Managing Docosie III While Counting Down to “I Do”.

Sadly, Ranih, James, Jean, and I are all back at work this week. Our leave for the wedding and honeymoon doesn’t begin until next week. This means that both sets of parents are essentially unsupervised during working hours. Our mothers will be just fine. It’s our fathers that Ranih and I are more concerned about. Who knows what those two might get up to on Docosie. Our mothers have already said they can only keep tabs on them when they themselves aren’t busy with their own plans.

James has his hands full this week with updates and maintenance schedules for most of the colony’s systems, both planet-side and on the Orbital Platform. It’s an end‑of‑month process. As for me, I’m working on the general administrative side of day‑to‑day colony business, as well as the feasibility study for potential colony expansion. We’ve arranged a meeting with the colony council two weeks after Ranih and I return from our honeymoon as newlyweds. Ideally, I’d like to complete as much of the study as possible before the wedding so there’s not much left to finalise in the two weeks leading up to the meeting.

I did promise Ranih that I wouldn’t do any colony work during our honeymoon, but being the forgiving soul she is, she told me she appreciated the promise but wouldn’t hold it against me if something urgent came up—so long as it was handled during downtime and didn’t interfere with any enjoyable activities. That last part certainly covers a multitude of sins.

James is working planet‑side today, whereas I’m on the Orbital Platform. He’s invited me on a short trip later this week to Docosie III’s only moon, which houses the colony’s main communications relay and long‑range sensor platform. There’s a small moon base there that currently supports 20 personnel on rotation so no one stays longer than a month at a time. It’s not due to any particular risk—just the sheer lack of anything to look at out of the viewports. The moon is a desolate, barren landscape.

James visits the moon regularly, but it will be my first trip. He thought it would be interesting for me to see Docosie III from a different perspective than the one I get from the Orbital Platform. Everything is about perspective. “Your perspective will either become your prison or your passport. It will either confine you to the way things are, or launch you into the way things are meant to be.” — Steven Furtick.

Image from Unsplash by NASA.