The Jaded Soul: Captain's Log

Today, and for the rest of my life, I will never be a teenager ever again! Excellent.

One more year and I can drink without stealing it from ree. Or green_tease... maybe I should start saving up in advance.

(I wrote a more introspective, mushy entry last year, if that's more to your liking; right now I'm just too busy to match it. Maybe next year?)

This journal no longer receives updates from my Twitter account. It might be awhile before I update again. Until that fateful day, I hope to traipse around Profusion and occasionally update @JainaJade (also archived on Pinboard).

Have a pleasant lunar cycle!

Alone in energy-conserving dimness, Jaina ran her fingers over her new toy. The vending machine had called it a PINpoint, which sounded a good deal tinier than it was was. It looked like a clunky mobile phone circa 1997 A.D.

She abruptly illuminated her hand around the PINpoint, casting eerie shadows within its screen and over her shoulder, and tried to decide what to do. This device could be the answer to questions she hadn't dared to ask herself -- what if something happens to me away from my friends? How could they know? Could they do anything to help?

But there's no such thing as a free lunch or free answer. There's always a bill attached when you look. And this? It was meant to communicate and transport across dimensions. Did it track dimensional co-ordinates? Would it forward them to whoever built and offered these things? Who might that be?

Her light rippled unbidden up her arm as she imagined a vast plot whereby vampires could obtain passage to sunless worlds, or worlds with harmless suns, and feed, feed, feed.

"Stop it," Jaina said aloud. The words jarred in the silent bedsit and disrupted her reverie.

Ice might know. Or he might want to dissemble the device to see how it worked. She suspected she still couldn't predict his reactions as well as he could hers.

She sighed and chucked the phone-thing into her open duffel. "Fuck."

The PINpoint might prove harmless. There were people who charged for killing monsters, after all, and Jaina did it for free -- not because of ulterior motives toward the victims, but because she got something else out of it. Perhaps this device's supplier had similarly benevolent designs.

But just in case...

Well, it had come to her homeworld with her. If it was tracking and sending data, any recipient already had this much. That potential mistake couldn't be undone. It hadn't been aboard ship yet. Wouldn't, either, until she had some answers.

Resolved, Jaina leaned back and soon feel asleep.