Inktober 2026 4
Inktober 2026 4, Cactus
Scrubbers at 87%. Cactus at 100%.
Chief Engineer’s quarters are the only place on the ship with a plant, and technically it shouldn’t be there. The mass allocation sheet lists it as “personal effects, 0.4 kg, non-essential.” The pot is a standard-issue ceramic planter, orange from the factory, bolted to the desk with two repurposed cable clamps.
The cactus is a prickly pear. He’s had it longer than the posting. It’s flowered twice, and both times it was a surprise. Nobody has ever been able to tell him why it flowers now and then.
Here’s the joke on the lower decks: the cactus does nothing for the CO2 scrubbers. The environmental officer has run the numbers. A single prickly pear is a rounding error next to a ship-scale scrubber array. He knows. He still talks to it.
What he says to it, in no particular order:
- Scrubber bed temperatures, read out like a bedtime story
- Which junior crew member has been using the wrong torque setting again
- Complaints about the corridor lighting on Deck 3
- Quietly, on bad nights, whether the repair is going to hold
It never answers, and that’s what he likes about it. It’s the one thing aboard that doesn’t need a status report.
Markers and fineliner on a postcard.
