Greetings! This is Libelle, and I am a little [coughs] hoarse today. You can blame speezz for that. Yes, you! But my friend, I grant you this: you do have an (albeit strange) sense of humour. When you said "Winter Olympics", I somehow expected that place called Sochi to be, you know, wintry? As in, freezing cold?
So, when I landed, I stepped out of the door in my expedition coat from the ice deserts of... [swallows] some place. I also took the lovely rainbow-coloured scarf I bought on Barcelona – mind you, each colour organic! Not dyed, but made from the hair of a specific breed of tree-horned yak. Well, as I was saying, I stepped out of my door fittingly adorned for Arctic temperatures– and you know what into? A blizzard? No, into brilliant sunshine! On a beach! There were even people swimming, and my ship had disguised itself as a closed ice-cream vendor, though I suspect she only did that to make fun of me.
Congratulations, speezz, you have successfully played a prank on a... [static, just for a split second] on me. You made me look like a [unintellegible word]. Does that even exist in your language?
Well, by the time I got to the boulevard, I was practically melting and took the first chance to get rid of my coat. Which was a coffee shop; I entered it on a whim, really, just because I liked the name. I believe it was a joke. But then, what do you know. People see all kinds of thing when they look up at night and search for patterns between the stars...
[a moment of silence]
When the person behind the counter wrinkled their brow at me, I did not think much of it. But just after the first sip of my overly-complicated-named drink which probably contained only a marginal amount of actual 'coffee' (I might run an analysis of it later, using a stain on my shirt, about whose genesis you will be filled in in a moment), that I realized something was of.
People were looking at me funny. All the people in there, all ages and sizes. And just to make sure, I may have forgotten to check the temperature before I got out, but I am not entirely stupid. I did remove all of my equipment before disembarking, including the welding goggles – and I always wear those, [static, then pause]
My clothes are definitely Earth-style. Leather boots and cord trousers in light brown, a white shirt, and a grass-green velvet swallowtail coat, because the day I take that one off will probably be the day I am no longer Libelle. Anyway, one woman winked at me, I think, when she passed me by, and I began to think of this as some kind of joke. I might have said something like "It's nice, being friends with all kinds of people, isn't it?". At the sound of which the employees behind the counter turned white and one of them ran for the manager, who appeared to be a very large very dark-haired and very loud-voiced man. He said something along the lines of he does not want foreigners to make political statements in his shop and if I didn't put away that scarf he would through me out by it. When I objected, stating my confusion in a fairly civilized manner (I addressed him as "honored sir" despite his behavior being neither very honorable nor very noble, and I even reached for his hand)... Well, lets just say the rest of my drink ended up on myself and the table, the table on the floor, and I on the pavement, gasping for breath, and being told they "don't want my sort" around there, when soon the world will be watching. Well, hope the world is watching from a safe distance. I am, sure as all known hells, going to.
In any case, I have used up most of the remaining energy to transferred my vessel to another location, somewhere nice and remote. No people here, only lots of reddish dust and rocks, a few bushes, and a road, but that one's a good distance away. Then I spend almost a whole day oscillating on the threshold of the engine room, but I am at a loss what exactly is wrong with it, and without our proper mechanic I don't dare to go in there if it might be dangerous. Staying out and leaving things as they are might be just as dangerous, though. The engine kept making strange noises; well, stranger than usual – it is as if she is trying to tell me something, this terrific, moody, beloved, complicated ship. Power levels keep falling, even now that I have turned almost everything of... Most of the stuff was broken anyway. But what to do now? I know better not touch the temporal navigation unit, and I should avoid another spacial displacement unless it's absolutely necessary.
At the moment, she's running on auxiliary power, and I'm bent on getting more if the systems back online. That's, actually, what I should go back to now. I'll postpone the story of the girl in the corridor to my next broadcast, which will be made as soon as I am reasonably sure the console won't blow up in my face.
This is Libelle, signing out.