5.21 - Swag

Just get to Jeska, he told himself. Deal with missing memories later.

Daniel began running toward the Afterthought in the darkness, listening for the Creature’s shriek.

His eyes were slowly adjusting to the gloom – too slowly, in fact.

After a few minutes at full sprint, he tripped over a pile of papery things and fell into them headfirst.

As he pushed himself to his feet uninjured, he figured out what they were – and what they were made no sense.

He picked one up to be sure.

It was a thin, flat, papery disk about four inches in diameter.  In the dim light it looked for all the galaxy like a beer coaster.

You got booze on the brain, he thought.

… but it really does look like a beer coaster! he countered.

The pile held thousands of coasters, and each one had writing on it.

It was too dark to read.

“Daniel …” he heard a voice call weakly from near his ship.

“Jeska?!” he called.

He threw the coaster to the ground and began running again.

As he neared the Afterthought, he realized he had developed a certain fondness for his ship.

After a few hundred yards, he tripped over something else in the darkness. Quickly he regained his footing.

He didn’t stop to examine it, but he caught a glimpse as he got closer to the light.

It was another mound, and it wasn’t coasters.

Ok, that’s even more ridiculous, he thought as he continued his run. I think I just slipped on a pile of t-shirts!