Just a short story i wrote. It takes place in the early days of UFO:AM.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------


January, the 17th

It's hot and there is no wind. The boat seems to stand still, albeit the sea seams different, it seems this is a
different place than yesterday, but i could be wrong. There is just no way to tell. There are 2 water containers left, each 25 liters and 10 boxes of the white cookies that taste like cardboard. Enough for some days i guess. I remember reading a statistic that a big amount of the people which are found dead in the desert had a filled waterbottle with them, they simply saved too much water for their own good. What else is on the boat? A life jacket, ONE paddle, a flashlight and a piece of rope of about 5 meters length. I wonder where the second paddle is...

January, the 18th

The heat is incredible. I'm using the lifejacket to provide me with some shadow. I can't think clearly, all i can do is to think about the ship and how it sank so fast after the explosion. I remember the frightened faces of the other passengers. Where are they all, there were several lifeboats full with people they can't all...

January, the 20th

I have to guess the date, it seems i fell in a deep sleep due to the heat and more than one day might have passed. There's a slight wind today and i ate some more of the cookies from the box i ate before i fell asleep. There was some red stuff on the cookies, it seems the box was damaged and maybe some saltwater ran into it.

January, the 22nd

Again i have to guess the date, it seems i slept more than one night, but there is no way to tell for sure, only this uncomfortable feeling in my guts. I threw away the cookie box, just in case there's something wrong with them. I do have some more of those boxes, no problem...

January, the 23rd

Had some terrible diarrhea, which is not an easy thing on a small boat. Peeing is easy to do, especially as a man, but everything else is difficult, i almost fell overboard. Several times.

January, the 24th

The sky is clouded, the waves are higher. In the evening i start to have painful cramps in my belly, i can't eat or drink anything. I try to remember the night the ship sank to keep my mind off the pain. First thing i remember is the serious face of the captain when he told us we had a saboteur on board. He used the word saboteur but we knew immediately what he meant, there was one of THEM on the boat. They were the reason why we had fled from the city with the ship. He said his men had neutralized the sabouteur, but he had to report the incident to the authorities. Bad mistake.

January, the 25th

The pain is getting more intense and i have cramps in my legs and arms. It is hard to write. No entry today.

January, the 25th

It's the evening of the same day. Ok,i'm feeling a bit better at the moment and i want to write a bit before the pain returns, which it always does after some minutes. After the captain had made his "confession" to us about the report, things had calmed a bit, we really believed it was over for the moment. We even relaxed a bit, doing a walk on the deck of the "Apollo", as the old ferry we were on was named. That was when i saw the other ship.

January the 26th

Had a terrible night, i had fever and nightmares and couldn't move or sleep. I tried to drink and eat, but couldn't keep the stuff in my stomach. I had to vomit right away. Had the strange urge to drink saltwater... I didn't, or at least i hope i didn't, i don't remember everything.

January the 27th

The sea is rough and my hands look a bit like they are burned, i guess that's a sunburn from back when the weather was better. The cramps are gone but i have a GIANT headache, it feels like my head wants to explode. Explode...
Yes, the other ship! It started firing at us and the passengers screamed and ran for the lifeboats. The ferry sank so fast i couldn't believe it. They even fired at the lifeboats! I could hear explosions and see flashs of light and i heard people screaming.

January the 28th

One of the water containers is empty, which is odd, since i remember it being about half full yesterday. But maybe i'm wrong, maybe i simply forgot some days, my mind is not so clear atm. I'm feeling terrible, i feel like i'm 200 years old.
Not much writing possible.

January the 30th?

I can't remember how long i slept and i can't move my legs, i don't feel them anymore. I wanted to take a look at them but somehow the pants seem to stick on the skin and i'm too weak to remove it, the water container and the cookies are on the other side of the boat, i wish i could reach them. Something tells me there is a way but i don't understand what this means.

next entry

Again i have been sleeping very long and somehow i feel i'm changing i can't describe it, no clear mind. Somehow my legs have grown INTO the water container and i can drink the water with my skin. No wait that's nuts i can't...

last entry

Body feeling stronger but mind so weak as if somebody takes over control. Damn fever



------------------------------------------

Captain aboard a Destroyer, talking to someone by radio:

Yes, sir, that were the writings we had found on the missing lifeboat, they were on the side of the Chrysalis.
Over.
Yes sir, we incinerated the whole damn thing.
Over.
What? No, sir, i think those were all. The others have been neutralized when we sank the ship.
Over.
No sir, we didn't actually see any infected ones except this one. Yes, thanks, will do.
Over and Out.

Technically it would have been a single oar and not a single rudder, but apart from that I liked the whole loss of identity theme as the narrator gets taken over.

I changed "rudder" to "paddle". Thanks for the tip! And thanks for the nice comment!

Nice story Aralez! It's interesting to imagine how it is to be taken over like that. Only thing I found odd was that he kept talking about eating cookies and the cookie box after throwing it away on January 22nd.

He threw away one box (the one with the red stuff (biomass) on it) the other boxes were still there. But i will edit it a bit to make it more clearer. Thanks for your input!

My mistake. I thought I read 2 containers of water and one box of cookies, when it was in fact 10