Letter in a Bottle

Posted on Wed May 1st, 2024 @ 12:10pm by Ensign Mercy Mourne
Edited on on Sat May 11th, 2024 @ 9:41am

Mission: Contagion
Location: Personal Quaters
Timeline: Day 365
914 words - 1.8 OF Standard Post Measure

Dear Mum,

I keep writing these letters even though there is no way of sending them to you.

I miss you Mum. We’ve been out here way longer than we should have been. The lab computers are starting to take twice as long processing some of the data. They aren’t a critical system, and there are no errors in the work, I’ve double checked. But they were never designed to go this long without the data being offloaded and the memory banks wiped and reconfigured.

I’m starting to think I should mention it to my CO but the thought of trying to explain it to them makes me itch. I know you would tell me they are a person just like me, but those extra pips make it tricky. It’s hard to explain. The chain of command is a funny thing. Even the phrase ‘chain of command’, like it’s something ready to bind you up the moment you put one foot wrong.

Oh dear I’m getting all in my head again, maybe I should just leave it? I can always just start my shift a little early, or stay a little late to make up for the lost time. I’m sure my roommate would appreciate the time alone, and it’s not like I have anything better to do. There’s always something that needs doing, even as far out as we are. There’s something about trying to maintain standards through all we have experienced that feels important. If we make it home, when we make it home, I want everything to have been catalogued and recorded and all the paperwork to be filed as it should be. I want people to know that we maintained our standards in the face of incomparable challenges. Does that seem silly? I know I am only a glorified lab technician, my work is more administration than anything, but how we do things says something about who we are. And out here, that matters more.

I really hope Starfleet has you guys access to my pay when we went missing. I hate the thought of Simon having to work two jobs just to pay for school. The kid can barely chew gum and walk on a good day, that kind of multitasking might affect his schooling. You know I miss his dumb face too? I hope you are getting the money for his school, and I hope he’s spending some of it on terrible hair decisions and drunken nights out. He’s a good kid, he deserves himself a few youthful regrets, you know?

I sometimes wish I had made a few more of those myself. Too much time with my nose buried in articles and data. Maybe there is still time for me yet? Although out here I would consider myself very lucky indeed to come across the opportunity for a drunken night out. We’d be lucky for a single glass of wine to share amongst the whole lower decks.

Between you and I, I may have calculated a formula to turn basic materials found in most asteroid belts into a fast and dirty moonshine. Imagine that, moonshine made of space rocks! I could call it star hooch. Clouds of ethanol sometimes gather in space too, like that story about the discovery of the massive cloud they found near the Aquila nebula. My history teacher used to joke and call it the Tequila nebula.

Only problem is I can’t work out a method that wouldn’t require venting excess fumes, and that means getting engineering involved. And an illicit distillery only works if very few people know it exists. Still the thought exercise was fun. Just hope no-one sees the calculations and decides to go through my room. They’ll be severely disappointed by the lack of contraband. It’s almost brig-worthy how boring my life is at this point. Even lost in space, I seem to be able to skip all the fun in favour of just keeping things running. It’s practically an artform at this point.

Also I think it would be extremely flammable, the starshine that is. I don’t want a repeat of the incident with Vicki and the neighbours shed. Do you remember the look on Mr Hallbot’s face when we had to explain why his beloved garden gnomes were a molten mess in his back garden?

Since this whole incident started we have had to deal with irradiated food supplies, ghost ships, alien ruins, and now some mystery species. Through it all, I have turned up to every shift on time, in more or less the right uniform. I have kept my head down, and done my duty. I tell myself you would be proud of me, for always being the responsible one. Most of the time it’s what has kept me going. But some days, like today, I want to rip off my uniform, beam down to the nearest M class planet and run into the wild and shoot tin cans while I pretend to be a space pirate like I used to do with the boys.

Give all the kids a squeeze for me would you? I miss you all, even Wulf with his terrible teen angst and pimply face. Better go start my shift so I can see if the lab computer is going to play nice today or not.

Love you,

Merc