SHOULD HAVE SEEN IT COMING

May 4th 2011, 11:40 by E O Hatterpol | 62 AU FROM SUN

I AM angry & disgusted with myself.  I haven't been doing anything except celebrating these past three days when I should have been mourning.  I need to step back from my own unexpectedly heroic feats & realize we all played important parts in keeping the blue whale from extinction.

After finding myself on the other side of this adventure with my life intact, I was understandably euphoric.  That feeling is being replaced with a sense of loss & sadness for all the Flybrarians who died saving the starship & its treasure trove of books.  It humbles me to see how much these interstellar librarians care about their stories.


Although it isn't firm, the captain has put the number of dead at 82.  That doesn't include the 46 or so who went missing: they could have died in an explosion, been sold into slavery by the pirates who managed to escape or gone so deep into hiding they have no way of knowing the coast is now clear.


I've already noticed a few empty seats at the Whale's Liver & haven't been able to find a regular who was starting to become my friend.  He was an RH.


I felt disoriented, like my life had been broken into two parts: before pirates & after.  I thought it might help to look at my blog posts just before the pirates hijacked the starship to see what had been important to the old me.  All I found was a writer whining about a poor night's sleep trying to convince himself to adopt an optimistic attitude by taking all of my Earthbound Flybrarians for a tour of the ship.


Then I got to my post about looking out the portholes.  At first, I didn't notice anything out of the ordinary - just another "I'm so happy!" post - but then I spotted it.  I was shocked, I was filled with self-loathing: there I was, scribbling away with my cheap blue pen, lost in a daze of fake optimism while I inadvertently drew the ships that were coming to kill us.  


In plain sight, a pirate starship that looks like it came straight out of Peter Pan!  How could I not see that?


There's an asteroid next to it; is that a pirate ship in disguise?  I picked up a paranoia in the belly of those fake rocks I just can't shake.  What about my post on the Baleen Plates Observation Deck?  Those asteroids floating harmlessly amongst the debris - were they carrying savages in their hollow bellies?

I could have saved lives.  I could have opened my eyes, seen the danger & told the Captain, a Left Hemisphere - anyone - & kept Flybrarians much braver than me from dying cold deaths in outer space.


I think I'll have a quicker emotional recovery if I can straighten out my own story & piece it together with what I hear on deck.  I guess the best place to start is back on 21 April, when I tweeted something that I now see was so drippingly optimistic, so ridiculously oblivious that it makes me hate myself:


"WHAT the hell was that? I just heard a loud THUNK on the Flybrary's hull, louder than I'm used to. Hm... probably just a passing asteroid!"