40S/58W - Morning
Dear Diary! It was a very, very noisy night. The factory is still working right now, as the sun is already going up again. I have no idea how much longer it will be working, but I gotta say, I'm really curious what will come out of it in the end!
...I just hope it won't take many more nights!
Anyway, no one's picked me up today - I guess I'm free to do whatever I want to do for now. So I'm off to get breakfast. And then... uh... I'll try to find myself something to do! I'll make another entry in the evening, and let you know how it went.
40S/58W - Evening
Dear Diary, the sun's going down and here's the second entry that I promised this morning. The Matchmakers are still extremely busy, but it looks like they are taking turns taking breaks from their factory duty.
I was able to catch one of them during his break. His name is Colt! When I told him that I don't know what to do with myself, he offered to play cards with me. We went to the library building to play.
Cards is a game, and it was great fun. Colt explained the rules to me - they were really easy. I even won a lot of the games. Maybe he's just not good at playing cards?
Besides playing cards, we also talked about a few things.
I asked Colt if he knows what the factory is building. I expected him to say that it is working on another tank like me, but he said that he doesn't know. That it's the factory's decision. I hadn't even realized that the factory is able to decide anything, like a tank would be able to. So, of course, I asked why it won't tell them what it's building. But Colt said that the factories don't talk to us... not anymore.
He mentioned some sort of "war" - a fight where many, many tanks are involved. But before he could explain more about that, he had to go back to work.
I accompanied him for a bit of the way back to the factory, and when we passed my garage I remembered my camera. I asked Colt if I could take his photo. He didn't mind!
We parted ways there for today, though before he left, he told me that I should give my radio a try if I'm bored. I did that.
Without any sort of help, it wasn't that easy to figure out how to operate it. It's just a metal box inside my frame, but it has a lot of dials and buttons. I mean, most of it was self-explanatory, really, but I couldn't make sense of why I couldn't seem to get any signal. I thought I was doing something wrong... but then I managed to ask one of the Matchmakers. She just shrugged and said that out here, there's no stations that I could receive in the first place.
She did however mention that they have some old recordings here, so I went back to the library and looked for them. I couldn't find anything, unfortunately... Everything is labelled with symbols that I can't read. That was a bit disappointing. I was really curious what the radio is all about.
I spent some more time in the library after my unsuccessful search, and thought about something else that Colt had said to me while we had played cards. He had wondered if I had found a name for myself yet, and the words I want to be referred to by.
I'm... not sure. The Matchmakers have been calling me "Tankietka" so far, and I thought that was my name. But apparently they call every newly built tank that. I don't know if I have to choose something else, but if it's required, I could get used to something like... Rook. That was the name of one of the cards that we played with. It was a pretty powerful card, and I like the sound of it.
As for the pronoun words, I guess I'll just go with "he"! No one has explained to me yet what the exact meaning of those are, but Colt told me that tanks paint symbols on themselves that show which words they want the others to use. I found some paint in my garage, so I'll do the same now! I'll make sure to take a picture of it, too!
...And afterwards, I'll try to get some sleep. The big engines in the factory are still working.
This is Colt! He showed me how to play cards.
A photo of myself with the new pronoun symbol. Taken inside my garage. It was already getting dark so it's kind of hard to see the symbol, actually...
