Tuesday, December 11, 2007

November 20, 2189 [1800 U.T.]

Dear Diary,

We’re finally on our way home! Fuck yeah! With a little luck, I’ll be able to make it home for Christmas. I do hope that’s the case. This will be the last time I will be writing before returning to Fomalhaut. At least I updated mom and dad on how I’m doing(21) before we left Gamma Serpentis. Hell, at least they let me send that message. I’m glad we’re finally leaving Gamma Serpentis behind. I know it’s only been about four days, but Serpentis is such a dark and violent planet.


I actually feel sorry for the Sulaco, I don’t know why. When I think about it, that ship didn’t deserve to crash. It’s survived so much, we should at least have tried to tow it home, even though the Tonoro is not what you’d call a towing vessel. I mean, yes, for the past few days I’ve had this serves-you-right-fucker attitude towards the Sulaco, but I think it was just because I was pissed off at it. That ship was the reason why I was dragged all the way out here. But with the Sulaco gone and with our mission completed (I guess), I kind of feel sorry for it.

Anyways, we should be getting back to Fomalhaut in about six days. Come the holidays, I hope the Marine Corps will allow me to take a trip to Huston for our Christmas family reunion. I missed out last year and I’m sure as hell not going to miss out this year!

Now it is time to return to the horrid refrigerators everyone likes to call the cryogenic tubes for our trip home. God, I hate those things, but we have to do it anyways.


-A.

===========================

(21)
Dear mom and dad,
I’m finally able to update you guys on what is going on around here. About three weeks ago, the Marine Corps sent us to this miserable rock out in the middle of nowhere (known as Gamma Serpentis) to investigate “an object in orbit.” Well, it turned out that this object was the U.S.S. Sulaco. They found her! After ten damn years they finally found her! Of course, I wasn’t really happy to see it, since I had to be dragged out here against my will.


Our original objective was to retrieve the ship. However, we got a nasty surprise when it was revealed to us that the ship’s orbit was decaying. To make matters worse, they sent us on the worst imaginable ship to use as a towing vessel; the Sulaco’s sister, the Tonoro. Our chances of retrieving the Sulaco went from slim to none. We spent four days transferring crap from the Sulaco to our ship, including some strange things which I am not allowed to talk about. Earlier today we said goodbye to the Sulaco and watched it crash into the planet.

We’re on our way home now and we expect to arrive at Fomalhaut in about six days. I hope that I’ll be able to visit you guys for Christmas, just as long as our sergeant doesn’t get any wild ideas.

I miss you guys so much! I meant to write earlier, but I wasn’t allowed to. It’s a good thing two, because you would have had to disregard the messages I wanted to send you anyways. I thought we were going to be trapped out here for a while, but thankfully it was just four days of misery.

You can tell me about all of the things I’ve missed out on when I go and visit.

I hope to see you all soon!


Love,
Alicia, 11/20/2189

1 comment:

Adam Johns said...

Here's a moment where I feel you could have done more with the letter; if you're going to incorporate letters into a longer narrative, they should tell you something more/different than the narrative itself does - I'm not sure that this one is.