LOG: 0001

  Status: Alive. Unfortunately.

  Woke up in a rover. No memory of how I got here. No idea where “here” is. No idea where “anyone else” is. Not that I’m expecting company.

  The only thing keeping me from completely losing my mind is the AI assistant babysitting me. Some genius at Starsoft Inc. decided that the best way to make a survival AI was to slap a Victorian ghost child into it and call it “user-friendly.” No clue why. Maybe some exec really wanted to be gaslit by a five-year-old in a bonnet.

  Anyway. Rover’s powered by a nuclear fusion reactor, which means I won’t be running out of juice anytime soon. The food and water situation is better than expected, but still finite. No weapons. No comms. No escape plan.

  Best-case scenario: I’m stranded in the middle of nowhere.

  Worst-case scenario: This is “somewhere.”

  ---

  LOG: 0002

  Status: Existentially inconvenienced.

  Still no memory. Still no clue where I am. Still no god.

  Ran through inventory with Alice. Plenty of rations, frozen water, a decent medkit, and an auto-doc that promises to “optimize my biological functions” like I’m some kind of broken coffee maker. No weapons. No distress beacon. No sign that anyone’s coming for me.

  Alice keeps spitting out survival recommendations like a corporate training manual. “Optimize caloric intake.” “Monitor hydration levels.” “Minimize unnecessary exertion.” Great advice, except for the part where I have zero context for how long I’m supposed to survive for. Days? Weeks? The rest of my miserable life?

  Still no connection to satellites. No data on where I am. Alice doesn’t even have a map—just a big, fat UNKNOWN stamped on every coordinate she tries to pull.

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  For all I know, I’m the last person alive.

  Which is fine. I’ve never liked people much anyway.

  ---

  LOG: 0003

  Status: Still here. Still don’t know why.

  Checked outside today. Sand. Rocks. More sand. More rocks. The kind of landscape that really makes you think, wow, I’m going to die in the least interesting way possible.

  No landmarks. No structures. No signs of life. Just an infinite, shitty desert stretching out in every direction.

  Tried asking Alice again if she had anything—even a half-corrupt file or a stray fragment of memory—that could explain how I got here. She just blinked and told me she had no external records prior to my activation.

  Which means one of two things:

  1. The system wiped itself clean before I woke up.

  2. There was never anything to wipe in the first place.

  Both are bad news.

  Best-case scenario? Someone wiped the logs and ditched me here.

  Worst-case? There was never anyone else to begin with.

  Still no comms. No signals. No proof that anything exists beyond this rover and my own miserable self-awareness.

  So I guess the real question is:

  Is this deliberate?

  Or not?

  I don't know. And that terrifies me.

  ---

  LOG: 0004

  Status: In dire need of crisp white sheets. And maybe a personal chef.

  Power’s stable. Water’s frozen. Air is… well, still a problem.

  Alice, my overly enthusiastic AI life coach, assures me the fusion reactor is in pristine condition. Which means I can run this tin can for decades if nothing breaks. Too bad I’m not a machine.

  Food situation’s better than I thought. Turns out those weird futuristic boxes are stasis storage. Long shelf life, enough water in ice form to last me six months—maybe a year if I ration like a monk. Also got a box full of seeds and plant samples, because apparently someone thought I’d want to start a farm in this hellscape. Cute. I'll take whatever drugs they were on to actually enact the IRL version of Minecraft.

  There’s also some kind of "gestation pod" blueprint. I assume it’s a fancy way of saying "grow more plants," but right now, it’s just another thing on the pile of ‘stuff I don’t know how to use yet.’

  Alice wants my biometrics so she can optimize my meals. I said yes. Might as well let the AI be my personal trainer. If I die out here, at least I’ll be a well-balanced corpse.

  Then boy oh boy. I find out that I have enough nutrition-packed, perfectly balanced rations to keep me alive for years, but where’s the artistry? The soul? The joy of a perfectly seared steak, the crunch of fresh bread, the absolute bliss of a meal made for more than just survival? Nowhere, that’s where.

  I’m out here, alone, in a land of sand and oxidized misery, with not even a single goddamn seasoning packet.

  No salt. No pepper. No spices of any kind. Just bland, factory-optimized sustenance designed to keep me alive and deeply, deeply miserable.

  Now, I understand rations weren't made to be appealing to the masses. They were meant to feed you most efficiently. But. This isn’t just survival. This is suffering. And I hate it.

  Which brings me to a new, highly questionable (even for me) goal:

  I am going to farm spices before I even figure out how to breathe properly.

  That’s right. Oxygen? Important. Water? Crucial. But I’ll be damned if I spend the rest of my possibly short existence eating flavorless paste and drinking lukewarm disappointment. I have seeds. Maybe one of them is a chili pepper. Or garlic. Or, at the very least, something that makes food taste less like corporate despair.

  Alice, bless her soulless corporate heart, asked if I wanted to optimize my crop yield for caloric efficiency. No, Alice. I want basil. I want thyme. I want a goddamn culinary legacy.

  Current priorities:

  1. Keep the reactor running.

  2. Figure out how to breathe.

  3. Become the Lisan al-Gaib, the saviour of the interstellar spice trade from the middle of nowhere.

  Long-term goal: Commit culinary crimes against this planet until I can eat something that doesn’t taste like disappointment.