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A
speaker for the dead had just finished his job. This speaking had been a though one and he was looking forward to going home. He was wondering how things had changed back there, since by the time he got home he would have been gone for 32 years, even though only a few months had passed for him.
It was only noon, so he decided to get an early start and head for home right away, rather than dragging out his visit to the small colony and having to stay another day. So he went to his
ship to inspect it to make sure everything was working.
After he boarded the ship he looked
trough everything, and it seemed to be in order. So he programmed in the destination and started it up. The trip would take a week, so he was trying to figure out what to do during the time. He decided to start writing on a
book about all his experiences he had accumulated trough his travels, to maybe try to pass them on, to
teach others about things he head learned. He didn't get very far however because he couldn't decide on what color he wanted the cover to have. He thought that
pink might be nice but a black cover might be seen as more serious. He spent all week trying to decide.
When the computer announced that they had arrived at his home he checked out the ansible network to see what had happened during the time of his travels. He was shocked to learn that there had been a horrible virus infection on his home colony, and that the entire place was in a quarantine since the disease was dangerous. He hadn't been able to say goodbye to his few friends who had died from the virus, and had no idea where he was going to go now. In the end he decided to spend some time
hiding away on the ship to finish writing his book while he still could, and then he would go to the colony in spite of the quarantine to see the people he knew that were still alive and try to help them find a cure.
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If you don't know what a speaker for the dead is,
this might enlighten you. Its one of my favorite books of all time, and so are the rest of the books in that book series. You probably need to have read it to understand some of the references in the story.
New words:
mall, east, seahorse, handshake, going, stroller, busted.
My chars: TPC / Tjuven / Dansare / Sinne / Magiker / Byracka / Krigare / Andreas