up her jumpsuit. She grabbed the fire extinguisher from the dull metallic corridor wall and approached the door to the hold. 

“I hate to ask this, god knows how you’ll respond. Is there air pressure in the cargo hold?”

“Les barrières tiennent.” 

Right. So, she could breathe. She grabbed a respirator anyway and opened the inner door and peered through the outer door’s porthole. Immediately, she could see there was no upper bulkhead covering the third furthest from her. It looked like it must have been a glancing blow more than anything, though, because none of the cargo was even disturbed.

“How long will the barriers hold?”

“Tilu dinten, di speed urang ayeuna.” Well, that was no help. She closed the door to the cargo hold and put the respirator and fire extinguisher back. She crossed the hundred feet to the cab and opened the door there. 

“Thank you, whoever there is to thank,” she whispered, seeing that her panels were still in English. So, just a bit over three days, as long as nothing else had gotten jarred loose with the hit. She pulled up the star maps to see if there was anything within three days. Fang’s Waystation was going to be the closest, about two and a half days away. It would be tight, but she’d make it if nothing else went wrong.

“Why did you think that?” she whispered at herself. 

She set a new course for the waystation, and killed the siren. It was giving her a headache.

She marched back out through the storage room to the closet that held a lot of the most important parts of the ship. These included the air recycler, the power cells that controlled everything but the drive core, and the ship’s computer. The computer was literally the smallest part of what was in the closet.

Inez pulled out the core of the computer and turned it over in her hands. No obvious physical damage (though she was by no means an expert). She grabbed a test lead from next to the computer and plugged it in. The core lit up and she could see the test reboot sequence running. After a few minutes, it began the slow blink that showed it was ready. 

“What’s your status?” she asked the computer.

“Working at 89% of nominal.”

She wiped her brow. She was surprised to find that she was sweating, given that the temperature in the rig was usually a constant 20 degrees. “Good. Can you monitor our progress to the waystation?”

“Pêgirtî, serwer.”

Well, that didn’t work. She stowed the core back into the computer case and closed the closet door. Hard.

It probably shouldn’t come as a shock that I’m going to take a long, possibly permanent break from this blog. I’ve spent the last year, more or less, making fun of someone who it turned out was right, at least about the outcome. I genuinely don’t understand how.

I can’t stomach looking at his blog, and I can just barely manage to function right now. Friends of mine are going to lose their rights in the very near future, and for the life of me, I can’t see the funny in it. Some people literally won’t survive this. 

And as much as it pains me to say, I have to accept that I was part of the problem. I thought that the little shits coming out of the woodwork were a last gasp of the worst of America. Turns out they were just getting started.

Well, I’m owning it. I am owning it and I am going to move forward. I don’t know what I’m going to do, but for now it doesn’t involve making comics. It probably involves making videos like the one above. Probably of better quality as I get better at it.

This is all partly my fault. The 2500 of you that follow me have buoyed me over the last year, and I appreciate your support. I won’t take down the Tumblr, but don’t expect updates.

You can check my personal Tumblr,  jscartergilson.tumblr.com and subscribe to the YouTube channel for more bad videos of me talking to the left of the camera.

It’s hard to admit when you lost, and it’s harder to dust off the dirt and try again. That’s what we have to do today, tomorrow, and on for the next several years.

It’s the week of the election here in the US, and for the life of me I couldn’t bring myself to read more than a few sentences of any entry on that blog. If that changes, I may post something later. Maybe.