Welcome to the Journal of Now and Forever. This Journal is a collection of my Star Control and Star Control 2 fiction. Note: Some of this material is, by necessity, extrapolation from the slim information provided by canon sources.

New fiction is posted first at My Livejournal before it appears here. This story is in response to First Lines 1000's Challenge #8 and The Other Write's Challenge #13.

It shouldn't be this hard.

I can still breathe. The lights are still on. I have plenty of room, plenty of food, available water. I can come and go as I please. I'm free.

I'm trapped.

I've got to get out.

Dusk has fallen and I don't even close the door behind me, just get out of the apartment as fast as I can without running, without drawing attention. Never draw attention – no. I don't have to do that anymore.

I can't stay there alone.

Calm down. Walk past the trees lining the street, heading out to the fields beyond. It's warm enough, no chance of rain, the stars in the sky above, the large multicolored lights of two other Vulpeculae stars setting on the horizon. Slow down. Breathe. But keep walking.

I look at my watch. I managed to be alone for... oh... three hours, before the panic set in. My shoulders sag. Only three hours. It's better than it was back on Earth, but I didn't think... I thought that was behind me.

Damn him. Damn myself. I wish I had someone to pray to. Some way of hope.

I'm going to have to tell him. I don't want to. I don't want to tell anyone. My pain is mine, it's personal, it's not something to be shared. Sharing hurts. It hurts me. It's why I don't get close. Don't get close because you won't get hurt.

I want to be left alone but I can't, not for long. I can't handle it. It isn't the silence, or the dark. It's knowing there's no one around. Knowing I'm alone. Knowing no one will come to help. That no one will hear me.

God, I'm shaking. Huh, God. Lucky me, an Androsynth who wants religion and can never have it. At least God, by whatever name, would hear me in the dark when I was alone. But that can never be mine.

I can't live alone. I can't do it. I guess the higher-ups were right when they said nobody should live alone, at least in my case. I rub my face with my hands, hard, trying to distract myself from everything else with a minor inconvenience.

Dean wasn't my first choice for a roommate. I never had a choice in one at all. I didn't get along with anyone – intentionally – so by the time I got to move into real housing, there wasn't much choice left. And I got the most slacker Androsynth I've ever met, then or now.

It doesn't matter who he is. He was the one who put up with me for years. I don't think I'll find a new roommate now. I can't live alone. I have to find him – at least it shouldn't be that hard, with only forty-odd thousand of us on this world – swallow what pride I have, say I'll change, just move back in so I'm not alone anymore. So someone is there, when I'm there.

I thought once we left Earth, it would go away. That it was because of the Earthlings, my owners, and once I was free, everything would be fine. And it is, except that I have no friends, suffer recurring nightmares, have probable stress-related health problems, and just lost my roommate because of my temperament. All that's left is to lose my job. And my mind, I suppose.

I can't see a doctor about this. That'll just be a permanent note put on my record, it'll keep me from things later on. I have to get past this on my own. If nobody knows about it but Dean, then there's still a chance. I have to fix things, fix myself, at least enough so nobody, not even Dean, thinks – thinks what? Right now they just think I'm damn unpleasant to be around. Fine, I'll fix that. At least enough so that I don't have to live alone.

Maybe I don't have to tell him what happened. I don't want to. It's my pain, wound up tightly in string inside my chest. If I just apologize and say I'll change – and do it, at least on the surface – maybe that will be enough. As long as he hasn't already found someone else to live with. It can't be that easy – I don’t think anyone's changed roommates in years. We'll probably end up a subject in the forums if the word gets out.

I've come to the end of the trees. From here, it's the open fields, the wild perennial wheat standing still when the breeze stops, like now, and there's only one Vupeculae star left above the horizon.

I don't want to go back. I have to, at least long enough to find out where he went, somehow. I don't know how to do that, but there's got to be a way. I'm Androsynth, we always find a solution. Don't we?

I'm at the end of the trees. Only the wheatfields lie beyond. It's so quiet, so alo –

Oh God –

Gotta get back to where people can hear me, know I exist –

~ ~ ~

Author's Addendum: No, he isn't being attacked. He's all alone.

Comments? Email me: laridian at aol dot com