Dear Mom,
I've been on post for a couple weeks now. Nothing much has changed. I've cleaned out the station as best I could and now I'm in a regular routine. I set up the communications array but have yet to get any direct connection with anyone. It's all one way communiques right now. Speaking of which, I received an invitation to an awards ceremony for significant adherence to duty principles by a first year officer. It specifies that accommodations can be furnished for two family members, assuming of course those are your parents. I realized while holding the print out of the message that there was no way for you to attend seeing as how we're now on opposite sides of the collapsing wormhole. I also realized that I couldn't attend if I wanted to being that the fuel it takes to break orbit is more than available before the next drop, after the date specified in the message.
Sometimes I think to myself that maybe my choice for this outpost wasn't the best assignment. Maybe I should have stayed back home and spent the my pay at the bars with the other cadets getting stinking drunk. That's yet another luxury unavailable here before the next drop. Distilling my own would take too long and would probably make me go blind anyway. I've stayed away from the stuff for a long time anyway, so no need to start up on account of there being nothing social to occupy my time. There is a local colony near by which I visit occasionally, but they're a hermit colony, staying to themselves, in their own niches, only coming out when in need of supplies that they can't supply for themselves.
They're nice people who I wouldn't mind seeing more of. It takes my mind off the loneliness and distance from home I've felt growing in my bones. There's another officer that's caught my eye, though she's younger. Even so, she's been in the service about as long as me. She's stationed at the next outpost and our monthly business allows us to interact. I'm waiting for the next fuel shipment so that I can see the outer planets, hoping maybe she'll need to survey them around the same time. These spanning spaces along the solar plane make for long nights listening to radio static in hopes that a voice might come clear requesting my presence. But really, all that comes are pangs of hunger for companionship. Just something to take my mind off this infinite distance that now separates me from you and the rest of the family.
It's almost power-down time - that period we have to shut down the equipment to conserve energy when the fuel shipment is taking its sweet time. Give my regards to all those on the other side. Wish the distance weren't impassible.
Your Son,
Tomaro
Thursday, February 7, 2008
Sunday, January 27, 2008
Arrival
Dear Mom,
It's been six months since I last talked with you. I know I've been away from home before, but this time it's different. We won't see each other any more. I'm too far out in space to be reached, but I'm told that I can send a data stream back to let people know how things are going back on Terra Prime. I've reached my post on the edge of the Universe.
There isn't much here, but I'll be going on scouting missions and be interacting with people in the Forgotten Colonies. It's funny, as much as people back home talk about this place like it's some mythical land where there are rivers of milk and honey flowing, it's more like those places people could reach by taking a trip to the edges of the system. Except here, it doesn't stop. There is no center, there is only one all encompassing expansive space where those places on the edges of the systems that we know dot the solar plane.
My post is on a desert planet converted to suit human needs, though it's plain to see the dust as it blows over this place. It leaves a thin layer of soot that needs to be cleaned off of everything each cycle. Sometimes I let it pile up and don't think about it. Mostly because there's also nothing but time here. I usually let the soot pile until the day before I know there's an inspection. They're never a surprise. No one wants to be here. No one wants to come here. Everything is out of the way. The only benefit is that the post is so close to Ecumenopolis. That's where I told you I wanted to live someday.
I haven't been able to muster up the time to spend to putting in for a transfer to there. The paperwork is unfathomably long. I've already got my Academy Correspondence Courses to deal with for another year. That'll be when they boot me off this rock to another one if I can't pick up a position in the private sector in Ecumenopolis.
I hate to be brief, but there's plenty of unpacking to do, as well as tidying up after the last guy who was here while I was on furlough. Apparently, he didn't bother cleaning the soot off anything so the outpost looks like just another set of dunes, save for the broadcast antennae protruding from them.
I know I was told that I can't go home, that the wormhole had closed too tight to send matter through, but maybe someday I will make it back home to see you. I know you'll be by my side in spirit, even if that's just another myth.
Your Loving Son,
Tomaro
It's been six months since I last talked with you. I know I've been away from home before, but this time it's different. We won't see each other any more. I'm too far out in space to be reached, but I'm told that I can send a data stream back to let people know how things are going back on Terra Prime. I've reached my post on the edge of the Universe.
There isn't much here, but I'll be going on scouting missions and be interacting with people in the Forgotten Colonies. It's funny, as much as people back home talk about this place like it's some mythical land where there are rivers of milk and honey flowing, it's more like those places people could reach by taking a trip to the edges of the system. Except here, it doesn't stop. There is no center, there is only one all encompassing expansive space where those places on the edges of the systems that we know dot the solar plane.
My post is on a desert planet converted to suit human needs, though it's plain to see the dust as it blows over this place. It leaves a thin layer of soot that needs to be cleaned off of everything each cycle. Sometimes I let it pile up and don't think about it. Mostly because there's also nothing but time here. I usually let the soot pile until the day before I know there's an inspection. They're never a surprise. No one wants to be here. No one wants to come here. Everything is out of the way. The only benefit is that the post is so close to Ecumenopolis. That's where I told you I wanted to live someday.
I haven't been able to muster up the time to spend to putting in for a transfer to there. The paperwork is unfathomably long. I've already got my Academy Correspondence Courses to deal with for another year. That'll be when they boot me off this rock to another one if I can't pick up a position in the private sector in Ecumenopolis.
I hate to be brief, but there's plenty of unpacking to do, as well as tidying up after the last guy who was here while I was on furlough. Apparently, he didn't bother cleaning the soot off anything so the outpost looks like just another set of dunes, save for the broadcast antennae protruding from them.
I know I was told that I can't go home, that the wormhole had closed too tight to send matter through, but maybe someday I will make it back home to see you. I know you'll be by my side in spirit, even if that's just another myth.
Your Loving Son,
Tomaro
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