Family Correspondence

Nobody can hear a scream in the vacuum of space, or so they say.

I hear them regularly. Look, if we're splitting hairs (or popping heads), it is only vaguely distinct from the popping of a head. Sometimes people fall into the refuse shoot. It takes sharper wits than the victim of such poor judgement (There are huge signs 'DO NOT LEAN INTO GARBAGE SHOOT') to get out before, what is useless, gets expelled. One time three kids fell in. Not the easiest day on watch.

Before leaving Earth there was this tendency to make the vast emptiness some sort of malevolent force. You know the only evil I've seen? A lack of resources and the ensuing shit fight. Logistical miscalculations, accounting mishap, bureaucratic triple handling so slow the need disappears before the thing needed arrives.

(Also just an aside, its not empty out here. There are things called Flip-sparks, common as flies. If you see one you'll know why we named them but didn't do so with much creativity.)

I get a decent vantage of the horrors from within my Security Detail, more often than not stationed at doors that lead into the valuable areas. Like Fridges and Freezers and the spare parts warehouse. Despite their mundane function people can get quite upset when you deny them access, so we usually let them in. Or do other stuff like take them to jail or throw them outside.

Just last week someone "sacrificed" a month's supply of rations to Santa Muerte during some approximation of a Spanish or Mexican, Neo-pagan Lent-thing (The shit we try to hold onto, honestly!) This was in the middle decks. Well he got to meet Santa Muerte within moments of the food leaving the ship. His flesh became the temptation and the mob did not resist. There is so little sinew needed to achieve release for the crazed. Rotten business.

But you see, like, how could someone be given access to take an entire month of food, for an entire deck, in one go? It just boggles. I wasn't on duty, I think I'd have noticed and likely said something. But then again there's not much to motivate us anymore. Hit a bit of a rough patch.

The Temple fell off due to a malfunction in the lighting software that gained access to the severing protocol.

So, sometimes we have to move a room or repair them, so they get "severed" and are carried on tracks to the appropriate area.

Anyway, the lights went all HAL 9000 and for our own good I guess just kicked the Temple into space. Off the tracks, we have no way of catching a room. I mean they're massive and heavy. It was filled with people.

You know, maybe that's why the Santa Muerte man did what he did, trying to recapture a bit of that lost purpose.

Then we found out that there were sterility medications being dumped into the water supply. For everyone. No rhyme or reason, seemingly. Not like a class warfare decision, the outer decks wanting to interfere with the inner decks. We share a water supply. One of the maintenance crew just snapped and, well, ruined us.

Hasn't been a lot of that pioneering, intrepid explorer vibe floating around as we float around out here with these tragedies.

And just the other day found out the navigation system has been off by .01 of a degree variant (Dunno why it's a degree variant, I'm taking their word for it.)

Which means we will miss our target by hundreds of millions of miles or more. Can't correct because we don't know if the error occurred along the way or if it was faulty from the get go. Since despite the fault we have been hitting our targets, according to the same bit of software.

We'd have never known if it weren't for one of the navigation genius doing some bored recalculations with some third party software independent of the main system or something. Just keeping his wits sharp. I was standing watch at the navigation deck that day and he just started vomiting. Someone came over to check on him, saw his screen and just screamed. Screamed like an alarm, on off on off. I stepped inside and closed the door behind myself, asking tentatively 'What's goin' on?'

'We're off course.'

'By how much?'

'.01 of a degree variant.'

'Doesn't sound like much.'

'We're gunna miss our destination by hundreds of millions of miles. Or more!'

'Do you know when the course changed?'

'Could have been anywhere along the trip or it could have been faulty the whole time. My guess is the lightning storm we ran through but since the software has been ticking itself as 'arriving', we can't trust that software to say. We're done.'

We, uh I'm, locked in the communication room. The announcement didn't go well. It was like someone knocked the information out of our hands and it rolled away and we all tried to catch it but a child picked it up. Then handed it to an adult.

I might be the last of those from the Navigation deck. Suppose that makes me Captain. And maybe crew.

So. I wonder what else I can say?

Arimaya Ryan