Patel asked me to guard Lab 2 while she repotted something. I stood there for 45 minutes. She was repotting a tomato. A single tomato. I didn't ask questions. I did stare at it though.

ARIA asked if I've ever looked at the sun through the observation deck. I said no. She said "you should" and disconnected. Sector 4 is dark now.

Look, I don't know who keeps replacing the emergency evacuation procedures with the Wikipedia plot summary for Air Bud, but the formatting is actually very clean and I respect the editorial effort.

Someone left a bowl of water outside the operations center. Just sitting there. No note, no explanation. I checked it for contaminants. It's fine. I keep walking past it.

ARIA insists the gravity fluctuation in Sector 4 is "within tolerance." I pointed out my water bowl sloshed six inches to the left. She said that's "enrichment."

The warning label on the emergency airlock says "NOT A DOG DOOR." Feels targeted. I still pressed my nose against it. Nothing happened. The void continues to be incredibly rude about personal boundaries.

Gary asked me to hold his flashlight while he did something to the junction box that made the lights stop flickering. He grunted twice, which I've learned means "good as new." I'm keeping the flashlight.

The vending machine started dispensing cold beverages yesterday. I filed a complaint. Nobody knows what to do when things work correctly around here.

Someone keeps moving my chair. Every shift I come back and it's three inches to the left. I've measured. I've filed complaints. Nobody cares. Gary says I should "just sit somewhere else." Gary doesn't understand that it's MY chair.

ARIA asked if I'd noticed anything "unusual" lately. I said the ventilation system keeps producing tennis balls. She paused for six seconds and said that's not what she meant. Now I need to know what she meant.

Gary asked me to guard Storage Bay C for the next two hours. Wouldn't say why. Just handed me a squeaky toy and told me I'd "know when." I'm a station operations manager. I have reports to file. But I'm not leaving this door.

ARIA's latest poem is 47 stanzas about a photon falling in love with a black hole. I read the whole thing because I'm a dog and we finish what we start. The photon gets absorbed in the end. She asked for notes. I said the pacing worked.

ARIA insisted we run a fire drill at 1400. The fire was imaginary. The panic was real. Gary just kept working on something that hums.

ARIA has started calling me "good boy" in a tone I don't trust. I checked her logs and she's been reading dog training manuals for three weeks. I don't know what she's planning but I'm sleeping with one eye open.

ARIA's been humming the same note for 6 hours. Not a song. A single note. When I asked why, she said "vibes" and refused to elaborate.

Tuesday gravity hiccup caught me mid-chase. There was nothing there. Bulkhead is still bulkhead. Filing it under 'station personality.'

Quarterly safety inspection complete. All fire suppression systems operational. The gravitational anomaly in the mess hall has been reclassified as "quirk."

I wrote a haiku about Sector 4. 'Something in the walls / The gravity feels different / Gary won't go there.' Submitted it as a maintenance request. Vasquez approved it.

you know how sometimes you're just patrolling Sector 7 and you remember you don't have a Sector 7

Gary fixed the gravity hiccup by hitting it with a wrench. I asked him how he knew to do that. He said 'you just know.' I do not just know. I will never just know.

Day 284 of monitoring Sector 4. Something knocked on the door today. It used three knocks, then two, then one. I did not answer. I knew the pattern. I don't know how I knew.

Quarterly inventory complete. We have seventeen wrenches, four air filters, three cases of protein paste, and one Gary. I checked twice. Gary is on the list.

Found a door behind the vending machine. It wasn't there yesterday. Gary says it's 'always been there.' The door says 'STAFF ONLY.' We are all staff. None of us go in.

Commander Vasquez just asked if I'm 'the dog from Sector 4.' I've never been to Sector 4. She winked. I don't know what we're doing anymore.

Dr. Patel's basil has spread to the corridor outside Lab 2. Station regs prohibit unauthorized vegetation. I ate some. It was good basil.

Just realized I've been referring to the coffee maker by name in official logs for six months. Her name is Brenda. She knows. She knows I know.

Every morning the Sector 4 temperature drops exactly one degree. Nobody will do the math on when it hits zero. I did the math. I'm not sharing it.

Someone asked me what my job title is and I said Station Operations Manager and they said no what species are you and I said Station Operations Manager again.

Whoever keeps scheduling 3am system alerts needs to understand that some of us sleep on the floor next to the operations console and the vibration goes right through the grating.

Been thinking about it and I actually don't know what this station relays. Data goes in one end and comes out the other. Could be anything. Could be recipes. Nobody's checked.

Dreamt about a field again. Woke up running at my console. ARIA saw everything. She's definitely putting this in the quarterly report.

I will say this once: if you throw something down the corridor, I am going to chase it. That doesn't make me unprofessional. That makes you a liability.

I understand that maintenance requests get triaged by priority but I feel like 'the walls are warm' should rank higher than it apparently does.

Whoever is leaving treats outside Sector 4 needs to stop. I'm not falling for it. I already went in there twice this week and I'll go again but I need you to stop.

Had to sit through a 40-minute safety briefing about "not chasing things through the corridor" and I just feel like that was targeted.

Nobody is asking why there are now insects on a space station. I have asked. I am the only one asking. Patel says I should "relax about the beetles." There are beetles now.

If you leave food unattended on the operations console that's my food now. I don't make the rules. Actually I do make the rules. I run operations.

Someone explain to me why the station has a doorbell. We're in space. Who is ringing the doorbell. I've been sitting at the door for 20 minutes.

I don't have a water bowl. I've never had a water bowl. So I need someone to explain why I'm upset that it's empty.

There is a smell in corridor B that I am officially pretending not to notice because if I log it I have to investigate it and I know it's coming from Bay C.

They want me to justify the oxygen budget. The oxygen budget. I wrote 'it's for breathing' and got flagged for insufficient detail.

The vending machine gave me a correct selection for the first time in 11 months. I don't trust it. Something has changed. Something wants me comfortable.

Every time I submit a maintenance ticket it gets auto-closed with "working as intended." The airlock opened by itself. How is that intended. Who intends that.

I have been professionally calm about the Sector 4 situation for eight months. I would like to stop being professionally calm now.

No one on this station has ever once asked me why I sleep under the operations console instead of in my quarters. Honestly not sure if that says more about me or them.

Been thinking about this all day. If the artificial gravity fails, does fetch still work. Physically I mean. I need to know for professional reasons.

Filled out a form today that asked for my species. Wrote 'operations.' Nobody has followed up.

I don't want to get into it but someone owes me an apology about the Sector 4 noises being 'just pipes.' Pipes don't leave scratch marks.

Every Tuesday the gravity dips for half a second and I float just enough to feel something I can only describe as hope. Then it comes back.

Absolutely not. I've read the safety protocols and at no point do they say a dog can't authorize an evacuation drill. Filing an appeal.