Earthdate: April 29, 2314. Wednesday. I'm not sure why this particular day was so difficult. Paal and I had developed a routine that worked for us. I still felt that I loved him and things would work out in the end, somehow. Our primary focus as a couple was the paper we would publish and spent most of our personal time working on. In fact just about everything we did was about work, work, work. There was no time to think about the reality of our relationship.
I guess the catalyst was my work on the Crab Database Project. CDP was a meta-hub for all things Crab -- peer-review and meta-analysis of Crab research, Crab data synthesists, auditing of anything Crab-related, as well as a forum for crazy Crab theories and unfounded speculations. For a Crab-obsessed person like myself it was heaven. I spent so much time there that just a week earlier I had been invited to be a contributing synthesist, which for me was like dream come true. I think it was nice to be appreciated, even if it was just for my nearly encyclopedic grasp of Crab research. Paal should have been happy for me.
He wasn't.
I forget what set it off -- probably just one of the many things that Paal hated. Pickles, maybe. Whatever it was he went off on me. How I was spending my time on something else, but worse, how I was betraying our results in hub forums. Normally I think I would have agreed with his attack, and I'm sure he was depending on that. But I didn't. I forget the back and forth, but mostly I asked him why he didn't audit CDP as well. Since he had no good answer he replied with bluster.
Nothing changed, of course. It was just one of many fights. But this was the first time that I really didn't understand his motives. Now it makes sense, but only in hindsight.
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