A letter from the Pathfinder to the director of the Andromeda Initiative

Dear Director Tann,

Sorry I missed your last email… for some reason I can only check my mail at two terminals. I’ve been meaning to ask about that, actually. Have you ever heard of cellphones? They had them hundreds of years ago. They could do email, video calls, all the stuff we have entire rooms dedicated to these days. I’m not sure why we replaced them with orange holograms. Just a thought.

Really appreciate the ship, by the way. It’s great. Might have been nice to have my own toilet and shower, but I’m not above using the crew bathroom. One thing about that, though: Did one toilet and one shower really seem like enough? I’m pretty sure Drack can’t even fit into the stall, so I’m not sure what he’s been doing. I’ve chosen not to ask.

I know, I know, I’m nitpicking, and it’s not like you designed the ship. But the little things add up out here, and there are certain… discrepancies. Like I was out driving the Nomad around Eos the other day—an ATV I had to find in some random crate, by the way—and I noticed there’s a button that says ‘jump.’ I pressed it, and I’m not shitting you, the thing jumped. Isn’t that a little wasteful as far as our engineering resources go? Maybe I’m just looking for problems, but it seems to me that instead of jumping cars we could’ve had a Krogan-sized toilet on the ship. For future reference. 

Anyway, SAM and I are working well together, but I also wondered if maybe my father left any documentation behind. It’s not that he’s malfunctioning necessarily, I’m just a little confused. SAM can process physics calculations I can barely conceive of, but when it comes to simple logic problems he’s stumped. Like the other day, we’re on Eos, and Cora and Vetra are standing right behind me watching me solve this ancient alien sudoku puzzle, and he just leaves me hanging, looking like a chump. In fact, all he really does is tell me to scan stuff, which I’m always saying out loud to myself anyway. “I wonder if I’ll pick up anything on the scanner?” I’ll say. All the time. I digress. I’d really appreciate any advice you have about getting SAM to do sudoku for me.

Here’s another idea, and I think you’ll really like this one. You know how we have forward stations in orbit around every planet? Let's put bombs in them. Seriously. Or lasers. That would help with the Kett problem so much. I know, I know, forceful colonization wasn’t really the plan, but I feel like the ship has sailed on that one. And while we're on the subject, it would be great if we could mount a gun on the Nomad. I'm not above running over the indigenous fauna and Kett, but a gun seems more practical.

Back on the topic of policy, though, I was under the impression that we came to Andromeda to start fresh and create a better civilization, but I’m seeing some worrying things. One of my guys here has been borrowing credits to help out a woman back on the Nexus. That just doesn’t seem right, does it? I kind of thought room and board were guaranteed after traveling 600 years or whatever to get here. But then there are all these ‘commerce’ pods in the cryo bay. Did we really bring a bunch of bankers out here? What we need are scientists, farmers, plumbers, electricians and I just don’t see how hedge fund managers help. I mean, you’re not really waking people up from cryosleep and then checking their account balance to determine if they can eat, are you? I was thinking there’s no way at first, but you keep rewarding me with credits. You know I’m not doing this for the money, right?

Maybe I’m just overreacting. Things are going fine out here. We just spent six weeks scanning planets and found some iron, so that’ll really help the colonization effort. Next up we’re taking two weeks to return to Eos to put some guy’s pendant on a rock. It’s the little things you do that make a big difference.

I just have a few more notes and then I’ll let you go… requests, concerns, nothing major:

—Asking for a friend: what are the Initiative's policies on intra-ship relationships? Please let me know which cryo pod contains a human resources person.

—We could really use a crate of eye drops the next time we stop in to resupply. My orbs are aching from all the wide-eyed lookin’ around I get up to. I have special eyes. I think the crew is having the same problem.

—Speaking of the crew, this one guy, Liam, keeps bugging me about a ‘movie night’ he wants to plan. Can you tell him never to speak to me? 

—Some of the security personnel on the Nexus keep squatting while on duty. Can you please tell them to stop? It makes me uncomfortable.

Sincerely, 

Sara Ryder, Pathfinder
Frequency 235.25 | hotryde22@yahoo.com